March 9, 2008

Scripture:         Ezekiel 37:1-14

Sermon:           “Life in the Junkyard”

            Have you ever had somebody give you a forecast of things to come that you just didn’t want to hear?  The doctor says something about high cholesterol and heart disease.  Or a politician mentions the prospect of war for heaven’s sake.  People in the know about the economy start using words like “recession”.  Things we don’t want to hear.  Like a weather forecast for a foot of snow in the middle of March.

            People say things like this and we don’t really want to pay attention.  We’ll listen to the doctor when our chest starts hurting.  It’ll be a recession when I lose my job or the value of my house makes it impossible to sell the thing.  And goodness knows that calling for large amounts of snow is the surest way of receiving large amounts of rain.

            It was the position that the prophet Ezekiel found himself in.  God called him to speak some mighty unpopular news of what was to come to the people of Israel.  They weren’t much in the mood to hear him, either.

            Ezekiel was part of the upper-crust in his day and age.  He was an up and coming priest in the Temple in Jerusalem.  He could hobnob with the king, with nobles, with well-decorated military men.  He was a rising star, you might say.  A bright future.

            All of that also meant that he was lumped in with all the powerful folks when the enemies of the nation came and decided to replace the entire power structure with people more to their liking.  When the great army of Babylonia arrived in Jerusalem some 700 years before the time of Christ, Ezekiel found himself on the short end of a coupe.  The king, the high-ranking army officers, wealthy folks that had a big stake in things, and the top religious figures were all removed from power and taken far away to a land that is now in what we know as Iraq.  That’s how the Babylonians did things.  And Ezekiel found himself among them.  His bright future seemed dashed.

            That’s the time when God called on Ezekiel to be a messenger to all of those folks who were deported to live far away from Jerusalem.

            Now, what these folks wanted to hear was that God was quite perturbed with the current situation and that it would just be a short matter of time before their fortunes were overturned.  God would not forget them.  Soon everything would be fine.  That’s what they wanted to hear.

            Instead, Ezekiel preached these sermons about how this was just the beginning.  Even worse things were going to happen.  The city of Jerusalem itself was going to be destroyed.  The Temple would be burned and looted.  Many more people would die and many more people would be taken from their homeland to live in exile.  Instead of a soothing, pastoral word, Ezekiel lambasted those folks with bad news.  Furthermore, he pointed out all of their many sins and explained that their suffering was the justified result for how they neglected their responsibilities to their God.

            Nobody wanted to hear that stuff.

            In ten years time, Ezekiel’s words proved to be quite accurate.  The misery of the people of Israel was multiplied.  Those that lived to tell the tale did so in a place far away from home.  They were defeated.  They were humiliated.  And it looked to most of them that there must not be a God at all.

            Ezekiel wasn’t finished with his preaching, however.  Once the dreadful disaster occurred, he began to speak with an entirely new outlook.  His sermons changed from fiery to hopeful.  God wasn’t through with these people.  God was going to start again, he’d say.  The nation was going to be reborn.

            I suspect that Ezekiel had proven himself by that time.  It’s something like the doctor.  She tells you that your cholesterol is high and that you’re in danger.  You don’t listen at first.  Then your chest begins to hurt one day, and where do you turn?  The doctor.  So, Ezekiel likely had listening ears, even when he began to speak of the impossible dreams of the future.

            Turn with me to the 37^th chapter of Ezekiel.  We’ll read verses 1 through 14.  You can find that easily on page   of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament in the pew Bibles.  Listen for the word of the Lord…

            The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.  He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.  He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?”  I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”  Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them:  O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.  Thus says the Lord God to these bones:  I will cause breath to enter you; and you shall live.  I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.

            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.  I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.  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.”  I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

            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.’  There 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.  And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  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.”

            I think Ezekiel was talking about a turnaround.  You know what I mean?  Something just might as well be dead and something happens to make it just kind of spring back to life.  A turnaround.  A one-eighty.  I think that’s what Ezekiel was saying.  All this talk about dead, dry bones being knit back together with tendons and flesh and then received the breath of life—that’s a turnaround.

            I met a man this past week who knew a thing or two about turnarounds.  His family and friends were telling me stories about his life as I prepared to write his funeral.  I didn’t have the good fortune to know him while he was alive.  But, I got to know him a little bit through the things people said about him.  And it turns out that he was keenly interested in taking things that you and I would throw away and breathing life back into them.  It’s called “Junkin’”.

            Tony and a friend would go out in a pickup truck and find stuff piled up along the curb.  You know how the city has collection days for large items that you want to finally be rid of?  They knew when certain streets would have those days.  And they’d get to the piles of discarded furniture, appliances, and whatnot before the city folks carried it off to a landfill.  Now, some of this stuff needed only a few repairs.  And these guys would fix up the junk they collected and sell it.  You wouldn’t believe the list of junk that I heard about.

            It struck me that Tony was something of a living portrait of another man that you and I know quite well.  Junkin’ was a way of life for him, too.  He was always finding the stuff that the rest of the world was throwing away and breathing new life into it.  Tax collectors.  Prostitutes.  Lepers.  Stuffy ‘ole religious folks.  Fishermen.  This guy got a kick out of picking up the stuff piled high in the curb and making it over into something valuable.

            And it made me remember a story that we used to tell one another when I was in high school church camp.  It’s called the Ragman…

I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing my
life, my street sense, my sly tongue had ever prepared me for. Hush, child.
Hush, now, and I will tell it to you.

Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome
and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with
clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear, tenor voice: "Rags!"
Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.

"Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!

"Now, this is a wonder," I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, 
and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed
intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner
city?

I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn't disappointed.

Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing
into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and
elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking. The
Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin
cans, dead toys, and Pampers.

"Give me your rag," he said so gently, "and I'll give you another."

He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across
her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift
to the giver.

Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he
put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then HE began to weep, to
sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left
without a tear.

"This IS a wonder," I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman
like a child who cannot turn away from mystery.

"Rags! Rags! New rags for old!"

In a little while, when the sky showed grey behind the rooftops and I could
see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a
girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood
soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.

Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely
yellow bonnet from his cart.

"Give me your rag," he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, "and I'll give
you mine."

The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it,
and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what
I saw: for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker,
more substantial blood - his own!

"Rags! Rags! I take old rags!" cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent
Ragman.

The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and
more to hurry.

"Are you going to work?" he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole.
The man shook his head.

The Ragman pressed him: "Do you have a job?"

"Are you crazy?" sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing
the right sleeve of his jacket - flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no
arm.

"So," said the Ragman. "Give me your jacket, and I'll give you mine."

Such quiet authority in his voice!

The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman - and I trembled at
what I saw: for the Ragman's arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it
on he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one. "Go to work," he said.

After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, and
old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it round
himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.

And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping
uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm,
stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old, and sick,
yet he went with terrible speed. On spider's legs he skittered through the alleys of
the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed
beyond.

I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I
needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove
him so.

The little old Ragman - he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits.
And then I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding. He
climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he
sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He
covered his bones with an army blanket. And he died.

Oh, how I cried to witness that death! I slumped in a junked car and wailed
and mourned as one who has no hope - because I had come to love the Ragman.
Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but
he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.

I did not know - how could I know? - that I slept through Friday night and
Saturday and its night, too.

But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence.

Light - pure, hard, demanding light - slammed against my sour face, and I
blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was
the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive!
And, besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow nor of age, and all the
rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.

Well, then I lowered my head and trembling for all that I had seen, I myself
walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry
figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him
with dear yearning in my voice: "Dress me."

He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside
him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!

You wouldn’t believe this, but God hangs out quite a bit in the junkyard.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)