REBUILDING AND RESTORATION presuppose an experience of fragmentation and destruction where to re-build and restore are a need. This narrative abounds in the Scriptures from the time of the fall (Gen 3:23) to the abandonment of God’s people’s covenant relationship with God (Ez 16:59). This separation from God has brought so much devastation in inter-human relations, in history, and to the earth (Romans 8: 22); thus, to rebuild and restore within this context requires a spiritual drive generated by Christian hope.

The theme’s annexing of HOPE (“with hope”) adds a perspective to the praxis of restoration and rebuilding. Set in their scriptural contexts, restoration and rebuilding are not easy. The fragmentation and the destruction were so thorough that even the concept of “original sin” was thought of in theology, or that going through the eye of the needle (Mt 19: 24) and be “born again” (Jn 3: 1-7) are a requirement of faith, or that we not only “wrestle with flesh and blood but with “powers and principalities (Eph 6:12-18).” To “restore and rebuild with hope” (as understood in Jer. 1:10) means you must dig deep into roots of the human crisis, and this would invite resistance if not persecution. Restoring and rebuilding with hope acknowledges this context but at the same time negates this in the faithful’s act of radical hoping.

Restoring and rebuilding with hope points to our embracing the promise of the full life and the hope inspired by the full life. It is this hope that generates our “gana” (energy/ zest) for the full life. Kapag ginanahan tayo, the full life that we have embraced would be a reality in the here and now of our radical hoping.

Moreover, “hope” to the faith community is the transgression of the normalization of life in the valley of dry bones. It is what aligns us to the vision of a fuller life for all. Hope is what could energize us into restoring and rebuilding our lives and institutions in the pandemic-ravaged world.

With this thematic agenda of “rebuilding and restoring with hope,” the UCCP may seem a little off the grid. The pandemic still rages on and there are surges now and then. Yet, it is precisely at this time when we need to muster that prophetic will to announce hope that life can be rebuilt and restored from the “valley of dry bones (Ez 37:1-13).

RESTORING AND REBUILDING WITH HOPE: OUR THEME ACCORDING TO PROPHET EZEKIEL (Ez 37: 1-14)

I propose starting with the messages and visions of the prophet Ezekiel to frame one perspective through which we can expound on our theme for the UCCP quadrennium’s inaugural year, “rebuilding and restoring with hope: heralding the full life.

37 The hand of the LORD was on me, and he brought me out

by the Spirit of the LORD and set me the middle of a

valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth

among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of

the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son

of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”

4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to

them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!

5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will

make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life.

6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you

and cover with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will

come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’”

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was

prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the

bones came together, bone to bone.

8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin

covered them, but there was no breath in them.

9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son

of man, and say to it, ‘This is what Sovereign LORD says:

Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these

slain, that they may live.’”

10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered

them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast

army.

11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the

people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our

hope is gone; we are cut off.’

12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the

Sovereign LORD says: My people, I am going to open your

graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to

the land of Israel.

13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I

open your graves and bring you up from them.

14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle

you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD

have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’”

(Ez.37: 1-13)

The book as a whole traverses a wide swath of ancient Israel’s history, and the prophet’s messages, both uttered and performed, including an announcement of judgment, an anticipation of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and the announcement of hope and restoration.

This reflection focuses on at least three emphases in the prophetic message using pandemic-era language: (1) the virus of injustice, (2) the virus of idolatry, and (3) the virus of exilic living. The foregoing serves as the context of our exposition on our theme for the first ecclesiastical year of the quadrennium, 2022-26.

LIVING IN THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES

In the text, the prophet Ezekiel was prophesying to a nation living or lying lifeless in the valley of dry bones. This is akin to an even much worse biblical description of the Hebrew people’s life of exile in Babylon: an eon of chaos when life was not.

The pandemic has brought the world to a standstill. It has brought so much suffering to the already suffering mass of humanity. Many economies went bankrupt, and this has a domino effect on big and small establishments and industries, livelihoods, and employment leading to so much suffering on all fronts. We saw not only the economic collapse and its dire consequences but also the rise of prejudices and tensions in the social and political fronts, including the pervasiveness of mental health problems among the quarantined. While these may have been going on long before the pandemic, popular authoritarianism, racism, classism, religious fundamentalism, etc. found increased currency during the contagion. In the Philippines, even our experience of ecological relief during the hard lockdown was very fleeting and very recently greeted with the news that the nine-year-old mining ban was already lifted, and open-pit mining is set to resume. This comes as bad news and terrifying to the ecosystem during this pandemic. Sadly, all these are but the tip of an iceberg. The crisis below among the economically displaced families and communities is much worse and sickening to describe. This, the human rights problems that stay unaddressed, the terrorism that comes with the state’s continuing fixation with national security, the revision of history to fit into the narrative of repression, and the dimming of the political horizon place us in a dystopian state aptly described by biblical visionaries like the prophet Ezekiel: the valley of dry bones.

