Ezekiel 37:1-14

1. This vision is directed toward a social resurrection, not a vision of afterlife. I do admit that the graves in v. 12 would lead to such a view.

2. Please go back to the preceding chapter to get a better handle on context; we are involved in land, spirit, and leadership..

3. The valley may well lead the reader back to an early section:3:22-5:17

4. Ruah=spirit/breath/wind. It is not always easy to determine which.

5. The slain brings up a sense of a defeated army.

6. Odell’s newer commentary cites the possibility of the dry bones being part of a covenant curse/treaty violation in other surrounding countries, p. 450

7. The bones recall the creation of Adam in Gen. 2:7

8. One could talk about a dying church, a decaying culture here.

9. Only God can make a tomb a womb.

10. What kills hope? What makes hope live?

11. What dead parts of your life have come to resurrection?

12. The dry bones make one think about the aridity of modern life. The bones come together into a living whole. Our analysis and compartments makes coherent living difficult.

Quick Reaction on Pew Research for Greensburg, IN paper

The major Pew Research on Religion is trumpeted on the news. Much of it isn’t news, as it marks the continuation of the American experiment in the diversity of religious expression. It also shows the remarkable religious character of Americans. Around 84% of Americans are affiliated with a church. For all the cries of rampant secularism, that is a striking figure. That figure has declined since their last major study, but it shows real strength of continuity more than change.

The culture of the marketplace continues to drive American religion, as we act as consumers shopping for something that fits. We have always been a seedbed for new religious movements: from Shakers in the 1700s, to the disciples, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 19^th century, to the holiness and Pentecostal movements of the last century. A couple of generations ago, people were encouraged to marry within their denomination of origin, but marriages are far more mixed than that now. Americans are much more fluid in terms of religious expression. I was surprised that neither education status nor income levels seem to be correlated to religious attachments.

We may be moving into a phase of “collage religion, ” a mix and match sets of individualized faith selections. Unaffiliated Protestant churches are growing. Much of it is stylistic, instead of the more doctrinal disputes earlier. Rock-based music and casual dress are the new norms. For years churches have used blended musical styles. Think of the classically based preludes and postludes and the simple gospel tunes that are sung by the congregation in the same service. Now we try to blend some of those same gospel tunes with rock music. Catholics spoke of praying the rosary, but I see it as a preparation for prayer, to create a meditative posture for prayer. The dull sameness of the insipid lyrics creates a sentiment among the faithful to prepare for worship through its repetitive nature, so in its way it is rosary through rhythm. I just attended some of a retreat led by a talented Franciscan at St. Mary’s that takes some “new age” materials, positive thinking, and meditation and molds them into new contemporary stew for the seeker. The Presbyterian Book of common Worship liberally cites many sources, and some of its Eucharistic prayers are almost indistinguishable from the forms of the Mass.

I do fear that the changeable nature of faith commitments will have some drawbacks. I don’t know how often faith can “afflict the comfortable” when such an affront could mean switching churches. Loyalty can be a virtue to help us discern the difference between a minor disagreement and something more potent. I’m afraid that churches may be afflicted with paralysis over big decisions out of fear that a number of people will use the decision as a pretext to leave. Instead of a mixed body, churches may become more homogeneous, a type of religious niche market.

The early church faced more grave challenges, of course. It did so by emphasizing that Jesus Christ broke down the walls we are so willing to erect. The early church was determined to have different people with different views learn to live together as a model for others. Expressing voice, dispute, and seeking reconciliation is the preferred path to exit when facing disputes. The church is being swamped by a cultural change of change that threatens to leave us rootless and unattached. Part of me loves the blooming of so much religious expressions; part of me fears we are elevating the trivial as principle.

Both passages have water at the center. Water is a fundamental need of all living things. When something fundamental is threatened we react with anger, and even violence. Our prayers turn into demands or bargains.

We all live in Meribah and Massah at times. The place of contention is always there, and can be as destructive as the incident here. It could be with a boss, at home, at church. It can be directed at a leader, a project, or even God. They complain, but don’t lift a finger to help, like a child expecting Mom to know where their socks have gone. After a while, we start to get used to Meribah, even enjoy, and make sure that conflict is cooking. Water cools the heat of the strife here.

At a spiritual level, the Massah, the place of testing, is more dangerous. Who are we to put God to the test? Notice this is not a test of the people. God does not like being treated as having demands made. They seem to forget the miracles just performed, and they demand to know how they are going to get the help they need right now. Their thirst threatens their trust. As they learn to become a free people, they are learning about being leaders and followers, and the hand of God. They will venture on to the very presence of God at Sinai and receive the Ten Commandments and the regulations that will mark them as a functioning polity.

