We Are All Exiles Now

And God said
Shall these bones live? Shall these Bones live?
—T.S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday”

A holy and learned confessor once advised a penitent to enter each day into a prayerful reading of the Old Testament. “It’s good,” he would say, “to have Iron Age words in your mouth every day.” Especially these days, he might have added, when so few either read or pray at all. We live in the Age of the Afterword. 

So, heeding his advice, I’ve been looking into Ezekiel who, having lived six centuries before the coming of Christ, certainly qualifies. Perhaps less of an Iron Age author than, say, Moses or David or Solomon, but not exactly a newcomer, either. And to make that exercise easier, the Church, in her wisdom, scheduled ten readings from the lectionary last month, each carefully selected from among the forty-eight chapters of the book he wrote—which happens to be among the longest books in the Bible, by the way, not to mention one of the most quotable.  

Consider Chapter 37, of which the first fourteen verses contain the famous prophecy of the dry bones. It is a stirring passage in which God assures Ezekiel, in a vision—one of many vouchsafed him over the course of twenty or more years—that, yes, these bones shall live, but not without a great deal of purifying fire to burn away all that stands athwart the covenant so many had abandoned. Thus will the apostasy and sin of Israel serve to validate the presiding theme set out by Ezekiel, which is that of ruin followed by restoration.  

Well, he certainly chose to live in interesting times, didn’t he? But, then, he hadn’t chosen anything of the kind. God had chosen. Ezekiel had only to consent to put on the prophetic mantle and, pursuant to the vocation he was given, spend twenty or so years receiving visions of all that he must pass along to the People of the Book.

So let us take a snapshot or two from those fourteen verses, which carry far-reaching lessons for our own crisis-ridden times. If crisis bespeaks judgment, then we are no less under the judgment of God than our forerunners the Jews, who first breached the covenant with God. We, too, have been, in the words of Ezekiel, “stubborn of brow and obstinate in heart” (2:3-8; 3:4-9). 

Beginning with the Lord Himself coming down upon this great priest and prophet of Israel, leading him into a forlorn and desiccated place, there to commune with countless bones strewn about the desert land. “How dry they were!” exclaims Ezekiel. Whereupon the Lord asks the question which is as relevant to our own age as it was when first he put it to Ezekiel: “Son of man, can these bones live?” 

Ezekiel is promptly instructed to prophesy over the dry bones, announcing that in the new dispensation provided by God, they will indeed rise up once more, but at no small price in suffering and travail. Nevertheless, God has promised to redeem the time:

I will put sinews upon you, make flesh grow over you, cover you with skin, and put spirit in you so that you may come to life and know that I am the Lord. 

And so it happens. The bones miraculously come alive, standing erect as if a vast army were made ready to march. So, what exactly are these bones? To whom do they belong? 

They are the whole house of Israel, which, having fallen away from the covenant made with Yahweh, now lies in a state of grief and ruin while an alien army lays siege to Jerusalem, destroying its temple and leading its captive people on the long march to exile in Babylonia. The nation has been split in two, the Northern Kingdom falling into the hands of the Assyrians, while Judah, the Southern Kingdom, is forced to languish in abject captivity for years and years to come. All this Ezekiel has not only foretold but, led into bitter exile himself, he must in the midst of such tumult live out his own days. 

In other words, things are destined to change, hope is on the rise, but not anytime soon. And Ezekiel, for all that his words ring true, will not live to see the time of restoration. Like Moses before him, he carries the torch that points to the Promised Land, but he is unable to enter therein. 

“O my people,” declares the Lord, speaking through the voice of Ezekiel, “I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel…

O my people! I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land; thus you shall know that I am the Lord. I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord.

It is the fact of the Lord’s constancy that will fortify the hope of Israel during their long sojourn with sorrow and subjection. Provided they do not fall into complete apostasy, that is, refusing the call to order their lives in conformity to the covenant God first made with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and then with Moses, whom He led out of Egypt and for whom with his people He promised a land overflowing with milk and honey.

But because they had sinned and thus forsaken the covenant, the Lord suffered His people to be handed over to their enemies. He had not cast them off, however, and so would sustain them yet amid the time of subjection. And if they listen to the prophets sent among them to keep alive the historical memory of what had once been, they might yet be restored in a time of grace.

The real danger—and it is one no different for us who are the heirs of Israel and of the promises entrusted to God’s chosen people—is that in living among an alien people with their strange and spurious gods, we will succumb to the siren sounds that surround us and thus look elsewhere than to God for the salvation for which, at the deepest level, we most hunger and thirst. The fleshpots of Egypt and Babylon have not gone away, in other words, and the fear is that by failing to heed the warnings of the prophet, we, too, may be forced to languish in exile for years and years to come.

Pray that the people and the politicians they elect take note of these things.

[Image: Gustave Doré engraving “The Vision of The Valley of The Dry Bones” (1866)]