Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Just a few years before, Jesus had assured his disciples, "Because I live, you will live also." (They had hardly understood what he meant at the time -- not all the implications of it, at least -- not until Easter.) It is a belief right at the center of our faith: that Christ raised from the dead, by some amazing mystery, is able to bestow resurrection and new life upon his followers. He can make what is corruptible incorruptible, what is mortal immortal. He can restore flesh to the dry bones.

These Bones Can Live!

Which reminds us of Ezekiel who, centuries before Jesus, had a famous vision. God took Ezekiel to a valley full of bones, thousands of them white and blanched by the sun, and walked him around among the bones and asked, "Mortal, can these bones live?" "I'm sure I don't know, Lord," the prophet replied. "All right. I want you to prophesy to these bones -- speak my word to them -- and I will put breath in them, and flesh on them, and skin around them, and they will stand up and live, and they will know that I am the Lord." And, in Ezekiel's vision, it happened, just as God had said.

In the Old Testament it is the Word of God that gives new life to the dead. In the New Testament it is Jesus Christ. But that is no conflict. For Jesus is the ultimate Word of God -- the sum total of God's will and intention. All we need to know about God, we can see in Jesus Christ. And what we see is life-giving power. "…he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also."

Nations Can be Reborn

Nations and peoples sometimes need rebirth, a new burst of life. After Ezekiel's vision, God tells him, "…these bones are the whole house of Israel." Israel in exile. Israel defeated and dispirited. Israel mired in self-pity. Dead Israel. Israel, a valley of bones. And, in fact, had we lived back then, we would undoubtedly have drawn the same conclusion: that Israel was finished, a dead letter in the mailbox of history, a people and a nation that started out well and then fizzled.

But God brought Israel back to life, put flesh on her bones. Surprising everyone, Israel returned to her own land, and went on to fulfill the promises God had made to Abraham so many years before. In fact, her greatest glory was still ahead of her. New life. Rebirth. It's God's specialty.  

We Too Need Rebirth

America needs renewal, rebirth, and it has to come, I'm sure, from the Word of God. (We've tried everything else.) We need to restore decency and civility to life: to our neighborhoods, to our schoolrooms, to our churches, in the workplace, in the sports arena, in the Congress and in the White House. We desperately need men and women of integrity to lead, people who will set good examples in their personal lives, and who will not be afraid to speak out about our national derailment.

As children we listened with pride to stories of George Washington refusing to lie about the cherry tree, or of Abraham Lincoln walking many miles to return a penny that wasn't his. Then historians said these things probably never happened. And we were ashamed of our naivete. But these stories were never told for their historical value. They were told to teach the verities and virtues on which America was built. It is to these verities and virtues that we need to be reborn.

Churches Too Need Rebirth

The church needs to be reborn now and then. And so it has been, by God's grace. Whenever the spirit of God would die in the church, and she would forget her mission and become like a dead body, God would instill new life in her, would resurrect her, so to speak, through an Augustine, or through some Benedictines, or Franciscans, or through a Luther, or a Calvin, or a Wesley. He would breathe new life into the dry bones of his church. Our own tradition, Methodism, was, itself, a reform movement bringing new life to the Church of England. It came about because that church had become highbrow, and had forgotten the poor and downtrodden. But, in less than a century, the Methodists had become highbrow, they started charging for pews -- something the English church used to do -- which, of course, made the poor feel unwelcome.

So the Free Methodist Church broke off. (That's where they get their name -- the pews are free.) The Free Methodists never grew as the Methodists had (although they remain an important and strong denomination today), but what's really significant is that they reformed the church they left. Our Methodist Discipline now says, "Under no circumstances shall anyone be required to pay for a seat in worship."

William Booth broke from Methodism, over the same issue (not enough attention to the poor -- Wesley's issue, the Free Methodists' issue), and founded the Salvation Army. And that had a renewing, and regenerating effect on Methodism. Resurrection didn't just happen once. Easter happens all the time. It is God's nature to restore and renew life.

A New Birth of Methodism In Our Time

I have seen a new birth in Methodism in my time. The Holy Spirit has brought that about, of course, but (in a practical sense) I must tell you that much of the new life is coming from national and ethnic groups which were not thought of as important parts of the church when I was a boy. When Methodism finally merged its black and white conferences, in 1966, and created one great General Conference (smarting, as we were, at Martin Luther King's scathing comment that the Sunday morning hour was the most segregated hour in America) -- when we did it, it was the best thing we ever did. It brought spirit and new life back into the church.

Richness in Diversity

Now we have Christians from other lands, coming to America, and enriching our congregations, lending us their heritages. We celebrate International Sunday, not to show off our diversity (nor to eat some really good food) but to thank God for this "new and improved" version of Methodism, a church of many colors, praying and serving God all over the world. God has once again given new life to something that was dead, or was at least was dying.

So God revives and renews nations and churches, but the best has not yet been said: God also revives and renews individual lives. Sometimes I feel like those dry bones in that arid valley, tired, confused, unable to put it together. Maybe you, too, feel that way once in a while. "Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work's in vain. But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.

God Gives Spiritual CPR

There is a balm in Giliad…" When we are down, it is easier to believe that God heals bodies than to believe he heals souls. But God administers CPR to people's spirits every day. I believe it is God who gets me up in the morning, and gives me a good day's work to do, and the enthusiasm to do it. And if I fall, I believe it is God who picks me up.

We like to tell the stories of the great Christian conversions, the dramatic remaking of whole persons, from very bad to very good. Like the story of Paul himself, who wrote to those Romans that the spirit of God would raise them from the dead. God woke up the dead in Paul, that's for sure -- created him all over again, made him brand spanking new -- and, symbolized the complete and thorough nature of that rebirth by changing his name: no longer Saul but Paul. No longer a persecutor of Christians, but a great saint of the church. God did the same for Peter, and for thousands of others.

God Makes People New!

The church was not built on good people, but on bad people whom God had changed. Of course, we ought to remember those famous conversions. But we ought also remember that, in a thousand less dramatic ways, God makes people new. He recreates people every day. He resurrects individual men and women from their own personal tombs: takes away a bitter hatred that has made someone's life go sour, gives courage to someone who is afraid, removes the thorn of grief from another's heart, exorcises racism, or classism, or foolish pride, or greed -- or whatever else it might be that makes us dead. And makes us alive again. I have seen it. I have experienced it.

A major turning point in John's Gospel comes when Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the dead. Some big wigs from Jerusalem were there, you remember, and they saw it, and knew instinctively that anyone who could make dead people live was dangerous.

John says, from that moment on they looked for reasons to arrest him. His teaching and his healing and his gathering of crowds -- these things they could live with. But monkeying around with life and death -- why, their whole world depended on dead people staying dead.

We Can Be Created All Over Again

We can put down slaves, kill their spirits with oppression. We can subject nations to tyranny and tribute. We can, by force of arms, keep shop keepers, and fishermen, and shepherds in their places. But, if people can be born again, if the dead can rise, then the battle to suppress them will never end.

The promise of Jesus Christ is that we can be created all over again. The most radical claim of all. For dictators it takes away their means of power. For individuals it takes away their excuses. For all of us it is a scary thought, that God might change our name. But that is what this faith of ours is all about. Praise God!