Scripture: Ezekiel 37: 1-14 (NRSV),
John 11: 1- 46 (CEB)
I found myself
feeling tearful as I reread these stories of Jesus from John’s gospel this past
week. I think it’s the back story that is starting to get to me. As Jesus
encounters all these people: using mud to open the eyes of the blind man so he could see the
world in a new way, awakening the woman
at the well to the abundance of living water that is hers to share, leaving
Nicodemus with a new teaching to ponder about being born again – the back story
to all these is that Jesus is heading most certainly to death, to crucifixion. And
the event described in today’s gospel story is the catalyst that sets those
plans in motion – the plans to crucify him. Raymond Brown has written a
wonderful commentary on the Gospel according to John, and he writes the
headline for the Lazarus story we are about to hear in this way, using powerful, though dated, words: Jesus Gives
Men Life; Men Condemn Jesus to Death.
I am reading from
the Common English Bible translation, and I will be adding one verse beyond what
is on the slides or printed in your bulletin.
Listen for the Word
of God to you.
Both this gospel
story and the Old Testament passage from the book of the prophet Ezekiel cause
us to consider death and life. The timing for this is appropriate, since the
events of the coming stretch of the church calendar that we recognize as Holy
Week – Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the Passover Supper he shares
with his disciples, his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, and the glory of his
resurrection – these events and our worship during Holy Week take us on the
journey with Jesus to the cross.
So let’s talk about
Ezekiel and the dry bones first.
God gives Ezekiel
the vision of the dry bones first laying in the field, then standing and
knitting together, then the flesh coming onto them all, and then finally the
spirit coming into them. And then God also gives Ezekiel the interpretation of
this vision. God tells Ezekiel, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house
of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut
off completely.” So God hears the lament of the people of Israel who are in
exile in Babylon, and knows that their hope is gone. They believe as a people
they are doomed; the Jews will be no more.
And then God replies
to their cries, also through this vision:
I will bring you up
from your graves, and bring you back to the land of Israel. I will bring you
from death to life. Even though you are so far removed from life that it’s like
your bones are dried up and lying in a field, I will restore your spirit, and
you shall live.
This is the promise
of God: that the Spirit of God is able to go through boundaries including the
great boundary of death, and cause new life, new creation to spring forth from
something so dead as to be a heap of dry bones.
In the gospel, much
of the story is about conversations with Jesus leading up to Lazarus’
resurrection – conversations with the disciples, and with Lazarus’ sisters,
Mary and Martha.
The disciples want
to avoid going back to Judea, because they know the danger to Jesus’ life, and
they want to protect him (and themselves) from death. But off they go, and they
arrive four days after Lazarus’ death. Now, four days dead is very dead. Lazarus’
body is in the tomb. Family and friends have gathered together to mourn and to
comfort one another.
Martha meets Jesus
as he draws near, and proclaims her belief in the resurrectionat the last day. And
Jesus says to her, I am the resurrection AND the life. He goes to the tomb, has
it opened against everyone’s objections. He calls Lazarus, and Lazarus obeys
Christ’s call and comes out of the tomb, alive again, still wearing his grave
cloths. Jesus tells the community gathered around him to unbind him and let him
go. And this scandalous act of bringing to life that which was clearly dead, gets
told to the Pharisees. And so the plot to crucify Jesus is set in motion, the
motive being this act of raising Lazarus. When Jesus said at the beginning, God’s son will be
glorified by Lazarus’ illness, the way Jesus is glorified is by being raised up
on the cross, as a direct result of the events of this day.
Death and new life.
There is no new
life without there having been death.
We have experienced
it here, too, haven’t we? PC Utica is no more. Peace Presbyterian is no more. We
are New Life.
But are we living
as New Life? Or are we doing our best in both campuses to keep what we knew
from our former lives, who we were before?
From everything I
have learned since coming here in December, it seems clear that both churches
were struggling, sick like Lazarus, sick enough to fear death was drawing near.
And so, from this
merger a new congregation emerges, a new life.
God has called us
from death to new life, just as Christ called to Lazarus, COME OUT! And when
Lazarus emerged, still bound by the gravecloths, it was the task of the
community to unbind him, and to let him go.
We must let
ourselves and one another be freed of the things that bind us, that keep us
tied up in our gravecloths, keep us standing up as bones with flesh but without
a new spirit, caught between past and future, in order to fully live the New
Life that God has given us.
In order for
churches today to grow and thrive, they must show the love of Christ in ways
that today’s communities can recognize. Those ways are not the ways we’ve
always done things. If we truly intend to move beyond survival, we must move
beyond who we have been and we must truly become a new life. This is not simply
about new programming, new clothes; this is about focusing everything we have and
everything we do on sharing the love of Christ in word and deed. We must throw
aside, let go of anything that distracts us or binds us from Christ’s mission
for the church. We must commit ourselves by giving God everything we have to
offer, our personal and collective resources, everything we have, all of our
gifts from God, to bring forth God’s kingdom. We must come together so we can
go out into the world together, with the energy and enthusiasm that comes from
new life.
Dry bones can live.
Jesus calls us from
death to new life.
Jesus died so we
would live.
Jesus is the
resurrection, and Jesus is the life – here and now.
Are we ready to
step from the former things, from death, into the new life that Christ has
offered to us?
Are we ready?
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