Jwquaker's Blog
Sermon
Again!
By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
April 9, 2023
Click Here to Join our Meeting for Worship
Jeremiah 31:1–6 (ESV)
1 “At that time, declares the Lord, I will be the God of all the clans of Israel, and they shall be my people.” 2 Thus says the Lord: “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, 3 the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. 4 Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again you shall adorn yourself with tambourines and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. 5 Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant and shall enjoy the fruit. 6 For there shall be a day when watchmen will call in the hill country of Ephraim: ‘Arise, and let us go up to Zion, to the Lord our God.’”
Two thousand years ago, a man was born. He was born to a woman who was barren and to a father who was a priest. His father, while serving in the temple, was visited by an angel proclaiming the birth of a son. This man did not believe the angel and as a result he was struck deaf and dumb for nine months, until the baby that his wife carried was born and named John. Everyone in the land knew of this story. They knew because the priest emerged from the temple that day and was unable to bless the nation. The people of Judah watched as this man grew, and when he left the temple and wondered in the wilderness, they took notice.
Two thousand years ago, that same angel made another visit. This time the messenger of God spoke to a young woman. This young woman was engaged to, but not yet married to a righteous man named Joseph. She was told that she would also bear a son, and that this son would be the cause of the rising and the fall of many in Israel. This young woman rightfully wondered at what was said because she was not yet married and had never been with a man. She wondered and yet she responded, let it be as you have said.
Again, this messenger visited a man. This time the angel spoke to Joseph in a dream. Joseph was a decent man, and yet when he heard that his future wife was with child he was concerned. This was a time and place where children out of wedlock were not widely accepted, it was so taboo in this culture that Joseph held this girl’s life in his hands. Yet because he was a decent man, he decided that he would divorce her quietly. He would annul the engagement, to protect his honor. But when the angel visited him in his dream, he was told that Mary’s child was of divine origin. Joseph woke from that dream changed, and proceeded forward, embracing the opportunity God had given.
Two thousand years ago some people believed the impossible. A barren woman giving birth in her advanced years. A young woman, a virgin becoming pregnant and bore a son. A good man was willing to take the shame of society to raise a child of questionable origin. Every aspect of the stories we read in scripture seem impossible.
The man born of the barren woman grew. He went out into the wilderness and began to preach. He cried in that desolate countryside, “Repent for the kingdom of God is near.” And people came from across Roman Palestine to listen. People began to wonder if maybe this man was the one. They wondered if John could be the Messiah they were longing for. John responded with a confident no. “I baptize you with water, but he who comes after me, whose sandals I am unworthy to untie, He will baptize with the Spirit and fire.”
The people listened to John. They listened because he had a family that they respected. His father was a priest, and his mother gave birth miraculously. They believed the wondrous story, even though it seemed a bit farfetched, because John stood before them. His dad was unable to speak for nine months and his mother was of advanced age to be giving birth. They wanted John to be something more, but John refused. He stood out in the wilderness and he proclaimed the religious leaders to be a brood of vipers. John often reflects the message of the prophets.
There is a constant cycle within the history of Israel. One of the first sermons I presented here at Willow Creek reflected on these cycles. I spent hours looking up each name of the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. While I did this a theme began to emerge. The names cycled through praise of God, praise of the world, praise of technology, and praise of war. Then the names began to focus on a depressed state of being, names that cried out to God for help, and eventually returned with praises to God. Names carry a meaning. We may not always realize what we are saying to the world when we give a child a name, but they do hold meaning. Often the name that we have or give reflects our current state of mind and where our focus resides. When it comes to names, the culture surrounding scripture believed that names held power. They believed that the name given to an individual prophesied over that individual’s life.
Eve means life and she became the mother of all people. Adam means son of earth. Abram means exalted father, and God changed his name to Abraham which means father of a multitude or nations. Moses means savior, or delivered from the water and he became the savior of a nation and guided Israel through the Red Sea. And his sister Myriam means beloved of the sea. We could go through each name in scripture if we wanted, but I believe we are getting the point, but let us go back to John, God is gracious. He was the voice crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. He cried in the wilderness, repent for the kingdom of God is near. Repent for God is gracious.
Our names carry meaning. My full name in some instances can mean ruler called by God to warn. My surname, like many comes from a family occupation and oddly I guess my family of Quaker pacifists is descended from military leaders that spent their time in towers to alert of impending invasions. But when we take a step back it holds a different message, a leader called by God to speak. One might make a case that I lived into my name, although this was not always my path.
