* * T E X T O N L Y ~ A U D I O O N L Y * *
READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Ezekiel 37:1-14
1 John 5:4-10
St. John 20:19-31
Grace to you and peace from Him Who Is and Who Was and Who
Is To Come: Jesus Christ. (Rev 1)
Who speaks to you through His Apostles saying:
“These things are written that you may believe that Jesus
is the Christ the Son of God”
Cremation is cheaper than a regular funeral, because bones are not included in the cost. Oh you get the bones of your loved one back, but they have been ground to dust, not burned with the rest. You see, most of what chemically makes up your bone is non-flammable and actually melts at high temperatures, not burns.
The bones are always left behind.
The bones are always left behind to tell a story. In this case, it was that our loved one lived a life and we loved them. In Divine Service today, our Lord gives us two instances of bones. First in our Old Testament, where the Lord says of the valley of very dry bones, “these bones are the whole house of Israel” (37:11). Now, this may be a metaphor, but who’s bones were those and why were they in that valley?
The second instance is this Easter appearance to His Apostles. It is St. Luke who records Jesus saying this: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:39)
Now, because of our Epistle reading, we would expect Jesus to say Body and Blood, not “flesh and bone”. This is the only place Jesus speaks this way about Himself. This, too, tells a story, or Jesus is meaning to connect us to the story. That is the story of Adma an Eve, when Jesus presented Eve to Adam and he said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:22).
Brought into easter, then, that old bones story is Jesus teaching that His will is to be united with us. That we be a part of His Body in order to grant us eternal life with Him. It is an important part of the complete story of Jesus the Crucified that He renew us and take us into Himself: water, spirit, flesh, blood, and bones.
We use this same metaphor today, when we see an old building that is still doing its job of standing up. We say it has good bones. After our admiration, then its “who built it”, “why is it here”, “what stories could these walls tell”? And they tell nothing, of course, because they are walls and walls don’t speak.
However, the Lord’s Church is different. During the Reformation there was a fight over bones. When fighting for a proper understand of the Mass, what we term the Divine Service today, the Lutherans found 6 things that violate the rule: “The Word of God shall establish articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel”, from our Confessions (SA II:II:15).
First was the invention of purgatory, next was appearances of souls of the dead demanding vigils, pilgrimages, and alms. Third was those pilgrimages, fourth the monasteries, sixth the infamous indulgences, and fifth, because we’re talking about it, relics. These relics were mostly the bones of saints, when in reality they were animal bones. But, they were sold as bones so blessed that you don’t even need Jesus for faith.
Bones that outlasted the bodies of the saints. Bones that contain a history. Bones that connect us to our history and patristic wisdom. And that’s the religious pull. If only we had something more than a book. If only we had something more than spirituality. If only we had something to sink our teeth into, then our faith would be genuine and we could know that it came from God.
Repent! As your Introit stated we are indeed newborn infants in the faith. We love to misunderstand God, because it makes more sense to us. We would rather be connected to God in our own way, since we know ourselves best and can feel the results.
Except we don’t. The famous line “know yourself”, is a lie of this world. Instead, Jesus says, “deny yourself”. Deny, deny, deny ourselves to death maybe, until all that’s left of us are some dry bones. Yes, dry, dead, and forgotten in our sin. That’s our belief. That’s the apostles’ belief, too, on Easter Sunday.
So we seek another way, the way of better men than us. But all the biblical men are dead. Long dead. That is probably what the Lord wanted to teach us in the valley of dry bones. So we imagine that if we just have a bone from them, no matter how small, we believe we can be connected to them and their holiness. Even though we believe that better men than us lived, we are it today. Dead, dry, forgotten.
That all changes when Jesus passes through the locked doors. You see, when you died and were buried with your fathers, as the Bible says elsewhere, it was your bones that were kept. For example, Joseph, of the coat of many colors fame, made his people swear an oath to take his bones with them if they ever left Egypt. Thus, Moses took Joseph with the people, just before crossing the Red Sea (Ex 13:19).
