Sunday, April 6, 2014: Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45

I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live.”

The last time I heard a sermon on this passage—about the valley of the dry bones from the book of Ezekiel—was earlier this year. It was at a special service honoring the radical legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. The Baptist preacher giving the keynote address proclaimed the renewing words of the prophet and then recounted ways in which God was trying to breathe life into struggling men and women on the South Side of Chicago. The cathedral was filled to overflowing with people of faith drawn together to work for justice and peace. They cheered as the preacher called for a living wage for workers and tighter restrictions on fracking, the controversial method of extracting oil from the ground.

But there was one point when the crowd came alive and roared amen. That was when the preacher called for changes to mandatory sentencing laws in the state of Illinois.