Sermon: Wednesday of Quasimodo Geniti (Easter 2) – 2023

19 April 2023

Text: Ezek 37:1-14 (John 20:19-31)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

We have all had the heartache of having to look at a loved one lifeless in a casket.  And the longer we live, the more often we experience this.  Sometimes, it is an elderly person, and it isn’t such a surprise.  Sometimes it is someone who had suffered for a long time, and we knew it was coming.  Sometimes it is a young person who has died tragically and unexpectantly.  Sometimes it is a child who is stillborn, or a little one in the womb who was never born. 

And each death is an occasion for sorrow and loss.  Each death causes us to mourn, and our lives are changed.  Each death is a reminder of our own mortality, of the world’s brokenness.  Each death is a reminder of why we need Jesus.

For as we Christians all over the world say in the Easter season: “Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!”

For Jesus is the cure to death.  He destroyed death by dying.  And every time a person who is baptized and believes dies, we all have the assurance of that person’s resurrection for the sake of Christ.

The prophet Ezekiel, some 600 years before our Lord Jesus walked out of His own tomb, “the first-fruits of them that sleep,” saw a vision that was recorded in Scripture to teach us about death, about Jesus, and about the resurrection.

For we know where death came from, dear friends.  It is not part of God’s creation, not His will, and it is not a natural part of life.  It is the wages of sin.  It is a consequence of our disobedience.  It is our bitter enemy.  It came into being at the Garden of Eden, after the fall, when Adam and Eve began to age, fulfilling the consequence that had been pronounced by God: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Ezekiel saw a vision.  God took him to a valley.  “It was full of bones.”  The bones were disjointed and strewn about.  They had no skin, no flesh, and no sinews.  And “there was no breath in them.”  There was no breath in them, dear friends, because there was no spirit in them.  There was no life in them.  And this is indeed the fate of every man, woman, and child, every king and every beggar, every saint and every criminal; everyone, great and small is represented in this boneyard that Ezekiel saw.

And without Jesus, the bones would simply continue to decay, becoming ground to dust over the centuries, and eventually blowing away to nothing.  As said by a musician who became a Christian after penning these words: “All we are is dust in the wind.  Everything is dust in the wind.”

But Ezekiel sees a different kind of wind, dear friends.  In fact, he hears the wind.  “Faith comes by hearing,” says St. Paul. 

God tells Ezekiel to preach to these bones.  Ezekiel’s breath, formed into the “Word of the Lord” comes into contact with these lifeless, dry bones.  The Word of God is a promise, and Ezekiel preaches this Word: “O dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord.  Thus says the Lord God…. I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.  And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

Most of the time, dear friends, when we hear the Word of the Lord and its preaching, we do not actually hear the Spirit at work, but He is there.  And He is here.  But Ezekiel was permitted to hear and see – as was St. Thomas, when the risen Lord Jesus came to Him visibly and tangibly, restoring his faith.  “And as I prophesied,” Ezekiel says, “there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.”

The chaos of bones strewn about became order, as they lined up and were reassembled by God.  And then appeared sinews, flesh, and skin.  And last of all, God breathed into them through the preaching of Ezekiel, “and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”

This, dear brothers and sisters, is what Jesus does.  His death cancels the curse, pays the debt, and restores paradise.  He reverses death itself.  And what looks to us so permanent, and makes us feel so helpless, is only a temporary annoyance.  For God’s question: “Can these bones live?” is only rhetorical.  For we know the answer.  “O Lord God, You know!”  The answer, dear friends, is Jesus!

For “Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!”

Jesus raised the 12-year old daughter of the synagogue ruler.  Jesus raised the only son of the widow.  Jesus raised His friend Lazarus.  And Jesus rose from death Himself, so that these bones may indeed live, O son of man.

He gives us the Holy Spirit at our baptism, at Holy Communion, at the absolution of our sins, and at the preaching of the Gospel.  The Spirit is the breath that breathes life into our dry bones that suffer the effects of sin, and mourn in this fallen world. 

God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the living as well as to these dry bones that have come to life.  For the Word of the Lord prophesies to us and to our own loved ones who sleep in the casket: “Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves.”

Indeed, we have all had the heartache of having to look at a loved one lifeless in a casket.  But what a blessing the preaching of this mighty Word is, dear friends!  For its promise is for us, for all who believe and who are baptized, for all who hear this powerful Word of the Lord – the Word that is Spirit, the Word that is life, the Word that will fill our once-dead lungs with breath, and clothe our once-dry bones with flesh and blood.

“And you shall know,” dear friends, you shall know “that I am the Lord, when,” when, dear brothers and sisters, when “I open your graves, and raise your from your graves, O My people.”  For “I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Amen

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.