It Doesn't Have to Be This Way
Robert Jenson, the man whom Duke Divinity Professor Stanley Hauerwas calls America’s Best Theologian – and TIME Magazine called Stanley the same – said the vision God laid before the prophet Ezekiel is the whole ball of wax when it comes to whether or not Christianity is true or utter malarky. The prophet Ezekiel began by avoiding the obvious answer to the Lord’s question. The Lord asked, “Can these bones live?” Well, the Sunday School answer is, “of course God, you above all can do anything.” Instead, Ezekiel, perhaps because of a sense of doubt, said, “Lord God, you know.” Or better translated,” I don’t know Lord, you tell me.”
The Lord told Ezekiel to speak to the bones. Speak to the bones?
A valley full of bones, human remains, piled upon one another. Bones that had been long forgotten and scavenged over by animals and insects. Nothing remained but dry and brittle bones. All evidence of the lives once present was gone.
At Robert Jenson’s funeral Victor Lee Austin, the theologian-in-residence of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas said that the act of prophesying to the bones, “is a tiny movement, but it is the pivot upon which a vast future creaked into being.”[1]
Ezekiel said, “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.”[2] After Ezekiel had done as the Lord commanded the bones rattled, they began to come together and were remade as though the physical signs of life had never been stripped away by the pains of death. That was not enough for God. The Lord commanded Ezekiel to prophesy again, calling breath to enter the newly reconstructed bodies. Once the breath of the Lord had entered their bodies the "vast multitude"[3] was able to live.
Even in a place where despair was present the Lord tells us there is hope.
The Lord says it does not have to be this way.
Our ever-changing new normal began one year ago. And it has been anything but normal. It was one year ago that parents received text messages from school systems informing them that Spring Break would begin earlier than expected. We began hearing more and more about a rapidly spreading virus that had not quite touched our lives yet but was getting closer than was comfortable.
Overnight we began keeping our distance from one another – from extended family, friends, and strangers at the grocery store. We made masks from bandanas and rubber bands. We hoarded toilet paper (some haven’t needed to buy TP in the past year) and stocked up on any of the essentials we could find. We sat in front of our televisions and scrolled endlessly online looking for information about the virus, determining what we needed to do to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
We were frightened. Many of us did not know what a coronavirus was. We had never lived through a pandemic and what we discovered online about the Spanish flu of 1918 told us that the valley we were entering into would not be easily traveled. What many took for granted – barbershop visits, attending church in a church, dining outside of our homes, visiting our grandparents or grandchildren, summer vacations, and much much more – became high-risk activities without notice.
The three-week extended Spring Break became a month, then three, and before we knew it a year had passed, and we are not sure how much longer we have to go. Even with a vaccine rolling out, coming to a pharmacy or parking lot near you, we are not quite out of this yet even as it feels like we can’t take anymore. Phrases like, “when COVID is over I’m going to…” are becoming part of our common vernacular.
It didn’t have to be this way.
For the last two months, I have been serving as a hospital chaplain at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg. I am enrolled in a program to help pastors learn how to provide better pastoral care. I am assigned to two units within the hospital, one of which is an Intensive Care Unit where patients are being treated for COVID-19. If there was a 2020/2021 equivalent of the valley of dry bone 2 South and West of Mary Washington Hospital is it. Patients are in isolation with their medical teams dressed in equipment that could double as astronaut suits with visits from a chaplain most likely happening over the phone. Elsewhere in the hospital patients are isolated as well. Visitors are limited to one person. One person per patient per admission. Families must decide who will be the one to visit a parent or child while they're admitted. Tensions are high. Morale is low. And the end, well, we can see that the end may be in sight but with too many variables and past experiences looming overhead, staff and patients are not getting their hopes up.
The same conditions can be found in hospitals around the world.
A few weeks ago, I was asked by an educator at the hospital how it was going, how my experience had been visiting with patients and families, providing pastoral care during a global pandemic. Unexpectedly, I broke down, blurting out, “It didn’t have to this way!” The educator asked do you mean practically or theologically? “Teer,” she asked, “are you referring to the death toll of the pandemic or death in general?” I shrugged my shoulders and said, “both I guess.”
