Raising The Level Of Our Relationships
May 19, 2024 - Ezekiel 37: 1-14
As we heard, in today’s text from Ezekiel “The hand of the Lord came upon [the prophet], and he was brought out by the spirit of God and set down in the middle of a valley full of bones. There were very many bones lying in the valley, writes Ezekiel, and they were very, very dry.
Can anyone here relate to the valley of dry bones?
Is there anyone here whose life has places in it that are far from flowing with life?
Beyond our individual lives, too, it may be easy for us to name places in the world that are touched by violence, natural disaster, poverty, and neglect. Maybe it won’t seem like such a big thing to you next to the realities of war and violence that exist in the world. But one of the dry places that I feel keenly and that I think keeps us from addressing other problems in our communities and our world is what the U.S. Surgeon General last May called "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." The findings of his report include “that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness, ...the physical consequences [of which have been found to include] a 29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults.” According to this new advisory, the United State’s “epidemic of loneliness… can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” After also naming economic challenges, heightened social division, the fast pace of modern life, and the lack of mental health care access, the Surgeon General concluded, “we're seeing more forces that take us away from one another and fewer of the forces that used to bring us together.” Then he named faith groups among forces that bring us together and noted their decline contributes to a culture of loneliness that is hazardous to our health.
How many of us can testify what a difference it makes in our lives and in our communities to be able to face those dry, dry valleys with a quality connection to God and to other human beings? How many of us can attest to the difference it makes knowing somebody has your back and that there is a faith-filled place and a people you can go to when you need to celebrate or lament?
The prophet Ezekiel did not go to that valley of dry bones alone, and we need not walk alone, either. There are times and reasons of course for feeling alone. There are times when we feel dry and out of breath. Those times, I believe, are part of life that come for all of us. In that dry valley Ezekiel describes, it is the Breath of God, the ruach in the Hebrew that brings vitality back to the bones. The ruach draws the sinews and muscle and flesh and blood back together. It rebuilds a life. Have you ever seen a life rebuilt? Have you ever witnessed that kind of resurrection?
At our church over on Highland Avenue, I think we got a glimpse of that Breath of God this spring when we welcomed into church membership Daniel Cummings, an inmate on death row at Central Prison in North Carolina. He called in from his cell one Sunday morning. We put the speaker phone up to a microphone so that he could greet everyone and take his membership vows. Even though he wasn’t there among us physically, I felt a strong connection across the miles and through prison walls that for me attests to the new life bringing power of God’s love. Daniel is 68 years old and has been in prison for 30 years. He has very little in the way of comforts in his cell and it sounds to me as if he is under near constant threat of violence. But when he gets on the phone his voice carries this shining, upbeat light. He remembers and cares about any trouble in the lives of us, his friends on the outside. He prays for us and follows up on the next call like I try to do when I am administering pastoral care. It just seems natural to him. And he is blown away by the love of our congregation. That love has been spearheaded by our member, John Lengle, and by the Men’s Breakfast Group that meets every Tuesday.
In 2019, after reading about a program called the Death Row Support Project, John announced one Tuesday that he planned to become a pen pal with an inmate and invited the other breakfast goers to join him. They were assigned to Daniel and started writing letters. Then they started putting money in Daniel’s commissary account so that he could buy basic things like snacks, hygiene items, over-the-counter medicines, dental supplies, clothing, and stationery to write these letters back and forth. Then at some point, Daniel got access to a phone. And now he can make 15 minute phone calls, too, including to his new pastor.
Daniel has told me what a difference it makes to know someone cares about him. He has told me it has renewed his faith and his hope. It has meant new life to him. And the remarkable thing to me is how much it goes both ways. I have seen first hand how those of us who get to interact with Daniel are moved by his faith, his cheerfulness, and his hope. We often come away feeling we are the ones who are blessed to be a part of his life. I give thanks for the ways our church’s relationship with Daniel has blown God’s Breath of new life through our whole community.
In Ezekiel, God commands this mortal being to prophesy - prophesy to the breath. With God’s help, Ezekiel is to speak new life into being. Ezekiel lived in a time when his people were scattered to the wind. The dry bones are a good metaphor for the conquered people of his day. Ezekiel had reason to feel dry and hopeless. And yet, with God’s help, he prophesied new life on the way – bone coming to meet bone and sinew and flesh.
As we gather here today, on this Sunday that many Christians celebrate as Pentecost or the birthday of the church, I am so grateful to be here in a joint worship service among members of both Second Baptist and Highland Avenue Church. For more than 20 years we have shared in relationship building and praising God across the differences between us.
Have we solved all the problems in Elgin?
No we have not.
Have we ended racism or eradicated any other challenges that hurt us as churches or as a wider community?
No we have not.
But we have prophesied to a new life coming.
We have done our best to show up as our uniquely made in God’s image selves and to praise God together both.
I remember when I first came to Elgin and met Pastor Edmond before the first one of these worship exchanges I participated in. His best advice to me was don’t try to be who you think we’ll like. Just be who God made you to be. And love God. And we will get along just fine.
I think that’s part of our loneliness epidemic. It’s hard to be who we are when we know not everyone will like it. We know we don’t always agree. We know we’re not all the same. We know we all too often hurt each other even when we don’t realize we’re doing it.
Sometimes it takes an act of faith to bring our whole selves into the world and risk connecting with another person we don’t know or don’t trust. Sometimes it takes an act of faith to take the existing relationships in our lives deeper by telling each other the truth even when it causes conflict. Sometimes it takes an act of faith to believe that by working together we may not be able to solve every problem before us but with God’s help we can do a lot of good.
God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?”
And Ezekiel responds, “O God, you know.”
Only God knows sometimes what we may do when we act in faith.
Only God knows how the breath of new life will flow among us.
Only God knows how the relationships we build may be the foundation to experiencing a whole new level of love, peace, and justice
in all the communities where we live.
Praise God that it is so. Amen.
