Ezekiel: “No Bones About It”

A Sermon Based Upon Ezekiel 37: 1-14.

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   July 27, 2014

“He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord GOD, you know." (Eze 37:3 NRS)

When I was a kid, the most interesting TV crime show was Perry Mason.   It was the story about a mythical Defense attorney, Perry Mason, who was our American version of Sherlock Holmes, always getting to the truth of the matter to prove his client’s innocence, even when the odds were not in their favor, often getting others to confess their crime.  In the TV show, Perry Mason won all his cases because he was highly ethical and stood for what was good and right, which always won in the end, just like Perry Mason did.

We’ve come away from the naïve simplicity of a Perry Mason or the belief that all crimes can be solved with ethics, by being cleverer than the opponent, or by getting people to admit their guilt and face the truth, as Perry Mason did.  Today’s crime shows are much more based upon evidence rather than personal confessions of guilt, and they are about more about Crime Scene investigations, forensic Science and anthropology, than they are about getting people to face the truth.   In other words, in today’s TV world, it is the truth that speaks for itself, rather than making people face up to and admitting it. 

Since the hit TV show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and many like it have dominated the air ways,  it is argued that public perception about the forensic evidence needed to prove guilt for crimes has placed much more burdens on prosecutors.   This has come to be called, the CSI effect, or CSI syndrome.   Today’s jurors demand much more than circumstantial evidence to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, and because Crime labs can’t keep up with TV, it is believed that too many criminals are going free, such as OJ Simpson, Robert Blake, Cindy Anthony and George Zimmerman.   It is even being argued by some that trials were better argued and crimes better solved, when they were based upon circumstantial evidence and the testimony of witnesses, rather when the truth is left to scientific methods or forensic science.   In other words, murder trials might have been better solved, when there were ‘no bones about it’.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect).

Haven’t you heard that expression, “Make no bones about it!”   Normally, we take that to mean “make no mistake about it!” but that was not the original meaning.   According to Len Sweet, who gave me the idea for this sermon, this phrase, ‘make no bones about it’, came out of the middle ages, when people were being served soup out a common pot at the community table.  When you went through the line, sometimes you got some meat, sometimes you got just soup, and sometimes you got bare bones in your bowl.  The social etiquette of that day was not to protest when you got only a bone, instead of meat.  You were to ‘make no bones about it’ meant that you were to accept what was given to you and to wait to get your fair share at the next meal-time  (From a sermon by Lenoard Sweet at www.sermons.com).    

In today’s Bible text, from Ezekiel we have all kinds of bones a plenty.   It’s not the kind of bones you encounter when you are eating chicken stew either, but it’s the kind of bones you might find if you were to dig up a grave yard.    Here we have dried up, decaying, detached, dead and dreaded bones no one wants to walk out and uncover either in the woods or worse,  in the desert, where you might die of thirst too, as they are found here.   Fortunately, I’ve never found human remains while walking in the woods, but I’ve found my share of animal bones and carcasses.   It sounds morbid and gloomy, to take a walk in the graveyard with God, but God wanted Ezekiel to find himself in this graveyard of bones and he wants to put a question to him, “Son of man, that is mortal man, God asks, that is, man who is going to end up in this kind of graveyard yourself, do you think these bones can live? 

How would you answer that kind of morbid, but ultimate question?  Can dead bones come back to life?  Can people live again?   How would you answer, honestly, based upon your own experience?   Ezekiel does the smart thing.  He doesn’t answer.  He answers that only God knows.  Good answer!  Ezekiel makes no bones about it.  When it comes to overcoming death and destruction, what can a human know that only God knows.  You can’t make bones about that, or can you?

SPEAK TO DEM BONES

God doesn’t let this very polite prophet off the hook so easily.  God does make some bones about it and he involves Ezekiel in the process.  Indeed, instead of using God’s own voice to raise up these bones, God tells Ezekiel to use his own voice and that he must speak to these bones himself, and he does, saying “O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD” (37.4). 

Do you see what is going on here?  If Ezekiel has refused to speak to these bones, and if he had refused to see the possibility in the midst of the impossibility, there would have never been any hope.   Hope has to start with someone and it has to start somewhere.  Most often, hope starts with a word of hope spoken out against despair. 

When Ezekiel began to speak, it was then that the miracle of transformation began to occur before his own eyes.  But if Ezekiel had not learned to speak, and if he had not been willing to speak up, then nothing would have or could have ever happened.  It takes words to make miracles happens.  It’s takes not only God’s word, but it also takes human words.   What good is a miracle if only God makes it himself for himself?   If you recall in the New Testament, the miracle of Peter walking on the water, didn’t start until Peter took that first step.  Of course, Peter did begin to sink, when he took his eyes off of Jesus, but at least he stepped out there, and we all know that Jesus didn’t let him drown.   His faith was small, but it was still faith.

