Saturday, April 9, 2011

Ezekiel 37:1-14 

(John 11; Ezekiel 33:30-35)

God Did It

The danger in reading the valley of dry bones vision as a part of the thematic structure of Lent is that we might fail to comprehend that these bones – the remains of the corpses of Israel – are not the evidence of some unfortunate circumstance to which Israel fell victim – a circumstance from which God had to save them, like healing somebody's cancer. God did it. God caused the dry bones, quite specifically, to be there. In other words, in this visionary fashion, God killed them. And, as Ezekiel interprets it, in the whole historic tragedy of exile.  One cannot read the first 36 chapters of Ezekiel that lead up to 37 without coming to this conclusion. 

As critical readers we can question it all, of course. We can question the posted dates of the visions leading up to this valley waste. We can question the predictions and historical outcomes that involved Egypt, Babylon, Judah, Samaria, and all the “-ite” peoples - the traditional enemies of Israel. We can question the redactors of the book, put textual sentiments in test tubes, relativizing their perspectives, even removing the particular “Ezekiel” character from reckoning as an actual person.

As “theological” readers we can put quotation marks around the bulk of those first 36 chapters – make them specimens on exhibit subject to the doctrinal norms of our denomination or tradition which is grounded in the more reliable New Testament witness where, supposedly, perhaps, we might like to think, a killing God is not to be found. Not our God. Not the Father of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, are we not in the same camp as the ethnic cleansers? the religious bigots who would nuke the world to make a dogmatic point? the God of Blood on our side? – or our intractable enemy? After all, one of the most common oracular phrases of the book is “_________ (Egypt, Aman, Israel, etc.), I am against you.”

The problem is, as Jesus said, you can't put new wine in old wineskins. The old Israel, with its divided loyalties, is an old wineskin. There are to be no more cycles of deliverance-idolatry- fall as has plagued the landscape of Sinai and Canaan since Israel came out of Egypt. 

There are times when, for life to be real, death has to be total. Check out the gospel on that point (John 11). Jesus ignored Lazarus until he was four days dead before he would give him the time of day. And that's only the beginning of the death. Jesus and the disciples had to re-enter Judea, which was death. Which makes what happened in Jerusalem - and the valley of the dry bones - all the more astounding.

We read what happened in the valley. God did that too. But lest we get too cozy with that final outcome, there is a little scene in Ezekiel 33:30-35 that warrants our attention. This is Israel in exile. All these elders of Israel come to see Ezekiel. He's such a good story teller. A real artist, like a musician singing love songs. Totally cool. The word gets around town so that the prophet has a following. Only thing is, nobody's loyalties are changed. They still have the old Canaanite gods in their shrines, and who knows what else from Babylon. Their ethics and their faith still follow separate tracks - that always seems to go with the idolatry. If this sounds too familiar to our brand of religion, then, if the continuity of our ways of life – our church – our nation – are the desired outcomes of our heavenly entreaties, then this is not good news. He's on to us. And he's going to do both those things, just like it was signed in our baptism.

© 2011 Andy Gay