I have spoken often about my own journey of faith. I grew up in the Friends Church. I came from a long line of faithful followers of Christ from the Friends tradition. And my great great grandmother was a recorded Friends minister. I can look back through the generations and see a constant line of faith. Not all people can speak of this. When I was a teenager, I did not care. I did not want faith, I wanted knowledge. I spent years studying, I wanted to be an astronaut but when I realized that being born deaf would limit my ability to achieve that dream, I began looking to other places, and landed on crop science. The science behind genetic engineering was just emerging when I was in high school and I saw the great benefits in it. I know that this can be a divisive topic but stay with me. I wanted to use the knowledge I had, the intelligence I had to help feed the world by becoming a genetic engineer. I did not worry about faith, because I wanted knowledge and science. I attended worship with my family but for me at the time, it was culture.
This all changed around Halloween in 1997, my little sister died in a car accident. This left my mind, heart, and spirit spiraling out of control. On the outside people thought I was handling the loss well, but my inner life was a mess. In my grief I turned, I sought relief in the pleasures of the flesh and shortly after I was an unmarried father of a child. When I looked into the blue eyes of this boy just minutes old, it was as if twenty years of sermons and bible studies came rushing through my mind, and all at once understood love.
The next year I found myself on a plane flying to Ukraine, where I joined a group of college students teaching conversational American English classes and sharing my faith. While I was in Ukraine, God began to call me to ministry. A few months after returning, I sat in my pickup eating lunch and listening to a sermon on the radio, and in that message the pastor read about the conversation Jesus had with Peter shortly after the resurrection. Jesus asked Peter if he loved him more than these.
When my sister died my life spun, when my oldest son was born the spinning stopped and God revealed His Love to me, when that pastor read those verses, a rush again occurred in my mind. It was as if Jesus was asking me if I loved wheat, sorghum, or corn more than him. And my answer was that I loved God more. That brought me to Kansas City. I came here searching. I wanted to follow God, yet I believed that I was not truly acceptable because of my past.
I came to this very Meeting. You did not judge my past, instead you encouraged me. You allowed me to lead a bible study among the young adults, and this was instrumental in the journey that took me into ministry. I then moved to southern Kansas, and pastored for seven years, and in 2010 my family came back to Kansas City again to minister here at Willow Creek. The place that encouraged my initial calling.
I share this because our lives are filled with cycles. History is filled with cycles. We move through life at times we feel extremely close to God and at other times we are a complete mess. If we rely on ourselves only, this will always lead to our own destruction. We as humans can justify any action, and we can also be derailed by actions.
Jeremiah, the Lord Exalts, was a prophet in Judah. His name of course has meaning, but he lived in a time and place where God was not exactly first in the minds of the people. His ministry largely focused on the pending destruction of Jerusalem. He constantly called them adulterous people, likening them to a wife that was unfaithful to her husband, or a rebellious son that refused to follow the wisdom of his father. John the Baptist and Jeremiah would probably have been friends had they not lived thousands of years apart.
Jeremiah cried out to the people that if they did not turn from the present course, they would find themselves in a dire situation, and his prophecies were fulfilled. The northern kingdom fell to Assyria, and for centuries the southern kingdom allied itself with this vicious nation as a vasal state. They remained independent but only in name. Eventually when Assyria’s strength failed, another nation exerted military might over the region and as the people rebelled against this nation, Babylon, their king entered the holy city and destroyed the very structure that defined the nation’s identity, the temple.
While Judah lived under Assyrian direction, they followed the faith of their overlords. As that power diminished, the king of Judah reestablished the worship of the Most High God. This gave rise to a religious nationalism. They praised God with words but did not follow with their hearts. They worshiped the temple and not the God that took residence in that temple.
This is a story that cycles throughout the recorded history within the pages of scripture. The son of the earth and the mother of life turned from God when their desire for wisdom became greater than the desire for a relationship with God. Then the daughters of men brought pleasure to the sons of God and tradition would say the sons of God gave them forbidden knowledge. Knowledge of war, magic, lust, and manipulation. They used this knowledge, and it threatened the very earth to the point God had to preserve it through a flood. The cycles of praise to God, praise of the earth, praise of humanity, praise of technology, praise of war, despair, cries to God for deliverance, and returning to praise of God. They cycle continues and Judah was amid this cycle, they returned, but not fully. They worshiped the works of human hand instead of God. They were caught in praise for technology and this praise led them to war and destruction.
