March 22, 2026
Lent 5 Year A
Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 4:5-42
Epiphany, Winnipeg
We’re getting a taste of Easter right here in the middle of Lent. In this season where we have been called again to repent, to turn around and to follow new paths, in this season where we are called to be honest about our own sin, our own broken relationships with one another and with the land and with God; in this season where we are are called to be honest about our own dying; in this season today we get a taste of Easter.
We hear of dry bleached bones in the desert being given flesh and spirit and life, and we hear of Lazarus, dead in the grave four days, coming to life and coming out of the tomb when Jesus calls.
And couldn’t we all use a bit of Easter right now? As bombs fall on Iran and as Iran sends its own explosive gifts to neighbours all around them, more and more bones are added to the drying bones in Ezekiel’s valley. Every time we have another conversation about what’s happening in the world, what’s happening to our neighbour, sometimes what’s happening in our own neighbourhoods, it’s as though we’re standing in the valley with Ezekiel and all his people and saying, “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost…” And every time we ponder what’s gone wrong, God asks us, “Mortal, can these bones live?” And so often the best we can answer is, “O God, you know.” Only God knows.
Who doesn’t need some Easter right now, right? A few weeks ago I lost a very dear friend, and I know that some of us here have also lost someone they love in the last while. Maybe you’re waiting while someone you know draws closer to their last breath – in a day, a week, a month… - and we all know that our own time will come – in a day, a week, a month or more. As all that happens, sometimes we’re like Martha meeting Jesus at the site of her brother’s grave and saying, “I know that they will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” We’ll all say that together in the creed about ten minutes from now. Yet sometimes we’re just like Martha and her sister Mary, meeting Jesus and just saying, “If you’d been here he wouldn’t have died.”
Who doesn’t need some Easter right now, right? Where bones come back to life, and where a word from God brings death to an end.
Ezekiel needed a word like that.
You see, Ezekiel had been a priest in the temple at Jerusalem, where he was one of many who presided over the ritual life of the people of Israel. The work that he did was part of the whole work of the people to hold the nation together. But when Ezekiel has this vision that we’ve seen, it’s a decade or two since that nation has fallen apart. You might recall – I’ve gone on about it before - how a nation from the east named Babylon had invaded Israel and Judah. The capital city Jerusalem was ruined, the temple was torn down, and over a few years most of the people were taken away and forced to live far away from home in Babylon. Some other ones fled before they could be taken away, and a few were left behind to manage or scrape by in a ruined and empty land.
Ezekiel was one of the ones taken away to Babylon, where he and all of his people wonder if their nation will ever get its life back; if their nation will ever get its land back; if they will ever get their home back.
So Ezekiel has this vision, and in that vision God takes him to this valley that is empty of life and full of dry bones. Ezekiel is all alone in this valley of bones. Now everybody knows that bones by themselves can’t live. Ezekiel stands alone in all of this, and as the vision goes on God tells Ezekiel that these bones can live, and God says, “Tell the bones that they will live!” So Ezekiel tells the bones to live, and they grow muscle and tissue and come together to make a valley full of bodies, but bodies that still have no life.
Now everybody knows that bodies without breath can’t live. So God says to Ezekiel, “Preach to the Spirit, to the Wind, to the Breath” – they’re all the same word in Hebrew – “Tell the the spirit that I tell it to come with the wind from the four corners of the earth and to breathe upon all these bodies that have no life.” So Ezekiel prophesied; he preached to the Spirit, the Wind, the Breath, and it breathed on those bodies, and they stood up. All those people stood up.
Those bodies come to life, and Ezekiel’s not alone in the valley any more. Because everybody knows that a person can’t be all alone.
Those bones, says the dream, are all the people of Israel. And God says to Ezekiel, “Tell those people that they are going to live. They might feel like they’re in a grave now, but I will open those graves and they will get their land back and they will be at home and they will live. Because I said so.”
It’s an old old story. Twenty-five, twenty-six hundred years old. It’s a time long past, but it’s a story that we see often enough now, and maybe it helps us to see the stories around us and the stories in our lives in a new way.
We saw it on the streets of Minneapolis not so long ago. Trucks full of armed agents in masks moved in, and people were swept up off the streets and taken from schools and workplaces and homes. The forces that made it all happen expected to meet people who are alone and afraid to resist; they expected a valley full of dry bones. Instead, a wind from God blew from the four corners of the earth, and people stood up in the valley that was not full of dry bones, and they sang and they sheltered their neighbours and they brought food to people who were afraid to leave their homes. Some of them knit red resistance toques, they posted music online, they prayed and they protested. Some were quiet about it and some were loud and brash because living flesh and bone and spirit need to make noise sometimes.
Powers that rule from far away might have hoped for a valley of dry bones. But those bones lived, and like Ezekiel’s people hoping to return home, those bones lived and acted like their home was their home.
We’ve seen it on the streets of Tehran, and in so many places where people don’t settle for saying, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” In all those stories in all of those places there is a spirit that blows, a breath that comes on the four winds and stirs people up, and who shows them that they are not alone in a dry and dying valley.
The story unfolds in other ways too. A few weeks ago a very good friend of ours died. A little bit expected but mostly unexpected. He was in Saskatoon, part of a close circle of friends we have there. It was a bit lonely to be here, so far away. A few days later, we drove out to Saskatoon to be with those friends and to be there for the funeral, and although we were kind of in this valley full of dying it seemed sometimes like a spirit had blown from all over and breathed life into all of us who were grieving. Nobody was alone in the valley. We’d sit with friends in a living room, just kind of being together as we lived with this death in our own ways, but not alone. A few days later, as people filled a church for the funeral and then a community centre for a small and fitting party, I saw a lot of old friends, but even more than that I saw people I didn’t know at all. But it was clear that all of us were living together – living together - in this valley so filled with dying. A wind from the four corners breathed through that place, and it became a crowd of people, flesh and bones filled with a spirit of life, living as though life will keep going, living as though life is going to carry us through.
Maybe this old story of God and Ezekiel and all those bones brought to life isn’t so complicated for our time. There’s just this Spirit of life who blows among us. When we can’t help but say, “Our hope is lost, we’re cut off and alone” - and I’m pretty sure we’re all that way some time - there’s this Spirit of life who blows in among us and says, “Your bones will live,” and then that Spirit blows and raises us up together. Now.
When Jesus came down to Bethany to be with his friends Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus died, maybe he had that old story of Ezekiel and the dry bones on his mind. Maybe he wondered what to say and what to do, but then he remembered that story, and he said, “Lazarus will live again. Those bones will live.” Then he said, “I’m resurrection and life right now; those bones will live.” And then Jesus, the living Word of God, spoke a word from God, and death lost its power, and Lazarus and all those people, bones and flesh filled with breath, filled with Spirit, came to life right then. And then Jesus, the living Word of God, spoke a word from God, and death lost its power, and we bones and flesh filled with breath, filled with Spirit, come to life right now. It’s a little taste of Easter, right here in the middle of Lent. The Resurrection and the Life is right here, today, and these bones do live.