The sermon I heard today at an Episcopal church in Philadelphia was based on the dry bones story in Ezekiel 37. The priest homed in on the question God asks Ezekiel as he surveys the valley of dry bones: “Mortal, can these bones live?”
He pointed out that the Christian church in America is in rapid decline, certainly in attendance but most importantly in vitality. In his view, the dry bones in Ezekiel represent the church, devoid of life and in need of new flesh, new muscles, new blood, and new breath.
This service also featured the scene in the gospel of John in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. I think the state of the church today can also be compared to Lazarus, a body declared dead and placed in a tomb.
For a lot of us, it’s just as well. Churches have done great harm to people. They have literally, in the name of “saving” people from the “sin” of being gay, actually driven people away from Christ and his love. Many churches have made themselves havens for White supremacy and male chauvinism. They appear to be alive on the outside but are in fact soulless zombie institutions, devoid of the life of God’s love. They are in a spiritual tomb, and the stench of their rot is overpowering.
But the very people who have been ostracized and marginalized by the modern-day scribes and Pharisees of Christianity can be the conduits of a new. life-filled Christianity, one with Jesus at the center and love as the first commandment. I believe that Jesus is calling that church—the one that champions radical love and liberation—to come out of the tomb and is calling on us to take off its burial wraps. This world needs the spiritual compass that such a revived church can provide.