Yet as Jeremiah spoke of the destruction, he looked beyond. Again, he says. “Again I will build you, and you shall be built, o virgin Israel. Again, you shall adorn yourself with tambourines and shall go forth in the dance of merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria’ the planters shall plant and shall enjoy the fruit.”
Jeremiah is not just saying that Judah will return but all twelve tribes. Even the ten tribes lost in Assyrian carnage, will be brought back to fellowship with God.
The word, Again, is used three times in this poetic oracle. We do not always see this simple word as holding importance, but in this instance it does. It is a word of repeat, or extension, it is a word of redemption and renewal. Judah again returned to the land. For four centuries Judah lived in the land, for four hundred years the people of God returned from exile and again inhabited the land of promise. But there is a problem. Judah is not all the tribes, the southern kingdom only represented two of the twelve. The exile remains for the majority of Israel. It remains even to this day because the ten tribes were dispersed among the nations. The ten tribes were dissolved into nations, yet the term again applies.
Jesus was born of a virgin two thousand years ago. He was born into a time and place and everything about his birth was culturally questionable. John’s family was honored and Jesus was questioned. The people of Judah were focused not on the heart but appearances. And John saw that in them when he called them a brood of vipers. They very much reflected the people of Judah during the time of Jeremiah. John watched as Jesus approached and said, “Behold the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.”
Jesus was rejected by the faithful among the culture. Everything about him and his ministry threatened the stability of the established culture. They focused on themselves, their traditions, their manners, and customs. They looked at their own establishment and technologies of various sorts instead of the heart of the nation. John called them a brood of vipers. Jesus was rejected because it was better for one to die than to lose the nation. We cycle through this again and again.
Jesus was rejected, he faced an unjust judgement of false accusations, he suffered under the tyranny of ideology, was executed, and was buried. He faced all this with and for us. We are also treated with injustice, at times. Occasionally we can be caught up in ideology instead of humanity. There are moments where we demonize an individual, as we celebrate the nation. Often, we are with the people condemning Jesus. We too are caught in the cycle.
Yet Jesus came and lived among us. He ate with the sinners. He touched the untouchables. He spoke to those who were unaccepted. Even the Greeks and the Syrians came to speak to him, and Jesus welcomed them. Jesus welcomed the nations, and the nations found grace in the wilderness. Judah remains in spiritual exile because the ten lost tribes have yet returned. They are lost, but through Jesus they are found. Jesus came to reverse the curse and stop the cycle. He showed us what true life with God is, as he lived his life. Jesus then provided the means of that life for us, through his death.
We often focus on the death. It was his death that provided atonement for the sins of the world. The hymns we sing often carry the refrain, “we are washed in the blood.” This is not incorrect, but incomplete. Jesus died with and for us. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, that the wage of sin is death. Jesus, the one sinless man, bore those wages even though he did not deserve nor earn it. We all will eventually die. It is a somber reality, but it is true. We inherited death from our first parents the son of the earth and the mother of life. Yet Jesus is with us even in death, he was buried in a tomb separated from the living. But the story does not end there.
Again! Again, we can have life with God. Again, we can have joy. Again, our sorrows will be turned to merrymaking. Again!
“At that time, declares the Lord, I will be the God of all the clans of Israel,” He is the God of the lost and the found, the scattered and those that remain. “And they shall be my people.” Jerimiah told Judah that they would be separated from the land of promise that they would face Spiritual death, but…again. Again God will build. Again God will restore innocence and hope. Again!
Jesus the child born in questionable circumstances, grew to be a man rejected by his very people, crucified and left in a cold stone tomb. A man that lived a life loving the very people that would eventually kill him. He laid buried, yet God said again. On the third day Jesus emerged from the tomb, and in doing so he ripped the keys from the grip of death and hades. And as he did this, he reversed the destruction caused by the folly of mankind.
I stand here today proclaiming life after death, because I believe the seemingly impossible story. I believe because I have experienced the sorrow, rejection, and the wages of sin. I proclaim this impossible story, because I have experienced Again! I am not the man I was twenty-three years ago, because God has taken all that I have experienced and rebuilt and reformed it for something else. He has fulfilled in me the prophecy of my own name and has given me a new direction. I am a leader called by God to proclaim the impossible story of hope. I am called to encourage us all to become a people loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit, and living the love of Christ with others. I like each of you am touched by the hope of Jesus. The hope of Again!
