Spiritual Hiccups - Alabama Tornadoes and Dry Bones

When I stare at this morning's pictures from places such as Tuscaloosa or Pleasant Grove, Alabama, today's Ezekiel reading on the dry bones seems entirely appropriate.  Ezekiel's vision is meant to describe total devastation.  An army has been slaughtered on the battlefield and their bodies simply left to decompose.  There was death, destruction, and the final indignity of no proper burial.

Some of the scenes in Alabama and other parts of the Southeast seem every bit as terrible.  In places, nearly everything is gone, replaced by piles of rubble with a few skeletons of trees, their limbs and barks ripped away, poking up here and there.  The prophet Ezekiel could just as easily have been set down in a scene such as this and then asked, "Mortal, can these bones live?"

Gazing on such scenes, amidst unanswerable question of "How?" and "Why?" the immediate and pressing need is practical, hands-on help: rescue workers, places to stay, supplies, money, volunteers.  And as Christians, we are most surely called to help provide this.  But the need for hope is there, too, and that need will quickly grow.

During Lent our congregation has done a study using the book What's the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian: A Guide to What Matters Most.  The author, Martin Thielen, has provided an online study guide for such use, as well as a guide for an accompanying sermon series.  The final session for the seven week study - which our congregation will actually do this Sunday - is entitled, "Jesus' Resurrection: Is There Hope?"  And in the sermon helps is the story of tornadoes that struck Piedmont, AL in March of 1994.  A twister struck the Goshen Methodist Church as they celebrated Palm Sunday.  Nineteen people died, including the pastor's four year old daughter.  The pastor and 86 others were injured.  Pastor Clem performed 19 funerals that week, including her own daughter's.  And as the week went on, she began to get calls asking, "Reverend Clem, are we having Easter this year?"

Pastor Kelly Clem recognized that what people were really saying was, "Reverend Clem, we desperately need Easter."  And she realized that she desperately needed it, too.  And so she and members planned an Easter sunrise service.  And to a reporter's question about the disaster shattering her faith, she said that faith was what was holding her together, that all the people were holding on to each other and to the hope of rebuilding.  And she added, "Easter is coming."

On Easter morning, 200 people gathered in the yard of the destroyed church.  Pastor Clem, head bandaged and her shoulder in a brace, stood at a makeshift pulpit, opened a Bible, and read from Romans 8: "Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Why?  Why did the horrific events of last night happen?  I do not know.  I cannot answer such questions.  But I can answer Ezekiel's question.  Yes, these bones can live.  Nothing is beyond God's power to redeem and make new.  Nothing is beyond the hope of resurrection.  Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Thanks be to God!

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