And Then What?

March 9, 2008
Ezekiel 37:1-14 John 11:1-45
Sermon by Torin
Lent 5


And then what?.... That is the question that has been on my mind this week. Ezekiel was taken to a valley full of bones. He prophesied to them and they came together again. Tendons and ligaments grew over them. Muscle and fat melted back onto them. Skin and hair and eyes and fingernail spread over them, and they were brought back into the semblance of humanity. Ezekiel prophesied to the רח – the same spirit wind that moved over the face of the deep at the beginning – and the breath of life entered into the bodies. And a vast multitude stood before the prophet. “Tell the exiles in Babylon,” said the Lord, “that this is what I will do for the nation of Israel. It will be brought back to life from the dust of exile just as these bones were.”

And then what? What happened after Ezekiel left the valley of bones? What happened to this multitude of living people brought forth from the bones of the past? Did the prophet lead them out into the world of life? Did they wander back to the places they had known before? Did they die again after another lifetime or did they fall back into the dust as soon as God’s point had been made?

Ever since I first read this text as part of a Sunday school assignment in fourth grade, I have wondered how the story played out. It seems strange that such a multitude would be brought to life only to wither just as quickly – skin and hair receding, flesh and sinew melting off the bone like in some horror movie. Yet such a large number of people could hardly have moved back into society without a great upheaval. Alas, there are no answers to be had one way or the other, and more recently, I have come to understand that most biblical scholars (and most pastors) understand this passage as a prophetic vision. I’m not so sure that being brought to the valley by the spirit of the Lord necessarily makes this a vision, but this perspective certainly makes all these questions less urgent even if it doesn’t answer them.

Such a claim, though, cannot be (or at least has not been) made about Lazarus. He had been dead for four days. … Long enough to be sure that the soul had separated from the body according to Jewish law … long enough to smell of rot and decay. Then, at a word from Jesus, the stone closing his tomb was rolled away. Three more words spoken and Lazarus rose back to life, his blood warming, the rotting flesh knitting back together, רח flowing back into his body carrying his soul with it. The dead man hopped out of the tomb. In the warmth of the sunshine, his shroud unwound, he was released back into life.

And then what? Did Lazarus live a long and happy life? Was he dogged by the Jewish association of death with ritual uncleanliness? Did the smell of stinking flesh linger in his nostrils or was he newly aware of the mundane freshness of life? Did he live in fear of death or was his fear shattered by this experience of resurrection?

we actually have just a little more information about Lazarus’ story. Several verses later, John tells us that the chief priests also planned to put Lazarus to death because his resurrection had brought so many Jews to follow Jesus. But that’s the end of it. We know nothing else. So, was he next in line for crucifixion? Was he stoned? Did he spend the rest of his life in hiding? Or, was the resurrection of Jesus himself a big enough threat to make the priests forget Lazarus?


These abrupt endings are not so unusual. The bible is full of the tales of God’s life-changing intervention – tales that are largely unfinished. In just the past few weeks, we have heard three of them. Jesus healed a man who was blind from birth. Even though he was no longer bound to life as a beggar and he professed a new faith in the Son of Man, he was expelled from his village by those who still thought him to be the child of sin. What became of him? Where could he go with nothing to his name and no family home to support him?

Jesus prophesied to the Samaritan woman at the well, offering living water that brought hope and excitement into a life of drudgery and despair. She ran off, leaving her water jar behind in her excitement. … And then what?

Jesus spoke with Nicodemus, inviting him to accept new life born from above – born again in the spirit … and then what?


We don’t get many stories like these in our modern mythology. Our novels and movies typically end with more resolution. Either they say outright, “and they lived happily ever after,” or they imply the same kind of ending. Sometimes the main character or one of the heroes dies, but the rest of the gang is all set. And perhaps, that is why I find myself asking questions at the end of all these stories. In the end, I suppose they are not so different from the stories of our lives, but I just can’t help myself.

This week, one of my internet friends told this story.
Maryln, she wrote, has a brother Jim, who must be in his late 60's or early 70's. He lives down in Limon (Colorado) and was at a High School baseball game where he had a heart attack. They raced him to Colorado Springs to the hospital and worked on him for a number of hours, and finally declared him flat line and dead. His children had been called in and his wife was there and they all said their goodbyes. On their drive back home, they were calling the rest of the family, including Maryln, to tell them about his death.

