A cheerful heart is a good medicine, a proverb says, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.[1] Today is a good-medicine kind of day. Our hearts are very cheerful after long, long months of worrying and waiting. We smile big smiles behind our masks, and our eyes sparkle with joy. Today is a good-medicine kind of day and we rejoice over the young people who say yes to a life as followers of Jesus, yes to a life of faith and hope and love. Today is a good-medicine kind of day and we praise God for the steady downpour of God’s Spirit on all flesh, inspiring and empowering people of all generations and in all places to dream God’s dreams and see God’s visions and live into God’s future with all their heart and mind and strength.
It is so good that we use a lot of water for baptism, that we don’t just fill a small basin for a little splash, but a pool deep enough to wade in; deep enough for the water to go up to our chest; deep enough for our bodies to go under and feel the water’s support. We use a lot of water because it gives us language to speak of being immersed in God’s love as in an ocean, of floating effortlessly on the currents of God’s grace, and of standing under the broad falls of God’s mercy, washing away our sin and guilt and fear.
A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.
A downcast spirit dries up the bones. The driest place on Earth is in Antarctica, I read. There’s an area called the Dry Valleys, where it hasn’t rained or snowed for nearly 2 million years.[2] That’s mighty dry. But nothing compared to the valley Ezekiel saw. The driest place on earth is where hope has evaporated. Ezekiel didn’t want to see it. He didn’t go there out of curiosity. He was taken there in a vision, by the hand of the Lord who set him down in the middle of the valley. First impression: bones everywhere. The Lord led him all around so he could get a good look. There were very many bones, and they were very dry. It was a battlefield, long after the eagles and vultures had finished their feast and picked them clean. It was a scene of defeat and death and abandonment. Nothing but very dry bones.
“Can these bones live?” God asked Ezekiel. How could they? After a battle, there might be wounded warriors who could perhaps survive, but bones spell nothing but life long gone, without a doubt. Ezekiel responded, “O Lord God, you know,” which may have been another way of saying, “Don’t ask me; that kind of question you alone can answer.” And the Lord said to him, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”
The driest place on earth is not where it hasn’t rained for nearly 2 million years. The driest place is where hope has evaporated. God interpreted the scene for Ezekiel, saying, “These bones are whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone; we are doomed.’” Years of exile in Babylon and recent news of Jerusalem’s destruction had taken a heavy toll.
And the Lord said, “Speak to the bones.” And Ezekiel did speak, and in his vision he saw bodies being reconstituted, bone to bone, layer by layer, sinews, muscle tissue, and skin, in time-lapse mode. But that wasn’t it. There was no breath in them. And God didn’t just breathe into their nostrils the breath of life, no, God told Ezekiel to speak to the breath, the spirit, for it to come from the four winds and breathe into these slain bodies that they might live again. And Ezekiel spoke, and breath, the spirit of life entered them and they came to life and stood up, a vast multitude.
It was a vision of the complete reversal of a hopeless situation. It was a vision affirming for Ezekiel that God, creator of heaven and earth and giver of life, had not abandoned God’s people. But that wasn’t all of it. It was also a vision affirming for Ezekiel that his obedience, his courage, and his voice were needed for the big change. A downcast spirit dries up the bones, and Ezekiel had every reason to lament with his people or fall silent altogether. But he trusted the word, and he didn’t look away, and he obeyed, and he dared to speak.
The driest place on earth is where all hope is evaporated. The driest place on earth is the place where the road ends and folks know they can’t stay there, but they can’t see a way out either. The driest place is the desolate land between Jewish settlements and Palestinian cities, between Israeli cities and occupied territories. The driest place is where words aren’t trusted, where rockets scream and gunships howl, and dreams leave no room for others and their stories, their memories, their claims. Really, the driest place is anywhere where our dreams of the good life leave no room for others and their dreams.
Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet. He was born in Germany in 1924, and immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1936. As a young man, he fought in the Israeli War of Independence, but became an advocate of peace and reconciliation in the region. He wrote a poem called, The Place Where We Are Right, and with it, he speaks simple words of courage and hope in the driest place.
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.[3]
The driest place is where the others are wrong, because we are right. The driest place is where I am right, without a doubt, and therefore you must be wrong. Nothing grows there in the spring, no matter how much it rains.
The poet invites us to trust our doubts and loves a little more, to let them dig up the trampled ground of our certainties. He says a whisper will be heard, a word perhaps we hadn’t heard before, or heard a thousand times but never trusted. It may be the word calling the spirit of life, the very breath of God, to breathe on us.
Today is a good-medicine kind of day. We praise God for the steady downpour of God’s Spirit on all flesh, inspiring and empowering people of all generations and in all places to dream God’s dream and see God’s vision and live into God’s future with faith and courage. In the Acts of the Apostles, the images of fire and wind describe the Spirit’s coming, together with experiences of speaking and listening that transcend our cultures and languages. In the Gospel according to John, that same Spirit is associated with the breath of Jesus and the promise of another advocate like Jesus.
In English translations of John the Holy Spirit is called the Advocate, the Counselor, the Helper, or the Comforter; the Greek word refers to someone called to the side of another to help. Someone to be with us forever. Someone to teach us everything and remind us of everything Jesus has said to us. Someone to testify on Jesus’ behalf.
Today we celebrate that the Holy Spirit did come and continues to come – to inspire and empower us, so that we too may see the driest places where hope has evaporated, and not turn away, not run away, but abide with loving attention. The Holy Spirit continues to come so we can each be for each other someone called to the side of another to help – with faith and courage.
[1] Proverbs 17:22
[2] https://www.universetoday.com/15031/driest-place-on-earth/
[3] “The Place Where We Are Right,” trans. Stephen Mitchell, in: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, ed. Robert Alter (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 66.