Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Lenten Places – The Valley of Dry Bones

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Lenten Devotion

READING: Ezekiel 37:1-14

In our exploration of places along the way, we began in Eden. Like Eden, the Valley of the Dry Bones is more a place of mythological existence. Our journey has taken us from Eden with Adam and Eve to Ur with Sarah and Abraham, to Meribah and Massah with Moses and the Israelites, to Bethlehem and the prophet Samuel seeking out the one who would be king of Israel. 

This week, the Prophet Ezekiel takes us to the Valley of Dry Bones.

Ezekiel was a prophet born in Israel who spoke to the King, not David, but one of the many unremarkable kings that followed. Ezekiel warned of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The one that had been built by Solomon, David’s Son, and that had become the focal point of Israel’s worship. It was understood to be the dwelling place of God. 

Yet, Ezekiel’s warning went unheeded. 

Then came the Babylonians under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar. They came and conquered Israel, destroyed the temple, and then  took thousands of Israelites with them back to Babylon. Ezekiel’s family was among those exiled. 

There in exile, Ezekiel continued to prophesy. To proclaim that harsh reality that the temple was indeed gone, but also to proclaim hope and comfort – that God was still at work in the world. 

It is this wound of exile that grounds this vision of Ezekiel’s. Babylon, far from the promised land of Israel, is where this vision of Dry Bones takes place. 

As we hear Ezekiel’s vision, as we imagine the valley of Dry Bones, and their miraculous rebuilding by the Spirit of God, their flesh reconstructed, the breath brought back into them, we can hear a promise of our own resurrection. Especially, paired with the Gospel stories that we have heard this Lenten season. 

In Jesus’ meeting with Nicodemus, in Jesus asking for water from the Samaritan woman at the well, in Jesus healing the sight of a blind man, in Jesus meeting Mary and Martha on the road of grief, on his way to raise Lazarus from the dead, these encounters are all one-on-one. 

The resurrection promise in these encounters feels close and personal, intimate and individual, a promise that God in Christ makes to each one of us. 

Yet, as Ezekiel’s vision takes him to the Valley of Dry Bones, he arrives there with the collective weight of his people’s experience of exile. The wound of exile encompassed the destruction of the temple, the dwelling place of God, the violence of Babylon’s destruction, and the countless who fell victim to that conquering nation. Then the thousands who were carried away into Babylon, away from their community, away from the homeland, away from their place of worship and faith. These things are always in the background.

The dry bones are not just many individuals scattered throughout the valley; they are together a nation and a people. They are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, who bore the covenant; they are the people who were led out of Egypt by Moses; they are the people who clamoured for a King that would eventually be anointed by Samuel. 

These are the bones in the valley of Ezekiel’s vision. When God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to these bones, it is not an accident that the Spirit – the Breath – of God is invoked. When we imagine the breath going into these bones, we cannot help but also go back in our minds to Eden. To the place where we began this Lenten journey, and the place where God created Adam from the mud and dirt and then breathed life into the first creature. 

In this vision of Ezekiel’s given to a people who are lost in exile, whose temple has been destroyed, whose hope is gone, it takes nothing less than an act of re-creation to know that the Spirit of God has not left God’s people. Just as God creates with Spirit or Breath in Eden, God creates life from nothing in Babylon.  Even with God’s dwelling place destroyed, the Spirit still breathes life. 

We don’t always know it, but the Spirit’s work, breathing life into a people who bear the wound of destruction and exile, is just as deeply a part of the church’s stories, our stories that we tell 2000 years later.  

The Gospels, the books that tell us the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry, were written in a time when the temple of Jerusalem had been destroyed for the second and final time. When the followers of Jesus had been cast out across the Mediterranean. 

As we prepare for Holy Week, to hear the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, into the temple of Jerusalem… the background and frame of that story changes dramatically when we remember that for the first readers of the gospels, the temple had been raised to the ground by the Romans. That the wound of exile had been reopened, and is always in the background of the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry. 

