Ezekiel 37:1-14 & John 11:1-45
03/29/2020
I have found that, in years past, this Sunday arises about the same time within the Lenten calendar. And in previous years, previous journeys to the cross, to the tomb, it would have arisen at a moment in which the weight of all of our Lenten practices would have grown a burden too great to bear. And in response to this, we would read about the Valley of Dry Bones, about Lazarus, the one, we are told, whom Jesus loved—his friend—dying and being buried only to be called out of the tomb through the tears that wetted the savior’s eyes. In previous years, it would have felt important for me to stand up here and tell you to hold strong, that there was just a little further to go on the road to Maundy Thursday, to Good Friday, to dark Saturday, to Easter morning. All of that would have made sense and made for a good sermon that would have both challenged and uplifted, neither denied the heaviness of the moment, nor the light at the end of the tunnel, and yet, today, none of that makes sense. None of that makes sense because I am standing in a virtually empty sanctuary that is yearning to have Joan sitting in her pew with the pillow to mark her place. It is aching to have Seamus and Asa and Caroline and Jameson come running up the center aisle for the Children’s sermon, it is waiting patiently for the choir to file in behind me and while they whisper to one another during my sermons, (y’all think I don’t hear you). I’m standing in an empty sanctuary staring into a camera and I can’t tell you how long this is going to go on. I can’t tell you that this season that we find ourselves in will not stretch into May or the Summer or, God help us, the Fall. And because I can’t. Because I can’t tell you when you will be able to gather with friends again. Because I can’t tell you when next your church family will be able to be in the same room. Because I can’t tell you when everyone will raise their voices together and declare “Hosanna in the highest!” Declare “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” Sing, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Because I cannot tell you that, there is a degree to which this Lenten journey is going to last quite a while longer, even if the calendar proclaims a wholly different reality—this journey of solitude and separation, of isolation and exclusion, of children climbing walls and parents’ collective patience running dangerously thin, of your extroverted friends slowly turning into blobs of lifeless masses, staring at social media feeds for something that resembles human interaction because we are not ok. Of your introverted friends, stuck in houses full of people who can’t go anywhere, searching desperately for 30 minutes of quiet time. They are not ok, either. And in years past, both of the stories that we have for this morning may have felt like they were little sparks, little reminders of what was to come, of flesh coming together with bone, of resurrection arising out of death, maybe in years previous, these passages would have propelled us forward into the next two weeks of the journey. But on this year, those sorts of expectations, hopes, dreams, seem to ring hollow. Rather, what I find this morning, is that I understand, much better than I have in years past, the imagery of dried out bones, lining a Hebrew field some 2500 years ago. I understand the angst and the passion and the sadness that drove Jesus to weep at the sight of so many wracked with lamentations of death. And, in the midst of that, maybe, just maybe, we can all approach these scriptures, this time, this journey from a different sort of place, a new perspective, a novel lens. Maybe, in the midst of this extended time of Lenten darkness, we can truly understand and celebrate what it means to come back to life. To resurrect. To take that which was assumed and presumed to be lifeless and useless and decaying and gone and infuse it with a new vitality, a new energy, a heretofore unseen spirit and light and life. There has been a meme moving about the different social media feeds, and I should say that a great many of you have stepped up your meme game in ways that I truly didn’t think possible, but there has been a meme that a number of you have shared in the last couple of weeks that declares that you will never take for granted coffee with a friend or playing in the park, or going to social events, church services, full shelves at the grocery store, restaurants to dine in, or a simple handshake to say hello.” To that, may we add, that we all never take for granted the miracle of a guy walking out of a tomb, of disciples who were terrified for their lives one moment and transformed into the greatest evangelical force the world has ever seen the next, of the savior saying, “Lo, I am with you always, even til the end of the age.” May none of those pieces of the story that we read each year, that we celebrate each year, that we lift up together, may none of them ever be taken for granted again. May we be primed to be, like the disciples, share the gospel in every darkened corner in this community and in this world. May we prepare ourselves to see the light of the new day erupting all around us, driving out all the dust and the cobwebs off of faiths that have come roaring back to life where before there was no life. May we truly be the resurrected community of the faithful, conduits of God’s love in a world that is being filled to the brim with despair and sadness, loneliness and loss. May we take our place in the valley with Ezekiel, in the tomb with Lazarus, in the garden with Mary. May we be the Church again.
