The Valley of the Dry Bones

Have you ever been to the valley of the dry bones? 

The vivid imagery and story of ‘valley of the dry bones’ has captured readers of the Hebrew bible for centuries, with its rich material for visualization.   

We envision a desolate desert scene with bones and skulls lying around in disarray as far as the eye can see.

Seemingly alone, in the middle of nowhere,  Ezekiel stands in the middle of all these bones.   And in spite of the death & desolation all around him, God is there… with him. 

God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, and that they will come back to life.  

And so Ezekiel prophecies, and the bones rattle & shake, & begin to come together! 

One can imagine the bones coming together becoming skeletons, and dancing as they come alive.   With this visual I can almost hear the music from Saint-Saens “The Dance Macabre”, with it’s intense violin with skeletons dancing in my mind's eye!

With Ezekiel’s prophesying the word of God and with the breath of God, the bones become living beings once again! 

It is a resurrection story.  One of many… Phoenix Birds, butterflies.... just about every religion has their various stories of spiritual transformation and new life, their own version of the valley of the dry bones.

But I think we all can totally relate to this story with its desert imagery, desert dwellers that we are here in Casa Grande, Maricopa, & Phoenix!

In many ways, this is also the story of this little church, St. Peter’s!   

Yesterday a group of us attended the Daughter's of the King Spring Conference down in Tucson.   Bishop Kirk mentioned to us that he was including St. Peters of Casa Grande in his sermon for this weekend as an amazing example of a transformation – a resurrection story!     

He said when he first became bishop ten or so years ago, this little church had fallen into some hard times and was nearly closed down.  And now here St. Peter’s is, ten years later, and this little church not only refused to die, it is growing and has lots of vitality!

Yes, all of us have been thru the valley of the dry bones, in one way or the other.        

Well, they say the road to Easter is thru a cemetery!  Thru death…comes new life. 

But before we jump too soon to the joy of new and vibrant life, spiritual transformation and resurrection and all that “good stuff”, let’s get back to the those dry bones in the desert valley.

Contemplate this…what have we learned, or what can we learn from the valley of the dry bones?    The painful, difficult paths we are called to, or forced to walk?   

What other lessons are there for us, in that parched, dry valley?

Most of us can point out times of doubts, restlessness, depression, fear and anxiety that were prominent in our daily living.   Perhaps you or a loved one is in that ‘dry valley’ right now. 

What can we learn from our own dry periods of life when we feel disconnected and as brittle as the bones in Ezekiel’s vision?  

It makes us realize just how much we need that breath of God, and that “living water” that Jesus spoke of.  It is life, both physically & spiritually.

We tend to view death as something to be avoided, to not talk about, or as THE END.  But in other cultures & religions, death & dying is not necessarily the end, it is viewed as a beginning.

I read an amazing story about a team of archeologists excavating in an ancient peat bog in England.  They found some small lily seeds.   Scientists estimate that those seeds had been there for thousands of years.  Well,  they planted them, & it sprouted and produced a lily!   

God asked Ezekiel, …. Can these bones live?    

We usually associate bones with death.  But in the Spirit, and with the Spirit,  there is life!

As we stand at this point on the road to Easter and we know that--  the world will not have the last word, and we will not have the last word.   But God will have the last word!  

And these are the days of new beginnings!   

Amen.

[This was a sermon given April 6th, 2014 at St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Casa Grande, AZ]

 

Photina, the Woman at the Well

The Catacombs, depiction of the Woman at the Well

In the Lenten Gospel passage, (John 4:5-42) the lectionary continues to trace a watery way through the wilderness of Lent, calling us to be mindful of God’s provision, even in the desert. 

The encounter between Jesus and the unnamed woman offers us an invitation...to the well.   

The story goes like this.  Jesus and his disciples are traveling thru the region of Samaria.  The disciples went into town to get some food, and Jesus, hot, tired and thirsty comes upon a well.  

And what happens?  Jesus sees a woman there drawing water, and he asks her for a drink.   Totally understandable, it was about noontime, it was hot, and he was thirsty!   

