The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 4, Year A, 2008, June 1, 2008, St. Joseph of Arimathea Hendersonville (evening)

“He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord GOD, you know.’” (Ez. 37:3).

The Human Genome Project aims to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs that make up our DNA (there are about 3 billion of these) and to identify the approximately 25,000 genes that comprise our human genetic make up. Unless you are an identical twin, each human being has a unique genome; and fairly small differences in gene sequence lead to unique individuals. Studying human genetic makeup has implications for medicine and agriculture, and also raises ethical questions about the implications of this knowledge for individuals. Is our genetic makeup knowledge that should be open to our employer or to our insurance company, for instance? The study of human genetic makeup also opens up windows into the human past, and our relationship to each other. Human beings are all linked, different yet related; we are a simple matter of DNA, yet wonderfully complex at the same time.

Our reading from Ezekiel, the valley of dry bones, goes to the heart of this same issue of human identity, but with a different twist. The setting is a valley, the scene of human dissolution; the bones are dry because the people are long dead. “Can these bones live?”, asks the voice; a question that human beings have long been asking in the face of their own undoing. The answer is that God can make the bones, no matter how dry, live again. We are wondrously made, yet easily unmade by death; but in this prophecy we see bones and sinews and flesh come together again, and the breath of life breathed in once more. What was dismembered can be remembered. The dry bones can live.
God knows us better than we can know ourselves. If the making of the human race, and of each individual, is a marvelous thing, then how unimaginable and wonderful is its re-making? We are constituted by a complex sequence of genes; how greater then will its reconstitution be? The wonder of our unique individuality is precious; how more precious is the treasuring of that individuality for all time?

God knows us and remembers us. In the face of human dissolution, nothing is lost; God can bring us together again. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14), and God can re-make us. The promise of Resurrection life in Christ is what is foreshadowed in our reading today. New life is what is on offer; new and everlasting life with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That new life begins here and now. God is constantly making and re-making us through our life in the Church, giving us signs of the new life that we share with Christ. God is remembering us, putting us back together again according to his own particular sequence. Our confirmands this evening are reminders of the power of the Spirit to breath new life into the dry bones. We are seeing some dramatic re-sequencing this evening (perhaps more dramatic in some cases than in others!). God is at work in our lives, giving us a new identity in Christ. The community of St Joseph’s Church, and the Diocese of Tennessee, is being enriched by the fresh outpouring of the Spirit, and by the confirming of new identity within God’s People. You are an example for us of the new life that God longs to give each of us, and of the power of God to remake us and to remember us.

The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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