Ezekiel is pretty intense in the story, but, the skeletons are calm because nothing can get under their skin.

They don’t speak because, well, they had no body to speak with.

And they could not get up because they lacked the guts to do so.

The bones can’t get up, not because they are lazy bones – to flesh the story out– they can’t get up because they represent Israel in exile where truly only a skeleton of the once powerful community remained.

Babylon conquered Israel in 586 B.C. and took its culture’s elite into captivity for nearly 50 years.

In the valley of captivity the hopes of the captured were dashed and dried up; they thought they’d never get home. They thought Israel was lost forever.

The scattered bones of the nation in a foreign land were all that seemed to remain. There was not meat, nor muscle. No sinews or skin. No guts. The people of Israel felt that they had no body of a community left.

Ezekiel knows this. God shows him a valley filled with the symbolic bones of the once proud leaders and elite of the nation of Israel and God asks “Mortal can these bones live?

And Ezekiel is smart. He does not say the obvious “No way those dried up old things will live.”He does not even hem or haw or take a wild guess. He defers to God when facing the impossible. He responds “O Lord God, you know.”

And what God alone knows is remarkable. The answer God gives is incredible. It is in essence: “Yes the bones can live. Yes newness is possible”1

It defies logic, it is virtually inconceivable, but God claims that those literally hopeless, dried up bones in that valley of despair will live.

In fact God promises their spirit will be reanimated – that they will live– through God’s actions that reverse the ordinary order of decay. God promises to the bones to cause sinews to appear, to cause flesh to appear, to cause skin to appear and to cause breath that will bring them to life.

This is not the story of the creation of human kind in the Garden of Eden that we discussed a few weeks back where God directly breathes life into Adam and eventually Adam leaves Eden to toil the earth.

I mentioned in that sermon that the name “Adam” was a play on the Hebrew word “Adamah” for dirt or earth. And I suggested that Adam being sent to toil the earth could be heard as meaning that Adam was sent to work on Adam, that humans are meant by God to work on humanity, toiling to make it better.

Like the creation story, the breath of God is essential to life in this story as well. But did you catch in the story how the breath of God comes out of an act of man, Ezekiel? Humanity has the God-given power to initiate the animation of the spiritual life of even those with nothing left but the barest of a skeleton.

Even if it is just dead dry bones scattered and in pieces there is always the promise that spiritual life can live and that newness is possible! 2 Amazingly it is through humans that God works this miracle!

Ezekiel works God’s miracle by prophesying to the bones teaching them to “hear the word of the Lord.” Once they have learned to hear the word, God then builds the body back up bit by bit. Once the bodies are in shape then Ezekiel causes God’s very own to be breathed upon them so that they can live– and live they do!

This is a very hopeful story. And it is not just one for history. It is one for the present. Indeed it speaks to this very church.

A number of folks in this church grew up in the United Church of Christ or one of the traditions that formed it. But a number of folks here are amongst the scattered. Some from other denominations. Some from other religions. Some from no religion at all.

Many of us have lain in a desolate valley with hopes dashed and dried up. Nothing but bare bones to our spirituality. No meat or muscle. No sinews or skin. No guts left.

Even long time UCCers have sometimes felt all dried up with no body left to our spirit, no spiritual body at all whether individually or communally.

It would not surprise me if there are some folks here today that maybe feel that way now. It’s getting easier and easier to feel dried up spiritually and scattered to the wind. We not only move around a lot – often far from our families and hometowns– but, more and more it seems that neighbors barely talk to one another.

We often live our lives in isolation. Feeling alone in big cities bustling with people. Feeling powerless in the machinations of a culture pushing us to work, to move, to do, do, do, to buy, buy, buy, for ourselves, for the economy, for the boss, for the country, for what we called in my youth The Man.

This can lead us to feel like we are in a valley of captivity too. Where hopes feel dashed and dried up. It can feel like we’ll never get home. It can feel like our sense of being in community is lost forever.

Like the lyrics from a famous song in the 70’s we feel like “all we are is dust in the wind.” Scattered bones with no meat, no muscles, no sinews, no skin, no breath left. People can feel like there is no body of a community left. There is a sense of spiritual death, not only of self, but, of community.

Captivity can come in the form of a conquering nation. It can also come in the form of the daily grind and culture and the distant that creates from our neighbors.

The Lectionary reading today ends with these words:

What is really quite amazing is that this church is like Ezekiel. We know the skeleton of the community out there seems to be a heap of dry bones in a hopeless condition. But we prophesy, that is, we herald the Good News of the Word of God to all who enter this space. I don’t mean just here in the pulpit. I mean this whole church. You can feel God is Lord right down to the bones in this place.

God has taken the dry bones and hopelessness we have felt in our lives and built a throng here of those who know God is Lord. Not Lord as in one to cow-tow and kiss up to like The Man, but, Lord as in the One we joyfully follow and let lead. The Lord of Love, not the lord of the manor or the company we work for.

Through Riviera United Church of Christ God is building a community, adding sinews to the dry bones. How? The first part of our vision statement sums it up nicely. Our vision statement is Thinking Openly. Believing Passionately. Serving Boldly.