In both of the scripture passages for this morning, people are asked to pass their vision across scenes of death and to offer a frank analysis of that which is before them. They are asked to survey areas in which specter of the reality of mortality is present and overwhelming and in the midst of these scenes of tomb and bone they are asked instead to see life. In our first passage, God comes to the prophet Ezekiel and offers him a vision—a valley filled with dried out, decaying bone. Perhaps, there is not a starker setting we can think of for God to offer this prophet of Israel. And this image, this valley of dried out and decaying bones, was the perfect symbol for the feelings of the Israelite people at that time. It was the perfect symbol for people stuck in wave after wave of oppression and violence, stuck in wave after wave of exile and invasion, in which a rebel army from an empire far away has come in and inhabited their space, has come and taken their government and their throne, their culture, their religion. They have forced many in the country to flee to neighboring regions, have sent many of them back to Persian Babylon to start a new life of service and servitude to an unfriendly empire and a people bent on holding them captive as far into the future as anyone can project. They have trampled their fields and knocked down their buildings and torn families asunder and it is into that world that Ezekiel is cast before this valley filled with dry bones of a people who have lost hope, this valley filled with the death and decay of a proud chosen people living out a hellish existence in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar people, speaking an unfamiliar language and worshiping an unfamiliar God. This valley of dried out and decaying bones represents all the anguish and anxiety, all the angst and worry of a people stuck in the darkest days of an invasion from which they cannot get free. “Mortal,” God intones, “what do you see?”
In the second passage for this morning, we are told of the death of one of Jesus closest friends. In it, We see that word has reached Jesus that his close friend Lazarus is on the precipice of dying, and that Jesus must come quickly. “Rabbi, the one whom you love is ill.” The specificity of love is one that is not often given in the gospel of John. Certainly, Jesus speaks often of love in the abstract, in the sense that we are to have love for all persons, but in the end, very few of the characters in the Johanine gospel are said to be personally loved by Jesus and so we know that this Lazarus is one who shared a special connection with the savior. Rabbi, the one whom you love is ill. And yet we are told that rather than rushing to be by the side of his close friend who is sick, Jesus stays an extra two days in the place where he was. And there seems little way to explain this curious detail. Because it doesn't seem the actions of one who loves another and learns that they are dying. Perhaps there is a concern about his safety, the following paragraph seems to indicate that. Perhaps he is bringing believers into the fold where he is at and doesn't want to leave them behind in his efforts to get to his close friend. We don't know, but by the time that he does arrive in Bethany, we know and he knows, Lazarus is dead and Jesus wept.
In our broken and at times very dark world, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the immensity of everything we encounter on a daily basis. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the pain that exists in our world. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the amorphous nature of something that is, in the end, invisible. And if we cast our vision out over that world, it is easy to see only a valley of dried out and decaying bones. It is easy to those we love, those we care for and about, slowly giving up the light to the darkness. It is easy and totally and completely normal to become overwhelmed in this world in which lost jobs and homelessness, in which life was predicated on paycheck to paycheck living and even that is now gone, in which many lack and have lacked for sometime the most basic needs to live something that approximates a dignified life. It is easy in that world, to see only bones, to see only death. But, sisters and brothers, we know that we cannot let the story end there. We know that we must reach for something more to propel us through our days, to give us even a spark of hope on the other side, to help us see the movement of the one who comes that we might have life and have it in abundance. And so, if we return back to the valley with Ezekiel, we see that in the midst of all the remnants of lives lived and passed, God queries Ezekiel, “Mortal, Can these dry bones live?” And just like that, Ezekiel is given an opening in the midst of all this death and decay. “Mortal, Can these dry bones live?” A peek into the light of God when for the longest time, all there was was darkness. “Mortal, Can these dry bones live?” Ezekiel is given just the tiniest sliver of hope. “Mortal, Can these dry bones live?” “O Lord, you know!” “Prophesy to them.” And as he did, a strange thing began to happen. Slowly at first, but then with increasing speed. Bone came to bone, sinew and then skin, and then finally, the breath of God. That which had been dead, was brought back; that which seemed completely irredeemable, was breathing again, was together again. Then God said, “Go and do likewise for my people Israel.” Somewhere, deep in Ezekiel’s vision, in the midst of a valley of death and decay, we find a glimpse into the future of Israel. A future of hope and not death; a future of life and not invasion. Of home and not exile. “Go and do likewise for my people Israel.” And in a similar fashion, Jesus comes to the town of Bethany and all around him all people can see is death. All around him people are overcome by their grief for their dearly departed friend. All around him people want to know where he has been, why he had not come sooner, why he had not healed their friend, his close friend from his illness. Where had Jesus been? And who can blame them really? When you are surrounded by death, you have no reason to look for life. When you are surrounded by darkness you have no reason to look for light. When you are surrounded by brokenness and sin, there is no reason to look for redemption and hope. And yet, here is Jesus asking that the stone be removed, asking for access to the dead body. And the people are confused. Lazarus has been dead for four days, the stench is going to be unbearable. But from darkness comes light, from brokenness can come holiness, from death comes resurrection. “Lazarus, come out!” And just like that, that which was dead was brought back to life and the people could see and in seeing know and in knowing believe.
