9th May 2010 - "Can these bones live?"

Usha Hull - St Peter's Tewin and Ayot St Peter
Ezekiel 37 1-14
John 5 1-9

The sun beats down mercilessly and as far as the eye can see there is only sand and the cracked dry earth. Only the occasional knarled tree dots the horizon, withered and bent as it reaches deep into the bowels of the earth in its quest for water. There was water here once, there was life here once, on this dried up lake bed, the evidence left in ripples of dry sand and earth. As we look for shelter from the glare of the merciless sun, I wonder if this was what Ezekiel’s valley of dried bones must have looked like, a wilderness devoid of life and hope, before the breath of God transformed the landscape.

I am standing on a dried up bed that was once a salt lake teeming with bird life in the land known as Rajasthan in India. The desert is expanding in this place once known once as the country of the kings. And shortage of clean safe water is affecting not only the eco-system, decimating plant and wild life, but causing suffering on a massive scale among the human inhabitants. At the edge of the dried up lake stands a village and here, among some of the most vulnerable and poor people on earth we have heard stories of helplessness, of suffering and of loss.

On our trip, Colin and I have heard how children walk for miles with their mothers to carry back water, every drop of which is precious. We have heard how frail and elderly grandparents are rationed to one glass of clean water a day. Where are the men, we have asked, why are there so many children and women doing hard labour in the glare of this noonday sun? And the reply comes that like the water in the lake, work in the area has dried up, that the men have left their wives and their children in this dry and arid landscape, to find work in equally arid faraway cities.

And I wonder to myself what must it be like to be a woman here, struggling to bring up on her own to bring up children in the most dire poverty? What must it be like to walk four hours a day in the heat of the sun carrying the precious water of life? What must it be like to be a child here, growing up not as normal children do with schooling and friends and play, but with a horizon limited by thirst and the lack of a basic necessity? Can we, who have clean water at the turning of a tap, begin to imagine what it must be like to be an elderly person, frail and possibly ill, totally dependent on others for a single rationed glass of water a day?

These people are the helpless of the world. And I’d like to take you away from Rajasthan to another time, another place. Today the Gospels tell us of another helpless person who two thousand years ago lay beside life giving water, yet who never would have been healed had not someone held out to him the promise of hope and new life.

So let’s go for a moment to the pool at Bethsaida and imagine what it must have been like. The light dances on the water and sends reflections in shafts along the five stone porticoes. Sound has a way of echoing in here, echoing with moans and raised voices and mumbled prayer rarely silent in the jumbled mass of bodies strewn along the stone floors. For here lie the lame, the maimed, the diseased. Every now and then, as the hot springs begin to bubble, the level of noise erupts in frenzy and shouts as bare feet scramble past the man lying helpless and alone. Time after time he is left behind, rejected and shunned.

The thoughts going through the mind of the man lying helpless at the pool for year upon year, 38 years we are told, cannot have been very different from the thoughts of the woman forced to carry water for mile upon mile. Who is there to help me, the helpless of this world ask. Who is there to care? Their lament is the lament from psalm 94 ‘How long, O Lord, how long, will the wicked be allowed to gloat?’ Their plea is the plea from psalm 35, ‘O Lord you have seen this, be not silent.’ Their cry is the cry of Job, ‘God has made my heart faint, the Almighty has terrified me, yet I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face.’

There is anger here, there is bewilderment. Above all, there is suffering. And we might ask ourselves, where are the deserts devoid of hope in our own lives? Where are the situations where there is the promise of healing as at the pool of Bethsaida, but where we lie helpless in sight of the promised land but deprived of its life giving benefits? Where are the places of pain in our society? Where are the people who cannot help themselves?

In the weeks leading up to the election there was a great deal of rhetoric by the leaders of the three main parties. And one such speech struck me in particular, telling as it did of the broken world we live in. This politician spoke of metal detectors at the entrance of schools; of fire engines called out on a hoax only to be pelted with bricks; of people in wheelchairs abused on the streets; of people so overwhelmed by debt that they cannot bear to tell their family; of addicts whose only daily event is the queue to get some methadone to take the edge off life for a little time; of those with no shape to their day or structure to their life, who have the grim grind of hopelessness in their eyes. These are the people who today lie beside their own pools of Bethsaida and who is there to help them?

If you could look into the eyes of that man lying helpless by the pool of Bethsaida, what do you think you would see? I doubt you would see outright hope. More likely you would see pain and resignation but an unwavering resolve that no matter how bad things were, no matter what the odds stacked up against you were, no matter how long it took, there was hope to be had somewhere.

Possibly you would see the same look I saw in the eyes of a woman by a dried up lake in Rajasthan. These were sad eyes, weary eyes, but eyes that were far from defeated. These were eyes that told me that no matter what we human beings are forced to endure, there is the resolve to go on. These were eyes that said to me clearly that in all the troubles of our lives we human beings have patience and the desire to be healed. These were eyes that spelt out the courage of the human spirit in the face of years of adversity.

In the valley of dry bones, the Lord asked Ezekiel, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ Can these bones live and is it possible to bring to life again hope for other people who are less privileged than ourselves? Could we, who have so much, who have water in abundance, say to a woman in Rajasthan, ‘No, I will not diminish you by throwing you scraps for charity, but I will hold out to you the promise that I will do something practical, such as contributing to make possible wells that will bring you dignity and water’?

In our own society, is it possible to breathe new life into hopelessness, into sadness, into the brokenness of the under-privileged by our own acts of kindness and compassion, through the example of lives modelled on decency and a genuine wish to reach out? As Christian Aid week begins, can we give a little of ourselves, not just in money and donations, not just by pushing envelopes through letter boxes, but in pushing for Fairtrade by the ethical choices we make through our own purchases? When was the last time you helped the cause of justice and sustainable development? This is a world that is crying out, not for pennies given as what we can spare, but for a genuine commitment from those better off to help the disadvantaged help themselves.

And that brings us to the second question in our readings today. Beside the pool of Bethsaida, the Lord asked the sick man, ‘Do you want to be healed?’ Do we want to be healed of our apathy, our indifference, our willingness to let others do the running? Do we want to be healed of our resistance to life-giving change even though change may be painful? In the aftermath of the elections, where every vote counted, can we begin to realise that every vote for God counts as well and that the ethical choices we make in our everyday lives impact on the wider world in ways we cannot begin to realise?

Do we want to be healed? Because if we say ‘yes’ the Lord’s answer is simple. He will tell us to get up and go. To start doing. To act. For we are His body in the world, we are His hands and feet. And there is work to be done.

I’d like to leave you with a little story from ancient wisdom that you may have heard before, but which deserves new thought.

‘Past the pilgrim as he prayed, went the sick, the blind, the crippled and the poor. And seeing them, the pilgrim went down into deep prayer and cried, “Great God, how is it that a loving Creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?”

And out of the long silence, God replied, “I did do something. I made you.”‘

Amen.