These Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37:1-14

I am fortunate, I know, to know so very little of the scene which Ezekiel encountered in the vision before us now. One can only imagine the devastation which must have preceded what resulted in a valley full of dry bones. No, indeed, the closest I can come to comprehending such as this -- at least in its literal sense ---  is by perusing history. In fact, I found myself digging again into what I know about the battle at Gettysburg. How 7,000 died on the doorstep of this small town and how many were hurriedly 'buried' by comrades in graves so shallow that they offered little or no protection from the elements. We know, of course, that their stories don't end there for mothers and dads and wives and fiancees on both sides of the battle had their way when it came to exhuming those bodies and having them buried once more in places far more fitting.

I am fortunate, I know, that I know so little of what is before us now. I have grieved my share of dear ones, yes, and I have stood alongside countless others when called upon to speak words of comfort and promise before coffins were lowered or ashes were scattered. I have to say I could not help but compare the scene which Ezekiel was dropped down into to the orderly rows of gravestones in the cemetery which backs up to my home now. Even those whose loved ones have long since joined them so that no one who remembers them stops any more --- even for them the grass around their headstones is trimmed so that anyone interested can pause to make out their names and the years their lives graced this planet. And yet, while I know little of it first hand, the image Ezekiel shares is not nearly so rare as one might hope. In modern day cases of genocide it happens over and over again that one group so little values the basic humanity of another that their remains are not given the respect one would ordinarily render.

This was surely the case in the time that Ezekiel lived and prophesied. I am told that evidence has been discovered to show that it was typical for conquering armies to simply leave the vanquished to rot where they had fallen. It would have been, of course, the last indignity that could be visited upon them. Indeed, that valley of dry bones which dominated Ezekiel's vision was not something unheard of in that time and place. And yet even this vivid vision stood in for something else.  For those dry bones symbolized all that the people of Israel lost when their national and religious symbols were destroyed, when their leaders were carried off into exile, and when the rest were left to make do in a land torn apart by war. They must have believed themselves, their present, past and future, like those dry bones to be not only dead, but dead beyond any hope.

Surely it is difficult to find any comparable experience in the world I inhabit now. I cast around trying to see if I have ever been that bereft of hope --- at least in any way that matters in an ultimate or permanent sense. Except for maybe this: In one particular long dead place I had not even much thought about being dead until, I am ashamed to say, not so very long ago.

For this is what comes to mind. It is a hard struggle in the world I call home to stir up real connection between people who differ greatly from one another. I watch the news with all of you and again and again I see evidence of our differences and our distance from one another along racial lines all across our country. And yes, this is every bit as true in the community where I live and serve. Oh no, it would not be stretching the truth too far at all to say that even here while, in many cases, we live within mere blocks of one another, our experiences of the world differ profoundly. So much so that I expect we have almost forgotten that it is ours to try to shape a different world. Or at least this has been the case for me.

But let me try to bring this home. I heard on the news the other night that in a nearby city black and white clergy were meeting again for the first time in fifty years. Fifty years. I don't know the details of the disagreement during the Civil Rights Movement which caused them to sever community and connection, but surely after fifty years those bones must have been pretty dry by now. I don't know what stirred them to change. I do know this. Not only there, but also here, it has taken profound devastation for us to notice enough to do something different now. And yes, one could say that like the people of Israel so long ago, we have had to come face to face with our failings, with our propensity to try to do it all on our own, with our too quick willingness to worship something other than God, before we have been willing or able to sense the breath of God blowing among us and through us. And so yes, I have to believe that perhaps it is that very breath of God which also blew on those bones in Ezekiel's vision which is now somehow finding a way to blow through the tension and fear and brokenness -- and yes, death -- which is bringing us all to our knees now.

On its surface, it surely did not seem to be quite so dramatic in the city where I serve. No headlines heralded a change in relationship between clergy. I just happened to be sitting next to a colleague at a hospital chaplain's lunch last December in those days when the events of Ferguson were still fresh in our minds. I leaned over to him and told him we were trying to talk about this, but it did not seem all that helpful to only have a bunch of white people talking to one another. And he invited us to be part of shaping a series of dinners where people in this community are trying to listen to one another more deeply across racial lines.

It has been a faltering start, to be sure. It would surely be easy to just walk away from, or better yet, cover up the dry bones which so reflect what has surely been between us. Only the breath of God somehow keeps on blowing and we keep showing up and trying. And by the time you read this we will have met again --- this time after listening to a panel of moms talk about the different things they say to their children to help them to be safe.

So do these bones have sinews and flesh and life in them again or is that yet to be seen? In some ways it feels as though we are learning to do this for the first time all the while our muscle memory is trying to kick in again.  I can only imagine this was also so in the vision Ezekiel offers now. It was surely so when the people of Israel returned home and tried to make sense of their lives once more in that time and place.

Oh yes, for now it may be so that all I know for sure is this.These bones seemed pretty dead. It could only be something as powerful as God's own breath which could have brought us even this far.

And so this Pentecost Day, I wonder...

• What in your community, your congregation, your home, has seemed as dead as the dry bones before us now?
• And how have you experienced the breath of God bringing life again to such unlikely places as these?
• And how is that we live as those who believe this is even possible? How do we start to move these bones which perhaps have not moved in a very long time? And just where is it we are called to move, even if our steps are faltering and uncertain, so that we, too, might begin to live into the life God intends?

"The Will of the Father..."

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Matthew 21:23-32

So much time has passed since then.  Even so, I still offer this story with no small measure of pain.

