April 10, 2011 Romans 8:6-11 Ezekiel 37:1-14

“Can These Old Bones Live?”

Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

In 597 B.C.E., the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed the city of Jerusalem, and in
the process, burned God’s earthly throne, the Temple. As if destroying the beloved Temple wasn’t
bad enough, as part of the Babylonian strategy to subdue the people they’d conquered, for a second
time, the leading citizens of Judea were deported to Babylon, the country we know as Iraq. There the
Judeans, including the prophets Ezekiel and eventually Jeremiah, lived in exile until 538 B.C.E. when
King Cyrus allowed the captives to return home if they so desired.
As you can imagine, being deported to a foreign nation devastated the Judeans. Many of the Psalms
and the book of Lamentations, record the Israelites’ misery, even their fear that God had deserted
them. Lamentations 5 reads: “Remember, O LORD, what has befallen us; look, and see our disgrace!
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to aliens. We have become orphans,
fatherless; our mothers are like widows. We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must
be bought. With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven; we are weary, we are given no rest. . . But
you, O LORD, reign forever; your throne endures to all generations. Why have you forgotten us
completely? Why have you forsaken us these many days?” The exiles believed there was no hope.
They thought God had deserted them when the Temple was destroyed. They were afraid that never
again would they see their homeland and know the promises of God. Their world had collapsed
around them and they were in total despair.
While we don’t usually feel God has deserted us, we can despair at times when we look at our world.
John Leax writes: “I have enemies; men who rape children, corporations who elevate profit over
health, advertisers who sell their cheap goods, people who drive drunk, teachers who lie, abortionists
who make no distinctions, right-to-lifers who have no compassion, food processors and grocery chains
that have destroyed the health of a people, agri-business men who have destroyed the health of the
soil. The nuclear industry that destroys the earth for its stockholders, politicians who protect the
wealthy from the health hazards of the nuclear industry but who will not lift a finger to protect the
poor and powerless from the same hazards, and judges who turn the judicial system into an instrument
of oppression.”
While we may not agree with everything on Leax’s list, we can add a great deal more to our own lists
of causes for gloom in our society. We live in a country where whites are afraid of blacks and blacks
are afraid of whites; where 10, 11, and 12 year old children become pregnant; where 6-year-olds carry
guns to school for protection. CEO’s get millions while government officials work to break unions.
Ethnic hatred and violence, hunger and homelessness and destruction seem to fill our world. People
want more for themselves at the cost of less for others. Simple things like courtesy and common
decency seem no longer to be taught to children. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like the
prophet Ezekiel standing in the valley looking out over a world of despair, pain, violence and
destruction, a world too saturated with grief and sin to survive, a world filled with dry and dusty old
bones.
Nor is it only the world situation that leads to despair. Our personal lives are also often overwhelmed
with problems and desperation. Friends are out of work. Loved ones are stricken with cancer.

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Parents are afflicted with Alzheimer’s. Children rebel. Divorce strikes those whom we see as having
the best marriages. We live in fear of our cities. Death takes too many we know and love. In other
words, dry old bones are scattered in the valley before us. We cry with the Psalmist [74], “O God,
why do you cast us off forever? Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which
you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage.” We’re overcome by the horrors we see before us. In
our discouragement, when the LORD asks us, “Can these bones live?” – unlike the prophet Ezekiel,
we respond, “No. It’s hopeless, Lord, even for you. These dry old bones scattered all around us are
dead.”
Then come the surprising, unbelievable words of God, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O
dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the LORD GOD to these bones: 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.”
Can these words of hope be true? Can the LORD hear our prayers and make the dry bones, the bones
of starving children, the bones of black and white relations, the bones of unwed mothers, the bones of
gunshot victims, the bones of too many loved ones, can the LORD bring these bones together, and put
flesh on the bones, and put breath back into the bodies? Can the LORD do such a miraculous thing?
“YES!” the Bible proclaims. “Yes, the LORD can give life to even the driest of bones.” Through the
power of God hope can return to what appears to be the most hopeless of situations. By the
miraculous love of God we know the LORD can bring life to a valley of dry bones, because he has
done it. Ezekiel tells us, “The breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast
multitude.” Life came into the dry bones. Hope came to the hopelessness of the exiles. The LORD
GOD said, “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I
will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD. I will put my spirit
within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil.” Life came to a people who
were living without hope as exiles in Babylon, because Ezekiel proclaimed to them that the LORD
God had not forgotten them, and in 538, the exiles were freed to return home, just as the LORD had
promised through Ezekiel. The bones lived again!
Can the LORD return life to dry bones? Jesus told the followers of John the Baptist, “the blind receive
their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have
good news brought to them.” Can Jesus Christ return hope to the hopeless? Jesus prayed and then
“cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with
strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.” Can hope come to what appears to be our hopeless
world? Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die,
will live.” The sinfulness and despair of my life has been done away with and I’ve been given new
hope because of the power of Jesus Christ. Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I know hope
can return to our lives and our world.
Hope can come to the hopeless because it’s happened before. Life can come to those who mourn
because Jesus Christ the Lord has caused it to happen. Hank Wertz died just before Christmas. George
Smith died unexpectedly following knew surgery in the middle of March. JT died on March 29.
Crystal Pulliam is now home and on Hospice. Then Thursday night at 11:00 pm, I received a call
from my Police Chaplain friend telling me that Tom Masterson had died unexpectedly. And I wonder,

