Sermon text: Ezekiel 37:1–14
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The three readings for this fifth Sunday in Lent are timely — both for the Lenten season and for the outbreak of RSV among us. As a matter of fact, as I sat down to start to work on this sermon, my phone dinged. I looked down: it was CVS offering me a vaccination to avoid RSV.
Now, I didn’t pick the readings; the church calendar did. But the Epistle lesson, Romans 8:1–11, and the Gospel lesson, the 11th chapter of John, should put all Christians in mind of the Old Testament reading, Ezekiel chapter 37, and the great vision of the valley of dry bones.
In the Epistle lesson we heard and read Romans verses 10 and 11: “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
Then there’s in the Gospel lesson the reading of the raising of Lazarus, in the gospel assigned reading, which provides not only a display of the Lord’s power over death and dry bones, but foreshadows what’ll happen to him — Lazarus — in a very few days, showing that our God is the God of the ones who are living and not the ones who are dead.
As for the Old Testament lesson itself, Ezekiel 37, the primary text for the sermon this morning, listen again to verses 5–9: “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD. So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’”
Eight times the English word “breathe” or “breath” is used in this short section. Of those eight times, the word of life is connected to the word breath four times. The one cannot exist without the other. Life is the result of breath and breathing, and only the living breathe.
The physical act of breathing consists, by the way, of two parts. The first part, part one, interestingly enough, is called inspiration — or we know it as inhaling. Inspiration: think of God breathing life into Adam, Genesis 2, verse 7: “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
The Bible speaks of itself as being God-breathed, or inspired, in our language. Right? That inhaling part: 2 Timothy 3:16–17. “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
Phase one of breathing: we inhale. Our diaphragms contract; they move downward, so they create increasing space in the chest cavity. The lungs expand. Air is pulled in, and oxygen flows into our blood. Part two is interestingly called expiration, or exhaling. We used to say, when someone died of natural causes, they “expired” — meaning all the air went out of them. Under the second phase of breathing, carbon dioxide flows from the blood into the lungs and then is forced out when we exhale.
The average person takes 25,000 breaths per day. That’s the problem, isn’t it? When there’s a respiratory virus running about, you can’t breathe. Ask Mark. And when you can’t and don’t breathe, that’s a problem. Thank goodness Mark didn’t have that problem. You’re in danger of expiring if you can’t breathe. We all remember the year of COVID-19 and all the silliness that surrounded the fear of death.
Now, back to the Old Testament lesson. It’s 722 B.C. The northern kingdom fell when the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom. God gave the southern kingdom, Judah and Jerusalem, a little more time to repent before He brought about their fall by the hands of the Babylonians. That brings us to the prophet Ezekiel. Now, think about 600 B.C.: the prophet Ezekiel is taken to that valley of dry bones. God gave the prophet a vision that illustrates how important God’s breath and breathing is, spiritually as well as physically, to His children here on earth. In the vision, God’s breath of life resurrects the whole army of Israel. The army has been destroyed, slain by the Babylonians, left to dry into dust.
In the days of Ezekiel, Israel was breathing all the wrong kinds of air. To extend the analogy, they were breathing pollution: the pollution of the gods of Baal, the pollution of immorality and the pagans, the pollution of greed and tyranny, exploitation of the poor, and every other kind of corruption known to man. It was only because of their status as captives and slaves and children of God that they repented and cried out to God: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.” They believed God had cast them aside.
Having learned their lesson, now the Lord God sent Ezekiel to remind His children that He is the God who breathes life even in those who are dead. God commanded Ezekiel, saying, “Prophesy over these bones and say to these bones, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” Then there was a noise, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’” The Lord God wants absolutely nothing to be left to the imagination regarding this vision.
So He explains it to Ezekiel. He says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves. You shall know that I am the LORD. I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live. I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it.” Meaning past tense: His word has been spoken; the deed is done.
In the English translation of Ezekiel 37:1–14, the word “spirit” occurs twice, the word “wind” once, and the word “breath” eight times. In the Hebrew, the word for spirit is ruach. The Hebrew word for the wind is also ruach. The Hebrew word for breath and breathe: ruach. That means that the word ruach is used 11 times in 14 verses.
In Genesis 1, God’s ruach, Spirit, hovers over the waters of the earth: “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Being made alive by the breath of the Spirit of God is like being animated by the wind. Wind is not a dead thing. It is by its definition living and active in movement. It is doing something, going somewhere. Remember what Jesus told Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, breath, wind, Spirit of God goes out over the valley of death, into dry bones of the dead, and then they are restored to life. It’s a taste of Easter in the midst of the dust of Lent. Being born of the Spirit does not mean that we are flighty, unpredictable, or unreliable. It means we are animated, moved by God Himself. As Christians, we live and move by and in Christ and by the Holy Spirit.
The wind, the breath, the Spirit of Ezekiel 37 is the same Spirit of John 20:21. When Jesus sends out His disciples, He said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” On Pentecost Sunday, the very first sermon in the New Testament church: “suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind.” It’s the same wind that animated those dry bones 600 years earlier. It filled the whole house — this sound and this wind — and the people in it, they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
Take note that in all the verses I just quoted, and in Ezekiel 37, God is the one who moves the wind. He’s the one doing the work. He’s the one filling His children with the Holy Spirit. God’s the one who’s doing it. He said, “I will cause breath, ruach, to enter you, and you shall live. And I will put my Spirit, ruach, within you, and you shall live.”
Now we live in a fallen creation. So we breathe a lot of pollutants into our lungs, and even our own lungs make their own pollutants. Some of those pollutants are poisonous if found in too much concentration in our lungs. The same is true for the Christian life. As Christians, we don’t breathe the pure word of God as we should and rightly do. The breath of all too many Christians and Christian churches these days is shallow, barely life-sustaining. They confuse entertainment and good works with medicine for the soul — the ruach, the wind of God.
We all inhale all sorts of beliefs and ideas and philosophies and passions and lifestyles and every kind of sin that harms body, soul, and mind. We don’t breathe in God’s pure word. We breathe in other things with it. But remember Second Timothy, the text I quoted a little bit ago: all Scripture is God-breathed, inspired by God. And to what end does God intervene, so that we are taught correctly, reproved correctly, trained in righteousness? At risk of overdoing the analogy, I want you to picture a Christian church as Christ’s ventilator, pushing the breath of God, the inspired word, into your spiritual lungs, giving and sustaining you in true Christian faith.
It’s through the Word and Sacrament that God breathes into us His Holy Spirit, a right understanding, and life everlasting. It is also the place where we breathe out the pollutants and poisons that threaten our Christian lives and our Christian understandings. We breathe out those pollutants when we confess our sins. And our heavenly Father forgives our sins through the mouth of a pastor in Holy Absolution, and grants to us the remission of all of our sins.
And why does He do that? He does that because on the cross of Good Friday, Jesus said, “It is finished,” then gave up His spirit, and finally breathed His last. God expired there on the cross in our place. Then on Easter morning, He breathed the eternal breath as He rose from the dead, and put His breath in us.
Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” The man who had died came forth. And each and every time God sends a faithful pastor and congregation into a pulpit — every time I put water and the Word on the head of the newly baptized — the breath of God has claimed another child. And regardless of age, God is telling Ezekiel to do the very same thing: “Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man. Say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath comes into the baptized, and they come to life. That’s what happens in the waters of Holy Baptism. Each and every time we baptize, we fulfill that which was prophesied in the valley of bones, the valley of death.
So come to your confession and your absolution, knowing that the breath of God Himself has breathed the words “Your sins are forgiven” into you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.