Finding Hope Through Adversity - Ezekiel 37:1-14

2022 Moulton House Chapel Sermon

Eddie Jaku begins his book, The Happiest Man on Earth, this way. He says,

“I have lived for a century, and I known what it is to stare evil in the face. I have seen the very worst of mankind, the horrors of the death camps, the Nazi efforts to exterminate my life, and the lives of all my people.

But I now consider myself the happiest man on Earth.

Through all of my years I have learned this: life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful.”

Jaku, who passed away last year at the age of 101, was a Holocaust survivor having endured the horrors of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. He survived, yet his family was killed. He endured the very worst of humankind and suffered through some of the worst atrocities of the 20th Century. Yet for the majority of his life, he dedicated himself to teaching people about what happened and helping them to see the good in humanity. For many years he worked at the Sydney Jewish Museum and in the latter years of his life he spoke publicly, calling himself the happiest man on earth.

People like Eddie had every right to feel angry and bitter, given what they had had to endure throughout their life. Yet in the midst of it all, the remained hopeful. He, and many others, were able to find hope even in the midst of the worst possible adversity.

We all face adversity in our lives, sadly it’s an inevitable part of life. Now while we will never, God willing, face the difficulties of someone like Eddie Jaku, there will be times when we’re challenged and pushed. There will be difficulties in our lives that upset us and push us beyond our comfort zone. How we respond in the face of adversity is important and being able to find hope through difficult times is vital to help us get through it.

We as humans have an innate ability to endure and survive, possibly going back to our animal instincts. It doesn’t make these challenges easy, but we do have an ability to endure and get through adversity.

As I reflected on the Covid Pandemic I found so many instances where people, myself included, were able to find hope through adversity. Now we know that that time was difficult, and the effects of it still remain, yet through it all we were able to endure and find moments of hope.

I found hope when I logged into my Year 7 class and found a group of happy, engaged young men. These boys had barely settled into high school when they were thrust into remote learning, yet they persevered and produced incredible work. I couldn’t help but feel uplifted when at 2:30pm on a Friday afternoon, at the end of a long tiring week, I ran a Chapel Service online for the 3-6 boys at Wyvern. It brought me such joy to see 200 odd little tiles on a Zoom screen of smiling faces, interacting with me, even singing and dancing along to songs. I found hope when I went to Lindfield to supervise boys working at school and saw the youngest boys in our school adapting perfectly to online learning, logging onto their iPad and interacting with their teachers.

There were profound difficulties throughout that period in our life, yet through it all there were some incredible moments of hope. We wore masks, even before it was mandated, to protect the most vulnerable. We stayed home if we thought we were unwell to protect the sick, even if they were people we didn’t know. We dropped off toilet paper and cake on the doorsteps of our neighbours, even if we’d never met them. In the midst of great difficulty came and increased sense of kindness and concern for our fellow human. Out of adversity came great images of hope.

Our Bible reading for tonight provides us with an image of finding hope through incredible adversity. On the surface, it reads as a very strange and bizarre dream but with a little context provides us with an image of what it means to find hope through adversity.

The reading comes from the Old Testament, it was attributed to the prophet Jeremiah who writes about God’s chosen people, the people of Israel. Jeremiah lived during a time of profound difficulty for the Jewish people. They had been displaced from their homeland, the land God had promised their ancestors, and taken into Exile in Babylon. They were enduring great hardship and uncertainty. Their entire society, and faith, was structured around their connection to place and so to be in a foreign land meant they felt completely lost.

Jeremiah was a prophet at this time, someone chosen by God to deliver God’s message to the people. In this midst of this period of profound difficulty Jeremiah has a vision of hope of the future. God shows Jeremiah a Valley of Dry Bones, bones that are dried up and dead. And God says to Jeremiah, can these bones live again? Jeremiah assumes not but God says to Jeremiah speak to them, prophecy to them, and Jeremiah does just that. Slowly, the bones begin to come to life, bone by bone they join together to form a re-animated body.

God says to Jeremiah, this is like the people of Israel. Although they feel dried up and dead, unable to go on, I, God, will breathe new life into them. Where there seemingly is no hope, God will breathe new life into them and help them to rebuild their lives again.

Yes, it is a bizarre vision or metaphorical dream, but it provides an incredible image of what it means to find hope through adversity.

It’s an image that had sustained people across history as they faced great adversity. For slaves in America this song was adapted to the popular African American spiritual song, Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones. This song helped them endure great hardship and find hope in the midst of it.

For people of faith, this is an image of great hope. Even when we feel lost, dislocated and abandoned God is with us. God breaths life into the seemingly lifeless and provides us with strength and sustenance to endure.

Even if we don’t profess a faith, it helps us to realise that there are always glimmers of hope breaking through seemingly impossible situations. Yes, things may be difficult, but we can, and will, endure. Even when it seems bleak, we are able to find hope to get us through.

Let me encourage you to look for those places of hope in your life, to find where the light breaks through the darkness. Because even though we face adversity, there is always hope to be found.