Out Of Thin Air

"Out of Thin Air"
Ezekiel 37:1-14

Isn’t it fascinating that the most important things in life are invisible?  Love, for instance.  You can’t bottle it.  You can’t mass produce it. You can’t, as the saying goes, buy it.  It’s just there.  We know it’s there -- an invisible chord that ties one heart to another.

Or, how about a word?  In one of its most powerful forms, it is invisible.  Certainly you can see a word on a printed page.  You can put a few of them together into a sentence, a paragraph, a poem, a book.  So, words can be visible on a page, but the feelings they invoke are invisible.

What happens, though, when those words are spoken?  Like in a halftime talk with a basketball team.  Like during a quiet and romantic dinner conversation between a man and a woman.  Like in a sermon by a preacher.  The words, once spoken, are invisible.  Only mere ripples in the invisible air.  Yet, in each of those scenes that I mentioned, imagine how much power those invisible words can have to evoke inspiration, love, faith.

Invisible.  Yet powerful.  Like imperceptible sparks that can ignite our emotional kindling setting our spirit on fire.  So, in this way, invisibility is only a mysterious cloak for a powerful reality.  It is those certain realities that I would have you ponder with me for a few minutes this morning.

Think again, for a moment, of the power of the invisible, spoken word.  Let’s think about that word in the context of this story of the valley of dry bones that I read from Ezekiel.

First, get a feeling for how utterly hopeless this scene is.  Try to imagine the impact it has on Ezekiel as he gazes at it.  The ground is covered with bones.  Not whole skeletons intact, but disjointed piles of bones.  Human bones.  Skulls.  Femurs.  Fibulas, tibias and ribs.  Vertebrae and hip sockets.  There are a total of 206 bones in the human body.  Across this valley are thousands of people, 206 bones each.  All strewn randomly across that vast valley floor.

“...and they were very dry.”  They had been there a long time.  Picked clean by hyenas, vultures, and beetles.  All those bones were beginning to splinter and peel from their dryness.  Under the light and heat and radiation of the sun everything was bleached and returning to dust.

The Voice of God speaks:  “Can these bones live?”  Ezekiel evades answering the question directly, but his answer betrays his futility.  His inner voice is shouting, “NO WAY!”  But what he says is, “Master God, only you know that.”

Then comes the part that needs our careful concentration.  God asks Ezekiel to do what?  To speak!  To say words over all those dry bones.  “Speak over these bones:  ‘Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!’”  What!?  Just think of the utter ridiculousness of that instruction.  Talk to dry, disjointed bones.  Talk to them as if they can hear.  Tell them to listen, as if dry bones have ears, which they don’t.  Talk to them as if they will respond to mere, invisible words, as if they have the ability to respond to what they are told.

Yet Ezekiel spoke, as he was instructed by God.  Notice how Ezekiel tells this story.  “As I spoke, there was a sound and, oh, rustling!  The bones moved and came together, bone to bone.”  Ezekiel hadn’t even finished his speech, given to him by God, before things began to happen.  How many words had he uttered?  One?  Three?  Ten?  Does it matter?

What’s the point?  The point is the power of an invisible word, spoken over dry bones, that makes them not only reform into full skeletons, but also fills those skeletons with internal organs, and covers them over with tendons and sinews and muscles and veins and skin.  Merely a spoken word.  But not just any word -- God’s word, spoken through the prophet Ezekiel.  A word!  An invisible, potent God word!

Think how Ezekiel’s thoughts begin to churn as he remembers other faith stories.  Like the story of creation.  That is another picture of utter and hopeless desolation.  Formlessness.  Raging powers.  Total, thick darkness.  Nothingness.  Absolute chaos.

But what does God do?  God speaks.  And when a word comes out of God’s mouth, there was light, there was sky, land, sun, moon, and stars, living creatures in the water, on the land and in the sky.  God spoke, and a dirt mound became a human being.  God spoke, and foreshadowing this valley of dry bones story, a rib was taken from a man, and from that one bone another totally formed and distinct human being was made.

Ezekiel would remember the most famous salvation story of his people, the story of the Exodus from Egypt.  In that event, God spoke a word through Moses and a whole sea divided away from itself, driven by a wind, and the Hebrew people walked between those walls of water on solid ground.

And at a time that was not part of Ezekiel’s memory, because it had not happened yet, was when an angel spoke God’s word to a woman named Mary, and from that word she became pregnant with the One we would call Savior and Lord.

Only words.  Spoken, invisible, terribly powerful words.

But that’s not all.  There is more.  There is another important, invisible force that is put into play in this dry bones, re-embodiment story.  It is a force that is so powerful, and so invisible, it has to be described in the terms of moving air:  wind and breath.

We are familiar with what moving air can do out here on the high plains of Kansas.  Moving air is a force with incredible strength.  It can snap trees in half.  It can destroy grain bins.  It can lift the roof right off a barn.  It can flatten a whole town.  It can ruin your seafood buffet.  It’s just air.  But given enough velocity, air becomes a devastating wind, energized into a hurricane or tornado.  Just think of the awesome power in this invisible stuff called air.