To Donate to Willow Creek Friends Church Click here:
To donate directly to Pastor Warner click here:
Hear As Those Who Are Taught
By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
April 2, 2023
Click Here to Join our Meeting for Worship
Isaiah 50:4–9a (ESV)
4 The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. 5 The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward. 6 I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting. 7 But the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. 8 He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. 9 Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty?
Today we begin the period of the church year many call Holy Week. Among the various expressions of Friends, we do not celebrate these religious holidays as formally as other Christian traditions, but that does not mean that we do not understand or respect the significance. When the Religious Society of Friends emerged in England in the mid-17th century, they set aside many things. There is a good reason for these actions. For those that are newer to our Meeting, you will notice we have not served the elements of communion or the Eucharist. Many will look upon that neglect and shutter, but there is a reason we do this. Holy Days are another thing that was laid aside.
It is not that we do not believe in holidays, or in the significance sacramental elements hold. It is that we believe in the reality of what surrounds these things so much that incorporate them into our daily lives. Every day is a blessing. Every day is a glorious opportunity God has given us to live. He has given us this day so that we can participate in his Kingdom work, today. If we were to really consider the significance of that awesome reality, that we each are called friends by the creator of the universe, and we are called friends because the same God that breathed life into our first parents and commissioned them in the Garden to go into all the earth and cultivate it to reflect Eden. That same God has given us today, that same mission. How can we truly say that one day, or one week within the year is more important than another? In fact, in the earliest days of the Friends movement it was not uncommon for the Meetings for Worship to be on days other than Sunday.
That’s another thing. You might notice that I call what we are doing here this morning a meeting for worship, instead of a church service. This is another oddity of The Friends. We call the church building a Meetinghouse, and we often call the church the Meeting. All these oddities come from our history. The Friends emerged during a tumultuous time in England. The Reformation, when Protestant churches began to move away from the Church of Rome, began on October 31, 1517. For all the good the reformation did, it was not all wonderful. Those protesting churches moved away from the authority of Rome, and eventually entire nations became divided. And then nations fought against nation, and they justified this action because the people of the other nation were not true Christians. Well England also had a Reformation; the King wanted an heir and his wife only gave birth to daughters. The king petitioned the Bishop of Rome and asked that his marriage would be annulled, but the Pope rejected the plea. Up to that point England had remained loyal to Rome, but after the Pope rejected the king’s plea, the king decided that England would join the Protesting Churches.
The problem with England’s protestant reformation was that the king was not a theologian. This eventually caused within England several various expressions of faith to emerge that tried to become dominant within the Church of England. Each of these groups tried to become a better expression of Christian faith than those that had come before. Each group claimed to be the true church. And eventually in the 17th century, one of those groups gained political strength among the people and used that strength to start a war within their own nation.
England was at war. A war that was waged in many ways between churches. From this climate and culture those early Friends emerged. People that would read the scriptures on a Sunday morning, scriptures that tell you to love your enemy and do good for those that persecute you, and then battle again on Monday. They saw the hypocrisy of people that claimed to be part of the church yet failed to live it in their daily lives. They saw bloodshed, the arguments, the slander, the hatred among brother in Christ and caused them to lament. What good is communion, if it does not change the hearts of those that participate in the ceremony? What good is baptism if the hearts of those that emerged from the waters are not changed? What good is a holy day if tomorrow we take up arms against our neighbors because they are members of a non-conformist congregation instead of the king’s church? Empty words and empty rituals are what they saw around them, so they stopped. They stopped the ceremonial aspects of expressions of faith and turned to the light within, and they began to meet together in silence to nurture that light, and as they met many would then be led to speak while others were led to act. They based their expression of faith on a life lived.
Which brings us to holy week once again, and this day Palm Sunday. The day we celebrate the proclamation of Jesus the Messiah and King. It is a glorious day. A day for celebration. And yet as the people cheered and waved palm branches in the air. As men laid their cloaks on the ground before Jesus as he approached Jerusalem, Jesus wept. He looked at the splendor of his people gazing at the awe-inspiring temple devoted to the Most High God and he said with tears in his eyes, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Jesus wept because he knew. Jesus knew that the excited crowd around him would soon be turned. The shouts of Hosanna would within a few days would be lifted once again except the words being shouted would be, “Crucify him!”
