Sermon: Living a Resurrection Life
Ezekiel was a priest, or at least, he was training for the priesthood when God called him to service as a prophet. He was present in Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege, and taken into exile, more correctly described as captivity, with the rest of the aristocracy of Judah. We don’t know much about him, except that he was well educated and an extremely sophisticated and talented writer, he was married, and he seems to have had a house in Tel Abib. He is often described as one of the strangest of the prophets, having performed many of the most bizarre of prophetic sign acts in the Old Testament. He is also one of the most memorable and influential, still striking deep and profound chords with modern readers.
Ezekiel insists that God is in total sovereign control, not just over creation, but also over nations, and in total control of history. He portrays God as unbearably wrathful and vengeful, demanding the most extreme punishment imaginable for the extreme injustice of Judah’s government and the unmitigated unfaithfulness it’s people. (Just to be clear, these are not views of history or of God that I share or want to perpetuate. But it is important to understand this about Ezekiel.) Ezekiel is relentless in his critiques of the corruptness of the government of Judah, and its total disregard of the covenantal laws that define the requirements and expectations of Judah’s relationship with God. Ezekiel is venomous in his attacks. Suffice it to say, that he demonstrates no pastoral care skills or inclinations whatsoever toward his people, until after he is forced to march the 900 mile trek across the deserts to Babylon with them, and then witnesses and experiences with them, the lifestyle of servitude and oppression they must endure. Then he turns his attention to Israel’s enemies for chapters 25-32, preaching doom and gloom for them, for not recognizing the sovereignty of God and the specialness of the people of Israel. Finally, in chapter 33 and continuing through the rest of the book, Ezekiel begins to speak of restoration and salvation—and in chapter 37, resurrection of the people of Israel, including Jerusalem and its temple. After 32 chapters of Ezekiel’s relentless and abusive insistence that the people deserve to be removed from the face of the earth for their infidelity to God, God finally demands that Ezekiel change his tune, and give his people a huge and desperately needed visions of hope in the face of hopelessness. God tells Ezekiel he is wrong, that God has not and will not ever abandon God’s people.
In order to understand this text, we need to understand the situation it addresses. The Babylonians have conquered Jerusalem, the capitol city of Judah. This siege lasted 2 to 2.5 years. It was brutal. The city was cut off completely from the outside. At some point, the stores of food were drained, and the people began to succumb to starvation, especially women and children. There were no graveyards inside the city walls, no place to discard or store dead bodies. Eventually, the city was set ablaze, walls and all, including the temple, and torn down—much the same as the images we see in the news of Ukraine or Gaza today. War is terrifying, inhumane and horrific, always, no matter how sophisticated or precise the weaponry may be. Death and destruction, carnage, trauma and hopelessness are all it leaves in its wake.
Those taken into captivity, mostly the wealthy, educated ruling class along with those who had skills or trades useful to the Babylonians, like blacksmiths, carpenters, scribes and able-bodied soldiers, were pressed into forced labor or slavery in Tel Abib or other Babylonian cities, if they survived the march. Many were likely separated from their surviving family members in the turmoil, if not by design. The wealthy aristocrats were forced into physical labor, something most had never imagined, much less experienced. They were stripped of their wealth and privilege, their social and political status, their lands and homes, their heritage—everything that mattered. After years of captivity, scarred by the trauma of war and the carnage they witnessed, the people of Judah had descended into abject hopelessness, only worsened by Ezekiel’s insistence that they deserved every ounce of pain and suffering and trauma that they had endured. They were, essentially zombies—living corpses devoid of hope, of joy, of meaning and purpose, going through the motions of daily living, but dead inside. I can’t help but think that, eventually, Ezekiel found himself just as hopelessly empty and dead inside as the rest of them. Jeremiah, who remained in Jerusalem with the surviving poor, wrote to those in Babylonian captivity, telling them to get married, raise children, marry them off and enjoy grandchildren—and we must therefore surmise that they, like the Jewish survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, may have felt was pointless. What kind of world was this to bring children into? The people are utterly broken, dis-spirited. Ezekiel’s harsh criticism has taken root and strangled the life out of them. They are lamenting their situation, grieving their losses, and giving up hope that God will ever remember them, much less restore them.
So God, in a vision, transported Ezekiel to a hilltop view of a valley filled with desiccated and dismembered bones, and asked him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel responded, “O Lord God, you know.” Man, would I like to have heard how Ezekiel said those words! Without tone and inflection, we can’t tell if he says this with hope, with sad dejection, purely matter-of-factly, or inquisitively. I’ve often wondered whether he meant, “How would I know, God? Can they? Only you can answer that.”
Then God demonstrates to Ezekiel that the impossible is, indeed, possible with God. He even insists Ezekiel participate, speaking the divine words that can reform and reanimate the corpses. It is important to note, at this point, that the word translated as “breath” also means both wind and Spirit. He prophesies to the bones, then to the Breath or Spirit, or perhaps both, and then to the four winds. The bones are re-membered, re-connected, and re-created, and then filled once again with the breath of life that is the Spirit of God—in much the same way that Adam was formed, his lungs filled with air, his body enlivened by the Spirit. Finally, God explains that these are the people of Israel, and that God will, indeed, re-establish their relationship and resurrect their kingdom in Israel.
