![The steeple of the Memorial Church](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-02/160725ChurchCalArt4.jpg?itok=rG9ZvXzh) # Fifth Sunday in Lent April 10, 2025 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) *By The Rev. Dr. Kirstin Boswell* *Chaplain and Dean of Multifaith Engagement* *Elon University* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, April 6, 2025)* May God's grace be with you. I give thanks for being here this morning. I apologize that I did not bring better weather from North Carolina, but here we are. Thank you to Reverend Matthew Potts for this invitation and to the esteemed clergy of this congregation. I say thank you for the welcome. But my beloved, we are in perilous times. We are surrounded by the sound of bones rattling. Graves are not just in cemeteries. They are in headlines, in the daily news. They are in hospital rooms, in courtrooms, in boardrooms, and sometimes in living rooms where silence has taken the place of laughter, and where perhaps hope no longer lives. We all know the sound of things breaking. We know what it feels like to walk through the valley with a mask on our face and with weariness in our bones. We know what it is to carry loss in our families, in our communities, our identities, and in our sense of the future. And into this reality, God speaks, not with denial and not with dismissal, but with disruption. Here in the United States, the dry bones are indeed many. We are living through what sociologists might call a polycrisis, a convergence of cultural, political, ecological, and moral breakdowns all at once. But scripture has long had a name for this: exile. We have seen the bones in the normalization of mass shootings, our sanctuaries, schools, and gathering places turned into danger zones, and in racial injustice in our institutions, in our policies, in our theological imaginations. And indeed, we see them now in a political climate that sacrifices the common good for partisan power, in a generation disillusioned with capitalism, anxious about climate, and increasingly distant from institutional religion. We see it in a healthcare system that exposes how tightly the line between life and death is drawn by privilege. We see it in churches without relevance, where resurrection is preached but not practiced. This is not just a passing moment. This is a collective exile. And yet, as with Israel in Ezekiel's time, God is not absent from the graveyard. No, God speaks into it. Beyond our borders, the bones rattle even louder. War continues in Gaza, where the death toll rises even as political will stalls. Ukraine continues its defense amid unimaginable trauma and cultural erasure. Sudan, under-reported and under-supported, remains engulfed in chaos. The climate crisis tears through ecosystems and economies with a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable. If Ezekiel's valley was full of scattered bones, well, beloved, our world is full of scattered people, displaced, disillusioned, and disenfranchised, and still, God speaks, "I will open your graves. I will bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live." This is not just poetry. It is divine resolve, a theology of reversal, a promise of reconstitution and reanimation, not only of the body, but of identity, vocation, and future. Harvard Memorial Church · The Rev. Dr. Kirstin Boswell - April 6, 2025 | Sunday Sermon And yet we don't have to look around the world to know what death feels like, because some of us came in today carrying valleys inside of us. Let's name them. The grief that lingers long after a loss, and long after the visitors and the casseroles have stopped coming. The loneliness made worse by social media's illusion of intimacy and perfection. Perhaps the fatigue of living in Black, brown, queer, poor, or disabled bodies in a world that punishes difference. The betrayals, whether personal or communal, that make trust feel dangerous. The spiritual dryness that keeps us showing up out of habit and perhaps not out of hope. Well, we've all had these moments, if we're honest, when we've wondered if resurrection is still available for us, moments when theology meets silence, when liturgy feels thin, and when prayer is just muscle memory and not relationship. The turning point in Ezekiel's vision doesn't come when God acts alone. It comes when God invites Ezekiel into the process, "Prophesy to these bones, say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.'" This is not a passive resurrection. This is a participatory revival. I want to invite each of you quietly, gently, and personally at some point, whether in this service or later, bring the grave with you to you, in your spirit, in your heart, name it. Let your heart whisper, "God, this is what feels dead within me, and I give this to you." God does not need spectacle. God needs your permission. God does not require perfect belief. God just requires a willingness to speak, because what we surrender, God can indeed raise. Paul's words in Philippians carry weight because they're written