Can These Bones Live?
The Story
Ezekiel is set down in a valley full of bones — not freshly fallen but “very dry,” a picture of Israel in exile saying, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost” (Ezekiel 37:11). God asks an impossible question: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel wisely refuses to answer for God — “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then God tells him to preach to the bones, and as he does there is a rattling; bone joins to bone, sinew and flesh come upon them — but they are still corpses until the breath, the Spirit (the Hebrew ruach means both), enters them. Only then do they live and stand, “an exceedingly great army.” Resurrection is God's work, by God's Word and God's Spirit, on people who are utterly dead.
What It Calls Us To
The honesty of this passage is bracing: it does not pretend the bones are merely sleeping. They are dead and dry — and that is exactly the point, for God specializes in life where there is none left to coax. It calls us to abandon the project of reviving ourselves and to let the Word and the Spirit do what only they can. Where we see a graveyard, God sees a congregation waiting to stand.
How Jesus Fulfills It
Ezekiel's vision is a promise that God will raise his dead people to life — and the promise puts on flesh in Jesus. He stands at the tomb of a four-days-dead friend and says, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), and calls a corpse out by name. Then he goes into death himself, and on the third day the truest dry bones — his own crucified body — live, “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Paul says it of us directly: “you were dead in the trespasses and sins… but God, being rich in mercy… made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:1–5). We were the valley of dry bones; the gospel is the rattling sound of God's Spirit making the dead stand up.
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life: We humbly beseech thee that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.