'Can these bones live?'

By Tyler Tankersley

Surely one of the weirdest texts in the Hebrew Bible has to be the prophetic book of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel is full of odd imagery and strange visions. Ezekiel sees wheels within wheels in the sky; he eats a scroll; he eats bread cooked over dung; he lies on his left side for 390 days just to prove a point!

Ezekiel is such an odd text, the ancient rabbis used to teach that their students were not eligible to study Ezekiel until they were 30 years old. That makes me just eligible!

While Ezekiel is full of strange tales and performance art, it is also a book brimming with hope, restoration and new life.

The most famous passage from Ezekiel comes from chapter 37.

In this passage, the prophet Ezekiel is looking over a valley riddled with dry bones.

God speaks to Ezekiel and asks him: "Mortal, can these bones live?" (Ezekiel 37:3).

Ezekiel is perplexed that God would ask him such a question.

God then instructs Ezekiel to preach to the valley full of death and decay.

Undoubtedly still perplexed, Ezekiel begins to preach to the bones.

Suddenly, like a scene out of a film, the bones begin to form together.

Tendons, muscles, nerves and skin begin to form around the bones; however, despite the bodies being restored, "there was no breath in them" (Ezekiel 37:8).

In Hebrew, the word for "breath" is "ruah," and it also can be translated as "wind" or "spirit."

While these newly restored bodies had the appearance of life, they still needed breath; they still needed spirit.

This story from Ezekiel 37 served as a symbol of restoration and hope for the Israelites who found themselves in the midst of the Babylonian exile.

It demonstrated for them that God had not forgotten them, and from the ashes of their present state of hopelessness, new life and future possibilities shall rise.

I continue to see articles about the current state of decline of churches in North America. And I see people lamenting, blaming and finger-pointing at various demographics.

Churches are shrinking, and some are dying; however, as hard as this might be for some folks to hear, perhaps some of this is exactly what is supposed to happen.

In her book "Searching for Sunday," author Rachel Held Evans says it well: "Lately, I've been wondering if a little death and resurrection might be just what the church needs right now, if maybe all this talk of waning numbers and shrinking influence means our empire-building days are over, and it may be that's a good thing. Death is something empires worry about, not something gardeners worry about. It's certainly not something resurrection people worry about."

I think some people can get discouraged because their church is not what it used to be.

Well, friends, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're not supposed to be what we used to be.

Maybe we are looking out at this landscape of our community, and God sidles up behind us and whispers, "Mortal, can these bones live?"