Daily Lectionary: Ex 2:1-22, Mark 14:32-52

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. This story isn’t just Ezekiel. It’s every pastor of every church, called out into a valley full of sinners cut off from one another. Addicts with secrets and not-so-secrets. Monsters.  Victims. Bones. You see it in the gossip that runs rampant in churches, in anxiety and anger, depression and fear, suffering and death. We are the valley of dry bones. And someone told us that Christian soldiers are supposed to march. The hymn might be lying. 

So your pastor preaches sermons. A few of us are actually good enough to make you feel better for an hour or two after church. But does it really get better? Can these bones live? O Lord, You know. I don’t.  I can tell you what His word says, but can’t make you believe it. I can tell you a sin is wrong, but can’t break your addiction to it. I can give names to every sin in Ten Commandments, but it won’t make them hurt less. But God tells the prophet, unsure of what to do or say that it’s really pretty simple. Preach the Word.  

Know who your God is. He is Jesus, who opens your grave and makes you live. That’s a promise given to dry bones whether or not they’re afraid, whether or not they’re sinners, whether or not they even draw breath. God’s Word still preaches and the dying still live. Because it’s measured in Him, not the Valley.  Peace isn’t a lack of problems or a perfect church. Peace isn’t a handle on your life and a morality that doesn’t look at the Ten Commandments and find only hypocrisy.  Peace is a present God, speaking life to the dying, speaking hope to you.  The church doesn’t call us simply to strive to climb out of the valley where the bones are. It promises Jesus joins us and makes us, even us, live. In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.