Living, spiritual water is a fundamental need. I feel the need to remind us that this woman was no ancient Elizabeth Taylor. She had no choice in either being widowed or divorced. It may well be that she works so hard that she has to be getting water at a hot time of the day. Her relationships have dried up. Her hopes may have dried up. She has to lug heavy water jugs. Now Jesus tells her of an easy source of water. Unlike Nicodemus, she is speaking with Jesus in broad daylight, not under the cover of darkness. She does not make a disagreement the occasion for a fight, either, even though plenty of animosity existed between Jews and Samaritans. Then, unlike Nicodemus, she starts to get it. Not physical water, but the refreshment we all need will bubble up from the inside, our own personal well. Living water is also the water of life, inside and outside. I find it significant that she left her water jar to go tell the news to the folks in town. The spiritual takes precedence of the physical here. Jesus is giving her a spiritual gift of a well to which she can return morning, noon, and night.

I hope that some of the people of Israel could be grateful every time they had a drink of water in the desert as a gift. I hope that the Samaritan woman’s life got easier. Even if it didn’t, I hope she remembered her encounter with a stranger where a drink of water turned into a discussion of the nature of god, that god loved her enough to give her living water. The living water bubbles up within us when we face the Meribahs in our lives and try to handle disputes with some maturity. The living water rushes in when we look at the unused staffs we have in our hands to draw upon help when we need it. The living water pours down when we feel alone and abandoned and someone takes the time to listen to us. The living water washes our eyes and we are able to see the staff in our hand, one that has been there all the time, and we find the capacity to use it. The living water nurtures our trust in God. We know well tht water is a most precious resource, especially after a dry summer. The living water is inexhaustible and always available.

1. To see dominates this passage-Samuel is a seer. Seeing can be physical or insight or noticing things, or understanding things.

2. God looks past appearances

3. Still, David’s appearance is carefully noted, sort of a biblical Tom Brady. I’m not certain if the eyes are attractive or able to see well.

4. Samuel is grieving-but what and for whom? Is it that he was wrong about Saul? Is he sorry for Saul, the nation, or the whole idea of kingship?

5. Notice that David’s brother seems to be a surrogate Saul-Even now, leaders are often tall.

6. David is a symbol of Israel, small yet beloved by God. Notice his name only appears at the end of the quest.

7. Why does God seem to like turning expectations around, such as picking David, the youngest?

8. What are your best features? What is hidden about you that most people don’t notice or recognize?

9. What makes a good leader in your eyes? Are you good at selecting them?

10. Don’t you wish you would get help in making a decision in the way Samuel received help?

11. Names David=beloved; Eliab= God is father; Saul=asked, requested; Samuel=heard of God Jesse=possibly to stand out

Lenten devotion-Week of February 24

Sunday Feb. 24-One of the readings today speaks of Meribah, the place of conflict or contention. Where is Meribah in your life? Do you have multiple Meribahs at home, work, organizations? How do you try to resolve conflicts? Do you seek out Meribah or to avoid it? How can learning to deal with conflict be a good spiritual discipline?

Monday- When we say that someone is a good person, what do we mean? Are they easy to get along with; do they do kind things easily; do we detect a purity in them? Do you consider yourself a good person? Why? Do others, perhaps?

Tuesday- My new Theology Today has an article by the famous preaching teacher David Buttrick on the evocative language of Jesus in the synoptic gospels (the first 3 gospels). He says that Jesus “invites us to live in God’s future ahead of time.” He sees all of the highly charged language of Jesus as influenced by the vision of god changing the world, into one fit for human life. What elements of God’s future impinge on your life now?

Wednesday- John Bowker wrote a set of devotions with the arresting title, A Year to Live. He quotes words of Alcuin “let us love the lasting things of heaven, more than the dying things of earth.” What are some things in your life that should die, such as a regret, a vice, some neurotic guilt? What are some lasting things that you would like to fall in love with?

Thursday Bonhoeffer wrote:” everything that we can rightly ask and expect from God is to be found in Jesus Christ…we can demand nothing and ask for everything. God has said Yes and Amen in Jesus (2 Cor.1:20). This Yes and Amen is the only solid ground on which we stand.” When does your image of God differ from your image of Jesus? We often imagine god saying a gigantic No to us. What does God affirm in our lives? What does God affirm in your life?

Friday- Taking frustrations out on the wrong people can be a deadly sin for relationships. Sometimes we do it for the sheer proximity, but sometimes we treat them badly because we know they will put up with such behavior, at least for a while. Do you try to make it up to the person you wronged by lashing out at them due to your frustration? How do you react when someone lashes out at you for no apparent reason?

Saturday- Jude is usually cited for its beautiful blessing at its close. Today I picked up on its images in v.12 of ‘waterless clouds” and “fruitless trees.” Sometimes it does feel like our effort does not amount to much. Are there waterless clouds in your life that you keep wanting to make rain? Is there a tree in your life that you would be better off not waiting on fruit any longer?

Both Abram and Nicodemus are on an uncertain journey: Abram, later Abraham in geography, and Nicodemus within. Both know that are going to pull up stakes. Both are taking a shot in the dark. Is it a fresh start for Abram? Can we, should we try to erase a history? Can any move erase the past? As Joe Louis said, you can run but you cannot hide. Both offered the blessing of a fresh start. Few things sound so promising as a fresh start when things seem stale and routine. What are they being asked to risk, to give up, to lose? Is Abram going through an entire change and Nicodemus is looking for a partial one?

