A Fourth Church Sermon by Dana Ferguson

November 12, 2000 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Where Did Alex’s Hope Go?

Dana Ferguson
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Romans 6:6–11
Psalm 130
Ezekiel 37:1–13

“‘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, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord.”

Ezekiel 37:14 (NRSV)

The movie came out when I was in high school. It was a huge hit—The Big Chill. The opening scene was meant to be a somber one—a funeral scene in a small, country, white clapboard church. I can’t remember who played the part of the minister. It could have been someone grossly famous or terribly unknown. I don’t remember. But I do remember the character. Gathered at the funeral are college friends come to mourn the death of their friend Alex. The minister gazes out, leans over the pulpit, and, in one of the most pitiful attempts at a Southern accent I have ever heard, asks, “Where did Alex’s hope go?”

We thought it was hysterical. We laughed and laughed. Sitting on the floor of my parents’ bedroom, we rewound the videotape and watched again and again, literally rolling with laughter, giggling with delight. It was funny. Well, to us Mississippi folk anyway.

The words of that supposed country preacher did have a longer lasting effect on us, though. They became a part of everyday conversations. We pulled them out in the face of disappointing events—some trivial, some not so trivial: the nonmaterializing Friday night date, the defeat at cheerleader elections, the illness of a parent, the sudden and devastating death of a friend. At those moments, we would echo the words back to one another: “Where did Alex’s hope go?” It was our adolescent attempt at broadening the scope of our sight, at not losing sight of new possibilities for tomorrow, of hope in those valleys of disappointment and of despair.

The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones and they were very dry.

Ezekiel is there. In his vision, he is there in the valley. We can almost taste the dust. It’s dry. And skeletons are all around—representing Israel, the Israelites in exile, a dead nation without a future, feeling abandoned, bereft of hope. The question is, do these exiles, does this nation have a future? It makes possible a great sermon about nations and politics—about public life and powerless communities. I suppose great fodder for a conversation about this week’s political happenings, about elections, disappointment, lost hope, frustration, power and powerlessness. But, let me go ahead and let you know right now that I have no intention of attempting to make sense of our political quagmire this morning.

And that brings us back to Ezekiel. The dry bones. The valley. The valley where it seems impossible to grab hold of life or faith or hope. It’s a lonely and desolate place. Sometimes we, like Ezekiel, are there for a moment. Sometimes it’s longer, when we are so overcome with the landscape of dryness that we can’t see a river or pond or even a little spring. I can remember a couple of years ago being in one of those really long spells in the valley—in the valley where darkness covers all possibilities and the dawn is nowhere to be found.

I finally got up enough strength to painfully confess to my husband that I thought I might be losing my faith. He paused. I wasn’t sure if he were in shock or simply trying to think of something terribly compassionate to say. Finally he responded, “Do you think you can claim disability?” I didn’t really think it was funny. “I’m serious.” And I was, for these are serious moments and painful ones.

One commentator puts it this way: “Who among us has not stood at some time or other by the grave of their hopes? Who has not faced a situation in which any possibility of recovery seemed to be ruled out in advance?” It happens! It happens to us now, and it has been happening for centuries—from the beginning of God’s people of Israel right up to this very moment.

I grew up spending time during the summer at Montreat Conference Center in North Carolina. It’s a sort of mecca for Southern Presbyterians. I attended youth conferences there with thousands of other youth from across the country. And as an adult, I chaperoned youth groups. At the end of each day, we would gather in what we called back home groups to “process” the events of the day. The last evening was a discussion of the whole week. There is one of those last night gatherings that shaped my faith and my ministry profoundly.

We started out by sharing with one another our experiences of God. We talked about events and times when there was no doubt in our mind that God was present. There were talks of campfires and confirmation classes; scholastic moments and sporting events; funerals and family gatherings. I was impressed that so many could articulate these experiences of God’s presence with them.

Then silence fell upon us. It lingered there until John spoke. Lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling he said, “I can’t feel God.” “Why do you think that is, John?” “I don’t know how to feel God when my friend lies in a hospital bed in a coma. He’s been there for months. It’s not fair.” We sat silent for a while staring at the floor. And then, slowly, the resentment and despair rose from the depths of the group. Another member cried out in anger for having watched for most of her life, before the advance of treatments, her mother battle multiple sclerosis. Another teen confessed her rage at having been abused at the hands of her father. We were wandering around in that valley—that valley of dry bones—filled with the tears of despair. We wept. We wept hard.

These youths had brought forth their wounds and their questions, and now they were looking for answers. They wanted to make sense of the desolation around them—to get answers about the tough times in life. But our theology doesn’t give simple, easy answers to these questions. We don’t just package up piffle statements to respond to the deep mysteries of living and dying. Renita Weems, in her book Listening for God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt (Simon & Schuster, 1999), talks about being confronted time and again by students asking her opinion about some matter related to evil, suffering, and pain. She claims that her response sends these people away dissatisfied, questioning her credentials, and still perplexed by these mysteries.