It has been said in jokes by Jerry Seinfeld, that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are afraid of death itself.  Although it’s not quite that bad, public speaking is one of the most common social phobias.   I’m used to speaking publically, but I still have fears about saying the wrong thing.  Recently, when I was asked in court to stand up and speak to the judge, I felt a bite of unexplained anxiety tangling my tongue a bit.  However, after I got up and started talking,  I wanted to say more, but the judge wouldn’t allow it.  I guess he’d heard enough from a preacher and knew how dangerous I might be if I got my day in court.   

Why do we fear speaking up and speaking out?  What do you think is behind that fear?  Are we afraid of what people might think?  Are we afraid of what we might say?  Are we just afraid of doing something we’ve never done before?   In an online newspaper article, writer Donna Labermeir, says that one of the reasons people are afraid of speaking up, is because they haven’t made peace with our caveman or cavewoman.  You heard me right.  She says that our fear of speaking goes all the way back to the time when our primitive instinct was not to be ‘singled out’ when we needed to be in groups to survive.   Besides, she adds, it’s hard to fight a saber-toothed tiger by yourself.   When we speak up, one of the first natural feelings we have is that we are in a life or death struggle, and we might lose.  When we feel fear, we want to shut our mouths and run back into the safety of the group and hope the tiger bites someone else (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-labermeier/why-most-people-are-death_b_4798597.html).

But what if the tiger is able to bite all of us.  That’s what Ezekiel sees.  The tiger of death has already overtaken his people and there is no one else to speak up, so God asks him to do.  The word of the LORD spoken through Ezekiel is God’s only hope.   Unless Ezekiel speaks, there is no word, no voice, and no hope.  Someone has got to do it, say it, and speak up.   The tiger of death has already bitten, so why don’t we go ahead and say what we know needs to be said?  If we don’t speak, there is a good chance, nobody will, because nobody will be left who can.   We are walking through a graveyard, aren’t we?   Isn’t this where Ezekiel finds himself?  Are you ready to speak life to them bones in your own situation?

A contributor for CNN, Amanda Enayati, writes about an argument between two mothers at an elementary school which got ugly.  One of the moms was told to ‘go back where you came from”, because although she was born in the U.S.,  her family came here from India.   When she answered that she was ‘just as America as you!’ the aggressor doubled down with an even stronger racist retort.  Two mothers, who were horrified at what was happening, were very troubled at what they saw and heard, but didn’t say a word.  Neither one of them felt comfortable speaking up and intervening.  I guess you could say that the cat got their tongue.  (http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/06/health/psychological-impact-prejudice/). 

If life is going come back into the lives around us in this dying, decaying world, we have to learn to speak up, speak out, and share what is on our minds.   Churches have set up a false pattern for life, when we get used to one person doing all the speaking, and everyone else only doing the listening.  We need to understand, as Ezekiel does, that you only prove that you are listening to God when you are willing to speak up and speak out in caring and constructive ways.  The future demands that all of us have something to say to the dry, decaying, dying bones of our society, wherever we encounter them. 

BLOW AIR IN DEM BONES

There is something else that is required to bring life back into our world.   When Ezekiel looks out among all the dead, dry bones, there is still not life in them.   He has spoken a word, but nothing has happened, just yet.  Then God has him speak up again, and to call for “breath to enter” these bones, so they ‘will live’ (37.4).  

Now, we can clearly see that it is not just any kind of words which needs to be spoken, nor is it just any kind of deeds that need to be done, in order for life to return into the lives of the people,  it is God’s breath that needs to enter them.  It is only the ‘spiritual’ breath of life that can bring them back to their original energy of life and health.  “This is the word of the LORD,” Zechariah wrote,” …not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, the LORD of hosts. (Zec 4:6 KJV). 

Did you see that coming?  It is what life in the Spirit means throughout the Bible, as Jesus told his disciples ‘I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).   We do not have the power nor the strength to bring life back into our world, unless we have the kind of spiritual life that should be brought back.  It is only ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’ that sets us ‘free from the law of sin and death” Paul writes (Rom. 8.2).  “To set the mind (only) on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace”  (Romans 8.6). ‘It is the spirit that gives life’ Jesus says.  “The flesh is useless” (Jn. 6.63) unless it has the breath of the Spirit and life of the living God.   

When the human speaks, he must speak according to God’s word and God’s voice.  We have no life in and of ourselves, unless we are filled with God’s life and spirit.  Left to our own lives, and living life on our own terms, we are all dead people walking, but when we live in tune with God’s spirit, the mortal spirit obtains immortality.   Humans can soar, but we must do it on God’s terms, and by God’s spirit, not in our own.   It is the Spirit of God that gives us life.  Without God’s spirit we as good as dead, already.  Without God’s spirit we are nothing more than a valley of dried, decaying, dead bones.  But start to speak up, and let God breath his Spirit into us, and we come to life, not matter where we are, be it in a desert or in a valley where there is nothing but death.