The prophecies of Ezekiel to the dry bones that the Spirit would breathe new life into them carry a different weight when we hear them anew in Holy Week. When we hear the promise of resurrection through the Good Friday and Easter story, we know that this too is not a promise only for individuals, a promise made just one by one to each of the faithful, but a promise made to the whole of God’s people. A collective promise to the whole Church, to all of creation.

From the Valley of the Dry Bones, we will go with God’s people to discover a new home, a new dwelling place of God. On the cross, in the Messiah nailed there, the spirit of God is breathing new life into the Body of Christ – breathing new life into us. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Lenten Places – Bethlehem

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READING: 1 Samuel 16:1-13

We began our Lenten journey in Eden, a place of myth and memory that Adam and Eve left behind. We moved to Ur with Abram and Sarai, who were called to get up and go. Then to Massah and Meribah, where Moses provided the complaining Israelites with water from the rock. 

Now we come to Bethlehem. The city of Joseph’s ancestor, King David. Bethlehem is a place familiar to us; we were just there at Christmas. It is a place that can be visited today, a place to walk on the paths that Jesus walked, a place to go and see where Jesus was born. 

Bethlehem is a place of gravity, a place linked to lineage and prophecy, a place that bears the imagination of the faithful throughout the generations. It is the home of Joseph’s family, the place where Mary gave birth, the place of incarnation and visits from the Magi. 

Yet, the story that brings us to Bethlehem is one that might be fuzzy or hidden by the cobwebs of Sunday School memories. 

It is not David or Joseph and Mary that bring us to Bethlehem. But the prophet Samuel who brings us Bethlehem’s origin story. The same Samuel who slept in the temple under Eli and who was called to by the Lord, “Samuel, Samuel.” And who responded, “Here am I, Lord, your servant is listening.”

Samuel’s call came in a time when the word of the Lord was scarcely heard among God’s people. Samuel was called to lead the Israelites when they lived under the occupation of the Philistines. Though he was reluctant, the people begged him to anoint a King. 

The same Israelites who were descended from Abraham and Sarah. The same Israelites who had complained to Moses. These Israelites demanded a King. 

It is only after being reassured by the Lord in a dream that Samuel is convinced. Samuel anoints the first King of Israel – Saul. Saul, who is tall and handsome and looks like a King and a leader. Saul, who leads the Israelites in great military victories, but who eventually falls out of favour with the Lord.

Reluctant Samuel is then tasked with choosing another King, even as Saul’s reign continues. Samuel eventually makes his way to Bethlehem, to the family of Jesse and his sons. 

Samuel takes stock of Jesse’s family and sees a kingly specimen again. Eliab, the oldest, is tall and handsome like Saul… but this time the Lord stops Samuel from anointing this one. Instead, the Lord proclaims that it is not what can be seen from the outside that matters, but what the Lord sees within. 

One by one, seven of Jesse’s sons present themselves to Samuel. Yet, none of them is the one the Lord chooses. But there is one more son, the youngest, unsuitable to be a king. The ruddy shepherd boy – David. 

David, who would defeat Goliath, who would lead Israel to great victories, who would write psalms, and who would be the Lord’s favourite. David, who was also a sinner, who lusted after Bathsheeba and sent Uriah to die… this David would become the greatest King of Israel. 

Thus, Bethlehem was cemented into the prophetic imagination. Isaiah proclaimed that a servant of God would come from Bethlehem, the city of David. 

Bethlehem reminds us that in small things God is doing great wonders. From the stump of Jesse, all of Israel will be redeemed. Great kings are born in Bethlehem, the great King of Israel and the Messiah King who was foretold by prophets and desert preachers. 

In the feast of the Incarnation, on Christmas Eve, Bethlehem is a small town of great wonder, one visited by shepherds singing the songs of Angels. In Advent, Bethlehem is the place on the horizon, the town to which the star and songs of Mary call us to follow. 

In Lent, Bethlehem remains the birthplace of Kings, yet here it reveals contrast. Bethlehem is not on the horizon, but is a signpost along the way. A reminder that God’s people have longed for salvation before. It is a place where the anointing Spirit of God meets the world in ruddy shepherd boys and Messiah infants born to virgins. 