I love Holy week, and I know after my brief and probably inaccurate history of the emergence of Friends, you might think it is odd. I love this week because it reveals to us just how easily we can be swayed by those around us. Even within a culture that prides itself on individuality, our thoughts and ideas can be swayed by the opinions of those around us. We can go from celebration in one moment and a demand for blood the next. This week should remind us of our weaknesses and how fickle our minds can be.
Humanity is this way. It is just part of who we are. As much as we would like to say we value independence, we are communal beasts. We are relational creatures. We cannot survive without interaction with other people. Some research even shows that our brains cannot function to their fullest without other brains around us. We need relationships, so when our community celebrates we often join in with the celebration, and when our community cries for revenge guess what most of us will shout along with our community. Fickle creatures we are, and Holy week celebrates or to be more precise laments our human frailty in this aspect. Isaiah also speaks of this in today’s passage, it speaks of the fickleness of our humanity and yet it speaks of hope.
Isaiah 50 contains one of the servant songs. These songs are often seen as prophecies, foretelling of, the messiah and what will happen to this anointed one. But these poems were written over seven centuries prior to Jesus’s birth. That is seven hundred years of interaction with these words prior to the gospel writers connecting them with Jesus. How did these words encourage the people of faith for those centuries?
This is where my mind often gets caught. Isaiah, ministered just prior to the fall of the Northern Kingdom. And it is also important to remember that Isaiah was not just a prophet but a member of the royal court. He was a scribe, and he would often travel to deliver messages for the king. He was well traveled for a man of his era and this gave him special insights when he began to speak his oracles of faith. He likely participated in negotiations and he saw just how fickle our human experience can be. He foresaw destruction and hope.
“The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.” This is a profound statement, and one that we may often rush past to get to the part we see speaking about Jesus. Isaiah in this statement is encouraging us to learn. He is saying that an education is a blessing from God. Isaiah is praising God for the education that he has received, and he is also praising God that he can use what he knows to encourage those around him. “Sustain with a word him who is weary.”
I sat with this statement for a while as I studied this week. The word that is translated as sustain is interesting. The sense given in the context of the passage is that it means to provide help or assistance. But it is odd. The root of the word can also mean pervert, stoop, make crooked, bend or twisted. This troubled me a bit, because how can a word mean both?
This is where we are in our world. Warring factions on two different sides. Science and anti-Science. Academia and anti-academia. We can make lists everywhere and anywhere, because often everywhere we look there are two sides and each side thinks they are helping and the other side believes they are crooked. And these divisions bring us to the brink of collapse.
We see this later in the poem, “I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.” There is a battle waging in the minds and hearts of mankind. What can help us with these struggles we face?
This is why my mind went to the history of our religious society or church. We, the Friends Church, emerged from within an era of struggle and not just our expression of faith. I would venture to say most faith communities could tell a similar story, their conclusions are probably different than ours, but each group emerged from a struggle of some sort. We could even say that every group, religious or secular, emerged out of a struggle that defined who they are and in many cases plotted their future course. And within each of those struggles we have two sides, and a battle of knowledge.
Back to this one word sustain, on one hand it means to help and the other can see it as perverting or bending. How can we move forward and why is there this struggle? This is where life comes in. To bend or to twist can have multiple meanings. The pickup that rear ended me shortly after we purchased our vehicle bent the metal of our tailgate and I was not happy. But then there are those people that can take metal and bend and twist it to form tools for our survival. It is perspective.
Isaiah continues, “Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.” This is awkward. Some of us in this room can respect the awkwardness of this verse more than others. It is difficult to translate from one language to another. We are all in debt to those that have this ability and training. My favorite book, outside of scripture, was written in Russian had it not been for translators I never would have read it. And none of us could pick up a bible and read it without this as well. Few people can read Greek and Hebrew. Fewer still can pick out the nuances of the language. I am not one of those people. I have a computer program that allows me to click on words and read what others have written on a subject. But to be able to convey the message and meaning of one language to another is a gift.
Even with that gift, phrases can be awkward because different cultures have different expressions. When I was teaching English in Ukraine, this was mostly what we discussed. Little sayings that baffle others but make perfect sense to us.