We stood around her casket on a rainy Christmas Eve forty years ago.  It was just my mother and dad, my three sisters, my grandfather, and me. There was no visitation for receiving the care and comfort of friends.  There was no pastor to speak a word of light in our darkness, a word of comfort to our sorrow, a word of life as we faced death. 

I was in the 7th grade.  Though my grandparents had only moved to Illinois as my grandmother's health declined the year before, I knew that church was not part of her life. I did not know why, for it was never talked about. I was left to conclude that she was not a person of faith and in my then black- and-white, 12-year-old's faith, I reasoned that now, as a result, she must now be in hell.

I agonized over it, worried about it, wept at the thought of it, but I never spoke of it for fear of upsetting anyone.  It affected me deeply though.  Oh yes, even though the prophet Ezekiel is standing firm in the certain truth that our futures are not determined by our parents and grandparents, the proverb quoted there:  "The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge" still rings true.  We are shaped and changed by those who have gone before us.  Without a doubt, it surely matters how we live our lives --- for our own sakes, of course, and for our contemporaries --- but also for the sake of those who come after.

I was well into adulthood before I heard the story behind the story.  Even my dad, her oldest son, did not know the reasons why until then.  He heard it from his sister whose mother had confided in her in her last years.

• Why did Beulah speak with such bitterness about the church?
• Why did she insist that her children be educated in the Catholic tradition, but never darken the doors for Mass herself?
• Why was her special disdain reserved for certain normally respected and respectable residents of the town in Massachusetts which was her place of growing up and raising a family of her own?

This is why.  In 1933 Tom  Clark, my dad's dad, died from a stroke. He was 40 years old. They had a comfortable life until everything was lost in the stock market crash a few years before and in those last years of his life, Tom had been scraping by, doing his best to provide for his wife and two small sons.

When Tom died he left behind Beulah, who was not yet 30 years old.  My dad, Tommy, was five.  His little brother, Rodney, was three. At his death, Tom Clark's small family was left virtually penniless.  And so Beulah took the only job she could get: selling magazines and cigarettes at a small downtown newsstand. She had no protection and found herself at the mercy of others. And so it was that for the rest of her life she would not forget that certain pillars of the community and the church ---  married men with families of their own --- did not hesitate to make advances towards her.  I cringe to think of it now --- how very painful and frightening this must have been for her. And without a doubt, her distress was compounded by this --- that their 'witness' to her was that the faith they professed seemed to have no bearing on their behavior when they walked into that shop.  It would appear that their example was that of the son Jesus describes today who heartily and eagerly said yes to their father, and then somehow forgot, failed, and did precisely the opposite of what God would want. 

Beulah never did get past it. And forty years later her granddaughter, not knowing the whole story, wept in fear for her soul.

Oh yes, it matters what we do.  It matters how we live our lives in all the places we are privileged to live them. 

Of course it is not as though any of us can ever get it completely right.  Neither of the sons described in Jesus' story today got it right.  For one said 'yes' and then proceeded to not do it.  And the other shamed his father by saying 'no' before he got around to doing what he should.  It's not that we won't fail. But that shouldn't keep us from trying.  That shouldn't stop us from doing what we can to 'get it right' for the sake of one another and for the sake of all those who come after.   Oh no, that shouldn't stop us from yearning after the new heart and new spirit which leads to life as Ezekiel promises today!

There is a lot going in in today's Gospel lesson.  By now Jesus is in major conflict with the chief priests and the elders. I can't blame them for being distressed at Jesus' actions and accusations.  (Remember that in Matthew's telling, just before this tense exchange he has violently cleared the temple of the money-changers.)  Perhaps I would react in much the same way that they did.  At the same time, I have been on the other side of the equation as well.  I have known --- at least from a distance --- the consequences of being an 'outsider' to the faith like the tax collectors and the prostitutes Jesus speaks of now.  I try to stay in touch with that ache even now.  It makes me less certain, of some things, yes.  At the same time, I think it also makes me more open.

If I had never known Grandma Hunt's whole story this may not have been so. I might still be worried about her apparent lack of faith. But then I learned about the pain that put her in that place.  And while, like all of us, she certainly bore some responsibility for this, ever since then I have wondered at how that struggle shaped the rest of her life. Imagine what a difference it could have made if just one of those who had attempted to take from her what was not theirs to take --- if even one of them who had forgotten that Beulah was a child of God: so very loved by God and meant to be honored as such --- Imagine if just one of those had later apologized.  How might it all have been different if only one had turned back and tried to make things better?  Don't you suppose that one would have been doing the 'will of the father?'  Even if it came late?  For that matter, I can't help but think that if Jesus were telling the story, maybe, just maybe, Beulah preceded all the rest into heaven itself.  This side of joining her there of course, I simply won't know.

In this meantime though, I find myself less likely to judge, less confident in my conclusions: especially about ultimate things.  Unlike my seventh grade self, I trust that to God even as I try to remember that what I do and say matters.  Even to children I may never meet.

• I expect most of us can think of times when we have been like both of the sons in Jesus' parable today.  Where have you seen this play out in your experience?
• Since Jesus' words are directed at people like you and me, it may be hard at first to find the 'grace' in this story: at least for you and I who profess belief but don't always 'live' it.  What do you think? 
• For me there is some comfort in the understanding that what appears to be absolute, not always is. For instance, Jesus reminds us that those least likely, by our standards, to 'enter the kingdom of heaven first' are those who actually do. I, for one, am grateful to leave such as this in God's hands.  How about you?
• It may be an unusual tying together of the prophet Ezekiel's words and Jesus' teaching today.  I think it worked in the story I offer, but there are, no doubt, other ways to do so.  What are your thoughts?