All are welcome to join us for Sunday Service and Sunday School at 10 am.

This is the lesson for Sunday.

“He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel 37:3

As we journey into the final days of Lent, this reading from the Book of Ezekiel, for the Fifth Sunday, invites us to reflect on a vivid metamorphosis from death to life. This marvelous vision, celebrated in song, begins strangely with a collection of bones littering a valley floor. Before Ezekiel’s eyes, the bones come together, assembling themselves into skeletons, and growing flesh and skin. The bodies stay dead, however, until the dramatic moment when God puts breath into them.

The Hebrew for “breath” also means “Spirit.” And the vision would have reminded its’ hearers of Genesis 2:7, where God breathed life into humankind. The interpretation of Ezekiel’s prophecy applies to the house of Israel, which was despairing, broken in Spirit and hopeless. God is reminding Israel that it would take a miracle to bring her remnants back together from the distant places they were scattered.

“Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely,” the people of Israel declare. To be made truly alive, Israel will need a greater miracle: a new Spirit, the breath of God. So, God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the breath with the words: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

Thus, to the exiles in Babylon, who feel as good as dead, the Prophet is saying that God will not abandon them and that God will one day restore them to their land. Does God do this because the people have earned forgiveness? No, it is so that the people will know that God is all-sovereign and that God’s word can be trusted. Because that my friends, is the nature of God; and the nature of God’s love for us.

Rev. Marlene