Beyond Our Power--March 28, 2023

Beyond Our Power--March 28, 2023

"Then [the LORD] 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. 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. 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, has spoken and will act, says the LORD'." [Ezekiel 37:11-14]

Watch out--the first step is a doozy.

The first of the Twelve Steps, I mean--in an addiction recovery program, like Alcoholics Anonymous.  The first step is especially hard, because it means letting go of the illusion that you're in control of things.  "We admitted we were powerless... and that our lives had become unmanageable."  That's how it starts--not with a vow to "just try harder," or a recitation of the old poem Invictus, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."  No, instead, recovery has to begin with the honest recognition of our powerlessness, so that we can finally quit wasting our energy pretending we've got our stuff together.

In so many ways, that's all of us human beings, too--whether or not you're officially in a Twelve Step Recovery program.  Left to our own devices, we're all pretty well powerless, and our lives are just about unmanageable, too--except we tend to want to fool ourselves and everyone else around that we're all smashing successes.  We want to picture ourselves as the doctor who saves the patient in the nick of time, or the firefighter who comes out of the burning building at the last minute, carrying the rescued child. We don't want to consider that we're the patient on the table or the person carried out of the flames.

But the Scriptures telling us the uncomfortable truth: we are not spiritual Boy Scouts earning heavenly merit badges to make it to the next rank up; we are more like old chalky bones needing to be raised to life again through a power beyond our own.  We're Lazarus, waiting to be called to life again--which isn't something we can achieve by our own power.

Maybe that's what makes it so hard to admit we are powerless like Ezekiel's valley of bones: it means that we bring nothing to the table but our helplessness.  Bones, after all, can't even ask for help or healing.  A sick person might have the bright idea to call for the doctor.  A child trapped in a burning house can shout for help.  But bones?  They don't even know their predicament--they can't even ask for help in the first place.  God has to give it without being asked first.  God has to step in and raise the dead, without waiting around for the bones to get their act together and request a resurrection.  That means--gasp--God's work to save us doesn't depend on our being bright enough to request it, good enough to earn it, or pious enough to invite Jesus into our hearts first.  We are powerless, and our lives are unmanageable, after all.  We need a God who is willing to raise us from the dead without needing our initiative to kickstart it or to invite God into our hearts first.  We need a God who redeems even before we realize we need redemption.  

That was certainly the hard pill that the exiles had to swallow in Ezekiel's day.  After generations of thinking they were invincible because they had God on "their side" or because of their national wealth or their armies or their weapons or their own generic "greatness," they were brought face to face with their own helplessness.  Babylon, the empire du jour, had trampled down their city walls, burned their Temple, overrun their armies, and plundered their wealth.  It was as close as you could be to national death--to being just a valley full of old bones.  And it was at that point--but not before--that God could bring about a resurrection and bring them home again.  Resurrection, by definition, is only for the dead, and therefore must be given and cannot be earned, initiated, or even asked for.  But that's exactly when God's best work gets done.

If we, like the ancient exiles sitting in Babylon, don't bring anything to the table to earn or initiate our own resurrection, then that certainly removes any ground we have for looking down on anybody else.  Bones don't get to brag, and the femur over here doesn't have reason to think it's better than the tibia further down on the pile.  We're all just in need of a power beyond ourselves to bring us back to life. If I want to grow in love, it will mean abandoning the illusion that I'm more worthy of God's love than you or anybody else.  

Today, then, is a day for honesty... with ourselves and with God, so that we can be honest with everybody else, too.  We are helpless on on our own--but that doesn't need to make us despair for even a split second, because ours is a God who meets us exactly at our helplessness.  The thing that changes for us, though, once we are able to admit that we are powerless and that our lives have become unmanageable, is that we don't have to try and compare ourselves to anybody else, push them down, or puff ourselves up.  We can leave that kind of arrogance behind as one more coping mechanism that never got to the root of the problem anyway.  And instead, with open, empty hands, we will at last be ready simply to let God resurrect what is dead in us--and to rejoice when God does that for others around us, whether or not we thought they were "worthy" of it.  

O living God, we find ourselves resurrected by your power and your life-giving Spirit--thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Allow us to quit pretending we have come to life in you by our own achieving, so that we can celebrate as you call others to life all around us, too.