Hymn:
“The Church is Wherever God’s People…”
The church is wherever God’s people are praising,
singing God’s goodness for joy on this day.
The church is wherever disciples of Jesus
remember his story and walk in his way.
The church is wherever God’s people are helping,
caring for neighbours in sickness and need.
The church is wherever God’s people are sharing
the words of the Bible in gift and in deed.
Reading
(Ezekiel 37:1-10 Good News Translation)
A reading from a time of crisis
in the history of Israel. They are a
broken people because of their own corruption and greed – a kind of rot that
had eaten away the vitality of their kingdom.
They are a defeated kingdom, beaten in war and shipped off to live as
exiles in a foreign land. And in the
wake of all that they wonder if they will ever be a people and a kingdom
again—or are they finished? Even more to
the point, is God maybe finished with them?
I felt the powerful presence of the Lord, and God’s spirit took me and set me
down in a valley where the ground was covered with bones. The Lord God led me all around the valley; I
could see that there were very many bones and that they were very dry. The Lord God said to me, “Mortal man, can
these bones come back to life?”
I replied, “Sovereign Lord, only you can answer that!”
The Lord God said, “Prophesy to the bones. Tell these dry bones to listen to the word of
the Lord. Tell them
I, the Sovereign Lord, am saying to them: I am going to … bring you
back to life. I will give you sinews and
muscles, and cover you with skin. I will
put breath into you and bring you back to life.
Then you will know I am the Lord.”
So I prophesied as I had been told. While I was speaking, I heard a rattling
noise, and the bones began to join together.
While I watched, the bones were covered with sinews and muscles, and then
with skin. But there was no breath in
the bodies.
God said to me, “Mortal man, prophesy to the
wind. Tell the wind that the Sovereign Lord commands it to come from every
direction, to breathe into these dead bodies, and to bring them back to life.”
So I prophesied as I had been told. Breath entered
the bodies, and they came to life and stood up.
There were enough of them to form an army.
Meditation
Three things in this reading and three things in
our life right now – the bones separate and disconnected, the sinews and
muscles that bring them and hold them together, and the breath that comes in
and gives them new and true life.
The bones.
In Ezekiel’s vision they’re an image of the
people of Israel scattered and buried all across the landscape of the Middle
East between Israel and Babylon. The
first great diaspora, that the people thought they would never recover
from. They couldn’t imagine how they
would ever come together again as a nation and a people in any good way.
The bones are also at times an image of
individual and personal life. We call it
burnout. Pulled in too many directions,
giving time and energy to too many things, trying to live up to too many
expectations until all you feel like at the end is a pile of dry bones,
discarded masks and roles, hollowed out dreams and plans.
The bones are also an image of where and how we
are now as church, as community and country – as the human species on the face
of the Earth in this pandemic. We’re suffering disconnection – isolation –
everything seems to be falling apart – we feel buried in our bunkers and fear
how things are faring out in the land beyond our control.
Some say this time is
God’s way of shaking us, judging and correcting us – a work of God’s hard
will. And some mean by this that it’s
God’s way of separating good / bad, enriching the righteous and impoverishing
the evil. I don’t know; I’m not sure
what to do with a God like that.
Some will profit and
some will be impoverished as happens any time.
Some will win and others lose, but is that God’s doing? The way God
makes things work? Or the way people put
things together? Often to the detriment, or at the cost of honest spiritual self-assessment, one way or the other?
The sinews and
muscles. They can be human or holy. Made up by “the flesh” or shaped by the Word
of the Holy One. And we need to work hard at knowing the difference.
The prophet sees that
God desires reconnection driven by the Word – the same Word that brought all
the world into being. A community of
life, and the healing, healthy interdependence of the whole. Ezekiel’s vision is the hope Israel needed in
its time, and we need and our world need in ours.
How, though, are holy
sinews grown? How do we connect in love
and towards healing and justice? What
are the practical ties that bind?
What we’re used to is gathering,
family parties, meeting neighbours on the street or at the store, visiting,
taking food to the Food Bank, making quilts around a table and taking them to a
women’s shelter, volunteering at GBF or driving for the Cancer Society, holding
fund-raising dinners and Open Mic nights and yard sales, having a good
conversation over coffee with a co-worker or over a beer with a friend.
But those kinds of
connecting tissue are now neither possible nor loving.
