Gonna make these dry bones walk

My inspiration for the sermon for the 5th Sunday in Lent came from the song "Dry Bones" by Lost and Found - a Lutheran group who were huge when I was involved in youth ministry (maybe they still are). The central part of the refrain to that song was (as I recall it) "Gonna make these dry bones walk", a phrase that has stuck with me as Lost and Found applied it not to the bones in the valley - but to the life of every Christian.

...Then God commanded Ezekiel to preach to the bones.
Now, I know that I have said that there are Sundays when ya’ll seem dead – when you haven’t quite woken up before arriving here. But can you imagine preaching to an open-air grave? But Ezekiel did it.
And as he preached …
Bones began to clack
and click …
Sinews and muscle and veins began to connect bone to bone …
Skin covered the muscle and bone …
Yet they remained lifeless, without breath. Now, I don’t know about you, but this sounds to me more like the night of the living dead than it does the Bible – it certainly wasn’t in the children’s Bible that my parents read to me from at bedtime; if it had been, I might never have gotten to sleep.
But then it happened, God breathed on them, air entered into their lungs, and the dry bones walked. It is haunting, disturbing image. It is the stuff of horror movies and Halloween ...

Read the rest of the sermon of the St John website.