Week 20 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 37.1-14 ; Psalm 107; Matthew 22.34-40

Just when we thought Ezekiel might have exhausted his supply of surreal and unusual metaphors and visions, he comes along with one of his best known ones. He is led into a place filled with dry bones. Can they live, he is asked by the Lord. You are the one who knows, is his wise answer. Prophesy to them, the Lord says, and tell them to hear the word of the Lord. So Ezekiel does so. (Remember he has done stranger things already than talk to bones!)

So imagine the noise as the bones begin to move, are given flesh and sinews and skin, come together to form people once again. But are they alive? Only when the Spirit comes upon them, the breath of life, God's creating power, which causes them to stand up, fully restored.

It is a wonderful illustration of a message Ezekiel has already passed on to the people: 'I mean to raise you from your graves, my people, and restore you to the land, cause you to live according to my statutes, and truly to know the Lord'. 

That knowledge means loving God with all of ourselves and our neighbour as ourselves. This is the great commandment in which Jesus summarises the statutes and precepts, the commandments and prescriptions of the Law (and the Prophets). To observe that commandment is to be truly alive, alive to the fullest potential of the human being.

But the capacity to observe it is a gift of God's grace, the gift or virtue of charity, which means loving God and our neighbour with the selfsame love with which God loves. For it is the Spirit of God, poured into our hearts, who makes such love possible.

So loving, knowing, living is what is promised in these readings; loving truly, knowing deeply, living fully. The dry bones of our lives are transformed by the gift of the Spirit as our hearts are opened to love, our minds are enlightened to know, and our souls are strengthened to live. Then we will know that the Lord is our God, we will love him with all our hearts, we will live the eternal life Jesus has won for us. He is the Lord. He has promised to do this for us. And he will do it for us.