In the midst of this Lenten journey, we are all the more aware of the struggle that comes with being faithful to the call of Christ in our lives—the call to hold onto hope when all hope seems lost. As we walk Jesus, we see that more than feeding hungry people, more than healing the sick, more than offering sight to the blind of release to the captives, as important as all those things are, more than all that, the chief responsibility of Christians, of the church, is to be with folks who have lost the ability to see and perceive the love of God and the light of the Holy Spirit dwelling with them. Thus, it becomes our task to forever remain in the cleavage that exists between darkness and light, between death and life, between despair and hope. To put it in the terms of the passages from today, we are to remain with Ezekiel in the valley of dried bones but always hoping for life to return to those who have become overwhelmed by death. We are to stand with those who grieve for Lazarus all the while longing for and believing Jesus will come and offer healing and life. In short, we are called to remain in the hurt and pain of the world while always having the courage to hope. And so it is for us who live in that in between place, we cannot simply remain stuck in the valley of dried bones. We cannot remain in death. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that all of life is made up of waves of violence and hatred; waves of brokenness and sin. If we do, if that is all humanity can ever hope for. Then, all that is left in this life is dried and decaying bones and the stench of a body four days past, and we cannot remain there. We cannot remain there because, at least at moments in our lives, our eyes have seen, get to see, the glory of the coming of the realm of God, and so we know that God’s love and grace are sufficient for the living of this day and the next.
In our passages from today, we are told Ezekiel saw a valley of dried out and decaying bones but God saw a valley teaming with life that had not yet been tapped. Let’s have the vision of God. Mary, Martha, and all those in the village of Bethany saw a friend who had died. Jesus saw an opportunity for resurrection. Let us be bearers of resurrection in a world shrouded in death. Nicodemus, coming to Jesus in the dark of night could not see the world as Jesus saw it. Jesus saw the world as worthy of being saved, every part of it. Let us work for the salvation of all creation. The disciples encountered a blind man and immediately began to seek to assign blame for the situation in which the man found himself. Jesus saw an opportunity to give sight to one who had searched for it his entire life. Let us bring sight to those who cannot see the movement of the spirit. The Apostle Paul only saw a small band of rabble rousers rebelling against the Jewish faith. God saw beloved children seeking to follow the one we call God’s child. Let’s make a commitment to one another on this day that we will take our place in the long line of the faithful who stretch from the beginning of time to the end. And once we do that. Once we have been given eyes to see and ears to hear it is not enough to stop at awareness. It is not enough to know that there is suffering in the world, that there are people who seek the God’s righteousness and a crust of bread. We have to be thrust out into those places. All our preparation during this Lenten season must move us to be resurrected on Sunday morning and to never see the world in the same manner. The time for pensiveness, for timidity, has drawn to a close and the time for a revolution of love to sweep the world has come and there are no half-measures when it comes to resurrection. The call to follow Jesus demands our all, every part of us, that we might be inspired and alive and ready to proclaim not a valley of dry bones but one teeming with life. God is at work at this moment, the spirit of God is still passing over the whole of the world as she did over the waters of chaos at the beginning of time, the resurrected body of Christ is still found on those rocky roads with those who struggle to see light and he tells them, I am the light of the world and my light is the life of all people, the Holy Spirit is still blowing across the face of the deep and inspiring all those who can hear her song to dance the dance that first birthed creation, while the creator of the universe sits high atop the throne with cherubim and seraphim singing that hymn of old, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty all the while calling all children home. Sisters and brothers we are blessed to be a part of that work, to be reconcilers of the world, to be witnesses to the resurrection that we might tell others about it. We are blessed to be a blessing. Let’s get ready, for resurrection is about to pass this way again. May the world will never be the same. Amen.
Image: The Vision of The Valley of The Dry Bones by Paul Gustave Doré, 1866