Bones and Bad Smells

Tracy Niven
Thursday 30 March 2023

Preacher: Revd Alison Jaffrey, Minister, Fyvie and Rothienorman Church of Scotland
Readings: Ezekiel 37: 1-14; John 11:1-45

Thank you for the invitation to share your worship today and visit this glorious old town filled with so much youthfulness.

“I felt the powerful presence of the Lord and his Spirit took me and set me down in a valley where the ground was covered with bones. He led me all round the valley and I could see that there were very many bones and that they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal Man, can these bones come back to life? I replied, “Sovereign Lord, only you can answer that.”

Let us pray

Holy Spirit,

As we speak and listen, think and reflect

Be in our hearts and minds to shine your light

And renew our spirits

In the name of Christ our Lord

Amen

In the prophet’s vision Ezekiel stood looking out on a scene from a nightmare, a valley of dry bones….a nightmare that is unless you are an archaeologist, especially one who is a bone specialist. Stretched out as far as the prophet could see is the history of God’s people written in the bones, their last remains. Whereas a normal person might like to wander through a peaceful graveyard thinking poetic or philosophical thoughts,  an archaeologist is thinking about what is lying below…a treasure hoard of information about the lives lived by others in the past. A tomb with grave goods may be full of  wonderful things but extant bones and teeth, they are the real prize. From them ancient DNA can be extracted, information on ancestry and upbringing, geographical information from isotopes in teeth, some diseases leave tracks in the bones and the damage and injury acquired throughout life are all written there for the eyes of the osteoarchaeologist to read. Careful excavation retrieves vast amounts of data but then what? The question of what to do with bones after study is increasingly complicated. Bones of those who were reliably known to be Christian can be reburied with Christian ceremony but what about the pre-Christian bones? What about the shamans and the druids, the priests of Egypt and Mesopotamia, what about the long dead and forgotten religions of prehistory? If it an affront to the ancestors to disinter them for study as many people think, how much more to put them back without the proper rite? And what of those whose bones are stored in acid free papers and card in the temperature controlled vaults of museums, or behind glass on display in the gallery. Are human remains respected by being stored in a vault or exposed to the view of visitors? So many questions to balance with  so much information to be gained from study. What did Ezekiel learn from his study of the bones.

Ezekiel is instructed to prophesy the bones back to life and this is where the prophetic nightmare ramps up. The bones rattle together joined by sinew and muscle and are fleshed over and the valley is now full of bodies,not living but not decayed away either. It’s a zombie apocalypse about to happen. Ezekiel is told to prophesy to the wind and finally the wind restores breath to the bodies and they live. In Ezekiel’s vision the miracle of life returning to the dry bones happens in two stages, building the body and restoring the breath. Without breath there is no life, the enfleshed bodies are just as dead as the bones. It is the breath which brings life to the bodies.

In the words of God spoken by the prophet life returns and an army stands up together. Ezekiel sees that dead is not gone in the hands of the Lord. The potential for life remains in the will of God no matter how dry the bones, how historical the death. How must Ezekiel have felt during that vision looking out on the bones?

Was it anything like the feeling of preaching in my normal pulpit where the numbers of church going believers has shrunk to the faithful few gathered in the middle of a vast emptiness? The questions in our heads rage around the meaning of the changes wrought by diminishing membership and the reorganisational zeal of those who live far from the consequences.

God did not ask Ezekiel to reorganise the bones, Ezekiel was instructed to prophesy to them so they would reorganise themselves. The body has to reassemble itself with all the parts it needs to function drawn together into one new potential life but it is God who sends the breath to make that potential a reality. Ezekiel’s vision was truly awe inspiring but the message was simple. Only God can make these people live again.

