The vision of the Valley of Dry Bones in today’s Old Testament reading is one that opens with desolation, hopelessness, and the grief and dreadful feeling in the pit of our stomachs that we may feel when encountering the imagery of a desert expanse filled with the long dead, very dry bones of the masses. God gifts Ezekiel this vision in a time of great trouble, in a time when the world feels like it is falling apart. The vision of the Valley of Dry Bones occurs during the Babylonian Exile, a time when the people of Israel witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. A time when they were deported against their will, to Babylon, and powerless to the oppressors of the empire that upended their lives, killed many, and attempted to ethnically cleanse their culture and way of life. This is the context in which Ezekiel is called by God to prophesy to the people, who are represented in this vision as the many bones spread across the valley. Knowing the historical context of this vision is powerful for me because it gives us a deeper sense of just how viscerally the people of Israel collectively felt that “it is finished.” And yet, even as they say, “our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely,” there is still resurrection and hope. I feel like one cannot get much more dead than a valley of dehydrated, scattered bones, so there is profound hope in the fact that even then, God promises life, return, justice, and the full presence of God’s spirit, from all four winds in the valley. When we talk about the “people of Israel,” we are reading a story of a people who faced marginalization, deportation, human rights abuses, and oppression. The name “Israel” comes from the Hebrew words “to struggle with” and “God”, from the story of Jacob being renamed “Israel” by God after wrestling with God and prevailing. Who might be our modern-day equivalents of God-wrestlers, people who face struggles and marginalization, who struggle together on the path to overcoming their struggle? Who are the dry bones of our times, among us, and around the world? The story of Lazarus paints a similar picture of a very, impossibly dead body being brought back miraculously to life. What is so intriguing to me about these passages is the impossibility and finitude and helplessness of what now is. Lifeless. Karoline Lewis from Luther Seminary reminds us that “since Jewish belief held that the soul left the body after three days, just in case we are wondering, Lazarus is really dead.” That’s perhaps why the gospel text clarifies the endedness of the situation through the voices of Mary and Martha that Lazarus has been dead for four days by now. Perhaps in his full humanness, Jesus feels the consequences of this hopelessness, this ending, and is moved by the loss of his beloved sibling, and deeply moved and disturbed by how much grief and wailing and anger and protest and disappointment and exhaustion, and LOVE, filled the crowd who loved and lost Lazarus. Jesus was overcome. Jesus wept.
And from the crowd, Jesus hears a remark from someone, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” I know I’ve voiced this sentiment myself, in my life path. Can’t God stop the viciousness of this world? Can’t She protect our children from abuse and assault when we can’t fully? Can’t God step in before ICE murders our kin? Can’t God stop the bombs, the people who declare war, save Gaza, Sudan, protect the people of Iran. Can’t God at least help a little bit more in our fight to end gun violence? We are trying. Couldn’t God have granted some more time for my spouse, my sibling, friend who died of illness, or was killed in an accident. Can God not intervene? Our earth, its stability is slipping, its species, are dying.
Our story today ends with life. Jesus calls on All Divinity, “Father-Mother, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Lazarus is liberated and let go, unbound, after a story that we thought was the end. And many believed. As we journey toward Easter, What may these readings and their promises in our Lenten season mean for us, among the dry bones and Lazaruses who are deeply loved and cared for by the Holy One, to the point of weeping. In our age of struggle, in our witnessing of struggle of the people we love and sometimes feel helpless and hopeless for, there is life possible even at the supposed end. We must not give up on weeping for our losses, and summoning the four winds to breathe life back from the tombs of the desert, unbinding people from their cloths and letting them go. And, like in the time of the people of Israel, in the moment when it is hard for us to see it all fall back into restorative completeness, we still do what we can. As the wisdom from a hadith in the Muslim tradition encourages, “if the final hour comes while you have a shoot of a plant in your hands and it is possible to plant it, you should plant it.” Tombs house our lost loves, valleys dry up bones, throughout the history of our world, and in our present time, and in the future. But these readings “end” with life and resurrection each time, in our Christian tradition. So wherever we may, we shall plant trees even if we assume that the end of time is coming tomorrow. For death is not the end to a God who weeps in love.