The New International Version of the bible translates this phrase as, “He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.” And the New English Translation, “He wakes me up every morning; he makes me alert so I can listen attentively as disciples do.”
How do we overcome the struggles around us that threaten to divide? We listen. We listen as if there is something that could be learned from those around us. And we listen as well to the words of scripture. Only after we listen, truly listen do we act.
How often are disagreements between individuals because we fail to listen? How often do arguments begin because one party made an assumption and acted without consulting the other, which is a form of not listening? This is true with nearly every relationship among people. Brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, parents and children, it is true within the workplace, and even between nations. Yes, it is more complicated that I make it sound, but it is true.
We are all in relationships of various forms. We all interact with people, and each person we come in contact with expands our relational network. This can increase our knowledge and it can also increase the likelihood of conflict. When the early Friends began to meet, they met because they did not seem to fit anywhere else. They were often called Seekers by their contemporaries. They were seekers because each of them in some ways were distraught by what they saw around them. They would ask questions but no one was listening. George Fox, the one often regarded as the founder of the Friends, visited many pastors and priest while he was seeking. He was given answers but those that gave the answers did not listen to the questions so George left each encounter feeling empty. Then one day he went out to a field and as he sat, he said that he heard a voice saying, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to your condition.” And George said that his heart leapt for joy.
Our God speaks even today. He speaks through the exploration of the universe and science. He speaks through the interactions we have with others, he speaks through the pages of scripture, and at times he speaks through the light within us. Holy Week reminds us just how quickly we can move from celebration to battle. From a loving embrace to vengeance. As we move through this next week, as we walk with the ancients through that journey from the celebration of the king to the crucifixion, let us see just how we stand. And let us make an effort to learn and to listen. Let us make an effort to live according to the learning and wisdom we have gained. And let us stand with Isaiah, and with Christ and say, “But the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have se my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God helps me’ who will declare me guilty?”
To Donate to Willow Creek Friends Church Click here:
To help support the personal ministry of JWQuaker (Jared Warner) online and in the community click to donate.
Restored
By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
March 26, 2023
Click here to join our Meeting for Worship
Ezekiel 37:1–14 (ESV)
1 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. 2 And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. 11 Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
Ezekiel is not my favorite book of scripture. There are a few really interesting stories, or visions that he records. But overall it is a book that will leave you troubled. If the things that Ezekiel speaks about are literal and not an exaggeration, the world today is extremely moral and pure.
I think it is important to have this book in scripture though. It gives us a glimpse into something that I hope we will never have to experience. Ezekiel was born during the reforms instituted by Josiah. Josiah became king of Judah after they had spent a century as a vassal nation under the dominion of Assyria. A few weeks ago we spoke about that time when Isiah advised the king not to enter into an agreement with this nation. Assyria laid waste to the northern kingdom of Israel, and spared Judah as long as they continued to pay tribute. When Josiah became king, they found the books of the Law, and Ezekiel’s father and all the other priest began to restore the righteousness of the nation.
Ezekiel watched as his father did these things. They tore down the altars on the high places. They instituted the feasts and festivals according to Torah. They began to train the next generation of priest, of which Ezekiel would become. And as they did these things Nationalism began to take hold of the people.
There is a healthy respect for one’s nation. I love my country because it is where I was born. But to blindly accept everything a nation does as being honorable because it is your nation, that is nationalism. Nationalism is irrational, it is idolatry. It is taking the love people have for their home and manipulating it to promote something that does not reflect the history and culture of the people that live there. Josiah was a good king. He tried his best to do what was right in the eyes of God, and scripture honors him in that attempt. But there is always a but, Josiah was human. For the past century the people of Judah lived under the thumb of pagan rulers, even their own kings promoted the worship of these pagan gods. Josiah sought to move Judah away from that and rightfully so. As they did this, as they repented spiritually, the people began to think that they deserved something better.
They began to think God was indebted to them. They began to believe that they deserved, that God owed them. And they began to move against Assyria politically and militarily thinking we have turned back to God and God will protect and liberate our nation because we are on the right side.
History would prove that the timing of this nationalistic movement would correspond with the weakening of Assyria and the rise of Babylon. And as Assyria plead with Egypt to help them with Babylon, Judah thought that they could gain full independence once again and Josiah lead the army to intercept Egypt. They were defeated and became a vassal of Egypt instead of Assyria.