In our Gospel reading we heard that Four days after Lazarus was put into his tomb, Jesus came to Bethany. Lazarus, This close friend of many years who, with Mary and Martha made up a human trinity, a family dependent on one another, Lazarus the brother whose presence was so necessary to the life and freedoms of his sisters was already gone. In the face of his loss, Jesus wept, In the background the snarky voices of criticism pointed out that if he’d loved him that much he might have made the effort to get there in time to save him. Jesus had dallied on the way and now it was too late. The tomb was sealed with the stone, there was nothing but decay waiting beyond it and Martha , ever practical pointed out

that there would be a bad smell…..an understatement given the heat of the Middle East. There would not be clean bones but putrefaction and decay. No one wanted to open that tomb. No one that is, except Jesus. Martha thought she understood that she would see Lazarus again in God’s good time, when she too stood before the thone beyond this world but Jesus had something else in mind. A sign of hope for everyone or a personal use of the divine power for the sake of his friends whose grief was so hard to cope with? Was it possible that the dead could rise? There was only one way to find out, the stone would have to be moved and the smell released. Like the archetypal Mummy of a Hammer House of horror film, Lazarus came out swathed in grave clothes, not doubt entirely confused about where he was and what had just happened. For his new life to be revealed the tomb had to be opened and the smell risked. it was a risk worth taking.

In an era of examination of past behaviours there are many cans of worms being opened. From Me too to the ethics of imperial confiscation, ignored accusations in the past to everything from the Benin bronzes to the Elgin marbles are under investigation and our museums have been at the head of a movement to repatriate these important artefacts of other peoples’ cultural history. Glasgow’s Museum and Art Gallery repatriated a ghost-dancing shirt to the descendents of the Lakota Sioux nation of South Dakota and their reward was a much more equal sharing for knowledge and resources for the Sioux nation gave gifts to the museum, gifts of friendship and gratitude. I watched the ceremony last year as the University of Aberdeen handed back a bronze head to the representatives of Benin, an artefact looted, like so many others from Benin by British soldiers. Emotions ran deep in that room. The material remains of people’s lives are emotive. The empty chair, the old coat in the wardrobe, the headstone or the place where ashes were scattered. So much of human life is a construction of memory around the remains of the past.  Giving back these important artefacts is letting the air into the tomb of the past and clearing out the miasma. It is an admission of the wrongs done in the past that allows the building of new relationships based on fairness and equality and just plain old reparation. It does not matter that the original perpretrators of the wrong are now dry bones and dust. It matters that their descendents can step up and do better. It is relatively easy to return that which should never have been here in the first place…up to and including the Parthenon’s marble friezes and sculptures. But we know that the truly bad smells are locked in with our dishonourable history of colonisation and slavery, of imperial ambition and conquest, of long held prejudice which deprived so many people of the freedom and opportunities  of life they should have had.

The church is not without its own buried bad smells, the burnings and the inquisitions, the witch trials and the exclusion of so many for so long from a full part in the life of the church because of their gender, the sexuality or their disabilities.

Little by little the bad smells are being faced down, like Martha nad Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, rolling away the stone. The willingness to release what is captive is the first step towards new life and new hope.

The people of Israel felt dried up like the dead bones with no hope of new life and perhaps we have days when we feel like that but the potential of new life lies in the will of God. If we are partners with God in the work of prophesying to the dry bones and to the winds that blow; if we are willing to roll away the stone and let the light and the air into the past, bringing to the surface all that has been we will release the possibility of renewal and new life into the world.

How should we treat the bones of the ancestors? We should do all that is practically possible to return them to their resting place out of respect. How should we treat the material remains of other peoples? We should return them to the care of the descendants of those from whom they were taken with an apology for the kleptomania of our ancestors. How should we prepare for a new material and spiritual body of Christ for the future ? We should prophesy to the bones that are left to us and to the wind that takes our words out where we have no idea if anyone is listening and pray that God will send new life. The best way to prophesy Ezekiel has shown us, Christ has shown us and it is to live the prophesy and release the potential, let the air in and the bad smell out to be blown away on the wind of renewal. Let the new life out of the tomb of the past to make its own way into God’s future.

 Thanks be to God. Amen

Share this story


Leave a reply

By using this form you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website.