There may be many creative entrepreneurial minds doing well, and some sections of the economy have shown not only resilience but also thrived in the new normal; however, these signs are minuscule compared to the devastation brought by the ongoing crises in the bigger section of the global population. The social projection of the present being named “new normal” is not of much help either as this only confirms in people’s minds that there would not be any social reordering happening soon; and that the difficult life before the pandemic is set to return in the new technopolis.

Down under, among people who need God the most [what the UCCP names as the masa] who constitute more than half of the social pyramid, life stays helpless, hopeless, and life-less like the dry bones in the valley of death.

THE RESTORED LIFE AND THE BODY-SPIRIT-ECOSYSTEM TRI-UNITY

LIFE is restored when bones and flesh come together. This initial description of the restored life is material or inclusive of the material. It is about our physiological or physical well-being. Nonetheless, the restored life is not “full” in the fullest sense of the word until the divine breath is breathed unto our bones and flesh. The full life is realized when the breath of God comes to us from the “four winds.”

There may be differing usages of “breath” and the “four winds” in the Scriptures but, principally, the “breath” in Ezekiel’s vision can be associated with the primeval creative, and life-giving breath of God. The “four winds” on the one hand can be associated with the whole of the earth or heaven.

To put it succinctly, the full life means the restoration of the body and our material well-being, the regeneration of our spiritual and moral life, and the rebuilding of our common life as an ecosystem. These are not necessarily in order as enumerated. The process of restoring and rebuilding can be initiated from any point of the body-spirit-ecosystem tri-unity.

Let us look closely at where our theme is coming from: our global, national, and local communities during this global pandemic and the calls made by the prophet and their relevance to us in our situation.

Before the exile, the prophet Ezekiel has been denouncing the leaders of Israel as false “shepherds of their flock” for their inability to care for the poor. What the “shepherds of the nation” did was live in opulence while the rest of the population live in penury. As far as the prophets of Israel are concerned, oppression or the absence of justice and idolatry are one and the same. These two socio-religious viruses have invaded and infected the temple making it an accomplice and a sanctuary to idolatrous and oppressive practices (a scandal of faith not unlike the temple of Jesus’ time). These “viral infections” from within made the people of Israel vulnerable to the virus of conquest and exile. Amid this moral contagion, and prophesying in the context of exile, the prophet called on the people “living like dry bones” to keep the faith, to properly observe the sabbath and other statues of the faith, and their hopes of restoration.

The improper-to-nonobservance of the sabbath, a concern that is elemental in all the above “viruses” is equally a central prophetic concern. In the world of the prophets of exile, the emphasis on the cosmic or the ecological expanse of the sabbath may be subdued, but the story of the sabbath was already at that time conceived as involving the whole of creation (as was the case of sabbaths in Ancient Near Eastern cultures). This was not abandoned in the idea of the Jewish sabbath. Nonetheless, the anthropocentric perspective triumphed to conceal the broader expanse of our earth-friendly Scriptures. It is only in the light of our current experience of ecological injustice, and now “climate emergency,” that we are beginning to re-read the centrality of the ecological concern in the idea of the sabbath. (thanks to our indigenous people’s contribution to our theological enlightenment vis-à-vis the sabbath).

Today, we may hear the prophet Ezekiel taking issue with our non-observance of the sacredness of the idea of the whole creation taking its rest. Either directly or indirectly, the global pandemic, or at least its global spread, has to do with our disturbance of the ecological balance; and this is not unconnected to our idolatry, i.e., our greed and unbridled Babylonian lust for god-like power (Gen 11:1-9).

In keeping with the call of the prophet Ezekiel to be faithful to the covenant, we need to always have that sense of pag-kakapatid and pananagutan sa isat-isa at all times. This is precisely how we must live our affirmation of the Emmanuel-ness of God: that we need to keep our covenant to do justice, to love kindness, and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8). It is the non-practice of the last three that we experience the pandemic as abysmal chaos. After all the social turmoil that we have gone through, injustice still rocks our society, kindness is nowhere manifested in our institutions and establishments and ways of relating with one another. Under the neo-liberal dispensation and its political superstructures, everyone is in the mad race to become like a god.

