Can these bones live? (A sermon for the last Sunday in Lent)

 

Sermon Title: Can These Bones Live?
Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Occasion: Fifth Sunday in Lent

All of us have some stuff in our life that’s not working right. All of us have something in our life that isn't coming together like it should. Welsh preacher Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said most of our problems in life happen because we spend too much time listening to ourselves and not enough time talking to ourselves. God said, «Ezekiel, do you see these bones? They look dry, don’t they»? «Yes, Lord, they’re dry». «They look dead, don’t they»? «Yes, Lord, they look dead». «They’re decomposing, aren’t they»? «Yes, Lord, they are».

«Can they live again»? Now the question here is not if God can make dry bones live again. The question is…Can these dead bones live again? Most of us believe that God can do big things. I think we're just not always sure he will do big things through somebody as small as us. It’s not God we doubt most of the time. It’s these bones. It’s this. Not that, but this. The Lord said, «Can they live again»? Ezekiel said, «Only you know, Lord». And so God  said, «I want to use you to speak life into something that seems to be dead».

Is this a vision, or a dream? Ezekiel says that the hand of the Lord carried him away and set him down in the middle of a valley. And it was a valley filled with bones. Who were the bones, before we go any further.

These were not recently fallen soldiers. These bones had been lying there a long time. The flesh was gone. The sinew was gone. The hope was gone. What remained was the evidence of a catastrophe long past.

Ezekiel walks through the valley.

Imagine the sound of it. The crunch of bone underfoot. Skulls staring upward from the dust.

This valley is the graveyard of a nation. Here’s the historical context of what we just read:

Babylon invaded and defeated Israel in 597BC. Ezekiel was taken into exile into Babylon which is modern day Iraq. Jerusalem had fallen. The temple had been destroyed. Families were dragged into exile hundreds of miles from home. Everything that defined their identity—land, temple, kingship, independence—was gone. War does this.

In Ukraine.

In Gaza City 

In Iran.

To the exiles in Babylon, the future looked exactly like this valley. Dead. Dry. Beyond repair.

In fact, earlier in this chapter the people themselves say it out loud:

“Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off completely.”

They believed their story was over. God then asks Ezekiel a strange question while standing in that valley: “ can these bones live?” It almost sounds absurd. Can dry bones live? Can death reverse itself? Can a nation that has lost everything come back?

Ezekiel answers carefully: “O Lord God, you know.” Because from a human perspective the answer is obvious. No. Bones don’t come back to life.

We know something about valleys of dry bones. Not literal skeletons scattered across the ground—but places where hope feels just as lifeless.

Sometimes the valley is personal. It’s the diagnosis we never expected.
It’s the relationship that has fallen apart beyond repair.
It’s the dream that quietly died while nobody was looking.

Sometimes the valley is spiritual. Faith that once felt alive becomes dry.
Prayer feels empty.
Worship feels routine.

Sometimes the valley is communal. Churches that once overflowed with life struggle to imagine a future. Congregations worry about what the next decade might look like.

Sometimes the valley is the world itself. War. Division. Racism. Violence. Fear. Hate.

Everywhere we look, we see reminders that things break. Systems fail. People fall. Institutions crumble. And when enough time passes, we start believing something dangerous:

That what is broken will always stay broken. That what is dead will always stay dead. That the valley is permanent.

Lent is the season when the church does not pretend otherwise Lent lets us walk honestly through the valley. We remember human fragility. We remember sin’s destructive power.
We remember that the cross is coming.

And standing in that valley, God still asks the same question God asked Ezekiel:

“Can these bones live?” Can YOUR valley of dry bones live again?

And if we are honest, most days our answer sounds exactly like Ezekiel’s.

“Lord, only you know.”

Because from our perspective, it doesn’t look possible.

 But then God tells Ezekiel to do something remarkable.

God says: “Prophesy to these bones. Say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”

Think about that. God tells a prophet to preach… to bones. No ears. No bodies. Just skeletons scattered across a valley floor.

Yet Ezekiel obeys. He speaks the word of God into a place that looks completely lifeless.

And suddenly There was a noise. A rattling. Bones begin moving.

Foot bone connected to the leg bone. Femur to hip bone.Ribs forming a cage. Spines aligning.

Skeletons reassemble across the valley floor. Muscles grow. Skin stretches across their bodies.

But “There was no breath in them.”

They look alive… but they are not…at least not yet. Some things in our lives look right, but they don’t work right. Some thing look good, IG worthy good, like its all put together, but inside it’s still dead. Outside looks good, but inside is empty. The body is there, but the breath is missing. Jesus gives us that breath.

So God commands Ezekiel again: “Prophesy to the breath. Say: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

The Hebrew word here is ruach. It means breath. It means wind. It also means Spirit.

The same breath that hovered over creation in Genesis…ruach
The same breath that God breathed into humanity…ruach
The same life-giving Spirit that came as wind and fire at Pentecost…ruach

And when the breath comes, They lived. V6 “I will put breath in you, and you will come to life”

They stood on their feet. “A vast multitude.”

Then God explains the vision.

“These bones are the whole house of Israel…
I will open your graves…
I will bring you back to the land…
And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live.”

The message is clear: God is not limited by the finality of death.

Where humans see endings, God sees possibilities. Where humans see dry bones, God sees the beginning of resurrection.

This is why the church reads this passage at the end of Lent. Because we are standing right on the edge of the greatest valley of dry bones in the story of faith. In just a few days we will walk through Good Friday.

The cross. The silence of the tomb. The moment when it looked like hope itself had died.

And yet we already know something Ezekiel could only glimpse in a vision. We know what God does in valleys of death. God brings resurrection.

The same Spirit that moved across the bones in Ezekiel’s vision is the Spirit that rolled away the stone from the tomb of Christ. The same breath that filled that valley is the breath that raised Jesus from the dead. The same breath that is in you.

And if God can bring life out of a crucifixion… If God can bring resurrection out of a sealed grave… Then there aint no mountain high enough, aint no valley low enough, aint no river wide enough…..

Not the valley of grief. Not the valley of broken relationships. Not the valley of exhausted faith. Not the valley of struggling churches. Not the valley of a wounded world.

God still speaks life where we only see bones. And the remarkable part of the story: God invites Ezekiel to participate in that life-giving work. .

God could have raised those bones alone. But instead God says: “Speak.”

God uses a human voicesto announce divine life. The church exists today for exactly this reason. Because words matter. Your words matter! You matter. So we can either use our words to speak life, love, healing, hope. Or we can use our words to speak death, hate, anihilaiton, and division. Bc every one of us is doing one or the other today, either in the words we are speaking or in the words we should speak and didn’t. Because the silence of true orthodox historical Christianity based on the teachings of Jesus is deafeningly loud right now when we are complicit and do not live out our baptismal vows and we do not resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves (UMH 34) Bc we have a wonderful message of hope, unity, and eternal life to share with the world—we just need to speak it.

We stand in valleys of dry bones—places where hope seems impossible—and we keep speaking the word of God anyway. We proclaim forgiveness when the world expects revenge. We proclaim reconciliation when division seems permanent. We proclaim resurrection when death looks final.

Not because we are naive. But because we know the Spirit still moves.

The wind of God still blows. And the question God asked Ezekiel is still echoing through every valley of human history: “Can these bones live?”

The gospel answers: Yes. Not because the bones have strength. Not because the valley changes on its own.

But because the Spirit of God breathes life where death once ruled. And that means the final word over every valley is not death. The final word is life. The final word is resurrection. The final word is mercy.  The final word is hope. And in that hope we stand, and with that hope we speak. Because our collective words matter.