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March 9,

Pat Eidsness AIM

Our scripture texts for today anticipate the Easter event…dry bones coming to life…and Lazarus, four days in the grave, walking out and shaking off the grave clothes.  Unlike the Easter story, however, these stories are about life on this side of the grave.  Life here and now.  And, mostly, they are a story of a God who can and does do impossible things, awesome, powerful, impossible things…to show he is God, to show us his love, and to give us hope.

Two themes run through these lessons: the first is life and death…or more accurately, death & life; and the other is belief vs unbelief.

Or, as the father of the demon-possessed boy in Matthew 9 put it, “Lord, I believe – help my unbelief.”  Surely that was the lament Ezekiel was dealing with among the exiled Israelites in Babylon.  They had seen what happened to others taken into captivity before them who didn’t stay faithful, who assimilated into the culture, worshipped other gods, and were no more a people of God.

Once again, God’s people are captives, this time in Babylon.  It gets worse.  They hear that back in Jerusalem their king has been killed, their temple destroyed, and even those who had been left behind are now either dead or captured.  It certainly looks like their God has lost.  Their hope is gone and in their own words, their bones are dried up.

Into this general malaise and despair,Ezekiel brings this powerful vision of God – of our God – of an awesome God who can bring even a valley of dry bones back to life.  Bones picked over by vultures, parched by the sun.  But at God’s word and with God’s spirit, they rise and dance again.

To the exiles, this is literally a breath of life!  Ezekiel describes returning home, rebuilding the temple, and for the next 8 chapters, they begin to focus on how they will rebuild when they return.  They believe even in their despair.  Their lament probably remained, “Lord we believe, help our unbelief.”  And God does!

God gives them hope and they do not meld into the culture around them or worship the foreign gods.  They remain faithful.  And God brings them home.  Just 50 years later, Babylon fell and God’s people returned to their homeland.  The temple was rebuilt, and those dry bones walked and danced again.

Did you notice how those bones were brought back? It was a two step process, wasn’t it?  First, God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy, to preach!  To speak the word of God!  And at God’s word, bones came together, sinew held and skin covered.  But there was no life, no breath, in them.

And then, God commanded Ezekiel to call forth the wind, the breath, the spirit of God, and at God’s command, those bones were filled with breath and life and they stood…a vast multitude!  This is our God, our awesome God, who can make dry bones walk, who can breathe his spirit into even the dead and they live.

I wonder if we read these stories so much that we lose the surprise, the shock and awe, the power of our God?  Imagine, just for a moment, being there…seeing it… seeing that battlefield of bones come to life.  And how?  By our God’s word and God’s Spirit.

Does this vision remind you of anything?  It should: Genesis 2:7.  God first formed man, then he breathed into him the breath of life, ”ruah.” At creation, it was God’s word and God’s spirit.

And the purpose of the vision?  A message of hope, a message of encouragement,  a reminder of who God is.  The same God who acted on Easter morning; the same God whom Jesus thanked at the raising of Lazarus.  And in our death to life story in our Gospel for today, once again we find the wonder and the power of our God.  And in our Gospel story for today, we once again find the tension of “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” 

Martha’s confession, as she runs to meet Jesus before he even enters town, and after he has taken 4 days to respond to her urgent call that Lazarus is ill…Lazarus was more than ill even when the messenger was sent, because Jesus was a long days journey away, he delayed two days, and then walked the arduous 15 miles back up to Bethany…so, if Lazarus has been dead 4 days, he died soon after the messenger left. 

Imagine those four days – for Mary, for Martha, for Lazarus!  Sorrow, anger, disbelief…and yet when Jesus stands before her, Martha makes one of the most powerful confessions of Jesus as Lord found in the Bible!

 “Yes. Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who was to come into the world.”  Powerful words of belief, reinforced by her “If you had been here, our brother would not have died.”

And yet, when Jesus goes to the tomb, and asks her to have the tone rolled away, the unbelief floods back as she protests, “Oh, no, Lord, already there is a stench!”  You’re too late.  Lazarus is really, truly dead.  Lord I believe…help my unbelief!  And he does!

With the words, “Lazarus come out!” Lazarus is brought from death to life, from darkness to marvelous life, from the tomb out into the world.  Jesus does for his friend what God will do for him on Easter – call him forth from the tomb and turn him loose in the world.

Lord we believe...believe that God’s power is loose in our world, that Jesus is lord of both the living and the dead.  And yet, we look around the world and we see greed alongside poverty, waste alongside want, war alongside of prayers for peace…help our unbelief.

Christians are assimilating into the secular western culture, worshipping the alluring gods of the day:  the gods of busyness and financial success, of popularity and consumerism. We hear stories of empty churches across Europe and declining membership in our own and many other Christian denominations, and we see dry bones!

And yet – even today – our God blows his spirit from the four winds!  As the west becomes more secular, the world becomes more religious.  There is a growing realization that secular culture itself produces a deep need for meaning in life and therefore for religion.  In an unprecedented survey on religion just released this past Monday, to the surprise of experts, it showed Americans are still deeply religious, with 84% of adults claiming a religious affiliation.

We hear that Islam is the fastest growing religion – and by some counts it is, but not all agree.  It’s growth is due mainly to large birth rates while Christianity is spreading by the 10’s and 100’s of millions. 122,000 new Christians are baptized every 24 hours! 

The seeds that missionaries planted in third world countries have produced a startling reversal!  There are 150 churches in Denmark and 250 in Britain which have been reopened by foreign missionaries!  Across the ocean, Brazil has gone from none to 50 million evangelical Christians at the same time that the Catholic Church in that country has grown from 50 million to 120 million.  In his book, Jesus in Beijing, David Aikman observes there are now 100 million Christians worshipping underground in China, and in a few decades, China will be the largest Christian country in the world.  A century, 10 % of Africa was Christian, now it’s 50%...350 million of them! 

Our God lives and reigns and his Spirit is on the loose!  Dry bones are dancing all around our world.  This dance, this growth, is fueled just as it was in Ezekiel’s vision so long ago…by God’s Word and God’s Spirit.  Worship is the heart of Christianity.  Word and Spirit in baptism, the Word made flesh that comes to us in Holy Communion, Word in scripture and song.

I know I am preaching to the choir, you are here!  And it is not easy to be here every week in our culture.  Christianity in America today, as it has always been, is countercultural.  But it is here, hearing God’s Word, splashed with the promise, that we stand and say, “I believe.”  Something wonderful and mysterious happens when we are under God’s Word.  The spirit produces faith and gives us life.  Contemporary research shows it is worship that nurtures lasting faith…in our children here…and all around the world.

Ezekiel’s vision comes to us here today to give us hope.  Just like those refugees in Babylon trying to remain faithful, we have hope – we will dance, we will not assimilate and be lost in a secular society.  We, too cry, “Lord we believe…help our unbelief,”  and He does.  The ruah...the wind blows from the four corners and breath of God brings life.  Today and always.  Thanks be to our all powerful, awesome God!  Amen.