This week I heard from a friend who had heard from another friend a first hand account of the deconstruction in Japan. This man lives in Sendai, a city of a million people, about the size of Fort Worth. After the recent earthquakes and tsunami the country from Tokyo north is in a daily survival mode. There is one 7-11 convenience store that is stocked with things to buy. It's 17 miles away. That's the only store open. No one is working. There is nothing to sell. The highway to Tokyo is open but there is a $100 toll to use it. He told of a a woman from Sendia who is going to pay the $100 toll to drive her sedan on that highway and go to a store on the edge of Tokyo and fill up her car with sugar and flour and such necessities. Everyone north of Tokyo is in a post-apocalyptic survival mode. What will they do? For perhaps 8 years they won't be able to grow crops due to the radiation leaks from the nuclear reactor on the Northeast coast. The towns you see on TV are towns of 10 or 20 thousand on the coast. Those that were saved had 3 minutes to get to the high point. They even have towers built for this purpose. There has been no shooting or looting. Everyone is looking out for everyone else. Everybody's bones are still intact but it's like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. A Japanese political leader proclaimed this is the worst catastrophe to hit Japan since World War II. We are talking about that level of destruction.
This sense of something being wrong is becoming commonplace today. We see it in the near shut down of the federal government as politicians wrangle over the federal budget. We see it again in the Texas state government's show down over the state budget. Harris County health care providers would lose more than $2 billion in Medicaid funding under the Texas House budget that passed Sunday night, according to an Austin think tank. Medicaid funding for Harris County hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and other providers would be reduced by 38 percent from the amount spent on such care in 2009. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9MCKJ6G2.htm "That would certainly be a body blow for the county, one I'd expect it to try to make up through tax and fees," said Vivian Ho, a Rice University health care economist. "As private practice doctors get out of Medicaid, I'd also worry about the spillover effect at hospitals, like Texas Children's, that provide care to low-income and privately insured patients." http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7506713.html Our present situation gives us some inkling of the sense of abandonment by God and the whole world experieneced by the exiles. You see, Ezekiel's people in exile were full of despair. They were no longer economically viable. They were no longer at home. They were living in a strange land, with spiritual practices that were different from what they knew. The people in Israel living in exile and they said the same thing the people of Japan are saying, "Ain't no use jivin', ain't no use jokin', everything's broken." (Bob Dylan, Everything's Broken)
I learned about spiritual cycles of growth and development at a retreat I once attended. One of the exercises had participants paint a picture to illustrate where we were in our spiritual lives. I drew my picture as did the other participants and then we laid them on the table to look at them. Wow! Mine looked so different! The other pictures were of green, verdant hills and valleys. There were blue skies. There were some stick people representing family members. And then there was my black and red abstract painting with no borders or recognizable objects. The retreat leader pulled out a reference book and began to look at our paintings and diagnose where we were spiritually. My painting was so different from the others. She asked me if I was at a difficult time in my spiritual life. I said yes. She said my painting is a good illustration of a person who is at 6 o'clock on the dial. If you think of the different seasons of spiritual development as a clock with 12 hours or stages, I was at stage 6 or 6 o'clock on the clock which is a stage of deconstruction. The retreat leader encouraged me that after the deconstruction of stage 6 comes the reconstruction of stage 7 at a higher level of complexity. So I was just around the corner from reconstruction. That is where the people of Israel were in Ezekiel's vision today in the valley of dry bones. It is the same place the people of Japan are in today.
Yes, we can more close to home than Japan when it comes to reconstruction. Remember Hurricane Ike a few years ago. Each of us has our stories to tell about that destructive hurricane. Our house ended up with a tree on the roof in the front yard and in the back yard. I'll never forget slowing stepping outside my front door the day after that long night when the hurricane swept through like a freight train. Through the front door was a surrealistic scene of matted tree branches, fallen trees, standing water, and complete disarray. The next few days were like a nightmare in a way as we began to clean up the yard one branch at a time. Over the next several days our neighbors came over and helped us get the trees off the roof and pick up the debris from the yard. That was when we really got to know our neighbors. The family across the street finally got their power restored a few days later and brought us some warm food in the evenings since our electricity was still not on. I'll never forget that time of deconstruction and reconstruction. It brought people together. With all the power lines down, you could walk the streets at night and look up at night and see the stars. People seemed friendlier and less rushed. It was really a sacred time. And the reconstruction continues. We had 9 people from St John's go to Galveston yesterday to help rebuild houses destroyed by Ike. The reconstruction there is ongoing. We are part of that reconstruction effort. The seven o'clock on the cycle. The period after the deconstruction. Then you go on to eight o'clock and greater reconstruction. The cycles of life.
That is what we have in this wild vision of dry bones reconstructed by God's Spirit into living beings as described in Ezekiel 37:1-14. This story symbolizes the cycle of deconstruction followed by reconstruction that occurs as a natural process in communities. This is a spiritual as well as economic reality. The main message, however, is not to our own spiritual development but to the congregation as a a whole. Where are we seeing signs of new life in this congregation? One place I am seeing God's reconstruction of lives here is through new ministries such as Partners in Educational Advocacy This new ministry takes people who are in the deconstruction stage of life and helps move them toward the reconstruction of their lives. This ministry helps people on the fringe who get lost in the system. They are like debris scattered on the tsunami blasted farmland of a Japanese city street. Our people take these broken down people and carry them to where they can be recycled. They walk them from stage 6 to stage 7 on the circle dial of spiritual development.
Ezekiel's vision foreshadows the events of Good Friday and then Easter Sunday. The risen Christ and the dry bones reconstructed in Ezekiel shows us reconstruction is more than a resurrected corpse.
Sometimes the world comes crashing down and you feel like dry bones. Your live through your own version of the crucifixion. You are then closer to resurrection than you believe. For you must die before you can be resurrected. We are closer to God when you are closer to death. I heard this week about a lady who experienced resurrection. She says, "I've seen it. When my husband walked out on me I was a walking zombie. I lost my life. I died on the inside. My life was nothing but dead end dry bones. But with my faith in God and the coaxing of a friend I slowly came back to life. I believe in miracles. Especially resurrection. I've lived it already." This story is about new life not when you die but today, if we are ready to step out of our dry bones.
Resurrection is about reconstruction of our very understanding of God. God stuck with the people of Israel.
Then the Lord s said to Ezekiel, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.'
Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.
And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.
I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act," says the LORD. (Ezekiel 37:11-14, NRSV)
God will never abandon Israel. God will never abandon Japan. God will never abandon Galveston. Our God is not a God of abandonment. Our God is a God of reconstruction. This reconstructing God rebuilds nations, congregations, and individuals. And God calls us to participate in this reconstruction. That may mean helping a disadvantaged child in the Third Ward of Houston navigate the public school system or hammering nails in the wall of a washed out home in Galveston. We are the children of a Reconstruction God. Let us continue to rebuild our own lives, the lives of others, and the life of this world.
~The Rev. Dr. Jon Burnham preached this sermon at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Houston on April 10, 2011 (Lent 5A)
