Ruach: Ezekiel 37, part one

Sometimes The Open Door likes to have people from within the church give the sermon. Somehow, I became one of those people. So, the Sunday before school started, I preached for the second time at The Open Door. This time, I shared a chapter of the Bible that has been rolling around in my head for the past year... and wanted to share it with whomever out there reads this blog, too. So here's the transcript--in two installments. Part one:


A few months ago, BJ offered the opportunity to preach on a passage of choice, so I decided to share with you a chapter that has been marinating inside me for a year now. It’s in Ezekiel—chapter 37—and it’s been informing a lot of what I do, especially the yoga and God and how we relate to God. I came across it in an Old Testament theology course last year, and wrote a paper on it. But when I thought about sharing it with you, I only remembered the first part of the chapter… and as I reread my notes, I re-fell in love with the whole chapter. So we’re going to look at the whole chapter tonight, which will be fun.

Before we read the chapter, I’d like to invite you to close your eyes. We have a powerful tool in the mind—our ever-active minds. Often when I walk into church, it’s the first time in a week that my mind has had a chance to breathe. So I’m inviting you to simply sit and breathe. If your legs or arms are crossed, uncross them. Place your hands on your legs. Melt your feet into the sloping floor of this lovely room. As thoughts pass through your mind, acknowledge them without judgment, and then let them go. Without changing your breath, pay attention to it. Watch it move into your body, flow through your body, and go back out. Your breath does this all day long. Your breath keeps you alive. So appreciate it for a moment!

As you breathe, listen to this passage:
Read Ez. 37:1-14

You may open your eyes now, if you want. This was the first part of Ezekiel 37. I don’t know what you saw in your mind’s eye, but I always see something from the Lord of the Rings in mine—like the Army of the Dead at the end. I would love to see that director do something with this passage. Except that this “vast army” is not green and ghostly but fully alive. They’re not even zombies—zombies don’t have The Breath. These bodies here have The Breath.

In Hebrew, the words in this passage for “breath,” “wind,” and “spirit” are all the same word: ruach. Literally: life-breath. The life-breath of God pulled these bones and tendons together. The life-breath of God flowed into them and stood them up. The life-breath of God flows into Israel and makes her new. This is the same ruach as in Genesis 1:1, where the ruach—the Spirit—of God hovers over the waters of the earth before it was formed. And the process in this chapter then parallels the process of God making man, as God formed Adam’s body before breathing life into him, just as in the valley of the dry bones. The body is created first, and then the ruach gives life.

This is pretty incredible. I love it. I love the idea of God’s breath entering us. The idea that it is God’s breath that we breathe every moment. That this life-giving breath is in us. If you are familiar with Rob Bell’s Nooma videos, then this idea is familiar to you, as he has a video called Breathe, and he explains it much better than I do. But I see Ezekiel taking this a step further than Rob does.

What this means to Israel? Ezekiel is a prophet in the context of Old Testament Israel. At this point in history, Israel is divided into Northern and Southern Kingdoms, and the Northern Kingdom had already fallen to Syria. The Southern Kingdom has a complicated relationship with Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon and eventually falls to Babylon. Ezekiel lives among the exiles in Babylon before the fall of the Southern Kingdom. During the year that scholars speculate is when Ezekiel should have begun his priestly duties in the Temple but cannot because the Temple is in Jerusalem and he is not, Ezekiel starts prophesying the doom and destruction of the Southern Kingdom—which is Jerusalem and the Temple—chapters 1-24 in his book. Then Jerusalem and the Temple are destroyed. Ezekiel’s ministry changes to giving hope to the exiles—chapters 34-48, ending with a description of the new temple.

So back to chapter 37—the valley of the dry bones—in this context, God is saying through Ezekiel that he is going to revive Israel. Israel is the dry bones—she is split, and exiled without a Temple, without the presence of God, and God says he will revive. The cool thing about this chapter—I’m going to get grammatical here—is that most of the active subjects and verbs are God doing something. Break it down sometime: most of the sentences are God doing something: “I will,” “He commanded.” This is God’s initiative. Israel is scattered and broken and God initiates the revival.

Why? He says first to Ezekiel in verse 6 that “Then you will know that I am the Lord;” then in verse 13, He says it to his people: “Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.”

God says this to you too. And this is what I have been marinating in for the past year. That God’s ruach life-breath breathes into me and gives me life. That it’s his initiative. Frederick Buechner suggests that we should tell each other our stories, right, our stories of how God works in our lives. So... I found this chapter less than a year after I both started taking anti-depressant medication and went off it. I was studying this in the middle of my own revival and recognized God doing this in my own life. This is real stuff: God does this. He really does breathe His life into us.

But He doesn’t stop there.