[A sermon delivered to the Oxford Unitarians congregation via Zoom on Sunday, 27th April 2020]
(Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14)
Just in case you had forgotten, which is easy to do with everything we are going through now, we happen to be in the season of Lent. Now, between you and me, I must be honest and say that I didn’t intend on giving up quite so much as it turns out I have done! Indeed, this will be my only Lenten period where I have ended up giving more up by the end compared to when I started!
Lent starts with Ash Wednesday were we are traditionally reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Lent is a season that reminds us of our mortality and the mortality of those around us. As grim as this topic may sound, I believe that it is a very valuable one and that the time we devote to remembering this can do us a great service. I agree with David Usher that coming to terms with one’s own mortality is a very important step towards spiritual health and I look forward to a yearly period of time when I get to explore that symbolically.
I say symbolically because I’m sure that no one finds the daily update on various national death rates or the constant anxiety of potentially loosing a loved one to COVID-19 conducive to building one’s spiritual or mental health. I have two elderly grandparents both well into the at-risk age group, as well as a fiancée who nearly died due to heart failure the last time she got a significant infection. To say I am worried is somewhat of an understatement.
However, the interesting thing with thinking about death is that it can serve as a mirror to better analyse it’s polar dialectical opposite: Life.
This is certainly the case with our reading from Ezekiel. This is the lectionary reading for today and is usually paired with the story of Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life – and there are obvious comparisons between the two stories – things that were considered dead are brought back to life. Yet, there is more to it than that.
To show this I need to draw on most of my very limited knowledge of Hebrew and biblical translation – certainly not my strongest areas when it comes to theology.
In our reading from Ezekiel, God says to the bones that, “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” Later we get God commanding Ezekiel to, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” The passage closes with God effectively promising to his people that, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.”
There are three words that stand out in this passage from a translator’s point of view, ‘Breath’, ‘Wind’, and ‘Spirit’. These three English words are all good translations of one single word in Hebrew. That word being: (and please forgive my pronunciation) ruach. Most of the time, when we hear breath, wind or spirit in the English translation, we know that they are all translations of the same word. You could theoretically use any of the three words for translating any single instance of the word ruach and still produce an accurate translation.
When God first reanimates these bones and bestows them with flesh, Ezekiel notices something is wrong – something is missing – he points out “there was no breath in them.” It is only after the breath came into them that he declares the bones “lived”.
I have heard it said that the reason the term YHWH (along with other names for God) is traditionally not said by practicing Jews is because YHWH is not said but breathed. The term sounds like an inward breath and an outward breath precisely because breath is what it refers to. Breath is God’s Spirit that he gave to us and we experience it as life from the moment we take our first breath to the moment we breath our last. The name of God is on our lips from the day we are born until the day we die.
Therefor life is precious because it comes from God. We all participate in that divine breath while we live. Each breath we take an act of praise.
However, things that are precious often tend to be fleeting when it comes to our experience. Things that are precious are easily lost. We have a responsibility to take care of things that are precious.
The NHS is precious to me. I would be unlikely to be alive without it, my fiancée wouldn’t be alive without it, in fact most of the people I love wouldn’t be.
The NHS of course owes its story to the experience of war. Those people, in what is called the spirit of ’45, came back from experiencing death at close quarters and decided that they had seen more enough of it. They also decided that they hadn’t fought a world war or two only for them and their families not to be able to afford medical care at home. They also realised that if they could be paid and given food and accommodation to kill people then they should also be given those things to help build the schools, hospitals and universities that they needed. They wanted to ensure that their fallen comrades had not died only for things to go back to how they were beforehand. They wanted to make sure that no mother would ever again have to make the decision between eating and calling the doctor for her sick child. So put pressure on their politicians and they helped to create the NHS and Welfare state.
COVID-19 seems to be universally regarded as the biggest crisis our country has faced since that war and, like that war, this plague is holding a mirror up to our society. If you are wealthy, powerful enough (or just happen to be born the son of a monarch) and displaying mild symptoms, it turns out, you can get a test for COVID-19 easily. Yet if you are 36-year-old black mother of three from Peckham – vomiting and unable to breath – you are deemed not to be a priority and left to die in your flat. It also turns out that there is money to house homeless people but only if their presence on the street directly threatens the health of those with wealth and power.
Let’s be clear. If we truly believe that life is good and precious and worth saving and cherishing with those we love, then we must not allow such a society as we live in today to continue as it is. We must ask questions now and we must work together towards a better world as soon as we can.
Just as God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy to his people who were without hope we need to be prophets against injustice and for just future. This must not be a blind, flippant optimism. There will be dark days ahead. Yet still we are called to be prophets of hope.
Amen.