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what’s going to happen to us. Can hope come to us again? Can we grieve these deaths that have
struck are our congregation and still move forward? Yes. Our bones can live.
That’s my prayer for us. I believe hope can come, slowly over time, though it doesn’t always happen.
As we support each other as a church family, even as we support the families of these who we mourn,
God’s Spirit will also surround us and restore our collective soul. The dry bones we see before us can
live again. We can rejoice, not in the tragedy, but we can rejoice in the power of God to bring life into
a world of despair, hope into a situation of misery.
What can happen may not happen if we do not do as Ezekiel did, however. “Then the LORD said to
Ezekiel, ‘You prophesy to these dry bones.” It’s when Ezekiel prophesied, said to the bones the word
of the LORD, it was only then that “there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to
its bone.” God told Ezekiel to prophesy, and when Ezekiel prophesied, the bones came together. God
told Ezekiel to prophesy, and when he did as the LORD commanded, “the breath came into them, and
they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”
It just may be that our city is still filled with bones, literally and figuratively, because you and I have
not done enough prophesying. We may not have proclaimed the words of the LORD, the words of
hope loudly enough, or long enough. God’s people may have been much too quiet. You and I may be
too afraid of what people will say or too afraid of what they won’t say to stand in this valley in which
we live today and say, “O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.” Because of our fear, because of
our fright, because of our misgivings, the word of the LORD may not have been proclaimed and so the
bones remain dry and dead before us, symbols of a hopeless society.
Did Ezekiel believe that the valley filled with dried and scattered bones would live again? I don’t
know. He doesn’t tell us. We’re simply told that when God asked him if the bones could live, he said,
“O LORD GOD, you know.” Can our family and friends have hope? Is it possible that Chico can be
reborn? Is it possible that First Baptist can be reborn? Will the Lord do here what the Lord has done
elsewhere in the world throughout history? All we can say is, “O LORD GOD, you know. You know,
God, but I’m ready to speak. I’m ready to ask the Holy Spirit to come into this nation, into this city,
into this community, into this family, and yes, even into me, that my bones, my dry and dusty old
bones will have hope through Jesus Christ.”
Then God said to me, and said to you, and you and you, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O
dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.” There is hope. There is life. There is joy through Jesus
Christ. Commit yourself here this morning to proclaiming the God News of life – life through the love
of God, life through the power of Jesus Christ. Commit yourself to prophesying to the dry bones in
the valley of today. Commit yourself to sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.
To make this commitment involves faith – faith that God can once again use the church to bring life to
a desolate world. To make this commitment means trusting God not only today but tomorrow, trusting
God even when we don’t see how anything good can happen. To make this commitment means that
we look out on a valley of dry bones and don’t see devastation, but see instead possibilities, see what
will happen because of God’s love has worked in the world before, and God’s love will work in the
world today. Can these bones live? Our faith in Jesus Christ answers, “Yes.”