And in Lent, Bethlehem reminds us that the One prophesied and the One sent to save will meet creation in the space of a single human body. In Jesus, born to Mary and to Joseph. A body that will bear the sins and suffering of the whole world, that will take up his throne on a cross and confront the great occupying power – death. 

Today, Bethlehem points us again to the heart God bears for God’s people, in sending a king to lead us, in sending a king to die for us. Bethlehem point us to what is coming – to Jerusalem, to Golgatha and to Good Friday. 

But Bethlehem also reminds us that in a forgotten shepherd boy out tending sheep, in babe in a manger, and soon mocked and crucified King in a grave…God will bring salvation for God’s people. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Lenten Places – Massah and Meribah

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Lenten Devotions

Massah and Meribah

READING: Exodus 17:1-7

Our Lenten Journey brings us today to Massah and Meribah, a stop in the wilderness. There the Israelites have wandered and found themselves wanting, hungry and thirsty. 

This journey began in Eden. In the Garden of Eden, there was an abundance. Food and water enough for all – for Adam and Eve and all the creatures of God’s making to have enough. But Eden was not enough, Adam and Eve sought to be like God. In their reaching Eden came to an end. But God did not send them away without a promise that they would not be alone. 

Then in Ur, Abram and Sarai were called to get up and go. To a land that God would show them, to become parents to a nation, to be God’s people from then on. But the covenant of God’s trifold promises was not enough, and Abraham and Sarah’s descendants consistently fell from God. 

Now the Israelites, after escaping slavery in Egypt because of God’s promises and leading, because of the prophet Moses that God sent, are now wandering in the Wilderness. But they long to go back, back to Egypt and the known reality of slavery over the unknown of the wilderness. They long to go back to Ur, back to before they were called to get up and go. Back to Eden, where they were not dependent on God’s providence, where the milk and honey flowed. 

Looking and longing for where we once were is a very human emotion. Wanting to go back is the source of nostalgia, the source of grief, the source of our regret. The places and people, the things and experiences that we have left behind are often better in memory. Wanting to go back and experience them again is a feeling we all know well. 

It isn’t just that familiarity brings us comfort, even when the familiar is not comfortable 

It isn’t just that the known brings us anxiety, even when what lays ahead might be better for us, might be full of promise. 

It is that we are people of story. We understand the world through our stories, we make sense of our lives through the narratives we tell, the history that defines us. Our stores are anchored to our past. It is the reason we tell the same stories again and again when they are our favourites. It is the reason we follow a known liturgy in worship, and in the hockey arena, and in the drive-thru line at Tim’s and in the Monday morning staff meetings at work and in our bedtime routines. 

Stories help us make sense of the world; stories make the past into the present and into the future.

Which is why God’s promises and call are so scary. They are not yet our stories. They things yet to be, possibilities and risks unknown. Slavery wasn’t good, but at least it isn’t dying of thirst in the desert the Israelites complain to Moses. A refrain we have repeated again and again throughout the ages. 

And while stories of the past are so powerful, so integral to how we understand the world and our communities, our families and ourselves… they cannot give us water when we are lost and thirsty in the desert. 

This is what God knows about us. That we are people who need a story to make sense of things, AND people who water. New living water from the rock. The rock of Meribah and Massah. 

That is why God’s stories are different. God’s stories help us to make sense of our world. God’s stories bring familiarity when we need it. 

But God’s story is not the story of the past. 

God’s story is the story of the future – promise and hope. 

God’s story is the story of now – love, mercy and grace that meets us here and now. Water from the rock and a new story to tell. 

The stories we tell of God are stories that help us see that God’s people have been where we are before and remind us that God is with us now. God is in our world, our lives, our communities and families now. And God is bringing us through the unknown and uncertain.

The Israelites needed to be reminded of the present and future promise that God gave them in Egypt – rescue from slavery. 

The promise God gave them at Ur – a land, descendants and a relationship. 

The promise God gave them in Eden – that they would not go into the world alone. 

The promise that God gives us here now – that in the Christ to come, there is forgiveness, salvation and new life. 

