DRY BONES Reading: Ezekiel 37: 1-14
Out of all the prophets in the Old Testament, Ezekiel was probably the one who had the most visions. Some of these are very hard to comprehend, but he was a man who was finely tuned to the Spirit of God, and when we read what Ezekiel ‘saw’ we do so with awe and reverence. The best known of his visions is this one that we have just read, the valley of dry bones, and, if we don’t know the scripture, then maybe we know the song! Of them all, this one requires little interpretation. Even if we choose not to admit it, we know exactly what Ezekiel is talking about. For the people of Israel long ago, it was a description of where they were at, both physically and spiritually. As a result of their own rebellion and refusal to listen to the words of exhortation and warning through the prophets, they were in exile in Babylon; they also felt separated from God himself. They were like dry bones, lifeless and without hope. But the vision also contains a promise of restoration, of life returning. For us today, in the place of Israel read ‘the people of God, the body of Christ, his church in all its branches’, by and large so lifeless, so ineffective, so scattered.
For so many people today the church, if they think about it at all, seems like old, dry bones, lifeless and boring. Even those within the body who are faithfully seeking to keep it alive or to resuscitate it are weary, and their hope is practically gone. The cry arising from their hearts is “Can these bones live?” There are two conditions, according to Ezekiel’s vision, that are necessary for life to return. One is that we need a prophetic voice with the courage to speak life giving, challenging words into hopeless situations and the second is that we need to be listening for and then obeying the word of the Lord.
It is rather exciting to note that Ezekiel had to speak to the dry bones more than once, but that what happens the first time is that the bones come together as they had been before. What is striking for me is that the first sign of life returning for the church would be that we come together, that we are that sort of united, not uniform, body that was characteristic of the early church. It is almost as if that needs to happen before the wind of the Spirit comes to breathe the breath of life into us once again. Ezekiel, in his vision, says, “So, I spoke as he commanded me, and the wind entered the bodies and they began to breathe. They all came to life and stood up on their feet – a great army of them.”
Think what a power house we, as the church, could be, a great army for God, bearing witness to his righteousness, his mercy, his truth and his peace. Once we in the church have the courage to listen and to heed what we hear, and do so in a spirit of unity, then we are challenged to become that voice for a weary, hopeless, frightened world. We can only do that if the Spirit of God comes like the four winds and breathes his life giving power afresh into us. So our common prayer should continually be, “Come, Holy Spirit, breathe onto our deadness so that we may live again to always and only bring glory to your name. Amen.