Meanwhile, the chaplain was sitting by Jim's bed at the hospital with the death certificate in hand waiting for the morgue to come and get him, when Jim lifted his arms and crossed them on his chest. The Chaplin put a hand to his chest, felt a heart beat, and went to get the nurse. At two in the morning, just after his children had gotten home, the hospital called them and told them their father was alive. So they all went back to the hospital, making phone calls again - informing the family he was not dead. Maryln decided she needed to see this for herself, and went down to Colorado Springs instead of coming to church. She thought it was a pretty good excuse and that I should know what had happened.

It sounds like another happily-ever-after story, but I still wonder … And then what? How was Jim’s life and that of everyone he knew changed by this encounter with surprising hope in the midst of the grim certainty of death? Or perhaps it wasn’t changed. And that, I think, may be a sad reality for many of us. When we run into God’s mysterious touch, we simply go on with our lives without even telling the story to those closest to us.


There are many examples to the contrary even though we don’t hear much about them. I heard one such story from a holocaust survivor when I was a student in France. My classmates and I went to visit a concentration camp not far from Strasbourg. When we arrived - even before we went onto the grounds, we saw a stark, black statue of a huge open hand reaching toward the sky. There was no way to tell what it meant or who put it there, but we found that out as soon as we walked through the gates in the razor-wire fence that still surrounds the site.

There I met an eighty-year old volunteer who had been an inmate in the camp for three long years before the liberating armies arrived. She told us the story, among others, of how she had been spared from the shooting squad and the crematory ovens on three occasions. Once when she had sprained her ankle too badly go back to work (a death sentence at that camp), she had hidden under her thin blanket while others stood in front of her bed protecting her. For the other two times, she had no explanation. Both times she had been sick, and when the soldiers came to collect the prisoners who couldn’t make it to work, they looked right at her and just didn’t see her there. No blanket. No friends to hide behind. Yet, somehow she was invisible even in the glare of the bright search lights they held. Despite these miraculous experiences (her words, not mine), she spent years embittered and angry that God had let so many die in such a way, in such a place.

Then, she said, she had a dream-like vision that inspired her to seek out other survivors and the families of those who didn’t make it. As she talked with them, she found that most were as trapped in anger and grief as she was, but slowly an idea, an image formed in her mind. She went back to all those people and proposed that they plant a statue on the grounds of the camp and surround it with flowering trees. Everyone she spoke with was glad to help and in a very short time, the statue we had seen was erected on the site as a memorial to the pain of hundreds of people who cried out to God as their bodies melted away under the strain of hard work with little food. Planted around the statue in ground saturated by the ashes of the dead, twelve flowering trees symbolized the power of life in the face of horror and death.
When the ceremony of dedication took place, those gathered at the site raised their voices in prayers for healing and peace, and as they listened to a harpist play music written for the occasion by a survivor, the woman felt the breath of God dissolve the chains that had held her spirit captive. With a little chagrin edging her voice, the woman admitted that it took all four of these encounters with power of God to bring her back to faith. And though many of the others walked back into unchanged lives after the dedication, she began to write and to travel, telling her story. Too old to travel much now, she still goes back as a volunteer, guiding visitors through the empty grounds and telling her story of suffering, faith, and the grace-filled gift of new life rising from the ashes.


And that’s what God is all about – the gracious gift of new life rising to surprise us in the midst of chaos and death. In the beginning, God brought forth creation and breathed out חר so that life would flow through it all. In time, the word that is life took on flesh and lived among us…. lived a life that lit the way for others, speaking words of hope and new life to those lost in the valley of dry bones. Even now and for all future time, the Spirit of God is at work in the world – wafting … teasing … inviting us all to new life, offering hope in the midst of fear and despair.

And how will the world respond? How will we respond? Will we turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the wonders we experience? Will we stop; struck dumb by the majesty and power we have seen? Or will our lives change as we respond to the touch of God’s breath … bending and swaying to the Spirit’s rhythm … floating and flying, filled with life anew. For that is the undying invitation, the gift that awaits if and when we turn into the way of God: life in abundance drawn from the midst of death … life eternally renewed.

The truth of this is something we know deep in our soggy-wet bones. We feel it in our sinews, in our muscles, in our skin, in the beat of our hearts for our lives and our bodies are miraculous. We all feel the Spirit of life swirling around and through us. If we look with awareness, we can see that power touching and changing the world, guiding us all more fully into the Realm of God. If we listen with open hearts and minds, our spirits can hear the song of whistled by the Spirit as it gusts and dances through the canyons and across the meadows of our soul. God has touched our lives, is touching our lives even now, will touch our lives in the future. That is the gift of grace so freely given. And whenever we find it, we receive it with open and grateful hearts….
And then what?