From our modern point of view, this would not be unusual at all.  Especially for those of us that live in the desert!

But when I did my research for this passage, I could not help but notice that just about every biblical commentary and resource I reviewed seemed to overly focus on the woman’s past, her sinfulness, her bad reputation and all those "husbands" of hers. 

I thought, hmmm, there has to more to the story.

And, there is.  

I checked into how the Eastern Orthodox churches interpreted this story.  And I found that the woman at the well actually has a name, she is known as “Photina”!  (Svetlana in Russian.)

Her name is Photina because Phos means “light” in Greek.  And it was at the well she met Jesus, and encountered the light of Christ.  

The interesting thing is that for this story, the Eastern Orthodox focus on her future and not her past.   Who Photina became, not what she was, and what she did after she met Jesus.      

They look forward rather than backward.  What if we did so too?  

And so what happened after she met Jesus at Jacob’s well?   

The gospel says she ran into town telling people all about Christ.  It goes on further to say that many Samaritans believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.  

She is the first evangelist!  

The legend of Photina continues.   She leaves Samaria with her sons and daughters, and travels up to Anatolia, (modern day Turkey) and over to Carthage in North Africa, continuing her apostolic ministry, preaching wherever she went & bringing people to Christ.  

She was the first Christian female preacher & missionary!  And for the early church, she was considered “equal to the apostles”! 
 

She is frequently depicted in the catacombs in Rome. 

Photina was a very important figure in the early church.  That is the first three centuries before Constantine and the church merged with the Roman empire.  

Did the Roman Empire become more Christian, or did Christianity really become more Roman? 

For the Western Church (Rome), Photina, as well as many other female spiritual and religious leaders were erased.

The Eastern Orthodox follows many of the traditions of the early Christian church.  Thus the story & tradition of Photina continues...

As we travel through the desert this Lenten season, what are you finding in the midst of your daily rhythms and routines?   

Are your habits, thoughts and practices drawing us closer to the “living water”, or pulling you farther away from it?    

What can we learn from Photina, the Samaritan woman at the well, who conversed with a foreign man who asked her for a drink of water?

May we remain open to the Spirit, with ears to hear, eyes to see, and an open heart… for the extraordinary in the ordinary….as we journey this Lenten season.      

Amen.

[Note:  This is a blend of two sermons, one I gave in 2011 and the other in 2014. ]

What does it mean to "be holy"?

Have you ever been to a holy place?   

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral church cemetery

I have been to many holy places, but the one that popped in my mind when I was writing this sermon was when I was in Columbia, South Carolina a few years ago, and I was walking through the historic downtown.  There was a big Episcopal Cathedral there, very old with Gothic architecture and big pointy windows.   

Part of the church grounds included a church cemetery.  I walked through it.   Many of the graves were very, very old, some older than the civil war.  Many of the gravestones were worn down from the elements over the years, and many were tilted this way and that.    In one section a giant tree’s roots were pushing up the ground and the graves around it.  I looked up at the giant tree, perhaps a magnolia tree… it canopied the area …Yes this was a holy place….hallowed ground.

How do we know holiness?   A certain sense or feeling.  A special presence, a sense of peacefulness, a certain energy …something indescribable…that makes the place feel holy.

Our Old Testament reading for today was from the book of Leviticus.    What do you know about Leviticus? 

Now, Leviticus very rarely comes up in the Lectionary, so this is Sunday’s reading is a rarity!  Usually by this time of year we are well into Lent, but this year Epiphany runs long.

Leviticus is the 3^rd book in the Hebrew Bible.  Traditional view says it was written by Moses.  Bible scholars believe it was complied between 500 to 200 BC.  Leviticus rests in a very important belief that the world was created “very good”. This comes from the creation story in Genesis, where God created light…and the heavens and the earth, & saw it was very good.

So God is speaking to Moses and says, “Speak to all the congregation and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord God am holy’ “.     

God is calling us to be holy!

But how many of us think of ourselves as holy?   We tend to think of God, angels and the saints as “holy”.  No Mother Theresas, Popes or Dalia Lamas here, ay? 