not in triumph, but in confinement. He writes, "Forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on." This isn't amnesia. It is reorientation. Paul knew the seduction of nostalgia and the shame of regret. He knew what it was to carry the burden of religious certainty in a way that harmed others, and yet he dares to believe that grace can reframe his entire trajectory. This is not a cheap grace. No, it is a costly press. The Greek word for press on or dioko is active. It is urgent. It implies movement despite resistance, and it's the same word used earlier when Paul speaks of persecuting the church, and now he channels that same intensity toward Christ. Paul is saying, "I will not let the weight of what was keep me from what still can be." That is resurrection faith, not naive optimism, but persistent movement. And this rising, it's never just individual. In both Ezekiel and in Philippians, the vision is corporate. Ezekiel does not see a bone here and a bone there. He sees an entire body come back together. In the ancient Hebrew imagination, this vision isn't just about personal rebirth, it's about national and theological restoration. It's about an exiled people becoming a living testimony again. And likewise, Paul's pressing is not merely about his personal salvation. He presses toward the communal goal of being the body of Christ in the world. So church, hear this. Resurrection is not just your personal victory story; it's our collective call to become agents of new life in a death-dealing world. We must become resurrection people in our schools and in our universities, where history faces erasure and equity seems even further away, in our politics where courage is so desperately needed, in our workplaces where ethics are often sacrificed for efficiency, and in our churches where justice and joy must live side by side. And finally, in our relationships, we choose repair over resentment. So, let me speak it very plainly. The grave is not your home, my home, our home. Not the grave of despair, not the grave of fear, not the grave of apathy, burnout, or bitterness. We are not meant to live in exile. We are not meant to worship in resignation. We were made to rise, not only after death but in the midst of life. So rise up, beloved. Rise with clarity and rise with courage. Rise with compassion. Rise like bones that have been called by name. Rise like Paul, still pressing on. Rise like Jesus, who not only got up but got out of what was meant to hold him down and let the dry bones live. Let breath return. Let the joy rise again. "I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live." That's not just a promise—it's a proclamation. It's time to stop visiting the grave. It is time to disrupt it because God is not done. The Spirit is still breathing, and resurrection is already on the move. The grave is not our home. So what now? We've named the bones. We've stood in the valley. We've heard the Word of God, "I will open your graves. I will bring you up. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live." We've remembered Paul's call, "Forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on." So, how do we press on? What does this mean? What does it mean to live like people who have been raised? Beloved, it means this, to disrupt, to disrupt the silence, to disrupt the injustice, to disrupt the theologies that protect empire and excuse violence and erasure. To speak where others are silent, to stand tall when others shrink, to say what the Spirit is still saying, even when the valley echoes back nothing but doubt, because resurrection always begins with disruption. To resurrect, to resurrect the dream, the vision, resurrect the radical imagination of a world that actually looks like the kingdom of God. This means rebuilding trust, restoring justice, renewing faith. It means choosing joy as resistance, and building systems that nurture life, not extract it. It means being midwives to hope, architects of liberation, and caretakers of each other's healing and well-being. God breathes. We build. We rise. We rise from fear. We rise from grief. We rise from apathy and despair. We rise as if the tomb is already empty because it is. The grave is not your home, my home, our home. Not the grave of resignation, not the grave of powerlessness, not the grave of maybe-one-day faith, for God is breathing now. The bones are rattling. God willing, the church is stirring. "I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live," so rise up, beloved. Disrupt the notion that what impacts my brother or sister does not directly impact me. Resurrect the values of love and honesty, and justice. Rise and let the world know, resurrection is not a metaphor, it is a movement, and it begins today, right here, and with us. Amen and amen. ## Full Sunday Sermon See also:- [ Sunday Service ](/blog-categories/sunday-service) - [ Sunday Service ](/archive/sunday-service) - [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) - [ Lent ](/sermon-topics/lent-0) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)