SERMON FOR FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT, MARCH 29, 2020 TEXT: EZEKIEL 37:1-14

Friday night was movie night for Lucy and me, when she was growing up. Whenever a Disney film went on sale at Target, we added it to our collection, and Lu watched them over and over again until I thought the cassette would melt down in the VCR. One week we came home with The Black Cauldron, a Disney Studios release from the mid 1980’s. I had never heard of it and did not know what to expect. The story, based on Welsh mythology, centers on the evil Horned King who is in pursuit of an ancient mystical cauldron. Its magic will allow him to create an invincible army of the undead. He succeeds in capturing the cauldron and uses it to raise a multitude of slain warriors from the dead. The countless, soulless cauldron-born are at his command as he sets out to conquer the world. It was a medieval zombie apocalypse.

According to the journalist James Stewart, the author of the book DisneyWar, the original scene proved problematic. He writes, “Shortly before the film’s initially planned 1984 theatrical release, a test screening for the rough cut of The Black Cauldron was held at the studio’s private theater in Burbank, California. After the film, particularly the climactic “cauldron born” sequence, proved to be too intense and frightening for the majority of the children in the audience (most of whom fled the theater in terror before it was even finished), the . . . Disney studio chairman . . . ordered certain scenes . . . to be cut,” fearing that “their graphic nature would alienate children and family audiences.” As for Lucy and me, let’s just say I’m glad we didn’t see the uncut version!

So there is the prophet Ezekiel in the middle of a valley full of bones. “[T]here were very many lying in the valley,” he tells us, “and they were very dry.” One Old Testament scholar points out that this vast accumulation of skeletal remains suggests a battlefield and the power of the victor to inflict a final injury upon those defeated. The triumphant army dishonors the ones they have slain by leaving their bodies unburied for carrion prey to devour. Their bones are picked clean and left exposed to the elements.

This grim scene is a reminder of the disaster and disgrace that have befallen Ezekiel’s people. In 597 B.C. the armies of the Babylonian Empire forced the surrender of Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom of Judah, and deported the king and many others, including the young Ezekiel, to Babylon. Ten years later, after Jerusalem rebelled, the Babylonians destroyed the city and the temple and drove a second wave of its citizens into exile. A century and half before this, Israel, the sister kingdom of Judah to the north, had suffered a similar fate at the hands of the conquering Assyrian armies. Many of its citizens had been deported, and these, the so-called lost tribes of Israel, disappeared from history, their identity destroyed, their homeland never recovered. Exile for God’s people meant loss upon loss — physical suffering and death, the destruction of community and culture, the undermining of faith. The holy city of Jerusalem, the promised land of Judah, the temple, the king descended from the line of David — they were all gone. In these seemingly hopeless circumstances, the exiles asked themselves if their God too had been defeated. Or was the God of the covenant no longer their god, no longer committed to their welfare?

“By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs,

And our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:1-4)

“Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel prophesies as the Lord commands him. He hears a rattling, and the bones come together, ”bone to its bone,” he says. Sinews follow, and then flesh upon them, and skin. There they stand, like the cauldron-born, undead but not living. Not until they are filled with the breath of God do they come to life. Just like the first human, Adam, formed by God from the dust of the ground. “. . . then the Lord God . . . breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). The answer is yes, these bones can live. They rise to their feet, a vast multitude, and then they stand there, waiting upon God, longing to hear God’s word. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love and with him is great power to redeem” (Psalm 130:5-7; the appointed psalm for this Sunday).

God speaks here to a frightened, devastated people and promises that they shall be restored. “These bones are the whole house of Israel,” the Lord tells Ezekiel.The bones represent the core of who they are, the depth of their being. When Adam finds Eve, he exclaims, “This at last is bone of my bones” (Genesis 2:23). When the psalmist faces danger, he laments, “My strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away” (Psalm 31:10). And now God’s people cry out, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” The world they took for granted has disappeared into the darkness of exile. The God they trusted in the past seems out of reach, beyond hearing.

But just as the dry bones have been reconnected, and the sinews and flesh have been repaired, and the breath of life has been restored before Ezekiel’s very eyes in this desolate valley, so shall the community become whole again. It shall emerge from the grave of destruction and despair and return to the land of the living. Though the people remain in exile, mourning the death of loved ones, fearing the losses still to come, they are reassured of God’s presence. They breathe in the Spirit of hope; they stand ready for the future. This was God’s promise to the people of Judah centuries ago. It is God’s promise to us today. Amen.