Dem Dry Bones.
Lent 5
March 26, 2023
Fr. Tim Nunez
Dem Dry Bones.
Some years ago, I was at one of my kids’ soccer games. Another parent approached me with a very serious and emotionally charged question.
This man’s mother had died in another state. His sister was handling the arrangements and had shocked him by saying that their mom would be cremated. He hadn’t expected this since their father had been bodily buried, but he wanted to know if this was ok – ok in the sense that would his mother’s place in the Resurrection and her eternal life be affected. This is the kind of question people ask priests at soccer games; mom, eternity, no pressure.
This is an issue of theological debate. Some very wise Christians have well-considered and studied opinions as to why cremation is an equally valid way to be buried, other very wise Christians have well-considered and studied opinions as to why it is not. I come down rather firmly on the side that it is ok. I can dig around for supporting opinions on that, but it really comes down to this:
I’m confident the God who created us, loves us, redeems us and will resurrect us is perfectly capable of doing so from our ashes.
We start this season of Lent on Ash Wednesday each year with a reminder: Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Today’s scripture – all of it – reminds us to remember we shall be raised from that dust.
Does it matter if that dust is the result of a body lying in an unmarked grave in a remote country for a thousand years? Does it matter if a body has been embalmed and sealed in a casket? Does it matter if it has been cremated and placed lovingly in the consecrated ground of our Memorial Garden? It matters very much that we love and honor those we have lost and it matters very much to have a place of remembrance. But it isn’t going to block God from accomplishing his will. As the Apostle Paul tells us, NOTHING can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus: Nothing.
This is what God does – he breathes life. It reminds me of an old song about this passage from Ezekiel:
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Now hear the word of the Lord.
Ezekiel found himself in a very tough spot. After literally centuries of struggling to live in faithfulness to their covenant with God under the laws given through Moses, Israel failed. The final loss was when King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple Solomon had built. The people were then deported to the heart of Babylon, which is roughly modern Iraq.
This was an unmitigated disaster. While they were allowed to live together and even maintain most of their religious practices, the people of Israel had been largely defined by their Exodus from bondage in Egypt. They had been largely defined by their covenant with God which was to be demonstrated by observing God’s laws. They were God’s chosen people, and they had failed. They had lost the Promised Land, and lost the Temple, which was one of the eight wonders of the ancient world, and worst they had very clearly lost God’s favor.
The Lord had warned them repeatedly of the consequences of turning their hearts away from him. They had lost nearly everything gained a thousand years before. Ironically, they were in exile farther than the land of Haran, where Abraham had started in the first place.
In the midst of their despair and sorrow rose repentance. Ezekiel began to prophesy about God’s judgment, his plan and purpose in driving them to repentance. Then, with true cleansing of heart, Israel would be restored. Life, true life, would return.
Then we see this bizarre vision of re-creation as flesh, sinew and skin return to them. Does it matter how dry they had become? Does it matter how long they had lain there? No!
What matters is that the God who created them desired to breathe life into them again in his own time, for his own good purposes and to his great glory. God would prove Ezekiel’s prophecy to be true. Israel would return to faithfulness. Their Babylonian Captivity would end. They would see “dem dry bones” as a metaphor for new, restored life from God as they cultivated the Promised Land.
This was a great blessing that rings across the centuries about the faithfulness and the glory of God. When we love the Lord as he calls us to love, we find life is restored now and forever.
What was true metaphorically took on shockingly personal reality when Jesus revealed the glory of the Father by raising Lazarus from the dead. Does it matter that there is a stench from him being dead four days? No! Would it have mattered if Lazarus had been in the tomb 4 years or 400? No! What matters is that Jesus Christ, the only son of God, thanked the Father and said, “Lazarus come out!” and “Unbind him.”
This is the testimony of Paul. “He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”
Do you believe this?
My friends, these witnesses to the Lord’s faithfulness and his power to overcome even death and to restore the dry bones are meant to speak to us this very day on two levels. One is for this life, the life to which Jesus restored Lazarus, the life to which he can and will restore us.
This season of Lent is a time when we apply special focus to our need to repent. We started today’s service with repentance and absolution for our sins. We are in Babylon crying to the Lord to restore us. Repentance is key to that restoration.
We are here and we are alive, but who among us does not have dry bones? Who among us does not have areas within our bodies, minds and spirits that desperately needs that breath of God to heal, to restore, to grow flesh, sinew and skin so that we might live as the Lord always and ever intended us to live in covenant with him in this life?
And there is more, more than life as we know it, or even life as we might imagine it. We don’t know what became of him, except he, Mary and Martha appear to have been known to the early church. But Jesus restored Lazarus to this life. Soon Jesus will be raised as a new creation, the promise he holds for all of us. It is all one life, though, life as God intends it, true life, eternal life.
AMEN