A couple of weeks ago, on CBS’s 60 Minutes, I watched an interview with Briton, Nicholas Winton, an remarkable 104 years old man, still of sound mind, who was a Holocaust Savior, who had risked his life to save over 669 Jewish children from the hands of the Nazis.  Shortly before Christmas in 1938, Winton was planning to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday.  He decided instead to visit Prague and help his friend Martin Blake, who had called to asked him to assist in Jewish welfare work.   As a result of hearing the call and answering the spirit, Winton single-handedly established an organization to aid children from Jewish familes at risk from the Nazis.  He set up his office at a dining room table in his hotel.  After saving hundreds of children, amazingly, Winton kept quiet about his humanitarian work, until his wife found a detailed scrapbook in their attic in 1998.   The world found out about his work during a BBC programme.  Winton did not know it, but dozens of those people he saved were invited to stand around him and applaud.  He told no one, and no one knew who was to thank for saving their lives for over 50 years (http://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/3oJ8O9WKqdmCieH1sfj6fMq7J_jFwCeH/saving-the-children/).  

The man who saved them, appreciated their applaud, but he didn’t need it.  He got all the life he needed from doing what he did because he followed and lived in the Spirit, which is life.

SET DEM BONES TOGETHER

We also read in Ezekiel’s account of the “dry bones” that life came to these bones when God’s spiritual breath entered them and it was then that they got skin on and began to live.  But life is still not completely alive and full unless there is a ‘shaking’ and a ‘rattling’ of those bones so they would ‘come together.’  Bones are still just bones, unless they come together to do some shaking and rattling in the world.  If they only shake, rattle and roll, they only make noise, but remain nothing but a bunch of shaking, rattling, and noisy bones.  But if you get them together, and you give them something important to do, then a new kind of life comes into them, and they can stand together and gain a life of their own and they can make a difference.

In the first half of the 19th century, there were people who made their living as a bone-setters These ‘bone setters were often a combination of chiropractor and bone-setter, treating some very special patients, like Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth.  In those days, the medical field was more a series of crafts, each with its own storehouse of knowledge and secret skills.  Besides physicians and surgeons, the expertise of these bone-setters lay in understanding skeletal anatomy and muscular massage.  In those days of physically demanding work,  broken bones were hardly unusual, but often disastrous.  Not only could a broken arm or leg cause great pain, it could cause forced unemployment and loss of wages.  A mishandled broken limb could heal improperly, causing a lifelong disability or even gangrenous infections and death.  You entrusted a bone-setter with your future - your future life of work, wages, and well-being - each time that bone-setter aligned the broken bits of a limb.

The Greek term for setting bones is derived from the same Greek root we translate as "to equip." Fishermen repairing their frayed and frazzled nets equipped them, or mended them back together. In the same way, the old-time bone-setters who skillfully joined together a farmer's broken leg bone was helping to equip that farmer for a lifetime of hard walking behind the plow and over his fields.

Ezekiel was a bone-setter himself. Ezekiel equipped his people.  He called the frightened, depressed, dry bones of an exiled, beaten-down, landless Israel - by setting those bones back together again.  Ezekiel's vision from God offered hope for a future, for strength regained, for a homeland reborn and for life renewed.  And Ezekiel's vision didn't forget what must be central to any human repair effort - that the spirit as well as the body be mended and made whole again as well.

Fourthly and finally,

CONNECT DEM DIFFERENT BONES TO EACH OTHER.

Truth be bold, for most of us there's probably only one reason we remember the prophet Ezekiel - "Dem bones, Dem bones, Dem . . . Dry bones. Now hear the word of the Lord." That African-American spiritual, doubles as a crash course in anatomy, catches the peculiarity and the power of Ezekiel's bony vision perfectly, and puts it into such an unforgettable and fun tune that we all love to hear and sing about "Dem bones, dem bones, dem . . . dry bones." You’ll remember that part well where it says,  "the foot bone is connected to the . . . ankle bone; the ankle bone is connected to the . . . shin bone," etc.)

That song might not be as precise as Grey's Anatomy, but with that song, everybody can have a picture of a completed human skeleton dancing around by the time the song ends.  We also need to see the whole picture and include every single part.  For it’s not until all the different part of the body are connected that we have a fully functioning body.  The one body is comprised of many different parts, all obediently fulfilling their roles and none separate from other parts. Each different part, each piece of the body has a piece of the action, and every bone has a particular job to do.

The work of God’s church, which can still bring dead things to life, requires the both the diversity of the body and the unifed working of each part.  In other words, the whole body does not work well, does not fully come to life, unless every bone is doing it’s part.  You know how the song goes.  Sing it with me:

The toe bone's connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone's connected to the ankle bone,
The ankle bone's connected to the leg bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The leg bone's connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone's connected to the hip bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The hip bone's connected to the back bone
The back bone's connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone's connected to the head bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The finger bone's connected to the hand bone,
The hand bone's connected to the arm bone,
The arm bone's connected to the shoulder bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around
Now shake dem skeleton bones!.

Shake dem bones, church.   We can’t shake, rattle and roll the world back to life, until we speak up, blow the spirit on these bones, do work together with these bones, and connect with each other in ways that bring life back into the world.   When we do this, church, we will  not only shake, rattle and roll ourselves, but we will shake, rattle, and roll life and spirit back into the world.   Now shake dem skeleton bones!   Amen.