Tonight’s stop at Masseh and Meribah quenches the thirst of Israelites; it quenches our thirst. But it also gives God’s new story of promise and hope to tell… that God is with us, showing us the way through to the other side of wilderness, to new life in Christ. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Lenten Places – Ur

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Lenten Devotions – Week 2

Ur

Genesis 12:1-4a

Our journey through the Lenten wilderness has brought us to important places along our way. We began our mid-week stops with the Garden of Eden last week, where Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil to become like God. But there they were sent on their way with God’s promise that they would not leave Eden alone, but that with them God would go into our much less than Edenic world. 

Today, we begin in the oldest part of the Bible. It is here in Genesis twelve, in the land of Ur, that we find Abram and Sarai. Ur was in southern Mesopotamia, the fertile flood plains of civilization around modern Iraq today, just to the West and North of Israel. 

Abram’s lineage is traced back to Shem. Shem, one of Noah’s three sons, Noah who, with his family in the Ark became the second Adam. The second ‘first’ human of creation, as God started over, blotting out all the wickedness of the earth with the flood. 

The call of Abram and Sarai is an unexpected one. The Lord meets this couple, who already had a life and kindred in the city of Haran, in the land of Ur. Abram and Sarai are called by God to give it all up and go. To get up and go to an unknown place, to a land that they did not know but that would only become known in the future. 

This call from The Lord is by no means an easy call to follow. Yet, this call sets the stage for the people of Israel and their relationship with the Lord God. There is a signal in this call to give up Sarai and Abram’s country, and father’s house, and kindred that the life of faith and obedience might regularly demand us to leave behind comfort and certainty. 

But Abram and Sarai faithfully go. Not knowing where the Lord God will send them. 

Eventually, Abram and Sarai will become the parents of Israel. Their sons, Isaac and Ishmael, and grandsons, Jacob and Esau, and their 12 great-grandsons, including Joseph and his dream coat, will eventually establish the nation of the Israelites. The people who are rooted and formed in the call of The Lord to get up and go. 

But God’s call is not just one that makes demands of Abram and Sarai, that makes demands of us. 

With God’s call comes a covenant. A trifold promise. The Lord promises to Abraham first land. Not just any land, but land that God will provide – promised land. Land that it takes Moses to lead God’s people to. A place to call home, a place where God’s people belong. 

The second promise is that God will make of Abram and Sarai a great nation, that God will bless them with many descendants. With offspring more numerous than the stars in the sky. People who will claim that they have Abram and Sarai, or Abraham and Sarah as their ancestors. 

Finally, the third promise that God makes is that Abram and Sarai will be blessed. Blessed means that they will carry with them the presence of God, that they will not go alone, but that God goes with them. Just like Adam and Eve who left Eden and God went with them, Abram and Sarai leave Ur with God along for the journey. 

However, these three promises are not just any promises. They are not promises that are just for Abram and Sarai; these promises are given or all of God’s people. These three promises become the Abrahamic Covenant – the promise that is the foundation of God’s relationship with the Hebrew people throughout the Old Testament. It is a birthright that Isaac was given over Ishmael, the promise that Jacob stole from Esau, the promise that Joseph rescued from certain doom when he brought his family from famine and into the land of Egypt. The promise that Moses than carried with the Israelites into the exodus and eventually almost to the promised land. 

They are the promises that Jesus would have learned as a young boy studying the Torah, listening at the feet of his parents at Shabbat, from the Rabbis in the synagogue, from the priests in the temple. The promise that the Pharisees threw in his face when he promised a new covenant. 

It is the promise that becomes the through-line from Genesis to the end of the Old Testament, and again from the Gospels to Revelation. The promise that still defines the people of Israel to this day. 

It is the promise that Jesus adds onto with the New Covenant of the cross, the new covenant that we receive in Bread and Wine, the New Covenant that defines us, the Body of Christ. That we too are given a place in God’s Kingdom, that we too are part of God’s family, that God is our God and we are God’s people. 

From humble beginnings in Ur, two faithful people were called to get up and go, to follow God’s call out into the world. With them went a promise, a covenant, that has carried from there to us, reminding us that in this world we are not alone but always going with God. 

