It Ain’t Over ‘til God Says It’s Over
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 13, 2005 The Fifth Sunday in Lent
Ezekiel 27: 1-14
It’s an old story. A man suffering from deep depression decided that there just wasn’t anything worth living for. He said to himself, “My life is worthless. It has no meaning, no purpose. I might as well end it all.” So he climbed up on the parapet of a high bridge and was about to leap into the cold, murky waters below when, without a warning or a word, a policeman placed a hand on his shoulder and jerked him back.
The man protested: “You don’t understand, officer. You don’t know how miserable I am. My life is hopeless. I can’t face it any longer. Please let me jump.”
But the kindhearted officer had another idea. He said, “I’ll make a deal with you. Take five minutes and give me your reasons why life is not worth living. Then, I’ll take five minutes and I’ll give you my reasons why I think life is worth living. If at the end of ten minutes you still feel that you want to jump, I promise that I won’t stop you.”
Sounded like a fair plan, so the would-be-suicide agreed. He took his five minutes. Then the officer took his five minutes. At the end of the ten minutes, they looked at each other, joined hands and jumped off the bridge together.
Well, that is one approach to the inevitable pains and disappointments and sorrows of life. But there are others. “Then the Lord said to me, ‘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 put my spirit within you and you shall live.” And a valley of death is turned into a valley filled with new life.
I wonder: Has anyone here this morning ever been without hope? Have you ever truly wondered if life could go on? Have you ever thought that you were as good as dead, that you might as well be dead? Has the future ever looked bleak, leaving you to wonder if you could ever really live again, experience joy again, find hope again? Certainly the people of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, were feeling this way. Their world had crumbled around them. The unthinkable had happened: Jerusalem had fallen and they now found themselves in exile in Babylon. It seemed they would never go home again. Surely God was punishing them, or even worse, God had turned God’s back on them. Hope for the future was in precious short supply. For many, truly life no longer seemed worth living.
Enter the prophet Ezekiel. And at first he really had nothing comforting to say. He chastised the people for their sin and unfaithfulness and self-centeredness. God had given them opportunity after opportunity, and still they stubbornly refused to do God’s will, refused to be faithful. Ezekiel said, “Don’t come whining to me. You are getting just what you deserved!” Ezekiel really wasn’t into pastoral care. But then there was this vision, this strange vision, a vision that changed everything.
Ezekiel found himself in the midst of a valley of dry bones. He was asked not simply to look at them, but he was led through them so that he could see how dead and dry they were. This was not a valley of life. It was a valley of death. And God asked him, “What do you think, Ezekiel, can these bones live?” “Is this a trick question?” How can dead bones live? How could there be any hope of life in a place of death?
But God isn’t finished. We must be careful about placing human limits on God. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy, yes to preach to a bunch of dead bones. Every preacher knows how that feels from time to time. But God even tells him what to 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 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.” Now Ezekiel must have felt like a fool preaching to a pile of sun-bleached bones, except…that when he says it, when he preaches the word of the Lord, it happens. Life comes forth from death; hope is found in a place of hopelessness.
Yes, this is a specific word of hope spoken to a people lost in exile. It is a vision, a promise, of new life. It is an assurance that the way things are is not necessarily the way they will always be. In spite of their own failures, their faithlessness, all they had done to contribute to the crumbling of their world, still there is this promise that God will transform death into life and they will go home again. It is a word spoken then and there, but folks, the same promise is offered here and now, no matter what manner of exile we may find ourselves in. In the words of Disciples of Christ pastor, Jill Cameron, “God is seeking to offer transformation to us. God is seeking to breathe the breath of life into our places of death…Sometimes we struggle to see it. Sometimes we look around and the dry bones are all we can see. Whether those dry bones come in the form of loss or grief or depression or desperation, sometimes they can be so overwhelming that we can't even imagine anything else, can’t remember or hope for anything else in our lives. And yet, into these valleys of dry bones God comes to us, just as to the exiles 2600 years ago, and God breathes the breath of life upon us. God comes to us and invites our dry bones to come to life, invites whatever depressions bury us to be transformed, invites whatever death surrounds us or fills us to be transformed.”