I know that, in the text, God refers to graves. But this text is not about raising the dead, either those slain in battle or those who died of illness or starvation or old age. God is talking about the captives of war, the exiled people of Israel, those who are still alive, but have given up on life—those who are living a life of death. God’s intention is to mend their broken spirits, to breathe renewed life and spirit into those who are living as though they were dead. The “graves” God is speaking of are metaphors for the conditions of slavery and exile—the Babylonian tombs in which they toil and languish in hopelessness and despair. God will resurrect them by filling them with a new spirit of hope that will inspire them to begin living again. And it is this hope, this promise in the book of Ezekiel and other such prophecies that have kept the Jewish people going, hoping, believing in a future that they couldn’t see, century after century, in the face of hardship, trauma and adversity.
But this text also addresses us today. It reminds us that life and death are not always polar opposites. It is possible to be alive in body, but dead in spirit. I’m guessing that most of us have experienced that, or will experience that, at some point. That’s what happens when we lose hope, when we give in grief and despair, when life loses its meaning, when we give up on life and happiness and just go through the day-to-day motions of life, without hope or joy, maybe even without feeling much of anything at all—just feeling more or less numb and dead inside. Some of us, desperate to feel alive, to feel anything at all, may be tempted to do things that may be dangerous, that may cause pain or injury, just to feel a rush of adrenaline that can remind us we are alive.
This text reminds us that there is still and always hope. It reminds us that anything is possible with God—even the absurdly impossible becomes possible. Ezekiel challenges us, as Christians, as Easter people, to rethink our understanding of resurrection and resurrection life. We often think of resurrection (and salvation) as something that happens only after we die, maybe even only on the last day. But not according to this text. According to this text, resurrection can happen even while we are still living and breathing. The same is true of salvation. And I think that the Gospels say that too. When Jesus restores Zaccheus to his community in Luke, he declares that salvation has come to his house, his family, that very day. Again in Luke, when Jesus goes to Simon Peter’s house, finds Peter’s mother-in-law sick and rebukes her fever, the Greek indicates that she is raised up, restored—the same verb Jesus uses in John 11 when he says tells Mary that the dead and entombed Lazarus will rise again, and she thinks he means at the end of time—the same verb used in the gospels to refer to Christ’s rising from the dead.
Resurrection can mean being brought back to life after death, but it doesn’t mean only that, and certainly not to the same life as before. Resurrection means being brought to new life or to newness of life—a life of meaning and purpose, a life different from the life of death, meaninglessness, emptiness, hopelessness that we were formerly living. Resurrection is a way of life—the Jesus Way of life. It is life lived out of the love, grace and mercy of exemplified in Christ’s life, death and resurrection. It is a life that embodies Christ’s love and compassion, his forgiveness and mercy, his kindness and generosity toward others. Resurrection life can begin at any age: at confirmation, at the hearing of the gospel, or in receiving the sacraments. It may begin over and over again as we struggle with questions of faith, as we stumble and fall and then pick ourselves back up again, as we overcome a battle with grief and loss, or and each time we lose our identity, and then rediscover or remember anew who and whose we are.
I think, perhaps the best description of resurrection life I know of comes from the song “To Be Alive” by Dakota Road, a Christian band based in MN. The lyrics go like this:
Join the singing/join the celebration/ Jesus lives./We are restored./So we live mercy, hope and freedom/Loving another to be whole./To be alive is to live the love/That is alive in God’s saving son/who brought us back from a life of death/to be alive.
Another, newer song that gives a good description is “Live Like That” by the sidewalk prophets. It goes like this:
Sometimes I think/what will people say of me/when I’m only just a memory/when I’m home where my soul belongs?/Was I love/when no one else would show up?/Was I Jesus to the least of us?/ Was my worship more than just a song?/I want to live like that/And give it all I have/So that everything I say and do/points to You./ If love is who I am/then this is where I’ll stand/Recklessly abandoned, never holding back/I want to live like that/Am I proof/That You are who you say You are/That grace can really change a heart/Do I live like Your love is true/People pass/And even if they don't know my name
Is there evidence that I've been changed/When they see me, do they see You/I want to live like that…
The point is, we are all prone to give up or give in from time to time and start living as though we had nothing to live for, as though we were dead, as though we no longer mattered, as though we made no difference in any way, shape or form to anyone at all. But Ezekiel 37 reminds us that we are resurrection people, and we are also resurrected people, called to live lives of gospel love for the sake of others in gratitude for what God did for us through Jesus. And he reminds us that we don’t have to be dead and buried to be resurrected. Our hope isn’t limited to an afterlife in some heavenly realm beyond time and imagination. We can be resurrected over and over again, as often as necessary throughout this life on this earth. Each time we are resurrected, we are made new again. God is always at work in us, transforming us for work in the Kingdom of God, such as it is here and now. God is always renewing, restoring and resurrecting us to new and better life in relationship with Christ. And that, my friends, is good news indeed. Alleluia and Amen.