This is a crazy time of year with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all stepping on each other’s toes. You have probably noticed the Halloween display at the corner of Elm and Metcalf with its grave stones and skeletons. According to Monday’s paper, the owner says she enjoys setting it up and makes no bones about it.
One of my favorite skeleton jokes is “Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?” “He didn’t have the guts.” All of us understand how skeletons get that way. What we don’t understand is how that process can be reversed, but this morning I think I hear the rattling of bones.
Recently, Sue and I attended the 50-year reunion of our Iowa Mennonite School class. Our reunion was a three-day event with 75% attendance from as far away as Oregon and Florida.
I suppose reunions can seem long, but this was the most uplifting event we have attended in a long time. The noise level in the room was almost deafening. And it was amazing how mature everyone turned out to be!
As you can guess, in a class of 55 students, a few were rebellious back then, some were spiritually alive, and some were what we might call spiritually dead, but I heard the rattling of bones. I remember this fellow as a happy-go-lucky guy, not rebellious, but also not interested in spiritual things. It was this guy who caught my attention over breakfast, because it was obvious he had completely changed.
He worked at a big hospital as a psychiatric aid and always carried his New Testament with him. He didn’t tell patients that he was a Christian, but somehow they knew. Some asked to talk with him. He would step out on the veranda with them and minister to them there. Doctors told him that when these patients came in, their lives messed up, the doctors expected the patient to be there for months or even a year, but sometimes they were ready to go home in three days! They couldn’t figure it out. “I knew,” he said, but he never told the doctors.
So what changed him? He told us that at one point he had become so depressed, he knew he needed the power of God in his life, so he went to the Bible and started to pray about each part of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, confessing where he knew he was falling short. His load began to lift, but finally, he realized that he needed to confess his root sin and give his life completely to God. And the Spirit of God changed his life.
Ezekiel 37 is not just about one person who is transformed by the Spirit of God, but about the whole nation, or today the whole church, if you will. Because of their disobedience to God, the Israelites had been taken into captivity and Jerusalem had been destroyed. They were crushed militarily, separated from each other, abandoned by the Lord, and as good as dead. (Douglas Stuart. The Preacher’s Commentary.)
But just a couple of chapters earlier we see promises of revival. In Chapter 34 God promises a new shepherd to lead his people. God says in 34:23, “I will set up over them one shepherd…and he shall feed them..”
In 36:8, God promises renewal, “But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot out your branches, and yield your fruit to my people.”
And later in Chapter 36, God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.”
So as we come to chapter 37, we anticipate the new life God has promised. When we see the words “the hand of the Lord came upon me,” in verse 1, we know that we are about to see the power of God. These words are only used about three prophets: Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel.
In Ezekiel’s vision the valley is strewn with bones –dry bones. Here is a fallen army, slain long ago, and never buried. They represent the death of Jerusalem. All Ezekiel could see were dry bones. As the old spiritual says, “Bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.” Verse 2 says they were very dry. That means that life is impossible. That is why when God asked the question, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel tossed the question back to him. And then God told Ezekiel to speak to those dry bones because God knew that in them is the possibility of resurrection. I hear the rattling of bones.
Note two things. In 37:1 God brought Ezekiel out to the valley by the spirit of the Lord. If anything is going to happen, it has to be by God’s spirit. Verse 14 says, “I will put my spirit within you and you shall live.” These two sentences form a kind of envelope for this passage about the bones. And in between, the word that is used for spirit is mentioned 8 more times. The word we read as spirit here can be translated as spirit, wind, and breath. So there is a play on words here in Hebrew which we have to explain in English. So, this power, this life force blows in from God. Has God’s power blown in over your life? Has his Spirit changed you and renewed you?
Second, it is clear that these bones were dead and there was no hope for life in them. They were dead bones, dry bones, disconnected, useless bones. People were saying, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost.” It was like they were buried in graves. But God says he will open their graves and bring them out and he will put flesh on their bones and his spirit in their hearts and they will live. Do you hear the rattling of bones?