This is good news…isn’t it? Transformation, change, new life? This is good stuff, right? A pastor shares this story: “A friend of mine has spent his adult life active in Alcoholics Anonymous. He tells me that not that high a percentage of people are able to conquer this terrible disease. That’s not surprising, for addiction to alcohol is a tough thing to beat. I said to him, ‘I understand that in AA you teach people that they have only one problem – alcohol. Their problem is not their marriage, their problem is not what their parents did or did not do to them, their problem is that they can’t stop drinking.’
“My friend confirmed this to be true. But then he added that often, when you finally stop drinking, become sober, break free, then you find you have another problem.
“’What is that?” I asked.
“’What to do with this new life, that is the problem. When you are drinking, you don’t have to think about what to do with your life. The bottle tells you everything you need to do. When you get free and get your life back, well, then the ball is in your court, and that can be more than a little frightening.”
Dry, dead bones really can be so comforting, so familiar. At least we know what to expect. New life can threaten the entire system. It robs us of our convenient excuses, our alibis, our rationalizations for failure. I once heard this complaint from a successful business owner: “My biggest challenge is to get my people to want to be successful. Success in business can be a pain in the neck. New customers require more work. It’s much easier just to hunker down with the folk that we have. Keep old customers happy rather than get to know new ones. You will find, despite what they claim, that many businesses develop a prejudice against new customers.” That couldn’t happen in the church could it? Naah! Invite anyone new to worship lately? Heavens, have you spoken to a visitor in worship lately? The old bones, the old ways are so comfortable.
What to do with the new life, that’s the problem. In the Gospel of John, when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, that act prompts the authorities to start plotting against Jesus. In the Gospel of John, new life becomes a capital offense! The old dead bones can be so comfortable – new life so threatening.
A young pastor was called to an old, dying church in downtown Kansas City. It had all the symptoms of decline – bad location, shrinking congregation, large building with no money to care for it. But this church did have a service program for children of the inner city. The kids would come after school for games, food, singing and a Bible story. Every day, fifty or sixty children would come.
One afternoon, a mother showed up. She went to the minister and asked, “Are you the one running this program?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“My son is in this program.”
“And we are glad to have him. We are having such a good time. I hope he is having a good time.”
She said, “Well, he can play the games, and he can eat the food, but I don’t want him listening to any more of those stories.”
“But we just get them out of the Bible. They are Bible stories.”
“Well, I don’t want him listening to any of those stories.”
“But why? I assure you that we are not trying to indoctrinate anybody. We are just telling Bible stories.”
She responded, “He’s gotten to where he’s coming home now, thinking he’s as good as anybody in Kansas City. You are setting him up for bitter disappointment. I don’t want him to hear those stories anymore!”
Said the minister, “I was just trying to do good.”
Don’t underestimate the power of these stories. “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you and you shall live….” Don’t underestimate the power of these stories to change lives, to change expectations, to change hopes. Who knows what might happen if we actually take them seriously, if we actually believe that God can give us new life, no matter what valley of dry bones we find ourselves in; if we actually believe that it ain’t over ‘til God says it’s over. Friday after my mother’s memorial service my father told me, and I know many of you have experienced this, that he is frightened, frightened to face the new life that awaits him. He has suffered with my mother so faithfully and for so long. He has spent a lot of time down in that dry valley. It has been his life. Now he is not sure he wants to leave, not sure he can leave, not sure he can handle transformation. I can’t do it for him, but I can only hope that he – a man who has been a church member all his adult life – begin to let that story seep into his fearful heart. I hope he can begin to feel its power to, in words of Barbara Brown Taylor, “lead him through the graveyard and out the other side.” And I would hope the same for each of us. This story really can do that. God really can do that. Let us put aside our fear that we may we open our eyes and hearts to catch the vision, to receive the life.