Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text for today’s meditation is Ezekiel 37:1–14

¹The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. ²And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. ³And he said to me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" And I answered, "O Lord God, you know." ⁴Then he said to me, "Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. ⁵Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. ⁶And I will lay sinews upon 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." ⁷So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. ⁸And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. ⁹Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live." ¹⁰So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. ¹¹Then he said to me, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.’ ¹²Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. ¹³And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord."

The breath of life, we breathe so naturally that we can take breathing for granted. Breathing, our breath is a main element that sustains life in these frail human bodies; it nourishes our bodies with oxygen. It is a vital part of our survival. It is so important that we teach anyone willing to learn how to restore the breath of life to someone that has lost it. We teach CPR classes, we hang posters so those that haven’t had the training can still follow along and hopefully restore the breath of life. We create gadgets that help us be more effective in restoring the breath of life. We teach the Heimlich maneuver in our homes and to children on TV. It is so important that even our teachers are taught how to remove obstacles from a blocked airway with this maneuver. I know of a teacher that walked up on a fellow teacher attempting the Heimlich maneuver on a middle school child that was taller that her. The child could not breathe; she was choking on part of her lunch. The teacher thrusted several times but she just couldn’t get the right force to dislodge the obstacle because of the height difference. The taller teacher stepped in and gave three or four thrusts when suddenly the tortilla chip lodged in the child’s throat popped out. The breath of life was restored to that child. Interestingly, this was not the first time this person has successfully done the Heimlich maneuver. Several years earlier she had to do it on her mother who was chocking on a piece of meat. Had this person not been there to restore the breath of life both of these lives would probably have ended because without our breath we cannot sustain these human bodies. What would be left would be a frail lifeless body, complete in every way except the breath of life.

This is what we find in Ezekiel’s vision, complete bodies in every way except for the breath of life. He

prophesied to the dry bones and they rattled and came together and then the sinews came which are the ligaments and tendons, and finally flesh covered the bodies. What stood before Ezekiel was an army of lifeless bodies. There was no life because there was no breath. But God has a plan to fix that. Verse 5 says; "⁵Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live." God says they will live because He will cause breath to enter them. Ezekiel prophesied as he was commanded and the exceedingly great army standing before him received the breath of life and they live.

When we enter this world we are just like those dry bones, we just didn’t know it at the time. You see, someday the breath of life that we find so important will leave our bodies and we will die. We inherited original sin from our forefather Adam so we are born and already we are those dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision. The only thing in our future is the penalty for our sin, death and we are just as dead as those bones. Our life means as much as those dry bones which can do nothing. Just like those dry bones, when we are born we have not received the true breath of life, sure, we begin to breath the air that sustains our human bodies. But, do we have the breath of life that will allow us to live for eternity in the presence of Jesus? No, we don’t, not yet. That is why we bring babies, young people, and old people to baptism. This is where God gives us the breath of eternal life through His Spirit. At your baptism, the Holy Spirit took up residence in your heart. He is the breath of life because through Him you shall live!

We see that Israel lost their hope; verse 11 says; "Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.’" There are days when we feel cut off and our hope is lost. There are days that we feel so far from God. When life takes you into the valley of the shadow of death where you just sit down and say, "Why me Lord?" It is times like this that we can look back at Ezekiel and know everything is going according to God’s plan. His plan may not focus on earthly things; his plan is much bigger, eternal. Starting with verse 12; "Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. ¹³And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord." We are no longer that pile of dry bones; we have the breath of life, God’s Spirit. First, God sent His Spirit in the form of Jesus Christ to live here on earth. He sent him to pay for all the sins of the world, yours and mine. He sent him to become those dry bones in death as payment for the sins of the world. He also sent him to rise again just like those bones, Jesus conquered death and through Him and His Spirit we have hope, hope that one day we too will be raised from our grave and we too will know firsthand that He is the Lord.

As important as it is for us to keep breathing in order to sustain our bodily life, we must also continue to breathe through the Holy Spirit to sustain eternal life. We receive breath through the means of grace. As Jessica can tell you, the three means of grace are Baptism, the Word, and the Lord’s Supper. We receive the breath of life through baptism and we continue to breathe by reading and hearing the Word both from the bible and in sermons. We strengthen our eternal souls through the breath of life we receive at the Lord’s Supper through His body and blood that is in with and under the bread and wine. We must continue the supply of the eternal breath of life through the means of grace.

Oh, by the way, I hope you never need the Heimlich maneuver but if you do I know someone with some experience. Laurie is the teacher in my story. Just as she restored the breath of life in the human form, Christ gives us His Spirit and restores our dry dead bones so we too can spend eternity with Him.

Amen.