These Bones CAN Live: A Sermon for 5A Lent

Well, I'm running way behind the proverbial eight ball in getting my sermons posted! My apologies if you are someone who is visiting this blog and reading the mashed up musings that come from how the Holy Spirit lives, moves, and breathes through the Scriptures and into my brain.

There was so much richness in the Fifth Sunday of Lent lectionary. Ultimately, I found myself drawn to a comparison between Ezekiel's dry bones and the dry bones of Lazarus resurrected in John's Gospel. And I love the text of Psalm 130. 

Texts: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Ps.130; Rom.8:6-11; John 11:1-45

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Another long, complex, detailed lesson from John.

Another opportunity to contemplate the power of change.

And this time it is the ultimate change: moving from death to life.

In the Gospel…the raising of Lazarus serves as a pre-cursor to what we’re approaching… the death and resurrection of Jesus. And our lectionary diviners have made an interesting pairing of this story of Lazarus with the reading about the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel.

Both speak to the presence and power of God as the source of life.

Both show that even in the moments of our greatest despair… God can bring us out of the depths of our darkest places—as our psalmist says—and into a new and changed life.

The dry bones of Ezekiel represent the trauma of Israel. Foreign armies from Assyria and Babylon have swept in at various times…dispersing the people… taking the best minds and the strongest backs to far away lands and leaving behind a broken and despairing few.

They are devastated.

They are depressed.

They feel dead inside.

And so God asks the prophet: Mortal, can these bones live?

Can this people…this down and out…defeated… people… be brought back to life?

What a question!

Imagine standing in a place that is utterly destroyed.

Think of the folks in Rolling Fork, Mississippi.

A tornado has ripped up and trashed everything… from their lumber yard that they depend on…to the Dollar Store.

In this case of Ezekiel…the landscape is littered with bones instead of bricks and wood and broken glass.  

Can these bones live?

Ezekiel sees this sea of death before him…and gives the only answer he knows to give to such a question.

Demurly… he says… “O Lord God, you know.”

Ezekiel knows that if anything is going to revive Israel… bring back those who have been scattered in the diaspora… resurrect the people from their death of community… it’s the power of God.

Likewise… the same thing happens in the Gospel lesson with Lazarus.

Just as in Ezekiel… what stands before Jesus is a tomb… and a people broken by grief at the loss of a brother and a friend.

And in this case…Jesus enters into the grief.

For those who might have grown up in a tradition with sword drills (a term I only learned about a few years ago…good Episcopalian as I am… we don’t demand people know how to quote chapter and verse from the Bible)…the line in this Gospel passage “Jesus began to weep” is famously quoted as “the shortest line of the Bible.”

It’s even shorter in the King James Version when it says, “Jesus wept.”

Jesus joins with the mourners… the Jews who have come to Martha and Mary to sit shiva with them… a Jewish custom at times of mourning where a minyan, meaning ten Jews, sit with those in mourning for a week to be around them for comfort.

The tradition is that if the mourner wants to talk or cry… the minyan is there to bear witness but not to interfere with outpouring of emotion. It is a kind and gentle way of offering support to people in grief.

Sitting shiva is compassionate witness.

Compassion meaning that one enters the suffering of another.

When Jesus sees the emotion of the sisters… when they express their woe that Jesus didn’t arrive sooner…when he considers the loss of his dear friend Lazarus… Jesus begins to cry too.

This is a powerful image of our Lord and Savior.

Even the “Word made flesh” has so deeply entered into the flesh that this Word weeps.

There have been many times when I have counseled people in distress to remember that God really does meet them in their hurt and broken places.

I believe this because “Jesus wept.”

Jesus knows the ache of grief and loss.

 Jesus understands the pain in our hearts… and the trials and tribulations of our lives.

Here…Jesus weeps because this is a time for weeping.

And Jesus points the way to God by praying before everyone…thanking God for having heard his prayer… a prayer expressed by his tears and those of so many others.

And when Lazarus responds to the call of Jesus to “come out”…Jesus has shown the power of God… the same God who connected bone to bone in the valley and laid sinews on those dried bones. 

 In this act…  Jesus has affirmed that God has dominion over both the living and the dead and in this way…“God’s kingdom has no end.” (Nicene Creed).

The Gospel also gives us an equally powerful moment in this scene… and that is Martha’s confession about the identity of Jesus.

This declaration by “Martha”… that she knows that Jesus is the Messiah… the Son of God… is no less important than when Peter makes the same declaration about Jesus.

She expresses belief in Jesus… she hears him say “I am the Resurrection, and I am the Life” and she takes that in.

 This demonstrates her faith in God.

 Even as she is wagging her finger at Jesus for not coming sooner… even as she is wiping the tears from her own eyes…she still believes.

That’s a powerful moment in this story for us.

One can be hurt and angry and in sorrow…rage against the Almighty… and still have faith and belief.

Grief can look like that.

Grief is that peculiar world where we seem to be moving in another world

Time and space is going at a different speed than everyone else.

Death… whether it is the actual physical death of someone we love… or the other deaths we experience in our lives… relationships ending… a job loss… even loss of one of our senses or a body part… drops us into that place of grief.

What this Gospel… and what Ezekiel… demonstrate to us is that God meets us in that strange world…and moves with us through it.

When we’re wailing and wondering “God where are you? What took you so long?’ God is there.

When we’re looking at the broken bits of our lives as we feel ourselves sitting in the valley… God is there to breathe us back to life.

When we weep, when we sigh, and when we come around to finally saying, “Yes, I believe,”…God is ready with resurrection and restoration to life.

With God…these bones can live. Trust and believe.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.