Ezekiel watched this happen as he was being trained to serve God in the temple. He watched the rise of this nationalistic fervor; he watched as they made attempts to become righteous. He watched as the people of his nation turned to God in word, but those words did not saturate the soils of their being. Their heart, the core of who they were as individuals and as a nation were still as idolatrous as they had been for the past century. And this young apprentice priest watched as the rulers of his nation gave lip service to God and acted contrary. He watched as they went from a vassal of Assyria, to Egypt, and eventually he watched as Babylon deported Judah’s future far from Jerusalem. He watched because he was among them.
Ezekiel was just becoming a man when he made compulsory journey across the wilderness. Just as he would have been coming of age to serve in the Temple of God, he was following the pathways of the goat that was meant for Azazel. He like the youth of Judah were being lead away from their home, away from the dwelling place of God into a land that was not their own, a land under the dominion of evil. They were in exile.
I go through this brief and simplified history because we should make an attempt to gain the perspective of this man before we look at the reports of his visions. Ezekiel was not in Jerusalem when the temple was destroyed by Babylon. Ezekiel was among those that were carried away. He suffered not because of his own actions but because of choices others made around him. He suffered because his parents’ generation and those that came before them made choices that his generation were indebted to. The story of Ezekiel in many ways is the story we live in today. We see it in the news, we see it in our social media feeds, we see the same story within the arguments between the boomers and the millennials and Gen Z. Ezekiel speaks from the perspective of those that pay the price. And I want us to sit with that idea for a moment. Ezekiel speaks about the suffering of Israel, a suffering caused by the choices of his parents and grandparents, a suffering that must be endured even though it is not fair. And Ezekiel with all his vulgarity and passion helped a lost generation find faith in the most unlikely place.
This young man, this apprentice priest, who was just coming to an age where he could begin serving in the temple was exiled to Babylon and had been in that foreign land for five years before he received his first vison from God. That first vision is filled with imagery that is terrifying and confusing if we want to be honest. If you were to do an internet search for literal depictions of angels from scripture, it is the stuff of nightmares and that is what Ezekiel saw. But it is imagery not literal, Ezekiel was seeing the magnificence and the terror of the very throne of God. The throne of God is both beautiful and terrible depending on the perspective of those gazing upon it. And unfortunately for Ezekiel it was terrifying because he was called to go to a rebellious nation. He was not being sent to the people that were left in the land of Judah, but he was being sent to those that paid the price for the rebellions to those in exile. If you are brave, I encourage you to read Ezekiel. If you are brave I encourage you to look deeper and examine your life, our community, and our nation in the light of this prophetic book. But I warn you it is not for the faint of heart, because it is vulgar and brutal.
Today, we meet this young priest as he is again meets with God within a vision. And God takes this priest into the deserts of the soul to show him the truth behind the rebellious nation. “He brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones.”
I have heard songs about this vision my entire life. Since I was a child I have been told about this vision, and yet those songs and the stories do not do the passage justice. They skip past the terror of the vision and make light of the reality. This is a valley full of bones. And Ezekiel is walking through this valley. This is not just a vision of a graveyard, but the vicious carnage of war. A war so devastating that the fallen were not removed and buried, but left in disgrace to the elements. The devastation was so vast that no one came to the battle ground for such a long time that the fallen were forgotten for so long that their bones were not just dry, but very dry or bleached in the sun.
We have a tendency to rush through these words, but as I sat with these words this week my mind was captivated with these first two verses. My heart is heavy as I reflect on these words. A valley of bones. A valley of the forgotten, the damned. A valley filled with young men that bravely followed their leaders into battle, only to be struck down and left. It is in-human what is being said in these verses. It is a commentary on the dehumanization that occurs when ideology becomes more important than humanity. Throughout the valley Ezekiel walks. Imagine the shear emotional pain this man was feeling at that moment. Imagine the full-throated wails of sorrow this young priest would have been uttering as each step was greeted by yet another empty gaze from the eyes of the disregarded. My chest tightens with the thought. And I imagine eventually emotion grips him completely and he falls down next to one of the bleached remains of a man who might have been younger than him.
Ezekiel walks this valley of despair, and I imagine like so many who question the existence of God, he asks where was God when? God is right there with Ezekiel as he walks in that dry valley. Often we look at this passage and the voice we imagine is booming around, I do not think that is the case. I believe God was in tears right next to Ezekiel.
