Can These Bones Live?

A sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter
April 19, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Luke 24:1-12

“Mortal, can these bones live?” We heard that reading from Ezekiel a few moments ago. The Spirit of God whisks the prophet away to a desert graveyard, the scene of an old, forgotten battle, a place of death. Bones–dry bones–are all around. Life is nowhere to be found. And God asks: “Mortal, can these bones live?” I felt like I heard that question as I was leaving a nursing home room–Mary’s room–at the end of a dark hallway. Our hour pastoral visit had come to a close; Communion had been shared; she had bared her soul to me. As I walked away from that tomb of a room and to my car, I heard the old question: “Mortal, can these bones live?” The only answer I had was the same as Ezekiel’s: “O Lord GOD, you know.”

If you have been here the last couple of services you have heard about Mary. At 97, she was looking back at her life and she was done. She had been done for a couple of decades. She was exhausted; she was depressed; she was hurt and wounded. Without family or friends, she knew loneliness well. Hope was foreign to her. She described herself to me over and over as mean. I wish I could say that by the end of my visit, she had come out of it all. But that’s not how it usually works. Despair sets in; depression is still close at hand; darkness is ever present. Mary knew what it was like to be set down in the middle of a valley of bones, and the bones are very dry. “Mortal, can these bones live?” 

I think Mary would have identified with the women at the tomb–the other two Marys and Joanna. She would have identified with them before they saw the angel. After a Sabbath rest, these faithful women are going to do the unimaginable: anoint Jesus’s dead body. They have been dreading it. Duty takes them there; love takes them there; but this is a nightmare. How could it be that their Jesus, whom they loved so much, is dead–and dead from crucifixion, the death of beasts? Their gentle teacher and Lord, tortured, dead, gone? They go to the tomb with no hope, with despair, with depression, with tear-streaked faces. 

When they arrive–you know the story–when they arrive they discover the body is not there. There are two angels, though. They say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” Then they remember his words. He had said he would rise again. Maybe they thought it was a metaphor, a figure of speech? But now they are beginning to understand. They run to tell the others, and all the while, the old question pierces their minds: Can these bones live–can they really be alive? Can Jesus be alive? 

It’s the same for the old prophet, we read. The prophet prophesies, and to his astonishment, bones come together, with muscle and sinew and tissue and breath. They are raised. They are new. They are alive. What was dead is alive again. And the dead-end has a new way out, an impossible way out. And God has done it. God declares he will do that for the people who have lost all hope, who think there is no way out. God will act and bring them home, bring them back to himself, raise them to new life. 

The question is posed to us today: “Can these bones live?” I thought about Mary when I was walking away from the room and to the car. It seemed so bleak, her situation. But I believe the answer is yes. I knew then that Mary’s story was not over, not even at 97, for the goodness of eternity awaits all children of God. God acts to stitch together wounds, to heal traumas, to bring justice and wholeness and reconciliation, even on the other side of the grave. God raises to new life–God does it, even when we cannot see a way forward. 

“Can these bones live?” I can testify to Mary; the answer in my life has been yes. Brittny, tonight you can testify, too, for the answer in your life, from now on, is yes. For when we are baptized into Christ our story never ends in death; it never ends in decay; it never ends in sin; it never ends in hell’s victory over us. For the Spirit of God moves, and the breath of God enters us, and what was dead is made alive, and we are new in God’s victory.

That’s the promise for us, for Mary, for all who follow Jesus–that’s the promise for us in life eternal. But it’s also the promise today. For the baptized life is a new life today. It is the resurrection life today. The Resurrected One lives in us today; the breath of God is poured into us today; and the graveyards of our lives are put on notice–for God is doing something new, even in us, today. 

Brittny, a few moments ago we welcomed you into the household of God. God was present at that font–I’m sure of it. This baptism means God has claimed you today and forever. It means that your story is now in the hands of Jesus–for all eternity. There will be good times and bad times. There will be times you feel like you’re in the middle of a valley of bones–and they are very dry. There will be times you walk through trial and tribulation. Like Mary, there will be times of loneliness, times of suffering. That must be so because we are human. No one is immune. 

But hear this–Brittny and all of us–hear this: When we walk through those times, we do not walk alone. When we see the valley of dry bones, that’s not the end of our story. When everything around us seems lost and hopeless, the Resurrected One, wounds in his body, stands beside us. And he calls us to himself–to his life. And in him, we are made new. In him, we are free. In him, we live. Today and forever.

I never saw Mary alive again. She died in her sleep shortly after my visit. I got a call from the nursing facility–I don’t know why, but I got a call. Of course, there was no one else to call; no obituary; there would be no service. I drove down there. The coroner had not arrived yet, so I went to her room. It wasn’t dark like before. The curtains were pulled open; light was streaming in. Mary was there, resting in her bed, asleep in the Lord. Beside her, on the wall, was that cross she had made with two sticks and cheap putty. I took it off the wall and placed it in her hands. Then I knelt beside her and said the prayers at the time of death. 

After the final amen, I sat in a chair beside her bed and waited. It was quiet, but there was a loud echo in my head. It was those words I had thought in the hallway not too long before: “Mortal, can these bones live?” The last time I heard those words, walking down the hallway, I confess I was troubled. This time, though, I smiled. I smiled because alongside that question, I also heard music, an ancient chant: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and giving life to those in the tomb. I sang it to myself, and I kept on smiling, because I swear I heard Mary singing with me.