Lent 5 22 Mar 26 Christ Church St. Lucia
Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8: 6-11; John 11: 1-45
The prophet Ezekiel was my introduction to Old Testament studies when I was at theological college, and I guess Ezekiel has been one of my favourites even since. We sat at the feet of a scholarly old priest, Canon Laurie Murchison. He had two dogs who sat at his feet as well and they appeared to be as old and rheumatic as he was. Laurie had a great love of the scriptures and made them come alive. We’re in the realm of life and death in our readings from Ezekiel and St. John’s Gospel this morning. Ezekiel recounts the resurrection of the valley of dry bones and John recounts the raising of Lazarus. Both accounts point to the events soon to overtake Jesus – his own death and resurrection. It’s no accident that we read them on the Sunday before Palm Sunday.
I don’t know how many of you have seen a pile of human bones – if you’ve toured the catacombs in Rome or Paris you may have. I haven’t, but quite a few years ago Libbie and I were in Prague in the Czech Republic for a few days and we did a day trip to a town called Kutna Hora – it was famous for minting silver coins in mediaeval times. But there is also a chapel there which contains the bones of over 40,000 people carefully arranged into large cairns and all the chapel furnishings – chandeliers, candle stands and so on are made from human bones. The main chandelier is supposed to contain at least one of every bone in the body. It’s quite macabre and confronting. The whole chapel seemed redolent of death to me – we were told that now they only have one service a year there – on All Soul’s Day.
It’s the kind of image the Ezekiel presents in his vision of the valley of the dry bones. An image of utter desolation and death. Ezekiel’s description is not about personal resurrection and life after death so much but about the resurrection of a nation. To set the reading in context, Ezekiel, who was a priest and a prophet has been taken into captivity and sent from Jerusalem to Babylon with the first wave of exiles in the year 587BC. The siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians informs much of the prophetic witness of the Old Testament. The city and temple were destroyed. The exile presented an enormous disaster and crisis of faith for the people
of Israel. What was once a vibrant, thriving economic and spiritual community was laid to waste – left in ruins, with its former residents scattered. The people in exile were full of despair. They were no longer economically viable. They were no longer at home. They were living in a strange land, with spiritual practices that were different from those they knew. From this place of despair and woe, the prophet Ezekiel is visited by the spirit of God and is taken to this valley of dry bones. If you find the image of the valley of dry bones disturbing, there is another dimension to it as well – a dimension of impurity. Ezekiel was a priest of the temple and for the people then dead bodies were impure, so there’s a level of repulsion for Ezekiel – which we felt at Kutna Hora. As a temple priest, he finds himself surrounded by this awful vision.
Yet even amid this terrible devastation, God is not absent. As the vision unfolds before Ezekiel he sees something amazing taking place – the scene of death, devastation, unspeakable impurity begins to change as the divine promise of life comes to fruition through the power of God. God intends to do this. The promise is cast in the first person with a series of strong verbs: I will cause breath, I will lay sinews, I will cause flesh, I will cover, I will put breath. A plight that was absolutely hopeless to all intents is suddenly filled with hope and new life. Hope for the “valley of dry bones” comes from knowing God, God’s character, and God’s vision for the future by listening to God’s word. Twice we hear God say, “…you shall know that I am the Lord” (37.6 and 13); and the last line of this vision is “you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act” (37.14). That’s a major theme of the book: People who have the time to count such things say that God says “know that I…” 71 times in the book of Ezekiel! The vision of hope comes from God, and more than that, comes from knowing God. To claim the vision of hope, one needs to know God, not know about God.
There is a similar reality about death in the gospel reading – even a note of repulsiveness there as we are left in no doubt about the condition of the body of Lazarus after four days. Jesus, we’re told tells his disciples plainly “Lazarus is dead”. Dead – not carked it, nor shuffled off, nor fallen off his perch, nor passed away, nor, even worse, passed, which seems to have gained currency these days, or any other of the words people use these days to avoid the D word. This obfuscation infects the whole of our society now, churches included. I wonder how can we live and speak plainly as resurrection people if we cannot speak plainly of death?
As in other stories in St. John’s Gospel, for example the visit of Nicodemus by night[1] and the woman at the well[2], a misunderstanding, in this instance from Martha gives Jesus the opportunity to reveal the work that God sent him to do and who he really is. Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will live – she misunderstands him and thinks he is talking about the resurrection on the last day in which many, but not all, Jewish people believed. This time, rather than a long dialogue, Jesus comes straight to the point and says “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” The purpose of this story of the raising of Lazarus is to illustrate this “I am” saying of Jesus in several ways:
Because only God has power over life and death, this story illustrates that Jesus has God’s life-giving power and that he and he only has God’s power over death.
This story illustrates that God’s power over life and death is the salvation of the world – it’s not an individual thing - and that the salvation, or wholeness that God wills for the world is life, not death.
That salvation or wholeness is available now in, with, and through Jesus, who not only has power over life and death: Jesus is the life over which death has no power.
The “resurrection and life” available in Jesus is not only “the resurrection on the last day”. That, I think, is not the primary focus of this story. The “resurrection and life” is the transformation of life here and now.
The new life Jesus gives is not a life of conformity to law or a moral code; rather, the new life is Jesus himself. And it comes through the Spirit – the same Spirit that, in Ezekiel’s vision, transforms the vision of death. It is Jesus himself through the Holy Spirit who transforms the life of those who seek to live in relationship with him.
Martha's great profession of faith – “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world” is worth noting. Just as in the story of the man born blind “He said, Lord, I believe”[3] the profession of faith about who Jesus really comes from one on the margins, a theme continued in St. John’s Gospel when it is women who are the first witnesses to the resurrection.[4] How do we move from just saying what we believe to giving ourselves and our lives over to transformation and the new life that God brings?
Perhaps for Lenten homework this week, think about these questions. How often do we say we believe but live as if we do not? What does the world tell us about "real life" and how does that contrast with a gospel vision of a relationship with God in Christ, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, of living simply and being truly alive?
©The Rev’d. W.D. Crossman
[1] John 3: 1-21
[2] John 4: 1-42
[3] John 9:38
[4] John 20: 1-3