Old Testament: Ezekiel 37:1-14
New Testament: Romans 8:1-11

God’s promises have been impossible from the very start.

They began with an old man and his barren wife, who were told to go who-knows-where for who-knows-what reason. And somehow they were supposed to be the parents of a people more numerous than the stars, a great nation that would be a blessing to the whole world. They eventually did have a son (after some creative attempts to reinterpret the promise and a rather cruel test of the old man’s faith), and that son passed the story of the promise along to his family.

A few generations later, there were twelve sons – a far cry from the number of stars in the sky, but at least God’s word had begun to seem more likely. Then one of them, Joseph, disappeared. And, when a famine struck the land, it seemed as though all hope was lost. At the last minute, the missing son showed up in just the right position to save his brothers, moving them to Egypt but telling them that it was only a temporary stay, and that when God moved them back to the Promised Land, he wanted them to take his bones with them.

As the years went by, the family grew bigger and bigger, but as they did, they became less and less powerful, until they were under the thumb of a hard-hearted dictator who no longer remembered their family’s honor.

The land that had saved them became a land in which they were oppressed and enslaved. The reality to which they awoke each morning was one in which it was impossible – for most – to imagine that archaic promise coming true. I say “for most” because there were two midwives who still believed. They trusted God and defied the Pharaoh’s commands and, as a result, a boy grew up and the promise was renewed: they got out of Egypt, and they even got a little closer when God said, “Why don’t you call me by my name: Addonai.”

Unfortunately, instead of excitement and joy, the people’s journey brought them even more complications: they were trapped between the Egyptian army and the sea, they were wandering in a desert with no water or food, they were left alone without the man they had trusted to guide them to safety. Forget about the promise of greatness; at that point they’d settle for a promise of survival.

Instead, they received word that they would become great, that they would become a blessing to the world, no matter how things seemed. But they’d have to start acting like a chosen nation and they’d have to spend some time wandering first.

Rather than easy assurance, they received directions that permeated every part of their lives, down to the very threads of the clothing they wore. But these weren’t arbitrary rules; they were reminders of the promise. With every bite of food, with every step they took, the people were reminded of the words Addonai had spoken so long ago: “I will bless you and I will make your name great.”

One day, the man saved by those midwives died, and it turned out it was time for the people to enter the Promised Land. But it must have been a daunting task, because their new leader, Joshua, had to be reminded three times: “Be strong and courageous!” After a lot of hard work and some particularly violent interactions with the natives, they entered the land and things seemed to be going well. Years later, when Joshua was about to die, he reminded the people of the promises they had made and they all agreed: “We will serve and obey Addonai our God!” they said. And when Joshua died, they buried him with his ancestor Joseph’s bones.

Sadly, the people were a forgetful bunch, and it wasn’t long before they’d started to do things that violated the terms of the agreement Addonai had made with them.

Whenever things got bad, judges would rise up from among the people to call them back to their agreement with God, to deliver them from whatever mess they’d gotten themselves into. This went on for years, until the people started petitioning God for a permanent leader: a king.

The promise Addonai had made seemed impossible without one. After all, how could they be a great nation when they didn’t even have a ruler? How could they be a blessing when they so easily fell into depravity? I don’t want to shock anyone here, but things got really hairy during the time of the judges; let’s just say it’s not a story you want to read your kids before you tuck them into bed.

Despite some reservations on God’s part and a sketchy first attempt, the people got their king and Addonai ended up really liking him. Actually, the promise was expanded; someone from this king’s family would always sit on the throne, which would be yet another reminder that this nation would be blessed and would bless the world. And that worked – for a while. They even erected a Temple for Addonai, so that God’s spirit could dwell among them and remind them of the promises they all had made.

But to be perfectly honest, the monarchy wasn’t all that impressive and, if you recall, it was made up of the families of those twelve sons, who had never had a particularly easy time getting along. Eventually, the kingdom split in two and from time to time they’d even battle one another. When the kings weren’t just slacking off, they were actively working against God! It probably reached a low point right around the time they started sacrificing children to the god Molech. Then the prophets started showing up to cause all sorts of trouble.

Their job was to remind their people and kings of the promises Addonai had made – centuries ago, at this point – and the appropriate response to those promises. Sometimes, they also had to warn the two nations of what would happen if they kept ignoring God’s direction. And though the prophets did their best, the northern kingdom did fall, followed by the southern about a century-and-a-half later. The Temple was destroyed and the people of the southern kingdom were carried off into exile in Babylon, and one of them was the prophet Ezekiel, whose words we read in our Old Testament lesson today.

Ezekiel was faced with a situation in which a promise made thousands of years ago, a promise that seemed too good to be true, was turning out to be exactly that. The exile was one of the most traumatic events in Jewish history, and there’s a whole book of the Bible – Lamentations – dedicated to the words of despair and hopelessness God’s people felt at that time. The land was supposed to remind them of God’s promise; the king was supposed to remind them of God’s promise; the Temple was supposed to remind them of God’s promise. Now all those things were gone and the people were left despondent – utterly alone. We can hear their anguish in the words of Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the songs of Addonai while in a foreign land?

It may be easy for us to look back now and say, “Well, they didn’t live up to their end of the deal – they deserved what they got,” but I think that’s incredibly unfair.