RESTORING WITH HOPE: BEYOND THE NEW NORMAL

To “heal as one” requires us not only to ensure that the “new normal” is not a return or a continuation of what was normal before the pandemic. What was normal before the pandemic was the more virulent social virus that is akin to the moral virus that afflicted the people of Israel before the exile. It was what the 19th century Filipino propagandists like Rizal called “social cancer,” an illness, an affliction not unlike our social situation today during this pandemic. The rise of popular authoritarianism alongside the pandemic has been redefining the “new normal” into a lethal mix of health, moral, and social emergencies.

What the prophet Ezekiel envisioned was not a return to the morally infected life of the pre-exilic community of God’s people. This is how we need to understand the vision of the prophet if we wish to own his vision and hope. The vision was not about the rise of the zombies or humanoids but about the masses and their restoration to savor the taste of the full life.

Getting flesh and bone come together points to social change and spiritual rejuvenation. In our social situation, it means the lifting of the masses, i.e., the anawim or the poor (the weak, vulnerable, and socially marginalized) to reclaim the image of God in themselves, and a new lease of a more dignified life for those uncared by the “shepherds of Israel … who have ruled with power and without pity” (Ez 34:1-4).

The UCCP participates in this ministry of healing by heralding a gospel that transcends the social imagination of the “new normal.” This new ecclesiastical year is an occasion for the church to expose the sins of what our society and our global community have considered “normal” and the intent to perpetuate this situation under the guise of the “new normal.”

THE BREATH AND THE FOUR WINDS: The convergence of divinity and ecology

There is more to the restored life than just bones and flesh coming together. The restored life is not simply about the perfection of our moral lives and temple-keeping chores, nor is it limited to the reordering of human society toward the emancipation of the masses into living a free and decent life. There is the requirement of living in accord with the divine design for life, and this is supposed to be central to the message of Christianity.

Centered in the gospel of God’s sovereignty over the whole of life, the whole Bible expounds on this requirement. How are we faring as members of the earth community? Do we keep holy the sabbath? for all creation to take its rest? The prophet Ezekiel has been emphatic on the observance of the sabbath. Appropriated in the context of climate emergency in our time, we need to talk about the non-anthropocentric understanding of the sabbath, Sabbath is not solely about us and God. The Sabbath is about God and ecological balance or interdependence in the ecosystem, described and named in our bible as the “Garden of Eden.” It is through our non-observance of the sacredness of the earth and creation that we destroyed the ecological balance. We are not good shepherds of our sheep. We are not good tillers (Avad) of God’s Garden. We have breached the covenant and mangled beyond recognition God’s design for life.

Our living in the valley of dry bones is not necessarily the result of the pandemic but the cause of the pandemic. However, this is more nuanced than simply saying that the pandemic was divine retribution for our disobedience as is now popularly understood by many among the religious.

Long before the pandemic, modern-day prophets have been persecuted for exposing and naming our moral and social afflictions – until these viruses became a contagion and afflicted nearly if not all our human institutions including the spiritual constitution and moral fiber of our common life. The result is, directly and indirectly, the global pandemic and the aggravation of the crisis by a morally unprepared world. The sum result is our mass experience of literally living like dry bones in the valley of death.

In conclusion, the story of an exiled people is also our story during this pandemic. What is keeping us from owning the vision of the prophet Ezekiel and having this vision of the full life inspires hope in us? And what is keeping us from heralding this hope of our restoration and rebuilding as a people, a global community, and as an earth community? None. The message is clear. We will be restored to experience and share the full life beyond the temporal promises of the new normal.

Notes:

1While it is normally translated as “peace’ in English, Shalom as conceived in the Scriptures is more about the “full life” where there is contentment, completeness, material and spiritual well-being, wholeness, harmony, and complete peace.

2A paraphrase of Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 1967: 16

3Based on the JPED Documentary hypothesis where it theorized that the first chapter of Genesis was in part if not wholly the “priestly writers’ ” response to the crisis of faith among the exiles in Babylon.

5To “heal as one” is a phraseology drawn from the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, officially designated as Republic Act No. 11469. It was a law that was enacted in March 2020 granting the President authority to comprehensively address the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines. Retrieved Feb 03, 2022.