DEM BONES

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Ezekiel 37:1-14

April 6, 2008

Ezekiel 37

¹The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ²He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. ³He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” ⁴Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. ⁵Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. ⁶I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”

⁷So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. ⁸I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. ⁹Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” ¹⁰I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

¹¹Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ ¹²Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.”

"Well, the Lord he thought he'd make a man.

Dem bones gonna rise agin.

Made him out of mud and a little bit of sand.

Dem bones gonna rise again.

I know it, brother, I know it, brother,

I know it, hey, dem bones gonna rise agin."

It was a silly song. Just an old camp song. I loved it when I was just a kid but it doesn’t translate well into the age of inclusive language and it takes a pretty good shot at Eve for talking old Adam into eating that apple pie. And using the lyrical dialect of the old-time African-American preacher is nowadays offensive, as it should be. So I hadn't heard the song used much in recent years until I went to Louisiana and met Ben Bacon.

Ben was a 60 year old kid who had not missed church camp in 35 years. He was the grandfather or father that everybody wished was theirs. Ben was the one who could hug the hard-nosed and hard-hearted kid when nobody else could touch him. Ben believed in unconditional love. He talked about it to the counselors, to the teens, to parents, to anyone who would listen. But Ben not only spoke unconditional love, he acted it too. He was silly and wonderful and fun and spiritual and, who cared how old he was, Ben was our friend.

And he sang a mean version of Dem Bones! The campers wouldn't let him go a single day without singing that silly old song. When Ben sang his song in that off-key Louisiana twang, all the world was right and God was nigh.

But Ben didn't go to camp as a teenager nor in his early twenties. Ben suffered from bipolar syndrome; he was manic-depressive. During his early adolescence and adulthood, he was out of control, strange behavior and lots of alcohol. But somewhere along the way in Ben's life, God told a man in the church to go and prophesy to Ben Bacon, to tell Ben that he might feel half-dead but that there was life in him. And, hard as it must have been, as foolish as it must have seemed, that fellow did what God told him to do. And then Ben Bacon's alcoholism dried up, and his dry spirit came to new life. The spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, inhabited, indwelt, Ben Bacon and he then became the messenger, letting the Holy Spirit take a ride on this earth in him.

We Disciples of Christ hesitate to talk about the Holy Spirit. We have always been able to talk freely about God and God's presence with us. And we have become more comfortable talking about God's Son, even to the point that we can call him by name, Jesus, instead of always having to refer to him as Christ and leaving his given name to the more fundamental folks. But the Holy Spirit? As a separate and equally important part of the Trinity? Well, you know. But it ought to shake us up a little to realize that Jesus took the Holy Spirit very seriously. And to realize that even though the disciples had the resurrected Jesus with them for some time, they still were not able to preach or serve until the Holy Spirit came upon them.

We tend to put the Holy Spirit into the same category that we put this little tale from Ezekiel. We read this story and think, "Well, those prophets, they were all a little flaky. Dry bones moving back together to form skeletons! Really! It sounds like something from Walt Disney or George Lucas." So we conclude that since this incident really didn't happen, since it was just an analogy to show what God can do, if God wants to, then we can disregard it. But I think we ought to take it very seriously for several reasons:

1. It tells us that we have to prophesy for God. I love the beginning of this story. God drags Ezekiel out to a valley where some battle has taken place long ago and the ground is covered by dry, bleached out bones. So God asks Ezekiel, "Mortal, can these bones live?" And Ezekiel says, "O Lord God...you know." In other words, "You are the God around here; why are you asking me?" So God says to prophesy to these dry bones. As good disciples, we are asked to speak out for God along the way in our lives. It is simply our calling. It's not all “take in” with God; it is “carry out” also.

2. This story tells us not to second guess God, just do what God says. Prophesy to these dry bones says God. Talk to this valley of bones like they were real people! Can't you just see the look on Ezekiel's face? But no matter what Ezekiel knows or doesn't know about bones, he knows something about God. When God says talk, you talk. "So I prophesied as I had been commanded...and suddenly there was a noise, a rattling...." There is one sentence that is foolish for us to say to God: "Lord, I don't think that’s going to do any good." While I was teaching at Midway College, my student assistant was in a car wreck. Pam suffered severe head injuries and went into a coma. Weeks passed, Pam curled into a fetal position, unconscious, unresponsive. Doctors told us that Pam would never come out of the coma. But her parents just kept telling her family news and reading the newspaper to her. They encouraged me to talk to Pam as if she were fully conscious and alert. So I sat and babbled and scolded her for leaving me all that work at the college. Then one day when her uncle told her a joke, Pam laughed. After six months in a coma, Pam regained consciousness. I asked her if she had heard me talking to her when I visited. She replied, "Every word, Bill, I heard every word." It is not up to us to know what will do any good in life, to second guess God. It is only ours to do as God asks, when God asks. When God says speak, we must speak.