God is right next to Ezekiel, he is with him as he faces the grim reality of the failures of the kingdoms of men. And I believe they just sat looking across this valley in tears. I believe they sat with those fallen men and watched as the shadows marked the hours. God sat with Ezekiel as he gazed upon the hopelessness before him. And as the tears dried God asks this young priest, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
What question is God really asking? As we sit in a hopeless situation, as we look at the world around us and we see everything seems to fall apart. God is asking us, “Can hope be restored?”
Not long ago I went to Union Station and visited the Holocaust exhibit. And I remember looking at a single shoe with a sock still stuck with it. Behind that single shoe was a photograph of a mountain of shoes. And in that moment, I realized just how weak I am. When I went to school, I read the writings of the theologians of the confessing church. At the time I thought yes, I would be like those great individuals that stood up against the evil they saw before them, and yet as I looked at that single shoe, I realized that I would not. That single shoe convinced me, it showed me just how often I too have denied the humanity of someone, and how I too have blindly followed and even carried the banner that would deny the humanity of person that might have worn that shoe. Ezekiel sat with the bones, I stood staring at a shoe, and both of us came to grips with the reality that we are at fault. Those bones were there because ideologies denied humanity, just as that shoe did. There is always a cost and eventually that debt will come do. But can hope be restored?
Ezekiel answered God saying, “O Lord God, you know.” Ezekiel in this moment is not expressing exuberant faith. He is expressing resignation. He is at the end of himself. He is looking at the sun bleached bones and he is saying that there is nothing he can do. The bones are dry, all is lost. God is with Ezekiel in that pit of despair. He is with him in the hopelessness, but God does not let Ezekiel stay in that place. “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them. O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”
What do we do when all hope seems lost? If we were to deeply study Ezekiel, you will see that he often makes reference to the Garden of Eden. He takes the rebellious nation he was called to minister to not back to king David, not back to Abraham, but to the very beginning. He reminds them not of the glories of the kingdom, but he reminds them of God’s original plan. God’s original plan was that God and humanity would walk together. That humanity would go out into creation and nurture the entire earth and make it into an extension of the garden. Ezekiel reminds them that even the kingdom ruled by David was not the original plan, but was one sign of repentance. It is not the nation in a political sense that God wants, the people. God wants us to repent. He wants us to return to him.
We can continue to be motivated by the kingdoms of men, but where does that lead us? Turn on the news and it will tell you. Wars, famine, poverty, devastation all around, hopelessness. God wants something more than a government he wants us. In the query we reflected on today it asks a question, “Do you attend regularly the services of your church and participate in them actively? Do you prayerfully endeavor to minister, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in humble dependence upon Christ, the spiritual gifts with which you have been entrusted?”
That query is like the question God asks Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones live?” Can hope be restored? The answer that God gave to Ezekiel is a resounding YES! Hope can be restored, the garden can be reestablished. And it begins with each of us turning away from the things that dehumanize and turn back to the things that restore the dignity of each human life. “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Hope is restored when we draw near to God, when we listen to his voice, when we let the words we confess percolate deep into the very core of who we are, and we let it revive us. Hope is restored when we embrace that of God instead of that of man. Hope is restored when we walk with the dry bones and as Saint Francis says, “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.”
But where do we start? There is a valley of dry bones before us. There is a war in Europe, wars in Africa, earthquakes in Turkey, and that person on Facebook just said something bad about me. We do not live in Europe, we do not live in Africa, we do not live in Turkey, but we live here now. We begin to restore hope in our lives and in the dry bones around us when we begin to Love God, Embrace the Holy Spirit, and live the love of Christ with others. We love God by actively participating in the Meetings of Worship. We actively participate by preparing ourselves for worship. That means turning off the tv for a bit and reading scripture instead so that when we come to worship, we have something to contribute. We embrace the Holy Spirit by taking the words we read and meditating on them in prayer. By talking with God about what we have read and allowing space for the Spirit to speak and guides. And we live the love of Christ with others but using the things that we have, our finances, our careers, our talents, and our time to encourage those around us. This does not only have to be here in this Meetinghouse, but everywhere we go. We restore hope by living and reflecting the love of Christ wherever we are. God is asking each of us, “Can hope be restored? Can these bones live?” How will we respond? “O Lord God, you know.”
To Donate to Willow Creek Friends Church Click here:
To donate directly to Pastor Warner click here: