BONES

We are in the endangered days
of a global pandemic
when we are navigating uncertainty
and acting in ways we never have before.

We are alive in dangerous times –
not only for our bodies
and our communities,
and our economy,
but for our faith and for our hope.

There is faith
but it is often the brittle kind
that promises mortal good-fortune
and eternal joy
for the price of right belief.

There is hopebut it is often the fragile kind
that comes in a box of ideology
and dogmatic answers.

We live in a time of disbelie
when faith is polite
and better to be seen and not heard,
and if heard, not respected;
and if not respected, not much welcomed.

We live in a time of cynicism
when hope is called wishful thinking
and resignation is called realism.

We live in dangerous times
for faith
and for hope.

It is much like another time
and another place
when it was dangerous to have faith
and risky to have hope.
It was in the first fifteen years
of Israel’s captivity in Babylon.

It was a time of deep and pervasive darkness
for those who had once known
sovereignty
and faith
and a sterling confidence
in the future.

Suddenly the nation had been eliminated
by the colossus Babylonian Empire,
swallowed whole through the teeth of a Leviathan,
leaving them bloody and torn.

The last of the David kings –
the royal linage promised by God to the people of Israel
was now shackled in a prison
in a far away and foreign land.

The Temple in Jerusalem –
the vessel for the Holy of Holies
that was built upon the promise that
God would always,
always
dwell there,
was now a rubble of broken stones.

The city of Jerusalem –
the Holy City
on the Holy Hill
that was promised to be a beacon of light
to the entire world,
was now smoldering ashes.

The land –
the once PROMISED land
given to Abraham
delivered to Moses
taken by Joshua
divided because of Solomon –
was now taken
and owned
by an evil empire.

The exiles looked
and saw their bones,
the skeletal remains of all that God had promised.
Bitterly they asked,
“Where is God now?”

Was the promise betrayed?
Was it over?
Had they misunderstood?
Had it been a delusion?
Was it time? Was it time to abandon their faith
and their hope,
and the faith and the hope of their ancestors,
and embrace the gods of Babylon?

And then
Ezekiel whispers his vision.
The little, lonesome voice of Ezekiel,
a poet of small consequence, speaks.

He sees a valley of dry bones.
They are right there
as if he could reach out and touch them.

He looks and he sees
the piles of hair outside the gas chambers of Auschwitz,
the open pits Native American genocide,
the ragged nooses of thousands of lynchings,
bodies with bones protruding
like stacks of cord wood,
and then, and then God asks Ezekiel:
“Mortal, can these bones live?”

The exiles say, “No.”
Martha and Mary say, “No.”
The voice of reason and rationality
in our own little heads say, “No.”

You see, we are not the first ones to look out
the window of our exile
and see a valley of dry bones before us.

Right now,
perhaps for the first time in our lifetimes,
we look around and see the world
with exiled eyes.
We are those exiles,
still in our homes
but exiled from our lives –
from our communities
from our families
from our hopes and dreams.

“Mortal, can these bones live?”

Now look out!
This is a tricky and dangerous intersection.
False-hope turns one way
while hope rooted in radical faith
turns another way.
Cynicism of course, says, “No.”
But False-hope stubbornly says, “Yes!”
and purports to know exactly which way to go,
it has a vision of how it is supposed to look
when the world is as it should be,
and it has a variety of ideologies,
theologies and prototypes
that spell out how to get there.

But authentic hope,
which is rarer
and more true,
has a radical faith answer:
“O God, you know.”
It is not “no”
and it is not “yes” –
it’s, “O God, you know.”

“I do not know if these bones can live
but you, O God, know,
and I am sticking with you.”

Authentic hope
and radical faith
do not predict the outcome
nor do they have a comprehensive program
or how-to book
that will get us to the promised solution.

Authentic hope
and radical faith
places its tiny hand
into the hand of a power greater than ourselves
and walks forward.

Authentic hope
and radical faith
places its hand into the hand of God
and moves forward WITHOUT the answer
AND – this is important –
without despair
even though there may be fear
in the absence of knowledge and control.

We understand that faith
is often hawked as something else these days,
something we are supposed to get something for –
as in happiness,
the blessing of riches
or eternal life.

And Hope is often sold these days,
as trust in a solution
that will make everything turn out okay –
hope painted in the happy sounds
and comfortable images of a Disney ending.

But Ezekiel has a very different take on hope.
He tells those people
who had endured more violence,
suffering, and pain
than any of us will likely ever know,
“Trust God. Just trust God.”

Do not put your trust
in your current grief and despair, he says,
as if your despair is the proper punctuation
at the end of the world.

Do no put your trust in economic blueprints, he says,
or in political ideologies,
campaign promises,
or religions that promise paradise.
Hope is not a whitewash of wishful thinking
over your current struggles, he says.

Do not put your trust
in yourself, he says,
as if you can escape the present moment
and live on your own
in some hidden valley
where you’ll get along just fine
without the rest of the world.
The world is too small, he says,
and the chaos too pervasive.

Trust God, he says.
Or as the poet T. S. Eliot wrote,
“Do not hope.
For hope now would be hope
for the wrong thing.”

And indeed, we do not know
what to hope for.
But if we trust God,
our trust will be our hope.
If we truly
and radically trust God,
the trust will be our hope.

Hold that for just a moment:
If we trust God
then trust will be our hope.

And I do not mean
that we trust God to DO something
in particular,
but that we trust God
is a lover – a lover of our souls,
and therefore, whatever may happen,
it will have meaning
and purpose
even if we never get to finally understand
what it all means.

The trust being commended to us here,
is the trust that Moses
and Isaiah
and Ezekiel
and Dr. King –
just to name drop a few –
had when they realized
they may not get to the other side
but they knew,
because they trusted God,
there is another side.

It is the trust
that Jesus had when he entered Jerusalem
knowing he could not face down the Roman Empire,
but he knew
there was another side
even if he could not see the other side.

All those folks,
and almost all the people we claim to admire,
did not hope for something in particular,
they trusted in God as their hope
and that gave them courage
and strength
and peace
even in the midst of chaos.

So here is what happens
when we trust God,
and trust in God is our hope.

We form a community of faith;
and we form a community of hope;
and we gather ourselves around the table
and we pray for wisdom and healing.
That is what we do.

We aren’t a community of the mall
or the community of a political party
or the community of a social order.
We are a community of the table.
We are a community of faith and hope.

We pray for wisdom and healing,
and then we go on doing what we can do
to sow the seeds of God’s love,
to act as agents of God’s love,
and to trust in God’s love.

Just because we are stuck at home right now
in this strange fog of social distancing,
does not me we are alone.
Imagining that we are holding hands
even while apart, we struggle to extend
the healing power of community.
We do that now, any way we can,
every day we are able,
and when we get back together
in this sanctuary
or in our small groups,
we will massage and bandage
and comfort one another because exile is painful.

Like those folks that Ezekiel was talking to,
we are in exile.
It is a difficult, strenuous,
and downright painful moment
for all of us.
Let’s not pretend otherwise.
But if we trust in God as our hope
then we put our heads down,
cast our gaze upon the earth
to our feet
and the ground in front of us,
and take steps forward.

We do not look at the horizon
for where we are headed
because we do not know where we are headed –
it has not been given to us to know that yet.
We do not pretend to know what we do not know.

We walk instead,
one step at a time
in the knowledge that we are holding hands
in community
and with God.

That is what we know to do
and we do it one step at a time.
That is authentic hope
and radical faith.

“Mortal, can these bones live?”
“O God, you know…
and all we can do is trust you.”