|
Lectionary
CHRISTMAS WEEK: 22 – 28 DECEMBER, 2008
THEME: ‘THE
VALLEY OF DRY BONES.’
READING: EZEKIEL 37: 1 – 14
Israel had not always been a “valley of dry bones.” It
was something is had become. How did they tear the flesh from
themselves? How did their bones become “dry”? From the story
of God and God’s people in the Scriptures, every time the
people stroll into the wisdom supermarket and select a wisdom
other than Yahweh’s, it destroys them no matter how good it
may seem in comparison. Need we then keep proving what has
always been proved?
The colonization project was to the
African like the sun losing altitude, bringing its destructive
heat closer to the earth. The project sowed the error of
reframing the African’s identity from a person to a thing, a
piece of utility and merchandise. In this case, unlike the
Israelites who hurtled themselves into the horror valley
through obedience to alien wisdom, it was largely the
unsuspecting hospitality of Africa that dried her people’s
bones.
On the post-colonial side of history, we must admit
our guilt in allowing and even courting the neo-colonization
bug which licenses the continuity of the annihilating
“dry-bones” epidemic. We even seem to have gotten very
creative ways of remaining in the valley! This is even
gloomier when the church itself is in the valley. Like
Ezekiel, the church is called to be that living entity in the
midst of death, the entity that is actively breathing life
into even the driest of bones, birthing the possibilities of a
new life into our desperate communities.
Submitted by
Rev. Edward Buri
PRAYER
Breathe in us Lord so that
life will return to our broken continent, and all the nations
will experience spiritual, political and economic revival and
we will together ‘step forth in faith,’ through Jesus Christ
our Lord, Amen.
READINGS FOR THE WEEK
John 5: 16 –
30; John 6: 60 – 66; Psalm 8; Habakkuk 3; Isaiah 61: 1 – 3;
Isaiah 43: 8 – 21 | |
|