Over 500,000 Americas, 2.5 million people worldwide did not have to die. We did not have to lose the things we took for granted. We did not have to miss birthday parties. We did not have to fight with one another over toilet paper or argue about the use of masks and the need for shutdowns. A year later, we find ourselves in the valley of dry bones, in a place where we did not have to be. And yet, ever since sin and death enter creation we have been wandering in and out of the valley. Given the invitation from God to choose new life, we turn away, turning towards sin and death. We can repent and turn back towards God, yet, inevitably we will turn back towards sin and as a result, death.
The Gospel of John tells us about Jesus arriving at the grave of his friend Lazarus. Lazarus had been dead for four days. His bones may not yet have been dry, but life had left Lazarus’ body and he had been placed in a tomb. When Jesus arrived, he was overcome by the death of his friend. Jesus was confronted with the consequences of our proclivity for sin. This is where we find the shortest, yet one of the most profound verses in all of scripture: “Jesus wept.[4]
When faced with death, Jesus – the Son of God, Emmanuel, the loquacious Logos – had a bodily reaction. No single Hollywood-style tear streamed down his face. No, Jesus had a gut-wrenching response. The response many of us have had over the past year when we have been confronted by death and have not been able to say goodbye. Many of us know this feeling, and when death was laying in front of him, being wrapped four days prior in burial clothes, Jesus wept.
Then Jesus called out, "Lazarus, come out!" Leaving his burial cloths in the tomb, Lazarus exited the tomb and those gathered witnessed Ezekiel's vision in the valley for dry bones for themselves. They saw life return. Breath entered a man they knew to be dead.
It didn’t have to be this way.
God does not delight in suffering and death. When face-to-face with the condition we call carry, God became angry. God wept, was unnerved.
Disease and affliction are not God’s punishment doled out to humanity for _______ reason.
Disease and affliction are signs of an enemy named Death – a condition that entered into creation when humanity chose to turn away from God, the church calls this sin – and standing at his friend’s tomb, face-to-face with this enemy God is angry. So angry that he had a bodily response.
Lazarus carried a disease more widespread than any pandemic the world has ever faced - Death.
We are all afflicted by sin and as a result, afflicted by Death – not because of you as an individual rather because creation has turned away from God. Even when we name this affliction, we find it hard, nearly impossible to turn away from it. None can escape it.
No number of cancellations or changes in plans, social distancing cannot cancel or change this condition we all face. But in Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, the One who came down from on high and took on our earthly existence we are the recipients of the promise that sin and death do not get the last word.
We walk into the valley of the dry bones each time we choose sin and death over the sustaining love and freedom offered to us, freely and without cost, by God our creator in Jesus Christ.
Where hope seems lost and the dryness of sin and death is all that remains – in dust, in ash, and in the grave, the Lord is going to shout, the Lord is shouting, “Come out, follow me. It does not have to be this way. It will not be this way.”
Regardless of where we have been worshiping over the past year, we, the church, Christ’s called and gathered body, are resurrection people. We do not believe that sin and death and the hopelessness of the valley of dry bones hold the last word. This has been difficult to remember of the past year, because, frankly, death and dry bones have been part of our everyday life.
Even if you have somehow managed to avoid the virus over the past year you have still had your life turned upside down. You might be working from home. Maybe you lost your job. Maybe you've been separated from family – physically because of the virus and socially as well because of disagreement over the need for masks, distancing, and new protocols. Maybe you're coming off a shift where you were wearing one of those astronaut-like suits only to see people at the grocery store ignoring the practices that would keep them from needing your care. This past year has proved to us, whether we wanted it to or not, that no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want it to be different, sin and death, and the valley of dry bones, are ever around us.
Week after week and day after day, the church being the same broken record that it has been since God called Christ out of a borrowed grave on the third day has proclaimed hope and promise. It didn't have to be like this, sin and death did not have to have a grip on creation. And church, we say it will not be like this. There is hope. We have been assured through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, promised that sin and death do not hold the last word. There is hope. Every time we proclaim Christ resurrected we are telling the world that what we see before us will not last and that the same God who can fill the driest of bones with breath, with life, can call a dead man from his eternal slumber, and raise a crucified Son will do the same to for us.