What that means for us today is that bones are locked inside the bone box. They cannot get themselves out. Though a living person may open the box, the bones are trapped in death. Same with the bones of saints, apostles, and prophets. All dead. All trapped.
Imagine a bone box opening on its own and the person coming out! That is the debilitating fear that held the apostles in that upper room. Why didn’t Jesus knock on the Upper Room door on Easter? “Behold I stand at the door and knock”, right?
They wouldn’t have let Him in. There would have been furniture piled up against the door. There would have been a laundry bill. Was it Jesus? Was it the Jews? Was it Elijah? The Apostles were overwhelmed and sick with fear. They could feel it in their bones.
Jesus, in a suit of flesh and bones, came in anyways. He came in out of His tomb that was supposed to be locked and sealed. His bones are not supposed to move around, much less speak “Peace be with you”! His bones are not supposed to tell the story. His bones are not supposed to connect us to God. His bones were not supposed to do anything but lie still until the end of days.
Jesus was not supposed to, but Jesus is alive, never to die again. Death has no more dominion over Him. So while Jospeh’s story must be told for him, Jesus comes to tell His own story, which includes Joseph. There Jesus stands in His flesh and bones to bring peace to His wayward Apostles and to bring a message: Go.
Go into all the world with the flesh and bones of Jesus. That is, His Body, the Church. What are the bones of the Church? Are they dead saints?
They are the words of the Living Savior. The Church has the Word. It is the Word that carries the stories to us and faith to our ears. We have been baptized into His Body. And what is Baptism? Water and the Word. What is a worthy reception of the Lord’s Body and Blood? He who has faith in these words, “given and shed for the forgiveness of sins”.
Water, blood, Spirit, and belief. All these come wrapped in one package for us. This is why the Epistle speaks of overcoming the world by believing that Jesus is the Son of God and why the same author, said in the gospel today, “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God.”
This is why the Church has her own language and uses words and phrases you don’t find in the outside world. We use these words because they connect us to our faith, the Bible, the Apostles, our God, all of it. Every Sunday we sing the word “Hosanna” and it is Palm Sunday when we hear why. When we sing it, we sing along with the crowd around Jesus, on that first Palm Sunday.
Every Sunday, we sing, Gloria in Excelsis, or “Glory to God in the highest”. It is Christmas that let’s us hear just what those words make us a part of. Where Palm Sunday was on earth, the Gloria in Excelsis is the song of angels. Our history and memories in those words now tie us to heaven.
And the list of these words, these bones, goes on. By hearing, singing, and praying these words, you prove the survival, longevity, and endurance of God’s Word. Thus, the Church has accumulated these words and kept them around, teaching them to the next generation.
Here our Psalms preach to us: “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name” (Psalm 86:11). And from Deuteronomy 11:18-20, “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
Hosanna, Gloria, Amen, Sanctus, Nunc Dimittis, and Justification all are strange words and yet all are used by Jesus to join us to Him. “Truly, truly, I say to you”, Jesus says in John 5:24, “whoever hears my Word and believes Him Who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
At the Word of Jesus, in His Church, spoken to us in this valley of dry bones, we then are brought together. We are gathered, bone to bone, sinews and flesh, as Jesus knits us into one communion in the mystical Body of Christ, as we pray at funerals. He gives us breath through His Gospel preached in its purity and we are stood up again, back from the death of our sins, a great army for the Lord.
We are gathered in Jesus. We have hope in Jesus, because His bones came back. Risen from the grave, Jesus proves His words true and shows His intentions. Not to leave us as orphans, but to be as He is, Body and Blood. And to have His breath, His Holy Spirit, to remember, to witness, to confess these same words, “Peace be with you”.
No one’s bones have come back, except Jesus’s. No one’s words hold power except Jesus’s. No one’s wounds heal except Jesus’s. We do not fill Church with our own words. Though it is our language, our Lord’s words still carry their full strength and we hear and believe, ever to confess the One Who comes by water and blood. Water to baptize and Blood to feed, unto life everlasting. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
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