We are called to think openly. Think openly? At a church? Sounds kinda crazy. Well crazy or not that’s how it works. The United Church of Christ’s motto is “God is Still Speaking.”

In order to see a comma instead of a period, a full stop to the Word of God once the bible was finished two thousand years ago, we have to have an open mind. What I say up here is meant to open up thinking and dialog, to provoke thought. My sermons (as brilliant as they are), though, are not the final word on anything in this church.

The traditions of the church itself (as brilliant as they can be) are not the final word on anything in this church. Even the words in the bible (which are often beyond brilliant to pure genius), do not close the discussion. God adds sinews to our bare bones by allowing us to think openly here. Do not check your brain at the door here.

Do not expect to be spoon-fed the Word of God here.

Open minds – thinking openly– allow us to hear what comes after the comma, to hear that God is still speaking – and that leads us to where God is calling.

Through Riviera United Church of Christ God is building a community adding flesh to the dry bones. How? With a vision statement that calls us to believe passionately.

There can be no dryness to our faith when the blood of our passion for the love of God, self and neighbor runs through our veins. And we are certainly believing passionately in this community.

There are so many of you who give of your time and other gifts to make this place run. It’s truly remarkable. The support needed to make it through a week of all this church does is huge.

Have you ever thought about it? Believing passionately, brothers and sisters from this church do an amazing amount of work here without monetary recompense.

Hours are spent administering the non-profit corporate functions of the church as council members and officers and committee members.

People in the hospital and their families are tended to as are those who are ill at home. Anyone in jail is tended to as well.

Kind and competent parish nurses offer free services on the premises, as does a fun and caring mental health councilor. Stephen Ministers are at the ready to provide loving care a well

Teachers, cooks and child supervisors prepare food and lessons and games for children.

Folks come and share their open thinking at bible study helping others to grow.

Prayers are prayed for joys and concerns all week long.

Musicians show up and spend precious hours singing, playing instruments and preparing for choir and band offerings.

Chairs and tables are moved about with the precision of a series of downs in an NFL game.

Things are fixed and built and taken down all over our spacious building and grounds.

The place is cleaned up, essentials for the services are brought in and arranged, filled and put in place.

Infants are cared for in the nursery.

And week in and week out you bring more than gifts of action to this place. There are many saintly loving Spirit-filled folks here whose very presence provides peace and love. You also bring much needed gifts in the form of offerings, spending hard earned resources not on yourselves, but gladly on God.

Lots of passion fills this place, let me tell you.

As you can tell our passionate believing leads to serving boldly our third vision statement. Serving boldly is the skin on the bones of our community. It’s how we touch others. And it is not just here either that we serve and touch others.

Our offerings go to help the Florida Conference and the National UCC offices do their work, and they go to other places to help the needy and the oppressed, those far less fortunate than us.

Our very important capital campaigns – a new one of which kicks off in a few weeks– keep our mortgage current, and this place functioning facilitates all that we do to touch others.

Our Shepherd Fund helps the endless hands of Christ that reach out for help every week in this place.

And it’s not just our monetary offerings that serve God in and beyond this community. I already mentioned hospitals and jails and home visits. We also help out with Daily Bread and Habitat for Humanity, profitless fair trade coffee sales and numerous gifts to our own food pantry.

Just a few months ago we sent a mission team to Biloxi, Mississippi to help rebuild a little bit of Katrina’s rips in the world of our sisters and brothers there.

We share ideas on justice issues.

We sponsor a youth group and, last summer, a green vacation bible school, and for three years in a row we put together a Wednesday after school program, and we have plans in the works for a community family theatre group, lay jail ministry, young adult fellowship and men’s fellowship (we already have a women’s fellowship).

We boldly follow Jesus’s Way of Love by honoring and respecting other religions and creating a community that embraces all regardless of color, economic status, sexual orientation or past–wherever anyone is on life’s journey they are truly welcome and honored here.

Riviera United Church of Christ is serving boldly and intends to serve even bolder in the months to come.

In this church we offer to the bare bones of the bodies that make up this community the sinews of thinking openly, the flesh of believing passionately, and the skin of serving boldly.

The only thing I have not covered is the breath of God, and that dear friends is brought to being through personal action by each of you. Doing the thinking, believing and serving is great, but it will not animate the body without you bringing the Word of God to each other and to others.

We bring God’s breath, God’s very being when we exude Love. It is simply this: God is love; when we love we bring God to the fore. God’s there always, but, we have to bring God to the fore to animate, to help cause God’s breath to be breathed into bones that have dried up. Bones that have been in the valley of despair.

So here is the thing, we have to always think openly with Love. We have to always believe passionately with Love. We have to always serve boldly with Love.

When we do that, which we do a lot here at Riviera United Church of Christ, then we accomplish what Ezekiel did in his vision from God– that is: the impossible. We resurrect the spiritually dead. We give life to those whose hope is lost, who feel cut off completely.

This is happening here all the time. Riviera United Church of Christ is a God soaked, Christ drenched, Spirit-filled place and old bones are coming to life all the time and finding home here and in turn helping the world out there. AMEN!

– End Notes–

1. Texts For Preaching (Westminster John Knox, (2007)) p. 219 of CD ROM

2. Ibid.