Lutheran Church of the Resurrection

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"Dry bones. Hear the Word of the Lord!" You say, 'our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, we are clean cut off.'" It is truly good, right and salutary for you to say such a thing – before God and before one another.

But it's not God who has cut you off. It's you who have cut yourself off from God. You cut yourself off from God by cutting yourself off from His Word, for that is your only connection to Him. His Word, preached and read into your ears and eyes. His Word in and under the water of holy baptism and in and under the bread and wine of His holy Supper. Cut yourself off from these and you've cut yourself off from Him, for He is the Word. But you say that you have no time for His Word, to meditate on it, inwardly digest it, pray in response to it. But you have time to listen to the word of talk show hosts and to read the latest novel and you spend hours surfing the internet.

He calls you through His Word telling you to "honor your father and mother, don't murder, or commit adultery, or steal, or gossip, or covet." But you cut Him off quicker than a telemarketer.

You cut yourself off from God every time you make His Word say what you want it to say rather than what God means it to say. He says, "You shall honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy." And you say that means that if Sunday belongs to God then Monday through Saturday must belong to me. He says, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." And you think you've got that one covered because you don't call on the name of the Lord at all. He says, "You shall no other gods besides Me." And you say that must mean that God wants to be the most important God among the many gods that you worship. Slice the pie into as many pieces as you'd like, just be sure God gets the biggest piece and He'll be satisfied.

No wonder you say, "our bones are dried up." Cut off from God, everything gets dried up. Not only your bones, but your heart too. It's been broken in several places, and cut off from God, you don't know how to reset it so that it will heal properly. You've been living like this for a while now, hoping it will just heal on its own. And while you've waited, your love has dried up.

And you're all dried up emotionally too. Razor thin and ready to fall apart at any moment because you've been carrying a heavy load of cares and worries, responsibilities and obligations. And you're exhausted. But you've cut yourself off from the Lord who would help you bear them if only you would let Him. "Come to me you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." But you can handle it on your own. You think. But your emotions have dried up and you no longer care.

And certainly your bones are dried up too because you insist on trying to keep up with all the other skeletons in the valley.

So you're right to say that, "your hope is lost." You had put you hope in yourself, in your money, in your status, in other people. That's really why you cut yourself off from God. You figured you didn't need Him. But it all proved to be a very bad investment. And now you've lost everything. Your hope is gone.

But cut off from God, what do you do to get your life back again? Cut off from God, you're dead in your sins, and the dead can't help themselves. Only God can raise the dead. St. Paul once looked out over his congregation in Ephesus just as Ezekiel looked out over his congregation in the valley. Paul saw a congregation of dry boned people. "Remember," he wrote, "that you were at that time separated from Christ, having no hope and without God in the world." (Eph. 2:12) Cut off from God and His Word, there is no hope and where there is no hope there is only a dry, meaningless existence. Life is just a series of uphill struggles and then you die. To the Thessalonians, Paul writes, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope." (1 Thes. 4:13)

The Lord led His prophet Ezekiel to a valley somewhere outside of Babylon where they had been taken captive. He was one of the Israelites who had been taken away into exile there. When I was in Cambodia, I took a tour of the Killing Fields where Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge slaughtered over a million people in the early 1960's. In the middle of the field stands a monument. A four story, glass structure, filled with the skulls and bones that were laying right on top of the ground there.

The valley the Lord led Ezekiel to must have looked a lot like that. It was "full of bones. There were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry." They had never given a proper burial. Ezekiel's tour guide explained, "These are the whole house of Israel."

The house of Israel was God's chosen people. These were not pagans who worshiped false gods and whom God struck down in a fit of jealous anger. This text is not about unbelievers. This is about the people of God. They had been baptized in the Red Sea. Everyday they had eaten the holy supper of bread from heaven and water from a rock. And Jesus Christ is the bread that came down from heaven and He is the rock.

But they cut themselves off from God by cutting themselves off from His Word. It can happen. You can loose your salvation if you're not careful. It was a terrible sight to see, but there they were, all dried up and dead in their sin. The DNA testing has been done on those bones. St. Paul published the test results in Romans, chapter 2. The DNA of those bones is a perfect match with yours.