In fact, the whole subject of holiness can make many of us uncomfortable! But we have a pretty good sense that we are not holy, or holy enough.  In fact, thinking oneself as holy seems arrogant, and anyone who does is “holier than thou”.

Holy people live far removed from us and do things in their lives we cannot do with ours.  As appropriately honest as this may be, it also is a way of letting ourselves off the holiness hook! 

But God says to us, ‘You shall be holy “.  Everyone!  All of us, the whole congregation.  All of us are called to be holy.  Not just ‘those’ holy people with halos over there!   We are all called to holiness!

So, just what does it mean to be holy?   Just what is holiness?

And so I went over to my computer and Googled, ”what does it mean to be holy?” and all kinds of web site popped up, mostly various ministry sites offering their take on what it is to be holy.  Many, like the book of Leviticus cited things to do, things not to do, the commandments, good behaviors, give to the poor, be honest, and lists of rules and laws and ethical guidelines.

But being holy is more than ethics, or following a bunch of rules.    It goes much deeper.   Ethics, rules and laws are good in one sense, but in another sense have their limitations.  They are external controls.

In college I studied to be a teacher.  I was sent to observe various classes as part of my training, before I did my final semester of student teaching.  One semester, I was sent to observe junior high classes.  Whew!   Any junior high teachers here?  Then you know what I mean!   This is a special calling!  You have to have the patience of a saint!

I noticed one classroom had a bazillion rules posted on the wall.  And naturally this was the wildest class of the school!  In the other classes I observed, they maybe had three rules posted.   And for the most part, the kids in these classes were fairly well behaved!  

These classes were like a micro microcosm of society!    The more rules, the more wild the class!  The more rules and laws in a society...

And so, what does it mean to be holy?

Holiness implies being “set apart” or separate from the ordinary.  Certain places, things, objects, & actions are holy by their association with God. 

Places where God appears or is worshiped are holy.  At the burning bush, God instructed Moses to take off his sandals for he was on ‘holy ground’. 

Certain ritual actions bring us closer to God.  In Isaiah’s vision of God’s heavenly court, the angels sing “holy, holy, holy”.  And this is why we say or sing the Sanctus (which means holy) at every worship service!

But at its essence, holiness is based in love.  

 It is no coincidence that Jesus quotes Leviticus, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”.

Indeed, how we love God and our neighbor is evident in every action we take!  Whenever we open our mouth, extend our hand in gestures of kindness or rudeness, what kind of emails we forward, and what you post on Facebook, etc.

Holiness is not about making grand sacrifices to God or praying long pious prayers. 

We are holy when we treat people fairly, kindly & honestly.   We are holy when we live & act in love, not fear & hate. 

I think too, that holiness is very much how we view, or think about things.    We may think of things holy as “far away” and over there, but holiness is as close as we think it is!   If we think of something as holy or sacred, it is!   Everything is alive and vibrating with the energy of divinity!   God’s presence is in most everything.  But do we take the time to feel it?  Hear it?  See it?  And be amazed?

Yesterday a group of us visited the Biosphere2 down near Oracle.  And it was an amazing place.  Each section has a different ecosystem; one a rainforest, with jungle plants and high humidity. In each section, you could feel & smell the presence of the plants.  

How many of you think plants are sacred or holy?   We could not live without them! 

And we have all felt the holy “presence” of certain people.   Certain people just have it!   Other people, not so much!  What is that special ‘thing’ certain people have?   It is the energy they radiate, how we feel around them, a sort of sense of peace.  A sense of calm.

Think about this…What kind of spiritual energy do you radiate? 

Still, the directive to “be holy”  for many of us seems like an impossible goal.   ‘I am no saint!  I don’t pray in a monastery all day!  I am not an extraordinary person of spiritual purity and virtue!’

Well, being holy may include these things, but it is not limited to them. 

In all actuality, to be holy, is to be in close personal relationship with God,   and to live and walk in love.

Let us all think and pray on these things… 

“Lord, help us to be your holy people!”

Amen.