Be Amazed: Peace in the Valley of Dry Bones
Second Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2025
Introduction: Making a Statement
Do you remember your first day at a new job and the mandatory “orientation and training”? Or maybe you remember those early days of retirement, when you thought, “This is amazing, I finally have some free time,” so you signed up to volunteer somewhere—only to discover that volunteering also came with orientation and training.
I had one of those “orientation-and-training” experiences some years ago. During orientation week, our Executive Director looked at our incoming group of idealistic young leaders and said with a grin, “My goal is for each of you to get through your term of office without getting arrested!” Arrested—what did he mean? Each year, we would send student executives to Parliament Hill to meet with MPs and engage in advocacy, and he warned us to be careful because some organizations actively recruit idealistic young people to their cause. That year, a colleague attended an event the night before a planned march where they received “protestor training.” A dozen people walking peacefully with cardboard signs is not particularly newsworthy. But if a group intentionally breaches the barricade that marks the boundary where protesting is permitted, people get arrested. Now there’s a headline and a photo op. Our ED didn’t want his young leaders to become pawns in political theatre.
And that brings us to Ezekiel. People will sometimes do dramatic things for attention. But in Scripture, God’s prophets sometimes did dramatic things for a different reason: not to manufacture drama, but to tell the truth and wake people up to a reality they had become numb to.
Ezekiel: Enacted Metaphors and Prophetic Parables
Ezekiel is one of the major prophets in the Old Testament, meaning his book is longer than those of the minor prophets like Habakkuk from last week. Yet for many of us, Ezekiel is oddly less familiar. Many still hear Ezekiel’s name and think, “Wait… who was that guy again?” Ezekiel lived at one of the most devastating moments in Israel’s history: the fall of Judah and the Babylonian exile. Babylon invaded, Jerusalem was crushed, the temple was destroyed, and God’s people were forcibly relocated to a foreign land. It wasn’t only a political crisis; it was a spiritual crisis—like the bottom dropped out of their lives and community. Ezekiel didn’t begin as a “full-time prophet.” He was originally a priest (Ezekiel 1:3), teaching God’s law and helping the people live as a worshiping community. But in exile, with the temple gone and the people scattered, God called him into a prophetic role: a messenger who spoke God’s word into a specific moment—exposing sin, interpreting crisis, and holding out hope.
What makes Ezekiel stand out is how God often asked him to communicate. God told him to embody the message through enacted metaphors—building a model of Jerusalem under siege, lying on his side for weeks as an embodied sermon, eating rationed food cooked over animal dung as a sign of desperation and defilement, and even, when Ezekiel’s wife dies, not mourning publicly (Ezekiel 4; 24). Not because grief doesn’t matter, but because a great catastrophe was coming, and God wanted the people to see the truth before it was too late. Ezekiel is a priest in exile turned prophet, called to help a traumatized people face reality, and to believe that even there, God is still speaking and still able to bring life.
The Valley of Dry Bones
Ezekiel 37 opens with a vision: God leads Ezekiel into a valley littered with bones, representing the people of Israel in the wake of exile and ruin. Then the Lord asks: “Son of man, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3, NIV). Ezekiel answers with honest humility: “Sovereign LORD, you alone know” (v.3). He doesn’t offer false optimism or surrender to despair; he places the question back into God’s hands.
Then God commands him: “Prophesy to these bones” (v.4). Speak God’s word into what looks irreversible. God promises re-creation: “I will make breath enter you… I will attach tendons… make flesh… cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life” (vv.5–6, NIV). That mention of tendons reminds me of a second-year medical student I know, Cait. She tore her ACL playing women’s tackle football, and five surgeries later, doctors are still trying to get those ligaments and tendons functioning properly again. Modern medicine is remarkable, but it also exposes the limits of human repair. Ezekiel’s vision is the opposite: God’s word doing what we cannot.
So Ezekiel obeys: “I prophesied as I was commanded” (v.7). The valley starts to sound like creation: “there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together” (v.7). Tendons and flesh appear. Skin covers them. But then a crucial line: “there was no breath in them” (v.8). Form without life—structure without the animating Spirit. God then commands Ezekiel to prophesy again—this time to the breath: “Prophesy to the breath” (v.9). Ezekiel obeys, “and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army” (v.10). Not an army of conquest, but a people restored—alive, standing, ready to be God’s people again. Then God explains: “These bones are the people of Israel” (v.11)—exiles who say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone” (v.11). The valley is their external ruin and their internal despair. And the climax is the deepest promise: “I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live” (v.14). The ultimate gift is not merely life restored; it is God’s own life within them—the Spirit as the breath of God.
Application
In Advent, we learn to wait and hope for Jesus, the God who comes near. Advent tells the truth about our need, and it tells the truth about God’s nearness—Ezekiel 37 gives language for seasons when life feels dry and beyond repair, and it gives a promise: God breathes life into what looks dead.
I thought back to my installation service here at First Mennonite Church, when I said that “our church has some good bones.” Ezekiel helps me say it more clearly now: a church can have good bones—history, traditions, committees, faithful habits—and still need breath: the Spirit of God. And what I have learned since arriving is that we have more than good bones. We have good people—faithful people, praying people, people who have served and kept showing up. Which is why my prayer as we step toward a new year is simple: Lord, breathe on us again. Put your Spirit in us, and help us live.
And this turns us decisively toward Jesus. Ezekiel promised that God would breathe life into what was dead. Jesus shows us what that promise looks like when God steps into our world in flesh. Standing in front of Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?” (John 11:25–26, NIV). That question is not only for Martha. Do you believe in Jesus’ resurrecting power today?
Closing Prayer
Sovereign LORD, you alone know.
You see the places in us that feel dry, scattered, and beyond repair.
Speak your word into our valley, and breathe on us again.
Put your Spirit in us, and help us live.
Jesus, you are the resurrection and the life—teach us to believe you, trust you, and follow you.
Make us a people who stand up again, not by our strength, but by your breath within us.
Amen.