She says,

I still don’t have answers to the questions others as well as I have in good faith posed over the centuries about justice, suffering, evil, and faith. I care about life, about freedom, about hope, about beauty, about faith, about believing that somewhere out there, despite the evidence to the contrary, a mysterious wellspring of energy exists inside each of us or outside each of us that creates, sustains, embraces, protects, comforts, and responds.

In the face of such suffering, we are tempted to give it the power to negate what is good and possible and hopeful. But bad things don’t negate the possibility for good—for God to bring about good. The existence of things we don’t understand doesn’t render God powerless.

Weems continues, saying that

life sometimes sends heartbreaking news of death and devastation and allows angry, ugly people to come into our lives and challenge our faith in what is good. But it’s also true that sometimes we look around at what is good, beautiful, and precious in the world and hear stories of people changing and asking forgiveness that make us kneel and cry and wonder why we almost let evil take that away from us.

There is evil and suffering and pain around us. Did God cause it? No. Does it mean that God has no power? No. The amazing thing is that in the midst of all of that pain and suffering, God does have power. Power and compassion that is ultimately given to us in the cross. The cross. And then, resurrection. Newness. New life. New opportunities. New beginnings.

God said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” And God says, “I will cause breath. I will lay sinews. I will cause flesh to come upon you. I will cover you with skin. I will put breath in you.”

The Lord says to Ezekiel, “Say this to these bones: tell them that the Lord God does move among them.” And so Ezekiel does. At the command of God, at the words of the prophet, breath comes. Wind invades. There is life. The bones can function again.

In this passage, Ezekiel brings to us—to those who stand at the grave of loss—a message of hope. The vision speaks to us of a God who can achieve the impossible. It brings to us the very words of God saying that contrary to the way the current situation feels, God has not abandoned us. Despite the suffering, God is not rendered powerless. In the face of devastation, God does have the power to restore—to make our bones live again.

We may die many deaths—spiritual deaths—time and again. And we will even experience physical death. Between now and the time that eternal life claims us, we will pass through more than one valley of dry bones—we will feel plum cut off, dead to all around and distant from God.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that

if our turns have not yet come, they will—our own turns to submit ourselves to the unknown, to step into the darkness without understanding what it is all about. We may not go bravely or wisely or compassionately; some of us may have to crawl, and others of us to be carried, but that we can go at all has everything to do with the cross, the cross dares us to believe that God is at the bottom of everything, especially the things we cannot understand, with strong arms waiting to catch us when all our nets break, with loving arms to cradle us. (God in Pain: Teaching Sermons on Suffering, Abingdon Press, 1998)

The mother who had suffered with multiple sclerosis that the teen told us about on the last night of Montreat died a year later. I attended the funeral. It was a day of sorrow, but it was not a day when the darkness overcame the light. It was a day when a community gathered to mourn the loss of a spouse and a mother and a friend, to claim God’s promises for her and for that family and that community as they would carry on. It was a day of promise. The youth group that had gathered together a year ago at Montreat had been gathering faithfully each week, sometimes more often, to love and to support each other, to share their hurts and to share their hope. That day, they filed into the sanctuary just behind the family and filled the pews just as this friend come to mourn the death of her mother had asked them to. Those youth gathered to claim the promises for that day and to claim the promises of renewal for the days to come.

God’s promise of new life comes to us all through life: in the face of disappointment and discouragement, in the face of desolation and despair, God’s power to renew continues on. Can these bones live? Yes. They can live. By the power of God, these bones can live and the darkness can turn to dawn and the dryness can turn to possibility and the doubt can be soothed away by the power and the people of God. And there is no better place than this—than this community of faith worshiping and working, praying and studying—to await God’s spirit of renewal.

Attempting to make logical sense and seeking theological truth from movies is a dangerous thing. But, it is worth noting that in The Big Chill, Alex was the one that everyone else had lost track of. He was cut off—he had distanced himself from them. He had, for the most part, shut them out of his life. He had left the community.

We don’t hold in our hands the power of life and death. God alone holds such power. But what we do hold in our hands is hope—hope that in us and through us, God will minister to this community. Ezekiel tells us that restoration comes in community—communities where God’s people come together hanging on to hope, listening to God’s word, speaking God’s word. It happens right here. Right here in this community and Christian communities everywhere. We know not when God’s spirit will move us or move one among us. We can’t predict it. We can’t control it. But we can trust it. We can trust God’s spirit to mend crushed hope, to renew withering faith, to rebuild broken communities. Hope does abound. Hope abounds in the cross. Hope abounds in the power of God. Hope abounds in the people of God. Hope abounds in the community of God. All to God’s glory and honor and praise.