Wednesday, May 9 - Service of Healing

Ezekiel 37:1-10; Psalm 27; Romans 8:18-39

We begin life connected. From the moment of conception, when the egg implants into the uterine lining, we are connected. Our bodies, our brains, our hearts form and develop entwined with the body of another. After we are born, after our physical connection with our mother is severed, we continue to live connected to one another through bonds of love. Without love, we cannot live. Perhaps you’ve heard of the terrible experiment conducted in the US in 1944, where twenty newborns were physically cared for but never cuddled, looked at, rocked, or hugged. After four months, more than ten of them had died, despite being physically healthy up to that point. They died because they were not loved, because they were disconnected.

We rely on this connectedness with others to affirm our own sense of worth. Babies whose parents smile at them a lot grow up with more self-confidence than babies whose parents don’t. Connectedness assures us that we have worth, that we are worthy to be in the company of others, that we are worthy of care. Our closest relationships are the ones in which we are seen and heard, where our very existence is a joy to the other, and theirs to us. 

Which explains why hurt and separation go hand in hand. When others reject any connection with us, when they treat us as unworthy of love or respect or kindness, we are hurt. God created us to be connected, and when those bonds are broken, we are deeply wounded. We might put on a brave front, we might shrug and say it’s no big deal, but inside, where no one can see but God, we question our worthiness to be loved and we begin to wither and die. 

Ironically, we respond to this hurt with, sadly, further separation. Too often, in order to protect ourselves from further rejection, we separate ourselves from others before they do the same to us, and when we do that, when we cut off ties of affection or vulnerability, then we hurt them. We may think it doesn’t matter to them, but it does. God created us to be in community, God created them to be in community, too. Separation hurts them the same way it hurts us. 

And so I’m guessing you can imagine how this can become a vicious cycle, if you haven’t experienced it personally already. When we are hurt, we separate ourselves from those around us, causing them to hurt, which causes them to continue the separation from us, which causes more hurt. The painful gap between us tears wider and wider, disrupting not only individual relationships but entire families, church communities, even countries.

We might call this cycle sin, and we talk about original sin as a way to begin to grasp how it might have all happened, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. However it all started, we continue to do it. We are hurt, we hurt others, we separate from others, they separate from us. Friends become strangers, stranger become enemies, and at some point we look around and realize we are all a pile of dry bones in the valley, the victims and the perpetrators of physical and emotional wars, in the church and in the world. We yearn for life, and for some way to connect again, and we don’t know how to make that happen.

~~~~~~~~~

“Thus says the Lord God … I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on 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.”

In the valley of dry bones, where hurt has become deadly and our separation from one another is so complete that we are just a jumble of bones, the breath of God appears. The ruach in Hebrew, the pneuma in Greek, what in English we call the Spirit, intercedes in our cycle of hurt and separation and gives us new life. The same Spirit of God that moved over the waters at Creation and breathed life into the figures of clay so that they became human, this same spirit, this same breath moves into the valley of dry bones and gives life once again. God does not give life only once, but over and over again.

In our moments of deepest pain and alienation, when we feel most separated from those around us, even when we are the ones to have caused that separation, the Holy Spirit brings us into the house of the Lord, into his shelter, under the cover of his tent, into his own heart. And in God’s heart we find that we are not alone. In God’s heart, our connection is restored.

This is new life: reconnection. “Suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. … and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.” Through the power of our God-who-is-life, we are reconnected to God and, through God, to one another. We discover that we were not only created to be in community, we are worthy of being in community. We are worthy of connection because God’s breath is in us. Our hurts begin to heal, our inner selves become whole because we share the breath of God, because we are brought into connection with one another, because God puts us all back together. God restores not only each of us individually, but the multitude, so that each of us might be healed. 

~~~~~~

“I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” 

This is not a new life that comes only after our death. I have seen this healing take place in this place, in your midst. I have seen what were once dry bones receive new life. I have seen strangers become friends, and I have seen you turn towards one another when you are hurt, not away from each other. I have heard responsibility taken for hurts committed, I have heard desire for reconciliation. I have seen God piece together your broken edges and form a new community that is compassionate and forgiving. And I know that this has happened because in your pain, you have turned to God. God, present to you in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit, has been the source of your resilience and your healing. There are scars, to be sure, and some hurts have yet to be fully healed, but God has begun this work in you and God will complete it. This is the glory of the Easter season that we experience now, the goodness of the Lord in this land of the living.

Now we live still in this world. The cycle of sin, of hurt and separation and hurt, is not yet entirely disrupted. There will be times in the future when we will be hurt, when we will hurt others, there will be times when separation will be more prevalent than connectedness. There will again be “hardship or distress.” But there will again be healing, and connectedness, and new life. God will again draw you into God’s heart through the power of the Holy Spirit, and will again connect with you and connect you. God’s breath will come into you not just once but as many times as necessary, for as long as we live in the world, until all has been worked together for good. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God is here. God is with you, working amongst each of you and through all of you to bring healing and connection and new life––yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Thanks be to God, Amen.