We are in our homes
with immediate family. For many this can
be a time and a way to reconnect, to develop new lines of communication, new
kinds of activities together to deepen, enrich, change and transform our ways
of being connected as parents and children, as partners. And that’s good. This can be a rich spiritual time for us in
our families and houses.
But God is also never
about saving and blessing just the family unit, and never just the community of
the faithful. God and kingdom and the good
news of God’s kingdom is always ultimately about the neighbour and stranger as
well, also about the enemy and “the other” whoever the other may be.
In the OT they’re
lumped together usually as “the alien, fatherless and widow.” Today we might say the foreigner and
immigrant, the poor and the hungry, the laid-off and lonely and abused and
fearful and other folks at risk.
And the point of it
all, is that God’s desire ultimately is the well-being of the whole of God’s
family and the whole of God’s world … that the bones God wants to raise up and
bring to new life are the bones of all the world God has made, no matter how
and where they are,
So … what are the
sinews and muscles that can bind us now with others beyond us, and bring us
together ? That create the connections now
that allow God’s Spirit of true life to move among us and for others?
I’ve made a list of
just a few things I’ve become aware of just this past week among the members of
our little church. The list includes
· - phone calls people are
making to keep in touch with one another – especially to people they haven’t
seen for a while and may feel left out, and phone calls to me if someone seems
in special need maybe of a pastoral call?
· - a number of folks who
have volunteered to be available to help pick up and deliver groceries and meds
for people who may need help in that regard
· - the Quilt Club is making
masks for nurses and doctors at a hospital in St Catharines, and a number of
other folks have asked if they can help too
·
- people in some of our
online discussion groups – our gratitude group, our family spirituality group,
sharing resources and ideas to help each other out
·
- the Mission and Outreach
Cttee is trying to find out how we can still live out our Lenten project of
supporting and donating to the Stoney Creek Food Bank, especially needed now by
some of the “hidden hungry” in our community
·
- members sharing our
online worship with friends, family and
neighbours – some of them other-churched, some of them non-churched
These are some of the
sinews and muscle that help connection and reconnection happen here among us in
this time of pandemic.
And it’s when this
happens, when the connections of sacrificial and self-giving love are made,
when connection like that is crafted with the rest of God’s world, with “the
other”, that the Spirit comes. A fresh
wind starts to blow into and among us and our neighbours. A hope of new and true life begins to grow
and catch us up once again.
This is the promise of
God and the way of God. This is the hope
God gives. This is the the work and the
gift God does through us and through others for the life and well-being of
all. This is the way God breathes into
our time, with good news of new life for all
Thanks be to God.
Hymn:
“Heal the World”
There's a place in your heart and I
know that it is love
And this place could be much brighter than tomorrow
And if you really try you'll find there's no need to cry
In this place you'll feel there's no hurt or sorrow
And this place could be much brighter than tomorrow
And if you really try you'll find there's no need to cry
In this place you'll feel there's no hurt or sorrow
There are ways to get there if you
care enough for the living
Make a little space… make a better place
Make a little space… make a better place
Heal the world: make it a better place
For you and for me and the entire human race
There are people dying
If you care enough for the living
Make it a better place for you and for me
For you and for me and the entire human race
There are people dying
If you care enough for the living
Make it a better place for you and for me
If you want to know why, there's love
that cannot lie
Love is strong: it only cares of joyful giving
If we try we shall see in this bliss we cannot feel
Fear of dread; we stop existing and start living
Love is strong: it only cares of joyful giving
If we try we shall see in this bliss we cannot feel
Fear of dread; we stop existing and start living
Then it feels that always Love's enough
for us growing
So make a better world… Make a better world
So make a better world… Make a better world
Heal the world…
And
the dream we were conceived in will reveal a joyful face
And the world we once believed in will shine again in grace
Then why do we keep strangling life, wound this earth, crucify its soul?
Though it's plain to see, this world is heavenly. Be God's glow!
And the world we once believed in will shine again in grace
Then why do we keep strangling life, wound this earth, crucify its soul?
Though it's plain to see, this world is heavenly. Be God's glow!
We
could fly so high let our spirits never die
In my heart I feel you are all my brothers
Create a world with no fear, together we cry happy tears
See the nations turn their swords into plowshares
In my heart I feel you are all my brothers
Create a world with no fear, together we cry happy tears
See the nations turn their swords into plowshares
We
could really get there if you cared enough for the living
Make a little space to make a better place
Make a little space to make a better place
Heal the world …