Let’s be clear. When God brings these bones to life, do you suppose he only wants these people to be resuscitated so they can go back to their disobedience? When a prostitute comes with an STD and asks us to pray for her health, or a drug user comes with an illness and wants to be healed, does God want us to pray that they get well so they can go back to their sinful ways? No, God wants us to pray that they can be healed so they can live on a higher plane. It is a new kind of life God wants. Do you hear the rattling of bones?
The image of dry bones certainly fit the people of Israel that Ezekiel talked about. That image fits people like our classmate. I hope it doesn’t fit you, but if it does, there is hope. I want to tell you yet about a dead church that came alive in Wichita. (Roger L. Fredrikson. The Church that Refused to Die. 1991)
This church once had 4000 members and was noted for its evangelistic zeal. But, unfortunately, a spirit of misunderstanding crept in and it became painfully fragmented and the division of property ended up in court. The small group that was left was awarded the huge property, including a majestic sanctuary with 1800 red opera seats.
The pastor who was called there went reluctantly, but in the congregation’s first planning retreat, God gave them a verse from Revelation 21, “Behold, I make all things new.” They embraced that verse as their theme. And God began to renew them and give them hope.
They began by meeting in small groups in homes where the pastor could get to know the members and they could learn to know each other. Over the years they had shut each other off and now they were opening up. The pastor had noticed that people who sat on the north side didn’t know those who sat on the south side. Small groups clustered together after the service with their backs to the rest as though they didn’t want anyone to break in. Even during fellowship, some people were reluctant to move toward a new person and sometimes those new people sat alone, isolated from other worshipers.
But as they met together in homes and gathered for worship on Sundays, their trust in God and in each other increased. They sang the hymns, voiced their concerns, and came with expectancy for what God’s word would teach them. The pastor began to emphasize that they were no longer strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints. Slowly but surely those attitudes began to break down. Do you hear the rattling of bones?
Then the pastor turned his attention to the neighborhood. Did the church care for them? The church had made the decision to stay in that city location, but did the congregation understand what that meant, that here was God’s call to minister to people around them?
They began a neighborhood contact program. Volunteers went out two by two and began to knock on doors, letting people know that they had come because they cared. And they discovered they were surrounded by a huge mission field. Once during a heat wave, the church opened its doors and its air conditioned rooms to the neighborhood. And the people came.
The concern for evangelism began to grow. The leaders began to call people to prayer. They spent time in prayer at their board meetings and planning sessions. They invited guests to come and tell them about prayer. They discovered that evangelism is connected to the quality of life in the congregation. The joy and freedom of the congregation compelled them to invite others.
One person who became a part of their life was a loner from the neighborhood named Anna, a woman with an angry, troubled look. She began showing up not only on Sundays, but also on Wednesday nights. Sometimes she wrote notes –sometimes angry, sometimes thankful. Slowly she began to trust people. Eventually, she took the risk and gave herself to Christ and the congregation received her as a sister. Later, a person who had been attending church for awhile said he wanted to be a member of a church that treats people the way that church was treating Anna.
Several years later, this congregation and the one that had split off set aside their differences and brought their congregations together for an Easter worship service. And the broken relationships and old antagonisms began to peel away until these people could forgive each other and embrace one another. Do you hear the rattling of bones?
One more detail: They began a journey into compassion, setting up a clothing room in their building with free clothes for those who needed them. They set up their own food pantry. Members gave hundreds of dollars so the deacons could meet needs for rent, utilities, and gasoline. They invited the homeless into the church once a week for a meal and a short Bible lesson. Soon they were ministering to 200 every week. Do you hear the rattling of bones?
Every chapter in this book clouded my eyes with tears as I thought of what God has done and wants to do in this congregation. Will we allow God’s spirit to refresh and renew us? Do you hear the rattling of bones?
