B, Pentecost (Confirmation Day) - Ezekiel 37:1-14 "Life & Death: What is the Point?"
Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14
1 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of
Sermon
What is the point of all this church stuff? It seems to be disconnected with the reality of the world today, completely boring. It doesn’t do much to stir up excitement and bring in the numbers that have wandered away in recent years!
Why should we bother with teaching, and with being taught, what’s the point of confirmation class, learning the catechism, the books of the bible, and bible texts? What’s the point of learning about what we believe we receive, when we are baptised, when we eat and drink the bread and wine, when the pastor says in Christ’s stead, “I forgive you all your sins”? What’s the point of going to church on Sunday; trying to stay awake while the bloke in the white dress waffles on, up the front, and performs a bunch of antiquated rituals.
Even more so — what’s the point of life, living, going to school, working, falling in love, getting married, having a family, and growing old? What’s the point of it when at the end of it all, death awaits us!
Today is Pentecost Sunday and Pentecost is all about the Holy Spirit coming and giving life. In the northern hemisphere Easter and Pentecost fall in spring and early summer; just as the land is springing to life, Pentecost Sunday falls and our northern hemisphere neighbours celebrate the life the Spirit gives to the church.
But for us, Pentecost falls in early winter. Death appears to be evident in nature; the frosts are devouring what little green there is after twenty odd years of increasing drought on the Darling Downs. We celebrate the life of the Spirit, but as we leave and go out, evidence of death is all around us. What is the point of life, when at the end of it comes death?
As we go out from the church and live our lives, we might try to do the right thing for a period but eventually we fail, in fact our natures are like deciduous green trees that fight the deathly frosts of winter but without fail the leaves fall from the tree, and without fail the coldness of our sinfulness makes us wither and die. What is the point?
On Friday at our last confirmation class we went on an excursion to the
But death also opens the way for us to begin to understand the reality of the Church — Jesus dying on the cross, being raised to life, ascending into heaven, and his sending of the Holy Spirit into our lives through things done in the church. Such as baptism, confirmation, holy communion, the forgiveness of sins, and the proclamation of God’s word. In the midst of death we are in life! In the face of death what Christ does through his church becomes ever so clear, and critically important for every one of us.
What is the point? The point is this: without God’s intervention in our lives there is no point to life, and those who live without Christ, as well as those who think they can live as Christians without receiving the gifts he gives — are the living dead, living without hope, living pointless lives.
Jesus’ death and resurrection is pointless, coming to church is pointless, being taught, being called to repentance, being forgiven, this building, blokes like me in white dresses leading divine rituals, are all pointless if death did not exist. But it does!
We were never meant to die you know! The scientists all know it. They constantly seek the secret of life, but never find it. They know that a body should keep on growing and replicating the cells that die, continually making the living thing new. So why then do we decay, grow weak, weary, old, and die? Science can’t work it out. So what is the point, why do we all die?
There is one reason for death and one reason alone! We die because each and every one of us is engrained with a sinful nature! If there was no sin, there would be no pain and suffering in the world, no accidents, no illnesses or sicknesses, no crime, no starvation, no greed. Make no mistake it’s not ‘their’ sin that causes your death and my death, but ‘my’ sin and ‘your’ sin that causes us to die. But because there is sin and death, God brings us life through Jesus’ death and resurrection and through the means of this grace given to the church; it’s as simple as that! The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23) This is exactly the point!
Ezekiel is led by the Lord in the Spirit to see the results of sin on the Israelites. He is led back and forth through a valley of dry bones; thousands upon thousands of bones, parched weathered and dry; a drought of life caused by the deathliness of sin. “Son of man can these bones live?” the Lord asks Ezekiel. “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know” is Ezekiel’s response. And God then commands Ezekiel to prophecy to the bones, and the Word of God brought both, life to the bones, and breath to the thousands of bodies he'd recreated.
Just like Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones, God is revealing the mystery of life and salvation to us as we succumb to the deathliness of earthly life. We have been given new life by the Spirit in baptism; our bones bound in death have been given eternal life by water and the word. We have learnt about the reality in which we live—living between death in baptism and eternal life through death—and have been taught about the life giving presence of Christ in the bread and wine, sustaining us in this life to eternal life. We learn this as we hear the Word of God, and our Lutheran understanding of that Word in Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. And through it all the Holy Spirit is restoring, regenerating, and re-creating you, as you hear the word of God, and receive the replenishing gifts of forgiveness and assurance given by Christ in his Word through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Just as our Almighty Lord, said to Ezekiel, he says to all of us, “O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:12-14)
Jesus Christ died for sins, once for all. He, the righteous, died for you and me, the unrighteous, to bring us to God the Father. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit (1 Peter 3:18). And we through baptism and being instructed in the Word receive constant replenishment by the Holy Spirit. We, like Christ, are made alive by the Holy Spirit. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to give us the gift of faith and open our hearts to his unseen hidden presence in this life.
Jesus is taking our bones heaped up like rubbish in death, cleansing them of sin, connecting them, and building them into his temple. Just like Michelangelo who took many useless pieces of marble and carved them into priceless treasures. Just like the Apostle Paul whom God carved out of the murderous Saul, and whom out of a despairing monk carved Martin Luther, and through him returned the Gospel to its centrality in the Medieval Church. Jesus takes our sinful existence and through the Holy Spirit fills us with the life-giving fullness of his death and resurrection.
We, like the season of winter, are heading towards the coldness of death, the greenness of life is slowly getting frosted away, and the leaves of our existence might be falling from the branches of our earthly life. But in the midst of death we are in life. Think of the tree that comes to life in spring after loosing its old leaves. So too we will have the old sinful nature stripped away in death, but the new life of the Spirit will remain. God will lift us from the graves and the Spirit which gives us life will implant us in the new land of heavenly eternity.
What is the point of all this church stuff? It is this: that we receive the life-giving body and Spirit of Jesus Christ, and he to take our sinfulness to the cross, so we might trust this and have eternal peace with God the Father in heaven forever. Amen.
