Scripture: The Peace of a Graveyard
1 The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.
Today’s scripture opens amid the eerie silence of what is essentially a graveyard. “Very dry” bones mean the battle has long since finished, the scavenging birds and hyenas have long since consumed their carrion, and the bones that remain have sat for days in the sun, drying out, most likely becoming bleached in the process.
The Romans had a saying: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” What a tragic contradiction. The only way to achieve peace…is through violence? Yet this logic has prevailed in our world for thousands of years. We see it in the creation stories of Babylon and Rome and other ancient societies, where the world begins with a bloody conflict. We see it in the founding stories of many nations, which begin with a bloody war of independence. “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
In today’s scripture, we see this tragic peace. For the victors of battle, there is the peace of being in control once more, the peace of being able to call the shots. But for the conquered, there is also peace. It is the peace of a graveyard. The eerie calm that we see in that valley of dry bones. The Israelites to whom these bones belonged had fallen to the Babylonians. At one time, those Israelites had been filled with hope and fear, anxiety and adrenaline. But now their bones are silent, still, at rest. At peace.
Scripture:
A Disturbance of the “Peace”
3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath—in the Hebrew, this word can also mean “spirit”— to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath—or spirit—in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded, and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
Just to be clear about what’s happening here…God is a “disturber of the peace.” God is disturbing “the peace of the graveyard.” What was previously silent and still is now filled with a noisy rattling as the bones of the deceased, the bones that had long lain at rest, become animated once more.
8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath—or spirit—in them. 9 Then he said to me, “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.” 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath—or spirit—came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
God’s disturbance of the peace culminates with God’s breath. God’s spirit. Which points to a curious correspondence.
When Jesus sits with his closest followers around a table on the night before his crucifixion, he reassures them that when he is gone, they will not be alone. God will send them the Holy Spirit. And with this promise of God’s Spirit, Jesus then says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives” (John 14:27). Which is to say: God’s peace is different from the world’s peace. God’s peace disturbs the world’s peace, exposes it for what it really is—and what it really is, is not life but death.
The world’s peace is secured (or inflicted) through fighting. Let me put it plainly: the world’s peace is control. (When the Romans said, “If you want peace, get ready for war,” what they really meant was, “If you want control, get ready for war.”) For the people in control, this peace means security and getting their way. It is the peace of pleasant, preferable conditions. For the victims, this peace means resignation—or death. For the victims, this is the peace of giving up, of resigning yourself bitterly to your unfavorable lot.
For both the people in control and also the victims, the world’s peace means death. Because control kills the things that make for life. Choice. Possibility. Unexpected variables. Love.
When my nephew gets too good at a game on his tablet, when he wins all the time, he becomes bored with it. His eyes grow dull, his smile slackens, his face begins to look a little like a zombie. He is in complete control. And he is bored, almost lifeless. Whatever spirit usually fills him with enthusiasm and exuberance—that spirit is stifled. Similarly, when the game is impossible, when it has conquered him, when he loses all the time, he becomes bored with it. His face deadens into its zombie-like appearance as his spirit is again stifled.
Scripture:
The Peace We Desire
11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”
Here we see the difference of God’s peace.
The world’s peace (control) invariably drains us of spirit. But God’s peace is the opposite. We know God’s peace when we are filled with God’s spirit.
The world’s peace (control) is predicated upon an absence. The absence of conflict or difficulty. But God’s peace is about a presence. The presence of God with us. And as we see in Jesus, God’s spirit does not preclude conflict or difficulty. Rather it enables us to respond to those situations not in the way of the world (fighting for control or resigning helplessly) but in the way of God (loving our enemy, blessing those who curse us, praying for those who persecute us).
This Advent, it may be worth pondering what kind of peace we desire. Is it a Hallmark, everyone’s-happy kind of peace? A Thomas Kinkade, still-life kind of peace? (Still-life…) Is it an absence-of-conflict kind of peace? If it is, does that mean we need to prepare for war. (“If you want peace…”)
Or maybe, as we ponder what the peace of our world really means, we might come to desire God’s peace instead. A noisy, rattling, coming-to-life kind of peace. A peace that endures conflict with love and longs for God’s spirit to thrive in every heart.
The writer Frederick Buechner, as he reflects on war, points out that the same dynamics operate regularly in our personal lives. We all wage wars, he says, “to gain control, to get the upper hand, to have the last word, to get our way, fought not with weapons or even [words], but with silences and tones of voice and all the ways we know of fighting with each other.”[1] He remembers in particular one summer when his sixteen-year-old daughter had the dream of working with manatees at a wildlife organization in Florida. The idea unnerved Buechner as a father, but he knew better than simply to say “no.” Instead, he says, he found a hundred other ways to suggest that maybe this was not a good idea. What about the dangers of travel for a single young woman? What about living so far away from the help of her family? And so on… Then one day, as he was sitting in the living room, he overheard his daughter on the phone in the kitchen. She had called the manatee people and was telling them that she had decided not to work there that summer. Then she trudged sadly into the living room and sat down next to her father and lay her head on his shoulder.
Buechner indicates that his heart was broken. He had won the war. But he saw also that he had broken his daughter’s spirit. What a cheap, hollow peace it was. In the end, he was not happy. Neither was his daughter.
The Hebrew word for peace, “shalom,” connotes wholeness, fullness, everything in proper relationship, everything in harmony. And so there is a sense in which none of us will have peace until all of us have peace, for we are all connected. The Advent season with all its social encounters and frictions becomes for us a perfect place to practice being a peacemaker, which is what our heavenly father and mother is (for Jesus says peacemakers are to be called children of God). And what we read in today’s prophecy from Ezekiel (and in Jesus’ words about God’s peace) suggests that that being a peacemaker is not about winning wars and being in control but rather about surrendering and receiving God’s inspiration (God’s spirit) to live otherwise.
Prayer
Whose way of peace
Is our rightful heritage
As your children
…
Sometimes we cling so tightly
To expectations and desires
That we might rob ourselves and others
Of your spirit of love—and your peace.
Loosen our grip on life,
That we might receive
The peace of your Spirit;
In Christ, for whose coming we pray always: Amen.
[1] Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 109-110.
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