Midland Circuit Winkel - April 5, 2011

The Church Season of Easter,
Lent 4, Circuit Winkel
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (April 6, 2010)

Readings:   
        Psalm 33
        Ezekiel 37:1-14
        1 John 5:4-10
        John 20:19-31

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

Ezekiel 37:1-14

“1 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

In this season of Lent, in this time of reflection, repentance, and prayer, it would seem that our dinner prayer from Psalm 145 has now become, “the eyes of most look to themselves as Lord, and how can I get my food in the shortest time.”  It is a lost and fallen, topsy, turvey world in which we live.  A world in which neither a biblical perspective nor the outward appearances of things remain important, rather it is only important how we see to it to justify ourselves.  

God asked Ezekiel what he saw, that is if Ezekiel thought all those bones could live, and Ezekiel responded, “Lord, YHWH, you know.”(v. 3)  And to Ezekiel God said, “breath and blow into these slain that they may come back to life,”(v.9) and in that vision that is exactly what happened.  Ezekiel believed what he had heard God say, and Ezekiel believed what he saw.

Oh that we as pastors could see with eyes of faith like the end of Ezekiel’s vision.  Our hearts want that reality, that every person would hear the Gospel and be enlivened by His gift of faith given through the Holy Spirit.  But, no matter how many we see come to faith, there are always so many more dry bones.  More Gospel to proclaim, it is an overwhelming challenge for you and for me.  How can we ever win?

We know and we are taught that the answer is we cannot do that which only the Holy Spirit can do through the Word and the Sacraments.  But we see our reason as our only strength and so we question, “what difference can a little water, and a piece of bread, and a sip of wine make?” We cry, "it’s just not enough." How can we use these simple fool hearty means against a most crafty and evil opponent who sees to it that the sinful flesh is stripped from the bones. 

The means to win the battle and the war upon satan are given and won by Christ.  Yet, who are the means of delivering God’s means?  Well it has been said that, “Century after century Christians have continued to take men from their communities, to set them apart, and to say, “We want you [pastor] to be responsible for saying, acting among us, to direct us, from the Scriptures, what we believe about the gifts of God and [His] kingdom and [His] Gospel.”  That Christian community has called each of you and called me too.  And so hearing this call we spend some time reading, learning, and inwardly digesting God’s Word, so that we may accurately and with great precision proclaim God’s gifts, with the hope that all may one day see God and live. 

And we are to proclaim God’s Word with vigor, in the face of a world who would rather scoff at God, like those amusing atheist’s who are so angry at a god they say doesn’t exist.  We as pastors are called to proclaim that, “We believe that God is not a far away spectator.”  God has not made a cuckoo clock world wound it up and stepped away.  God does not sit feet up in His heavenly bark-o-lounger chair saving His favor for only the baseball or football player or pastor who will or will not cross himself.  Nor does God expect that this wrecked world will be corrected by pastors with their machinations, inventions, or programs.

No, we are called to proclaim God’s Word, and to administer His Sacraments.  We as pastors are to say that, “We believe that everything, especially everything, that looks like human wreckage in this world, is material that God would sacrifice His only Son to give them life.”  To “breath and blow into these slain that they may come back to life.”  To help all to see that we are to return thanks for what He has done for us.  And we as pastors are called to, “believe all this” with all our hearts and with all our minds and with all our souls and with all our strength.  And you know, at times I’m not sure we believe it, and I’m pretty sure “we don’t always see it.” 

Rather, “we see like Ezekiel in the beginning of his vision.  We see only a multitude of dismembered skeletons whitened under a pitiless Babylonian sun.“ We see with sorrow in our eyes a world filled with a dwindling number of Christian bones. We see in our community disconnected and disjointed people who, “once were laughing and dancing.  We see out in the world adults who once made love and made plans bound in Christians ideals.”  With dim faithless eyes we see a dwindling number of believers who once brought their doubts, sung their praises, and who not only admitted that they had sin, but they confessed those sins in church.  We see no hope, we see no way for God to connect this overwhelming randomness back together, and if we look only in despair that’s all that we ever see.  We see dry bones. 

“But what we’re failing to see is sin and the judgment of sin.”  Oh, we see the result of sin, the fallen church attendance, the fallen relationships, the challenged budget, the church wars and rumors of wars.  Because that’s what sin looks like it looks like dry bones.  It looked that way to Ezekiel too, it looks that way to any pastor with eyes to see.  And a skeptical world looks right back at us and sees idle misinformed, misdirected pastoral, bones.  Bone, bones everywhere but no pastors with brains to preach. 

Repent.  For as pastors we are called to proclaim with all the heavenly assurance we know exists, that we, “believe something else, something other than what we see.”  As it has been recently said, “we in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod are in a unique opportunity of time, because we have been given and have kept what other churches have given away, and that is the belief in and the proclamation of the Bible, the inerrant Word of God.”  We are not called to have faith in our own reason or strength but rather that we believe that this sinful world will come together, dry bone to dry bone, tendons, muscles, organs, and skin upon human beings who will speak, and sing, and laugh, and work, and will believe and will one day see the face of God.  All these things not by our actions, nor by their actions, but rather by the grace of God.

Therefore, rejoice!  Dry bones are restored by the ministry of God’s Word and by His Sacraments.  By proclaiming God’s grace to His beloved children, to their parents, to children at their birth, and to all God’s saints at the hour of their death and everything in between. 

To be a Pastor is to stand in awe of what God does in Christ Jesus through the ministry of His Word.  To be honored to bow down and to serve God’s people in their celebrations and in their sorrows, to bring His comforting Word in their days of sunshine, and when the phone rings in the deepest, drizzling, coldest, darkest, and clammy nights. My brothers, this is the honor to which we have been called.  We are called to witness and to proclaim to all who would hear what God has done for us through His Son Jesus Christ.  And not only that, we are called to believe it ourselves too.  To see that we also receive a renewal of faith in the Sacraments and that God’s Word gives our weary disconnected and disjointed bones renewed strength.  We are called and honored to witness to the countless number of dry bones in this world and to point them to see what God does in hanging His Son Jesus Christ upon the cross where there was no separated or broken bones to be found.  The eyes of Ezekiel, the eyes of God’s saints, the eyes of all look to you O Lord and in the grace Your Son Jesus Christ You take our dry bones and renew and restore our flesh at the proper time.  No bones about it, just pure grace. Amen.

The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
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