This is one of the great examples of John working on the physical and spiritual planes and people trying to stick with one at a time. Jesus speaks of being born again, born anew, born from above to see and enter the kingdom, the realm, the way of God, but wasn’t Nicodemus already of citizen of God’s world? Now he is told about seeing and entering it as if he is a stranger. Water and spirit usher in the new age.They offer a new point of departure, not a conclusion. Jesus then shifts to an image that we lift up/exalt a bronze serpent of healing, just like the symbol at the pharmacy. Last week the serpent is a symbol of sly, malign intelligence. Loving light or the dark is our movement into the way of God. At the same time we do well to be careful we don’t privilege certain personal experiences over the cross, especially when we have decided what is to be called born again or born from above.

God’s way in both of these stories is a bit elusive and shadowy. We don’t know why God picks Abram at all, just as we don’t know why God calls on us during our lives. We don’t know if Nicodemus is a seeker of wisdom, an investigator of Jesus, but he is left baffled and confused by Jesus’s deflection of his questions. Life and prayer rarely give us clear answers to the questions that pop up within us. In our rich and complex lives, what makes us think that we are owed simple explanations and simpler answers?

Abram becomes Abraham of course. He does live in the Promised Land and becomes rich, so many blessings come his way. He goes through many family trials. He lives on the move, and he dies after a long, full life. Nicodemus appears in a few places in John’s gospel. He defends Jesus against a guilty until proven innocent attack in the council. After the crucifixion, he is there with Joseph and bringing a large amount of spices to help with the anointing of the body. It seems that he is no longer a shadow supporter of Jesus but a disciple in the open. Both of his actions show that his spiritual pilgrimage continues. When we discover ourselves reflected in their stories, we are a long way down the road of a living Bible and a living God.

In the end of course, our Promised Land is heaven. That is the end of our search here. In the meantime, we too can see and enter the kingdom every day. Part of it would be going into the unknown, but knowing that we go with God. Being able to see blessings is part of living a kingdom life. I would go so far as to say that the sheer newness of the experience is part of being born again, born from above. When we hear our sins are forgiven, we are a new creation, born from above. What a relief to know heaven doesn’t hold a grudge. When we place our own travel through life and connect it to the biblical story and the way of God in the world, this life becomes a Promised Land.

Sunday February 17-Football is over (sigh). Football fans easily spend 6 hours a week on watching games. No, I am not criticizing that. I will ask what will we do with that new-found amount of time? During Lent what would you propose would be a spiritually uplifting use of those hours? Are you planning to use them in different ways?

Monday-Edith Stein was a Jewish convert to Catholicism. She escaped the Nazis once, but they caught up to her in Holland. To make sense of suffering she tried to see it as redemptive, as part of the cross of Jesus Christ. She saw that as a spiritual seed taking root. As it grows, it starts to determine what we do and don’t do, maybe even what we like and don’t like. How has suffering affected your personality, your sympathy, your view of God? Do you think that suffering can have a redemptive character, or is it always destructive?

Tuesday-In the new Christian Century, Walter Breuggemann review a new translation of the Psalms: “the poetic imagination cherishes the concrete…when the repertoire shrinks to the overworn and familiar…faith shrinks to mere convenient truth…the God we speak is the God we get.” Where do your prayers get a bit tired or formulaic? Where do thye achieve a new level of fresh power? Where could you get more concrete or physical about your prayers, and when are they too abstract or ethereal?

Wednesday- Scott Russell Sanders writes “power surges through bone and rain and everything. The search for communion with this power has run like a bright thread through all my days.” It is not a stretch to see this power of nature as the hand of God, a connection in all of nature. How do you commune with the hand of God in nature? Where do you see the hand of God in nature?

Thursday-Stress can motivate us, but too much of it can turn into a vice. A healthy spiritual practice would be to get a handle on stress, to discern the level that is good and unhealthy. Do you react to emotional stress in a different way than when under physical stress? What stress is hard for you to handle? What are your best coping strategies for stress?

Friday George Washington’s birthday used to be celebrated today. Of all his great work, I go back to his decision to free his slaves. That was no easy task, as the law in Virginia required a large sum of money to be set aside for each freed slave. He had a gift for withdrawing control, to allow democracy to grow. That generosity of vision would extend to slaves, and he worked hard to make sure that his will would be a testament to freedom for everyone. (See An Imperfect God for the story)

Saturday-Nahum’s vehemence against Assyria is not on most top ten scripture lists. It puts the thirst for vengeance into the hands of God. We may not like to admit it, but we may find ourselves fantasizing about revenge on those who have harmed us: nations, groups, or a person. We find precious little grace in Nahum, but we do get a glimpse of the depths of hatred that grows when we are victims of power and might.