If you are dealing with emphysema, or having breathing difficulties, you know how important air is and what it does for the body and one’s energy level.  You know what happens to the body when it doesn’t get enough oxygen from the air, and how important each breath is.  You know how scary and precarious life becomes without the ability to breathe deeply, in and out.

Breath.  Holy Spirit.  Wind.  Holy Spirit.  Air.  Holy Spirit.  All the same word in the Bible.  Invisible, live giving power.  Holy Spirit.

That was the final step in the total reanimation of these bones now become bodies.  Because that’s all they were without breath, without wind, without that which the breath and the wind represent -- the Holy Spirit.  As Ezekiel noticed, the bones had become bodies, “But they had no breath in them.”

Can’t you just take in the power of that image.  Bodies that look alive but are not.  Bodies that have all the vital organs and all the bones back in place, but not life.  Bodies that are intact, and ready to be a person; but just a body does not make a person.  There is something else needed that is vital, that is essential, that is strategic before there is life:  the wind, the breath, the Spirit of God.

Again, Ezekiel’s memories race back to the creation of the first human beings.  Mud and dust is brought together to form a human, but it doesn’t become fully alive until God breathes into the nostrils of that body.  Then life begins.

Even Jesus does not fully become the Son of God until the Spirit of God descends upon him at his baptism.  Then, as in the story of the valley of dry bones, the words of God (“You are my Son...”) become mixed with the descent of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus becomes more than he was for ever after.

So many people are content to just be bodies.  All the parts are in the right places, but there is no life.  I was in line to check in at the airport, out in San Jose, on my way back from Kristin and Nics a few weeks ago.  I had my ticket, had my bag.  I was just doing the waiting shuffle with everyone else in the ticket check-in line:  stand for a few minutes, push my bag forward, stand some more, push my bag forward.  You know the routine.

Ahead of me was a fairly disheveled man.  Unshaven.  Blank expression.  Staring at everything and nothing.  Wearing an odd, Goodwill assortment of clothes.  One scarred suitcase that seemed to be stuffed with everything he possessed in life.  He finally shuffled up to the ticket agent, reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a big wad of bills and said to the agent, “Give me a ticket to...”  Then he paused for a moment, and just continued, “Give me a ticket to wherever.”

I thought to myself that though many people don’t have this outward, lost appearance, they nonetheless are just as directionless, just as purposeless.  They are bodies going through the motions with no breath of God, no Spirit to make them fully alive.

Or think of it this way.  You could get on a jet at Mid-Continent airport.  Let’s say your destination is Seattle.  You could have the pilot get you there one of two ways.  The pilot could drive you and the other couple of hundred passengers there.  It would be a bit awkward driving a 757 up I-35 and then down Interstate 70, but it could be done.  It wasn’t the intention of the inventor and builder of the airplane for it to be used in that way, but it is possible.

The other option, of course, is the pilot could fly the plane to Seattle, which is the best way, and what the plane was meant to do.  It was meant to rise up on the air and fly.

My point, clearly, is that people are meant to be more than just bodies.  We can get through life just bodily.  But isn’t it just as ridiculous as a 757 driving to Seattle instead of rising up on the wind and flying?  The process of becoming a human being is not complete until we have risen up on the breath of God, until our mere bodies have been animated with the Spirit of God.

God drives the point home to Ezekiel, and to us, after the breathing Spirit of God has brought the bodies to life.  “My people...are just like these bones,” God says to Ezekiel.  “They...are dried up, without any hope, and with no future.  So I will put my breath in them, and bring them back to life.”

Wow!  No breath, no humanity.  No breath, no purpose.  No breath, no life.  No breath, no Spirit, no connection to God.

At what point in this story do you find yourself?  Is someone looking over this vast valley of bones, and somewhere yours are all mixed up in the pile?  Are you feeling fragmented and disjointed?  Dried out?  Hopeless?  Futureless?  Do you need to hear God’s invisible, creative word spoken over your fragments, and feel them rattle back together again?

Or are you a body?  Maybe all the right parts are in the right places, but you feel like an empty shell.  Are you just walking around?  Just going through the motions, doing your work, fulfilling your obligations?  Wandering through the oncoming hours of each day with no particular purpose or direction?  Ambling up to the ticket counter of each day, saying, “Just give me a ticket to anywhere”?  Do you realize that you need something else in order to feel alive again?  In your praying, do you find yourself trying to express your need for the invisible, moving, breath and Spirit of God?

Or do you feel fully alive?  The Spirit of God has reanimated you.  Hope and a clear sense of future has given you the certainty that you are alive again.  Inspiration, faith, and love have returned.  The invisible, yet very real Spirit of God has lifted you to your feet and empowered you with another unbelievable chance at life.

Listen.  Do you hear God speaking a word to you?