After helping to get this new blogging site off with a couple posts
I have been burdened with a number of things and have not posted anything for a
couple weeks. One burden has been physical—I came down with a really nasty
virus that I am still not completely over and that past onto one of my
children. Another burden has been helping my wife transition out of one job and
into a new one that she just started this week. It is an exciting change for us
but it has been a challenge to pull off in the midst of the holiday season.
Finally, there has been the awful burden that we are all feeling of the
Massacre of the Innocents in Newtown, CT. The combination of all these things
has left my blogging silent. However, during this time I have been reading a
brilliant book called Filled with the Spirit, by John Levison. I
wanted to take this blog post to share excerpts from the book’s chapter on the Prophet
Ezekiel that have spoken powerfully to me as I have been living with the grief
of Newtown.
The Prophet Ezekiel wrote at a time of intense grief and
confusion for the people of Israel.
Of his many visions, the one that has had the most intense hold on
Jewish and Christian imagination is his vision of God’s restoration of life to
a valley of dry bones. Levison’s meditation on this vision is illuminating not
only of the biblical text, but also of our own cause for Hope in the midst of
death.
Fundamental to this
vision is the overpowering reality of death that must be overcome, a horrible
reality which Ezekiel captures as he describes the unthinkable. The spirit
transports him, of priestly stock, to the land of the dead, to a valley where
the bones lie brittle and bleached by the sun and sands of time: “The hand of
the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set
me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around
them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry”
(37:1-2). It in the echo of this valley of death that Ezekiel gives ear to
Israel’s triadic and tragic lament: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is
lost; we are cut off completely.” Immediately Ezekiel measures the death around
him: very many bones and very dry bones. This is death to the
core, to the extent that even Ezekiel—with his fertile imagination…cannot
answer “Yes” to God’s question, “Son of adam, can these bones live?” (37:3).
Life in such a valley of death is inconceivable even to the boundless
imagination of Ezekiel.
And yet, it is in
this valley of death that the spirit has deposited him, and it is in this
valley, among these very many, very dry bones, that the spirit will accomplish
its most astounding act of vivification. In this valley, Ezekiel discovers
hope, hope that resides in the presence and the power of the spirit:
Then
he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the
word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause spirit to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay
sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put spirit in you, and you shall
live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” (37:4-6)
…These
bones cannot, therefore, easily return to life. They cannot be raised as they
had been, in the throes of sin and the pangs of disloyalty to God. Their
dismemberment is due to disloyalty, and they cannot be brought back simply by
being layered with sinews, flesh, and skin. (95-96 of Filled with the Spirit.)
The depth of Israel’s sin, and the totality of its death,
could only be overcome by a direct infusion of the spirit of life. The
magnitude of their fall, and ours, is such that only a deep work of the spirit
could possibly bring about new life and hope. This Advent our Hope is what
Ezekiel’s was, our Promise the promise given to Israel:
Then he said to me,
“Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the spirit: Thus says the
Lord God: Come from the four winds, O spirit, and breathe into these slain,
that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the spirit came into
them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.” (37:9-10)