Apparently, so did God, who showed Ezekiel a battlefield full of dry bones and asked, “Is it possible for these bones to get up and walk?” Ezekiel did not want to give the wrong answer, though he could be as sure as you or I that it is impossible for bones to come to life. So he shrugged his shoulders and tactfully replied, “Addonai, you know better than I do.”

Now, we’ve spent a lot of time in the Old Testament this morning, but I wouldn’t want you to think that God’s promises stopped seeming impossible after the exile. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he makes it clear that he realizes how impossible it is for flesh to understand God. “For this reason,” he writes, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law – indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

It is just impossible.

After hearing professors in seminary do it more than once, I have come to feel a little more comfortable breaking with tradition and jumping ahead in the liturgical calendar to Good Friday: the day of the Crucifixion, the day when we remember the sorrow – the anguish – of the disciples. They had seen so much promise in Jesus. They had put all their faith in him and he was tortured. He was killed. Obviously, he was not who he said he was. Obviously, he was not who they hoped he would be. He was just another in a string of seemingly impossible promises, and they must have felt like fools for ever believing in him.

And when I look at the news online and see the terrible, frightening, disgusting things that happen every day, I wonder if it isn’t impossible for God to save humanity. Just look at the acts of terrorism, many of which occur in God’s name. Just look at NBC’s “To Catch a Predator”, which roots out and captures pedophiles from all walks of life. Just look at the crime rate in America’s major cities – two years ago there were 2,041 incidents of violent crime in Richmond. That’s five a day during the week, seven a day on weekends. The world in which we live is a frightening place.

In an article called “Why Fantasy and Why Now?”, author R. Scott Bakker writes about the popularity of series like Harry Potter. “Since the Enlightenment,” he explains, “events are no longer the results of some spiritual agency, where thunder, for instance, might equal the ‘anger of the gods,’ but rather the result of indifferent causal processes. … Where we once lived in a world steeped in moral significance, now we live in a world where things simply happen.”

So despite the 2,500 years that separate us from Ezekiel, I think each of us must have some idea how he felt, how his people felt. I suspect that there are things many of us treasure as reminders of God’s promise: a passage of scripture; words spoken by a dear friend at just the right moment; the memory of a particular star in the sky one night. They are meaningless to anyone else, but to us they are touchstones to which we cling when everything else falls away.

Now imagine that you’ve lost even those, and I think you begin to grasp the magnitude of the exile. All their lives, these people had been hearing fantastic stories about a miraculous God. Now they were faced with the cold reality of a life in which all the reassurances of their faith had been stripped away. They were alone, forced to consider that their God – their Addonai – was impossible after all.

So we return to that painful conversation between Ezekiel and God. Painful because Ezekiel knew. “Mortal, can these bones live?” And the prophet knew the answer; he knew it was impossible.

And yet, that’s precisely what happens in the vision that follows. In essence, God says, “You think it’s impossible for me to restore my people from exile? I’m going to show you that I could do something infinitely more impossible than that. Not only am I going to restore the bones and sinew and flesh, but I am going to return my breath to these bodies, and they are going to live again.
“I keep my promises,” God says. “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, Addonai, have spoken and will act.”

Paul knows it is impossible for us humans to get it right on our own. He calls it the weakness of the flesh, and he explains that even God’s law could not make us any better than we are. “But,” he insists, “you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Just as the Spirit was promised to Ezekiel, just as it was promised to Paul, so it is promised to us today.

After he had been dead and buried three days, after they were certain they would never see him again, Jesus appeared to the women, then to the disciples. He ate with them again. He fished with them again. He taught them again. Obviously, he was who he said he was. Obviously, he was who they hoped he would be. They must have forgotten the time when, after they asked him “Who can be saved?”, he looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible .”

It seems like a trademark – this impulse to make it look as if all hope is lost, just before the dream comes true. If I didn’t know better, I’d start to wonder if God likes showing off – because every time the promise is renewed, it gets better. Abraham’s promise is eternal blessing. David’s promise is an eternal reign. Jesus’ promise is eternal life.

So why, of all topics, should I be talking about the impossibility of God’s promises on a weekend during which we’ve explored the mystery of God’s call? Well I’ve got to believe there’s at least one person here who thinks that a call to ministry – if not impossible – is at least extremely unlikely; for all I know it may not even be a prospective student! After the history midterm my classmates and I went through on Friday, I’m not so sure myself. But be strong and courageous, for we are in good biblical company.

Listen to some of these responses to God’s call:

“Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a person of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips! Yet my eyes have seen the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts! ”

“How can this be, since I am a virgin? ”

“Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a child. ”

“O my Lord, please send someone else! ”

Those voices all come from people who know God’s call to them is wrong, somehow. Surely they are not the right ones; others are better. It is impossible for them to see themselves fulfilling God’s call – and yet, with the Spirit, they all did, maybe in ways they never expected.

When you think you’re staring at undeniable, incontrovertible proof that God’s promise to you has been false, when you can’t imagine how things could ever work out the way you thought they would, when there’s nothing left to cling to and you feel utterly bereft of hope, remember those ancient words: “I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

God keeps promises, even though they have been impossible from the very start.

Amen.

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