Tapping dry bones together makes a very dead sound.
These are chicken bones - I would have brought human bones, but it raises awkward questions! I think you would agree that this chicken is well and truly dead - the victim of a "fowl" deed! Its outlook is pretty hopeless.
Ezekiel had a vision of a hopeless situation - a valley, its floor just littered with bleached, very dry, human bones. What a bleak, depressing scene! But for Ezekiel it wasn't just a picture, an image.
It was a vision. What is a vision? I have thought about this and tried to define it.
A vision is "seeing beyond the hopelessness to the possibility." How's that?
Or, alternatively, a vision is "seeing the possibility in the impossible."
Ezekiel was faced with an impossible, a hopeless, situation - stick-dry, bleached human bones, littering a valley floor. A scene of utter deadness! And in our Gospel reading Jesus too was faced with an impossible, a hopeless, situation - a burial tomb containing the dead, stinking body of His friend Lazarus.
A dead army - just bones! A dead individual - his body already, in the Palestinian heat, beginning to decay. Hopelessness! But both situations were transformed beyond all expectation by the breath of God.
I wonder, are you facing any hopeless situations at present? It may be something big, even global. Do you feel despair about the relentlessness of global warming?
As we travelled recently on the Ghan train, down through the Red Centre of Australia, we saw the utter barrenness of the land - just red dust. Cattle stations where no rain has fallen for years, and grass no longer grows. In their despair many cattle ranchers in central Australia have committed suicide. The situation seems hopeless.
Or do you despair about the rise of militant Islam worldwide, and the persecution of Christians in many Muslim countries.
Or do you despair about Generation Y - the 18-30 age group - and their children?
Young people who have grown up in a post-Christian society - self-confident, technologically skilful, but spiritually totally unaware. To them God, and the Christian faith, are totally and completely irrelevant - off the screen and freaky, and they really don't want to know. How do we reach these young generations for Christ?
An impossible situation!
Or is it drug usage, or alcoholism, that makes you despair? Or is it the squabbling and divisions pre-occupying the church, and the turning away from Biblical teaching?
Nero fiddling while Rome burns!
Or is it maybe something more personal? A relationship breakdown that you find hopeless? A personal sin or habit that you despair of conquering? A loved one whose life is in a mess, and for whom there seems no way out? Illness that doesn't get any better, and prayer seems to make no difference? Loss of faith, spiritual dryness, a dark night of the soul, that you are passing through?
I am sure that for each of us there are issues over which we despair. We each have our valley of dry bones. We each have our Lazarus. And it is so easy to feel hopeless.
As Ezekiel surveyed the desolate valley, in his vision, the Lord asked him: "Can these bones live?" And I suspect that it was with a wry smile and perhaps the cynical but unsaid thought "Of course they can't!" that Ezekiel replied: "Lord, You alone know!"
"God knows!"
Can your impossible situation ever change? "God knows!"
Both Mary and Martha, Lazarus' sisters, thought that Jesus' arrival was 4 days too late.
Martha cried "Lord, if only You had been here, my brother would not have died!"
Mary said exactly the same. "Lord, if only ….!"
"Open the tomb!" Jesus ordered. "Take away the stone!"
"But Lord," Martha protested. "But Lord .. by now the body smells!"
"If only ….!" "But Lord ….!" Doubts and protests that, in the circumstances, seem eminently reasonable! Would we not have said the same?
As we survey the situation, or situations, in our lives that we find hopeless, that we see as being impossible to resolve, we too may well cry out to God: "Lord, if only …!" and "But Lord ….!"
But Jesus insists that they take away the gravestone, and He calls out "Lazarus, come out!" And Lazarus comes out. And Jesus says, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go!"
You see, our God isn't a God of partial measures. In the valley of dry bones, He wasn't content just with the flesh re-clothing the bones. That was impressive in itself, but it was not enough. He took it a step further. The bodies got breath, and lived and stood up!
And now with Lazarus, Jesus doesn't just want his body alive. He wants him free, to live a life again. "Take off the grave clothes, and let him go!
So, two miracles - dry bones and a dead body. And in both cases the impossible became possible.
While we have been with our son Paul, and Nicky and family, in Tasmania, we have been able to share with them in their calling by God to a new and challenging situation. They felt an overwhelming urge from God to leave Bible College in Tasmania, after just one year instead of two, and to move on.
At the same time an urgent e-mail came to them, asking them to consider moving to a place called Cunnumulla, a small outback town in Queensland, 1,000km inland from Brisbane, to manage a Christian project there among Aborigines.
Now Paul and Nicky, as many of you know, have a passionate concern for the Aborigine people. They have already worked among them for 5 years. And it is daunting, often discouraging, work. The problems are enormous - alcoholism, petrol-sniffing, crime, abuse, health problems, lack of self-esteem, lack of motivation, dependence on money hand-outs by the Government, being despised and written-off by most white Australians.
Just how do you turn this situation around? How do you motivate them to change - not just for a few days and then back to how they were - but for good?
How? Well, the answer is "You don't!" Only God can do that!
Paul and Nicky, as from last Monday, are now managing a Christian Café, The Rock, in Cunnumulla. It is a scheme designed to train young Aborigines in management, catering, finance, hospitality
- in other words, training them for a career
- giving them skills, confidence, self-worth, motivation
- all in a Christian environment.
It is also to provide a café where other Aborigines can chill out in a safe environment,
in a place where Christ's love is demonstrated and caught. (A bonus for Paul is that he is also in charge of a go-kart track! A Christian go-kart track of course!)
The whole scheme is designed that Christ Himself might turn these young lives around.
Humanly speaking it is a hopeless situation. Anyone who has worked with Aborigines might say "a valley of dry bones" situation. But, of course, we have a God Who specialises in the impossible!
A verse that God gave me for Paul and Nicky while we were with them was John 17:16, words of Jesus to His disciples: "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last."
Cynics say that work among the Aborigines never lasts. In the end they always revert to form - drunkenness, apathy etc. We believe and trust that in this case it will last!
God is enabling Paul and Nicky to see beyond the impossible to the possible.
I will mention just one more situation in which we need vision. Right here in the Priory.
While we were away in Tasmania you had that open morning, when 100 or so of you gathered here, and tried to catch a glimpse of God's vision for this lovely building, and us as Christ's body. What are the possibilities for the Priory in today's secular, post-Christian, materialistic society? How do we reach our society for Christ? How do we touch Generation Y?
We live in a totally different world from that which prevailed when this church was built 900 years ago. So how does it speak to this generation? And so you listed those things which would enhance this building, and our witness for Christ, in the 21st Century.
- better lighting, better seating, better PA
- decent toilets, office and admin space
- a levelled nave to facilitate flexible use
- a visitor centre and so on.
Pipe dreams! "If only .." and "But Lord …" ideas. How on earth would we ever get planning permission, or, worse, get it past English Heritage? How on earth would we ever raise the money? Impossible!
That's exactly what was said before the Lyttelton Well was built!
You see, we can afford to have visions, because our faith is in a God Who makes the impossible possible. A God Who sees beyond the impossibilities to the possibilities.
And it is in that faith and certainty that we can afford to have visions, and to act on them.
We are coming up to Easter, and the Easter story is, above all, the story of the impossible becoming possible,
- the story of hope out of despair
- of love out of hatred
- of life springing out of death.
As we dream our dreams, and glimpse our visions let us never forget that our God is the Easter God, the God Who enables us to see beyond the impossible to the possible,
And to Him be praise and glory.
Amen
David Webster
Click to return to the list of further sermons.
Go to top
|
