This morning, I want to talk about revival. Have you
ever been to a revival? In the small town where our
family lived until I was in fourth grade, a group of
churches would come together the first week of
August every summer. These small congregations
would pool what resources they had to rent a big
tent. We would send out fliers and hang posters and
invite each of the pastors in that small community
to participate. Now, my dad got to preach one night
every year, but it was Ivan Lowery I really wanted to
hear. Ivan Lowery was the pastor of the Mt. Vernon
Presbyterian Church just about two miles away from
our congregation, and Pastor Ivan, especially to an
eight-year-old kid, was larger than life. He had one of
those booming, voice-of-God preacher voices. The
power of his proclamation and the poetry of his words
would fill that tent like an earthquake. And all of us
would be there together, sweating in the humidity of
a southern July night as Ivan Lowery delivered the
message. Now I’m sure I’d heard the story of Ezekiel
before, likely in Sunday school, but it was Ivan Lowery
who brought that story to life for me as a kid. He
said this story was the first revival. He explained that
the word means “to live again.” And then that’s the
invitation that Pastor Ivan, whose congregation had
been founded by former slaves in 1870, gave us over
and over again. He said it dozens of times. Come back
to life. Come back to life. Come back to life.
And so, this morning I want to talk about revival.
Mortal, can these bones live?
In the words of our nine-year-old son Samuel, this
scene is spooky—Ezekiel led to the middle of a dark
valley filled with dry bones, lifeless and long gone.
But this is not some random assortment of
anonymous skeletons we’re talking about. God tells
us, tells the prophet, whose they are—these are the
bones of your people. The whole house of Israel. The
whole community of faith. These bones belong to
you. A dusty, deadly desert filled with lost friends and
former glory. These are your bones.
The ones that have been crushed by oppression.
Beaten down and left for dead. The context of the
passage is collective crisis. This shadowy valley, the
ultimate vision of human disaster. And so, the question
God asks the prophet is both urgent and uncertain.
Mortal, can these bones live?
If you’ve been in the valley, you understand the
question. For some of us it is a passing place of
temporary discomfort, a waystation on the wilderness
journey. But for others, the valley is home. The
conditions are chronic. The pain is permanent.
The bones belong to us. They belong to those
who have been crushed under the weight of it all.
The bones belong to congregations once filled on
Sundays with faithful souls and now struggling for
weekly survival. These bones belong to families
who come home from low wage jobs to find eviction
notices posted on doors and empty refrigerators. They
belong to faithful souls raised in the church, where
they were told they were loved just as they are and
then turned away because of who they are.
These bones belong to us. They belong to our
siblings in Christ whose lives are made difficult by the
circumstances of their birth, the color of their skin,
the language they speak, or the place they call home.
These bones belong to us because we, too, are part
of a world grown weary by division, distraction, and
destruction of what matters most—that torn fabric of
community, the sting of isolation, the corrosive effect
of anger and distrust.
Mortal, can these bones live?
I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.
Bookends of divine encounter.
Question: Can these bones live?
Answer: I will put my spirit within you.
The space between the question and the promise
is where we spend our lives. And so, what does
faithful living look like between the question and the
promise? What is the work of Jesus followers in this
zone of the unknown, this arena of liminality, this gap
between what is and what could be?
Can these bones live?
The question is not rhetorical. It invites honest,
vulnerable soul-searching. It goes to the heart of who
we are. These bones belong to us. What of life is left in
them? Afterall, they’re good bones. They’ve just aged
a bit, depleted by the decades. They’re good bones
but so dry and disconnected. They’re good bones, but
to tell the truth, they haven’t moved in years.
Can these bones live?
What is begging to be born in the dusty pile? What is
waiting expectantly for a burst of life? Ezekiel answers
God’s question with a prayer I hear in a voice of
desperation. O Lord God, you know.
This is when the miraculous movement begins. It
happens when this human agent of divine possibility
speaks hope into a valley of despair, speaks life into
the shadow of death.
Speak to the bones, God says.
Tell them. Tell them it is not over yet. Tell them there is
still work for them to do, still life for them to live, still joy
for them to experience. It occurs to me that God could
have used any means of restoration, but the choice of
the Divine is to empower the human voice as a channel
for sacred truth. Only then, when the prophet speaks,
does life begin to stir in those old bones.
The core conviction of our shared faith—the rock on
which we stand when all else fades and fails—is the
sturdy belief in a God who brings life out of death. We
are a resurrection people. We worship and seek to
follow a Risen Lord, and so we know deep in our souls
and in our collective memory that these dry bones
can live—but only if the Spirit of God is breathed
afresh in the valley of death. Revival.
I want to be clear. If we do not believe that God can
bring life out of death, then the church of Jesus Christ
has nothing to offer. Nothing to offer a context, a
culture, a country that looks like that valley of driedup bones. We should simply close our doors and
distribute our assets.
But, if resurrection is our message, then ours is an
essential voice of prophetic power the world must
hear. I hope you know where I stand. I trust that the
Spirit of God can, does, and will resurrect the bones of
what has been, into a life we could not imagine. I trust
that there is always hope because God just keeps
breathing new life into old bones.
Can these bones live?
Yes, I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.
There it is. Revival.
You shall live again. Why? Because God has work for
you to do. Friends, this is no time to deny it, hide it,
reject it, or ignore it. God has work for us to do.
And it’s time to come back to life. Time for bold steps.
Time for courageous faith. Time to listen to that voice
that whispers to you in the middle of the night—this
is the moment, your one chance at life on this earth.
Don’t simply wallow in the valley of dusty bones and
miss it.
God gives a spirit of life. To refuse it is to reject
resurrection. To accept it is to join God on a journey
that will transform you. You’ll lose some things and
grieve the losses. Redemption does not come without
risk and real cost. But the abundant life that awaits us
is worth it all.
I will put my spirit within you, and you will be revived.
You will discover a life you didn’t know you could
have, a purpose you thought had passed you by, a
power beyond your capacity to explain it.
Yes, my friends, we know the valley because the
bones belong to us. They are our people. People who
contemplate ending their lives rather than living with
the pain of rejection. Imagine that. People who grieve
unthinkable loss because of violence we have come
to call normal or acceptable. These bones belong
to us. People whose days pass without meaningful
interaction. These bones belong to us. People whose
nights are filled with fear about what tomorrow may
bring. Their bones belong to us.
We know this valley and we know the call. Speak to
the bones. Speak to your people. Tell them about a
God whose grace is beyond their comprehension,
whose love is without condition. Tell them about a
God who knows just what to do with a pile of bones.
Find the courage to speak hope into despair and truth
into lies.
You know the call. Not an easy task. Not a superficial
message. I’m talking about revival today. To live again
we must speak into this dry valley. We must speak
truth. Friends, the word of God and the Christian
Gospel have nothing in common with derisive rhetoric
and pernicious policies that hurt people God loves
even when that rhetoric is thinly veiled in pseudoreligious language. We will not find life by attacking
each other. We will not find life by bullying the
weak, demeaning our differences, or spouting selfrighteous slander. Nor will we find life in half-hearted
commitment to disciplines of discipleship. We will not
find life in some vague spirituality that asks nothing
concrete of us. If we are unwilling to give ourselves
fully to God without counting the cost, it will never be
enough and it will always feel like too much.
There is another way. The image of God in every
human encounter. Revival. A stirring of life in the
valley of death. Flesh joined to the bones. Breath in
the lungs. Fire in the heart. I can hear the voice of Ivan
Lowery ringing in the ears of an eight-year-old child.
Speak to the bones.
Come back to life.
God is not finished yet.
Can these bones live? Surely you know. Amen.