Then the Lord asked Ezekiel and very strange question. "Son of man, can these bones live?" Maybe with the help of a good anatomy textbook, or if he could remember the words to the song, Ezekiel could have found a foot bone and connected it to an ankle bone and that to a leg bone and a hip bone, and so forth. But can these bone live?

Ezekiel knows he's being set up for something here. He's just not sure what it is. "O Lord God, you know." As hopeless as the situation appeared to be, Ezekiel wasn't going to say what the Lord could or couldn't do. With God, nothing is impossible. After all, in the beginning, God had taken the dust of the ground and formed bones out of it. And then God connected all the bones together in their proper order and He covered them with flesh, and filled that body with blood and organs and a brain and wired it all together perfectly. If God could do that with dust of the ground there, then whose to say He couldn't restore life to these dry bones here.

And that's just what God does. But it's how God does it that you want to be sure to notice. Ezekiel is told to preach. That's what the word "prophesy" means. It means -"preach it brother." And Ezekiel preached the Word he was given to proclaim. It's not his word, it's God's Word coming to you through his lips. Hear Him and you're hearing God. "O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, 'I will lay sinews upon 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."

And God's Word does what it says. Ezekiel heard a noise. He called it "a rattling" sound. But it's the same word as the word for 'earthquake.' And sure enough, the bones started to come together. Bones connected by tendons and flesh covering the skeleton.

Then came the breath. The word for "breath" is the same word as "wind," and the same word as "spirit." In the beginning, God 'spirited' His Holy breath into the man and only when the body possesses the Holy Breath, or the Holy Spirit, only then is it a living body. Apart from the wind, the breath, the Spirit, it's just a body. No life. That means that there's lots of people in the world today who have bodies with brain waves and a strong pulse, and they may have been running here and there, shopping, working, taking kids to soccer games, "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage" (Matthew 24:38) but they have no Holy Spirit in them and so they're dead. Or maybe they've been baptized and the Holy Spirit is in them, but they've pulled the plug on their respirator figuring they could breath on their own just fine.

So Ezekiel called upon the breath to come and breath life into these dead bodies. "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live." And God answered his prayer. "I will open you're your graves and raise you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live." And God Word does what it says. "And the breath came into them and they lived."

Even though they had cut Him off, God gave His people a resurrection from the dead, in body and soul. And ever since then, the people of God just love saying, "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life… and in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting."

What God did for His dry boned people in former days He continues to do in these last days. What sounded like bones rattling together in the valley outside Babylon, sounded like "a mighty rushing wind" in Jerusalem. But it was the same breath, same wind, same Spirit, doing His same work of breathing His life-giving Word into those who were dead in their sins, that they may be raised up from their graves and live.

It was a 'vast army' that came to life in the valley. 3,000 came to life in Jerusalem, a vast army in its own right. Sounds impressive, and it is. But since the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit continues to breath His life giving breath into dry boned, cut off, hopeless men and women, like you and me.

And He does so in the same way as He did in the valley and in Jerusalem, through His "God-breathed" Word. And His Word does not bear witness to Himself. It bears witness to Jesus. He is the Word. The Word made flesh and bones and blood. He is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. And on the cross, He bears all of your sins. And God cut Him off for it. Every last ounce of hope the Son had was in His Father. When the Father cut Him off, all of the Son's hopes were gone. He was cut off. Sounding just like those dry bones in the valley, Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me." He is clearly taking your place and mine.

But on the 3rd day, when the women went to the tomb where His dry bones had been laid, a rattling sound was heard. Matthew calls it "an earthquake" which is what it was. And God raised Him up from His grave.

Dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord. The Holy Spirit testifies to you about Jesus, your Savior. Your hope is not lost. You are not clean cut off. Jesus Christ is your hope. And He has reconciled you to God.

The Holy Spirit has breathed the Word made flesh, crucified and raised from the dead into the waters of your baptism and it was poured over your dry bones and you were united to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit breathes His Holy breath onto the bread and the wine on the altar, uniting Jesus to them, so that as you eat and drink of it, you receive Jesus, who unites Himself to you for the forgiveness of all of your sins.
"Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken and I will do it, declares the Lord."

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