3. This story tells us that God gives us the spirit of life. The Greek words for breath and spirit and wind all come from the same root. It implies that God is the giver of life in a creation sense, but also in a spiritual sense. God created Ben Bacon; that’s breath/spirit. But God also renewed Ben Bacon and used him to heal shattered lives, to lift depressions, to inspire goodness, to bestow hope, to put broken things back together again; and that is also breath/spirit. One is the first breath, the other is the new breath. God will give us that second breath, that spirit, as well, no matter how dried up we feel.

4. This story also tells us that we are the dry bones. God explains to Ezekiel that the dry bones are the whole house of Israel which was then in exile, cut off from their beloved homeland. They were so hopeless about returning to the land given them by God that they saw themselves as dead already. But God promises to step in and open up the graves and perform his reassembly act on them. Well, we know that the church is the Christian version of the house of Israel. And, boy, are we dry! In one church the minister proclaimed that the Lord was about to set him on fire with the Holy Spirit. One of the deacons turned to another and said, "I believe him." "Why?" said the other, "because he seems so inspired?" "No," said the first, "because he is so dry he would make good kindling."

We are dry bones when we sit in the house of the Lord and then do the same thing out in the world of the Lord. We are the dry bones when we open our minds to the Word of God but shut our hearts to the Spirit of God. We are the dry bones when we know how to run a church but we don't know how to let God run our lives. We need a breath from God. Come as wind and cleanse us. We need to be set on fire, inspired. Come as fire and burn. We need God to get our juices flowing again in our seasons of dryness. Come as dew and refresh. We are the dry bones; come, Holy Spirit.

5. And this story tells us that God will not only speak but act. Whenever I counseled at high school church camp, I always offered to take the "bad kids" into my group. I have always had an affinity for working with rebels and troublemakers. Those of you who have known me for a long time might be able to think of several reasons that this is true. So that year in Louisiana I made the same offer and the Director pounced upon the idea with glee. I got 'em all. Things went well with most of the kids. I tried mightily to speak to them about acceptance and tolerance and understanding and unconditional love, all shown to us in the life of Jesus. I talked and taught and explained, but one kid just ignored everything we said or did, everything except his girlfriend. He said she was the only reason he came to camp; he didn't care anything about what we were learning; if it were up to him, he and she would be somewhere else together; so please just do our thing and leave him alone. He was intentionally rude, insulting and disruptive. When he cursed at my co-counselor, it was the last straw. I told the Director that I was finished with the boy and that he needed to be sent home. While I was waiting for the Director to find the boy's home phone number, Ben Bacon walked up, sat down and asked what was wrong. As most people did with Ben, I poured out all my sorrows, all my venom against this smart aleck kid, and I told him that the kid was out of here. Ben gently asked, "Bill, have you taken the boy aside and talked to him alone? Maybe he is hurting over something. Here is your chance to really help him." No, I hadn't and so, naturally, I did what Ben said. And naturally, Ben was right. The kid had expected me to hit him or to send him home or to curse him back. But he wasn't prepared for me to love him. The rest of that week was fantastic for our whole group. I had been lecturing quite nicely on unconditional love, but Ben knew how to do more than speak it; he knew how to act it. We can count on God to do the same for us. "Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act." We can count on God to do the same through us.

Ben Bacon died unexpectedly of a heart attack that next spring. As I planned his funeral with his family, we reminisced about all the years and all the love Ben gave to church camp. "It's too bad," his wife said, "that we can't just sing camp songs at the funeral, but that wouldn't seem respectful to everyone there." So that evening my Minister of Music stayed up most of the night writing a classical arrangement of a camp song. The funeral was in a packed sanctuary filled with church members, townspeople, and kids of all ages from all across Louisiana, spanning several generations. The tears flowed freely and the mood was somber, tragic. Then some of the kids perked up their ears. What was that melody they were hearing in the prelude music? More heads came up and smiles broke across knowing faces. And the camp kids listened and remembered and believed as the notes sang to them, "Dem bones gonna rise again."