Renewal and Hope in the Valley of Dry Bones

our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord our rock and our redeemer amen please be seated in a childhood long long ago this is mine I'm talking about now in a galaxy far far away is what it feels like to me before the time of Nintendo switch Nintendo switch Xbox minecraft grand theft auto oh lord have mercy on me for that one and yes even before miz pac -man we played a lot of board games we played a lot of board games everybody remember the board games yes eight hours of monopoly yes and one of these board games that we played was called operation yes do we remember operation sold by a little toy outfit called Milton Bradley who here remembers operation can I think all right we all played operation so you may recall this is a game of a skill where you eight -year -old you are the doctor operating on a cardboard box shaped like a body with tiny little openings for various organs and bones you have to get these plastic bones a thigh bone I remember and a few rib bones out of the tiny bone shaped openings with even smaller microscopic tweezers the only glitch with all of this is that the tweezers are attached to an electrified wired loop that would emit a startling zapping noise if your little tweezers even so much as grazed the sides of the metal opening I remember trying with my tiny little eight -year -old digits to carefully save the life of this cardboard patient by extracting those rib bones and I have to say it was an incredibly stressful game I also don't remember just a zapping noise but I recall actually feeling an electric jolt in my fingers I'm not sure this game as it was produced back then would ever pay past the Canadian Consumer Safety Product Act today I also remember those little bones floating around the house for weeks on and afterwards after we played the game little white plastic leg bones and rib bones inevitably the dog would eat them and then get sick or we would step on them in our bare feet resulting in hair -raising screams of agony way to go Milton Bradley [00:25:27]

Today Ezekiel is facing a similarly daunting task of pulling old bones together but the stakes are much higher for him and the people of God in the reading that Daisy read for us so beautifully we hear how the hand of God comes upon the Jewish street preacher Ezekiel and gives him one of the most famous biblical images we have in our collective imaginations the Lord picks him up and sets him down in this dry Rocky Valley floor full of the dusty old bones they are not just dry they are very dry the scripture tells us this is the house of Israel this is the house of Israel [00:28:27]

dead and gone well past any kind of resuscitation and the Lord leads Ezekiel all around them so he sees the death from every possible angle. Ezekiel's Jewish listeners are exiled in Babylon with little hope of return to their land. It's a deep -down sense of spiritual death for these people. We hear the recurring biblical narrative arc of displacement in this text. [00:29:44]

The landscape is dry, dusty, all in a monotone hue, a kind of Tatooine vibe. That's the desert home of Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, FYI. My beloved, these dry old bones resemble how our souls can feel from time to time. [00:29:51]

We were displaced from our physical church buildings not so long ago. We are now witnessing a whole other kind of displacement and marginalization as a country, and we are seeing whole groups of people being cast out just south of our border. And in our hearts, have we not all been prodigals at one time? [00:30:24]

Perhaps at this very moment, as you may be sitting here in this glorious sacred space cast out from a relationship, a job, a sense of security that you might have, perhaps you feel rejected by God. [00:30:48]

Then there's the exhaustion of just waking up and reading what new assault has happened overnight to the Ukrainian people, to the trans folk who seem to have just disappeared from the US Constitution, and tens of thousands of immigrants, refugees, and migrants living in fear of ice every day. I don't know about you, but I can feel like a dislocated pile of dusty old bones before I'm even out the door in the morning. [00:31:05]

He is so overwhelmed by what he sees around him that when the Lord speaks to him, that's right, the Lord speaks directly to Ezekiel and asks him, mortal, can these bones live? [00:31:40]

Ezekiel, who doesn't really seem to be at a loss for words in the previous 36 chapters of his prophecy, answers, O Lord God, you know. [00:31:54]

Prophesy to these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord. [00:32:12]

Clattering and jangling bones coming together the old bodies fully reconstituted, new life out of old bones. [00:32:35]

If you are feeling like a pile of old bones, this is for you. It's the paschal mystery prefigured in the Hebrew scriptures, dying and rising, the resurrection body coming out of the tomb, just as we will celebrate in a month's time. [00:32:47]

But how is this to be, you might ask. And don't some of the best people in our scriptures ask that question of God? Okay, that sounds crazy, Lord. How exactly is that going to work? [00:33:07]

Gospel writer John's poetic account of the life of Jesus tells us, with the help of the advocate, the spirit of truth, who will be with us forever. [00:33:18]

Just when you think your tank is running on empty, your battery is down to one percent, the spirit comes. We only pray, come Holy Spirit, come, and she arrives right on time. [00:33:33]

If you are feeling brokenhearted, exiled, displaced, discouraged, if you have lost hope, or if you feel that maybe God cannot possibly love you, you with your difficulties, the spirit arrives with the truth that you and I are beautifully created in the image of God and made with love for love by God, and nothing can ever, ever change that. [00:33:48]

This hope given to us by Jesus himself and the power of the Holy Spirit is not just for you and for me so that we can make it through our day, or so that our parish might figure out how to have a solid discipleship program, or how to finally kick -start small group ministry. Today, those are just the table stakes, so just do it. You know why? [00:35:10]

There is a cruelty and disregard for humanity out there that is being allowed to go unchecked, and as I tell my own beloved community of St. John's, never before has the church been called to be her churchiest. We need to be as salty as possible, people of God. God, the darkness will never, ever overshadow the light, but it is going to take all of us little Christs to be fully reconstituted, spirit -filled bodies using our prophetic voices to speak out against tyranny, our bones fully joined, our souls and bodies alive and kicking. [00:36:04]

It's now what we are going to beg for with every ounce of energy we may or may not have left, so we can be the freedom fighters for justice and peace, love and mercy that God calls each and every one of us to be. A few weeks ago, I heard the Episcopal Church's new presiding bishop Sean Rowe speak. [00:36:47]

He said that the confessing church in Germany, this was the group of Christians who gathered in opposition to the pro -Nazi German evangelical church, and of course this confessing church includes the magnificent martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. [00:37:24]

Well, Bishop Rowe told the clergy that the confessing church was too late to the party back then, and that our Anglican church cannot make the same mistake today. Those are pretty high stakes for renewal, it seems to me. [00:37:39]

We have a beautiful and winsome body of Christ here in our Diocese of Toronto. We have so much to be hopeful for. I see it week in and week out in the east side of Toronto. What a glorious tapestry God is weaving among us. All our lives with our differing views and reflections, indigenous and settler, our variety of experiences as people of faith, our shared and deep desire to follow in the way of Jesus. You know, Ezekiel had plenty of misgivings about how God was going to put all those dusty old bones together. [00:38:00]

I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil, and you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act. [00:38:45]

In our gospel reading that Deacon John proclaims so wonderfully for us, Jesus repeats God's promise, I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you, and the Holy Spirit will teach you everything. [00:39:00]