Have You Forgotten How to Dance?
The year was 587 BCE… Before the Common Era. It was the low point of Israel’s history. After King Solomon’s death around 930 BCE, the great kingdom his father, David, built was split in two by warring factions and two different lines of kings ruled two smaller kingdoms, and the great decline began. Two hundred and fifty years later, the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrian King Tiglath Pilesar III. One hundred and fifty years after that, the Southern Kingdom fell to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. The final battle had been a long siege of Jerusalem, which ended with the sacking and pillaging of the city and the killing of thousands of Israelites. The great nation that had known nothing but peace and prosperity under King David was totally destroyed. The city of Jerusalem was demolished, including the great temple that King Solomon had built. The city and its surrounding area had become a ‘Death Valley’… a desert floor covered with the skeletons of the dead.’ It was like the Civil War and the battle of Gettysburg. There were dead bodies lying in the fields by the thousands… not buried, but left to rot in the sun. The whole desert, as far as the eye could see for 360 degrees, was filled with white bones of dead men.
The temple was destroyed. The capital city was destroyed. The people were in total poverty. Everybody was hungry or on the edge of starvation. The Book of Lamentations tells us that the people were so hungry that mothers boiled their own children for food. It was the low point. And the wealthy… the educated… and the elite among the Israelite people who were still alive after the siege and battle were taken as prisoners… with chains around their necks… and dragged back to Babylonia. The poor and uneducated remained under the governance of a puppet king. All who had escaped the battle had scattered to the four winds. The great Diaspora of the Jewish nation had begun and… from that day forward to the present time… more Jewish people would live outside of the city of Jerusalem… and outside the boundaries of a Jewish state… than within it. The Jews who remained lamented, “God can’t help us. God won’t help us. There is no God. God is punishing us for our sins. All we have known is gone. We are left here to rot and die in the desert. We have become like dry bones.” That is where our story begins. That is when God took his prophet Ezekiel out to the Valley of the Dry Bones.
Now, I want to bring us to the present day and I want to talk about the ‘elephant in the room’… that enormous creature that exists here… that we avoid talking about because we think no one else notices it… and we don’t want to draw attention to it. I want to talk about it because I don’t think it is healthy for us as a church to ignore it… or to try to push it under the carpet. I want to talk about it because it touches all of us… and the pain we feel won’t go away by simply turning our backs on it… and thinking of something else.
In the past twelve months, we have lost a lot of people from our congregation… good people… pillars of our church… saints of this congregation. Some… like Dad… and Ama Lee Taylor… and Lelia Surber… and Anita Cisler… and many others… have died. Some… like Joe Ayres… and Matt and Amanda Daugherty… have moved away. Today, we are losing two more wonderful people… Jim and Sue Durden. In the coming Sundays, the pews where they sit… or in this case, the places in the choir where they sit… will be empty. Where there was a familiar smiling face… there will just be sunlight shining on the seat cushions. The times in worship… in committee meetings… in fellowship hours… when we heard a familiar voice, that voice will no longer speak. We all feel that loss. Each one of those losses weighs on our hearts… and saps our strength… and the combined weight of all of our losses is enormous.
There is a corner of our hearts that… like the Jews in Ezekiel’s time… questions where God is… and why God has allowed this to happen to us… whether God has abandoned us. Why… when the economy is dragging on the bottom… when stories of job loss and personal suffering are all around us… when life is not the bowl of cherries we signed on for… why is God taking away what is good… good teachers … good elders… good friends? Where is God?
Two questions: Was God there during Israel’s time of suffering? Yes. In fact, in all of their times of suffering and sorrow, God was always there. God was with them when they were in bondage in Egypt. God was with them in the wilderness when they had no food and no water. God was with them in exile in Babylonia. God was with the early church during the years of persecution under the Romans. And God is still with us today. Question two: Did God give his people anything to help them through these lean years… these times of trial… the days of drought? Yes. God sent Moses to the children of Israel in bondage. God provided manna in the desert and water from the rocks at Meribah. God sent Ezekiel to go with the children of Israel into exile in Babylonia and Ezra to bring them out again. And… in an upper room where one hundred and sixty of the faithful gathered after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection… God’s Holy Spirit descended on each one, giving them power and courage to facing the coming trials… and to build Christ’s church in this world despite enormous odds. And God is still with us today.
There is a poem that is a favorite of mine. I have read it at several funerals… and I sincerely hope that someone will read it at mine. It was written by Joyce Rupp and is entitled “May I Have This Dance?” Let me share with you again:
There I am
in Ezekiel’s valley,
one heap among many
just another stack
of old, dry bones.
Some Mondays
feel this way,
and Tuesdays, too,
to say nothing of
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Lost dreams
and forgotten pleasures,
sold like a soul
to a gluttonous world
feeding on my frenzy
and anxious activity.
But just when
the old heap of bones
seems most dry
and deserted,
a strong Breath of Life
stirs among my dead.
Someone named God
comes to my fragments
and asks, with twinkling eye:
“May I have this dance?”
The Voice stretches into me,
a stirring leaps in my heart,
lifting up the bones of death.
Then I offer my waiting self
to the One who’s never stopped
believing in me,
and the dance begins.
My question to each of you on this day is this: Have you forgotten how to dance? Have we all forgotten how to dance? Just as the breath of God blew through the Valley of Dry Bones to raise those bones to life again… creating a mighty multitude… God is here with us today… sending his Holy Spirit into our dry bones, lifting us to life again. There will always be times in our lives when the going gets rough… those times that try men’s souls… those days that discourage the best among us… but God is always with us. Susie Comerford reminded us last week of Mary Stevenson’s poem, “Footprints in the Sand,” where the poet asks where God was during the low points in her life, for she only saw one set of footprints in the sand during those times. God’s response was “The times that you have only seen one set of footprints in the sand is when I carried you.”
So, God does carry us through those difficult times in our lives as individuals… and God will carry us through discouraging times that we experience as a congregation. Even now, God is reaching out his hand and asking each of us, with a twinkle in his eye, “May I have this dance?” Have you forgotten how to dance? The good news is that dancing… along with all the other gifts of the Spirit… dancing is something that the Holy Spirit can teach us to do as well. Shall we dance? Amen.
Ezekiel 34:1-17