Dare to Dance Again: With Spirit
Ezekiel 37:1-14
May 23, 2021
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/PK2g8vMzkqs
Every year, bodies of migrants wash up on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Libya, Turkey, Algeria and Greece.
Every year, human remains are found in the harsh terrain along the US/Mexico border. More than 6700 bodies have been found there since 2000, probably only a fraction of the actual number who have died from thirst or heat or hyperthermia while trying to cross the border. [1] The bodies of migrants are often reduced to dry bones before they are found.
The migrants are mostly nameless, but we are starting to know the names, so many names, of black and brown people who are killed during encounters with police – at routine traffic stops or walking down the street or sleeping in their own beds.
The crematoriums in India are overwhelmed by victims of the coronavirus. The bodies are literally piling up. In the United States, estimates of the death toll range from 600,000 to 900,000. I try, but I cannot imagine that number of bodies, that amount of death.
We are perhaps not very far from Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones. Ezekiel is one of the prophets of the exile, deported to Babylon in the 6th century BCE. The dry bones he sees are of soldiers slaughtered in battle, left unburied, to be ravaged by birds and beasts. In his vision, Ezekiel walks around among the very dry, very many, bones. The bones would evoke memories – of the siege of Jerusalem, with family and friends trapped inside the city, unable to conduct normal life, dying of hunger and disease. They would surface memories of the destruction of the Temple and of the forced march to Babylon where he is now, among the exiles. And so the dry bones come to represent not just the actual dead, but the living dead. The dry bones represent those living in exile, those who might as well be dead because they have no future and no hope.
African American theologian and preacher Luke Powery notes that we often link the Holy Spirit with celebration and joy and ecstatic moments. But Ezekiel was brought out by the Spirit and set down in the middle of a valley and it was full of bones. Sometimes, the Spirit leads us to valleys of dry bones. Sometimes the Spirit leads towards places of contamination and death. Sometimes the Spirit forces us to confront reality. Powery says “This is holy honesty in the face of existential hell.”[2]
In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, author and priest Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of being in Florida, at a time when the loggerhead turtles were laying their eggs. One evening, when the tide was out, she watched a huge turtle heave herself up on the beach to dig her nest and empty her eggs into it. Afraid of disturbing the event, Taylor quickly and quietly walked away. The next morning she returned to the beach to see if she could find the spot where the eggs were hidden. What she found instead were sea turtle tracks heading in the wrong direction. Instead of moving back into the sea, the loggerhead turtle had wandered into the dunes, the hot, dry, sandy dunes. Taylor eventually found the turtle a little ways inland, exhausted, all but baked in the sun, head and flippers covered with sand. She poured the water from her water bottle over the creature and then left to notify the beach ranger.
The ranger soon arrived in a Jeep to rescue the turtle. He flipped the loggerhead on her back, wrapped two chains around her front legs, and then hooked the chain to the trailer hitch. Taylor watched horrified as the ranger then took off in the Jeep. The turtle’s body was yanked forward with such thrust that her mouth filled with sand. Her neck was bent so far back Taylor feared it might break. The ranger continued over the dunes and down onto the beach.
There he unhooked the turtle at the edge of the water and turned her right side up. The loggerhead laid motionless in the surf, water lapping at her body, washing the dry sand away. As another wave broke over, the turtle lifted her head and moved her back legs. Soon other waves crashed over her and brought her slowly back to life. Finally one of the waves completely overcame the turtle, making her light enough to find a foothold and push off the beach, returning safely to the ocean.
Taylor writes that watching the turtle swim away and remembering the horrible scene of the turtle being dragged through the dunes, she learned something -- that “It is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.”[3]
It is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by what has turned your life upside down.
There, in the silent and terrifying valley of bones, God asks Ezekiel “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel’s answer “O God, you know” is delightfully ambiguous.[4] He could be saying “That’s your call, God. You hold life and death in your hands.”
Or he could be saying “No way, they are all the way dead, and you know it.”
Can these bones live, Ezekiel?
O God, you know.
Then prophecy to the bones, Ezekiel.
Ezekiel does as God commands and the bones rattle. Ezekiel continues to speak and skeletons reassemble themselves. Muscle and skin covers them, but there is no spirit, no breath. Without the breath of God, they remain lifeless
Call the breath, Ezekiel.
Call the wind from the four directions
Ezekiel does. The air stirs, a gentle breeze at first, and then a persistent current of air, relentlessly present, blowing away the chaff, inflating lungs, rousing the dead. The ruach, that wind/spirit/breath of God which enlivens and awakens is present with power.
The book of Ezekiel is full of visions and almost every one of them is dated. The scripture records when in Ezekiel’s life it occurred, but not this one. Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel has observed that this one bears no date, because every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live again.[5] The valley of the dry bones happens over and over again at the intersection of human weakness and divine power.
Every generation needs to hear in its own time. This is our moment, our time to know that these bones can live again. Ruach blows where she will. Beyond the confines of the church, the Spirit is active in new visions of justice and liberation. In the movement for Black Lives, in campaigns for environmental justice, and in tenacious resistance to oppression in places like Myanmar and Gaza, we witness the fierce love the Spirit has for this troubled world.[6]
Within the church, Ruach blows where she will. Did you hear the voice of Pastor Megan Argabrite in the visual meditation, the video with the fire dancer? She said, “The spirit is not done creating. We are not done becoming. . . . We are not who we once were and we are not who we shall be.”[7]
Remember that loggerhead turtle stranded and almost dead in the hot sun? The pandemic has dragged us through times and place not of our own choosing. Friends, there is great anxiety within churches across the country these days. A significant number of pastors have re-evaluated their vocation. Many have left the ministry, including one of my friends. Some have taken early retirement, including one of my friends. Many church members have drifted away and there is fear that they will not return. We have lost many of the routines, the structures, the familiar ways of being together in faith. Can these bones live again?
It is sometimes hard to tell whether we are being killed or saved by what has turned life upside down. But I believe that these bones can live again. And not just live, but thrive. I believe that this is our Pentecost moment. The Spirit has blown away the chaff, the dullness, the church systems and structures that may have become lifeless, dry bones. The gentle breeze of God is gathering strength, blowing persistently, awakening life, renewing our hope, summoning us to the radical good news of Jesus with new power and boldness.
“The spirit is not done creating. We are not done becoming. . . . We are not who we once were – thanks be to God –
and we are not yet who we shall be.”
Beloved ones, now hear the word of the Lord:
dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again!
[1] https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2018/11/06/migrants-US-Mexico-caravan-elections-Trump-water-desert
[2] Luke A. Powery, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, Volume 2 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 330
[3] Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning To Walk in the Dark, (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), p. 66-67 Note: some liberty was taken in the re-telling of this story; I found it first in another source purportedly quoting the original
[4] John Holbert https://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/2015/05/we-rattling-bones-john-c-holbert-05-15-2015
[5] Elie Wiesel, “Ezekiel” in Congregation: Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible, ed. David Rosenberg (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanaovich, 1987), p. 186
[6] Wendy Farley in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, Volume 2 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p.315