Pastor Thoughts

Lenten Places – Eden

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Lenten Devotions – Week 1

READING: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Our Lenten pilgrimage through the wilderness began last Wednesday in the valley of Ashes. There, we were reminded that we were dust and ash and to dust we shall return. But we were also reminded that the cross stamped on our foreheads that night was first placed there in baptism, as a sign of God’s claim on us – a brand marking us as belonging to the Body of Christ. 

Then on Sunday, we visited the wilderness of temptation with Jesus. There, Jesus revealed to us that in the Wilderness, God meets God’s people. 

But our wilderness roaming is not aimless. In fact, along the way, we come to places of significance and meaning. Having already come down to the valley of ashes and the desert wilderness, our next stop is the Garden of Eden. You might recall this stop from Sunday’s readings. 

Though impossible to place on a map, Eden was paradise. There the Lord God walked with the Adam… the creature made from the mud of the ground – which is what the name Adam or A’Dam means in Hebrew. The Lord God made Eden a home for the Lord God’s good creation. In the Garden, the A’Dam was free to live in peace and free, though the Lord God instituted a few rules. The Lord God told the A’Dam that he could eat from any tree in the Garden except the tree of the knowledge of the Good and Evil. If Adam ate from that tree, he would die. 

Now the Lord God’s command was not prescriptive or intended to be punishment, rather it was like a parent warning a child not to touch a hot stove, for if you touch you will burn your hand. 

Then we jump from the Lord God and Adam, to the serpent and the woman. Our reading skips a few verses, the ones in which God takes a rib from Adam, or perhaps more accurately in Hebrew, splits Adam into two and creates Eve, which means the mother of creation. 

The serpent and Eve share in the first theological conversation of scripture. The serpent asks if the Lord God said that she should not eat from any tree in the Garden. Now of course, Even wasn’t there for the initial boundary setting between Adam and the Creator. She only has second-hand information. 

But like any good theologian, she looks for context. She locates the tree in the middle of the garden, offering a way to know where the tree could be found in order to avoid it. Then, in a theological move that every good Hebrew faithful would know, Eve adds a layer of protection. Just as the 616 laws of Israel that governed daily life: what could be eaten, what work could be done, and how to remain ritually clean, as they were designed to keep people always two steps back from directly breaking one of the 10 commandments – Eve adds an extra step to the Lord God’s boundary of not eating the fruit of the tree. Eve declares that the tree could not be touched. If the tree cannot be touched, then surely none of its fruit will be accidentally eaten. 

The serpent then presents Eve with a new reality – eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and you will be like God. 

This is where the gravity of Eden begins to pull on us. A good Hebrew or a good Lutheran ear would know that being like God is the issue at the heart of the commandments. It is to contravene the first commandment – I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other Gods before me. 

As Martin Luther said, if we keep the first commandment, then we keep all the others. If we fail to keep any of the other commandments, we also fail to keep the first. 

The temptation of the old sinner within us is the temptation to be like God – to be God in God’s place. 

Being like God also means innocence lost. Being like God means the reality of sin, the reality of suffering, the reality of self-centeredness, self-righteousness, and self-importance enters into our awareness. 

Eden is no longer possible for those who seek to be like God. 

And yet, it is human to want to know God. Human to seek understanding. Human to seek context and location. Human to speak words that try to articulate the divine, that try to describe God and God’s creation. The serpent in all his craftiness knew this. 

And the serpent knew that this meant Eden would end. 

But Adam and Eve do not leave Eden empty-handed. We do not leave from Eden empty-handed. 

God gave Adam and Eve skins and furs to wear, and God gave them a promise. That no matter where they went, that would be known. Known by and to each other. And known by God. 

Known by the God who gave us Eden, who gave us paradise. 

Known by the God who leaves Eden, who leaves paradise with us. 

The God who, knowing sin, suffering and death, would enter into the world by humanity… decided to be like us. To take on our flesh, our world, our lives. And to bear to our suffering, bear our sin and bear our death all the way to the cross… that we will one day see Eden once more. 

Amen

An iPhone Pastor for a Typewriter Church