May 2011 Sketchings

EASTER PROMISES

If you were regular in worship during the weeks leading up to Easter, you will know that our lessons all had a focus of lives transformed by the power of Jesus to renew (the woman at the well), to bring sight, spiritual sight, to those who cannot see the presence of God (the healing of the man born blind) and the power to resurrect a life from the grave (the resurrection of Jesus’ friend Lazarus).

One of the stories we missed, due to the length of some of the readings, was one from Ezekiel 37, the “valley of dry bones.” You may know this story from a Sunday School Song, “Dem Bones” which has a chorus that contains “The thigh bone connected to the knee bone, The knee bone connected to the shin bone” etc.

You know, I love to preach this story and I was sorry to miss it this time around. I love to preach it because sometimes when I look out into the world, into the congregation, into the lives of individual people, even into my own life and faith, I see bones. I see the bare bones revealed in grief and the hurts and pains of life. I see lives dried up by fear and insecurity. I see death walking around in the cares and concerns about where the world and the church are headed. I see and feel the rending of relationships and the tearing of hearts. I hear people talking about the mad nightmares that are sometimes the reality of life.

And I wonder, as did Ezekiel, “Can these bones live? Can these bones ever have life again like they did last week, or last month, or last year, or back when it felt like everything was all right? Can these bones ever recover from their dried up death to find life and hope again?

Oh, yes, I’ve wondered aloud, as did Ezekiel. Lord!! Can these bones live? Lord!! Can these bones find the breath of life? Lord!! Is there hope at all for these bones?

And just about at the moment of despair, I hear God’s promise of new life in the resurrection of Jesus. Just about at the moment of giving up, I see God fulfilling God’s promise to breathe new life into these bones and these lives of ours. Just at the moment of hopelessness, God’s Spirit comes to blow in the powerful breath of renewal, even of creation’s life giving power, “he breathed into them the breath of life.” Just when we need it most, God’s Spirit blows like a mighty wind (Acts 2) to fulfill what God promises: life for these bones. Life for this life. Life like never before.

Oh, dear friends. Oh, God’s people. We are not bones. We are not in the tomb. It just seems that way. No, dear people, we are God’s people. We are those who have been brought to life in our Baptism. We are those who have been called from lifelessness to new life. Called to be living examples of what it means to have a faith that is active in our lives.

We are those called forth from the tomb as God breathes the breath of the Spirit over us, as God breathes into us life. We are not bones on a plain. We are not dead in a tomb. But we are full and blessed with abundance because God is God over even death, even grief, even changes, even over all that will be unknown and uncharted before us.

You know on Easter we declare with certainty, with enthusiasm from the depth of our beings, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.” We proclaim with certainly that God has ultimate power to give life, to raise from the dead, to open the doors to a new eternity and to overcome everything, even death itself.

So, now, in the promise of Easter, in the power of the breath of the Spirit of God over us, we do what we’ve celebrated and proclaimed. We rise and live. We let God’s spirit breathe new hope into us.

Because, you see, ultimately this isn’t about us. It isn’t about death. It isn’t about the darkness or despair that seems to close in upon us.

Finally, it is all about God, the God who gives us life, breathes into us meaning and ministry, the God who in Jesus Christ calls into a resurrected so that His name and His power can be glorified.

This Easter, we pray for God to breathe on us the breath of life—the breath of NEW life so that we can continue in what is charted before us, looking forward to the kingdom, when all will be seen in the perfection of His light, in the perfection of the life we long for.

T. O. M.