March 26, 2023

Lent 5 Year A

Epiphany, Winnipeg

John 11:1-45

It’s a happy ending, isn’t it? Mary and Martha get their brother back. Their friends who had come together to mourn get their friend Lazarus back. Jesus gets his friend Lazarus back too, and you could imagine that even Jesus is saying, “This is great! A few minutes ago I was weeping for my friend. Now he’s right here, back on his feet!” A bit of a feel-good story during Lent. Now I don’t want to cast a gloom over the whole thing…but right after this miracle story we hear that the authorities think the whole Jesus thing is getting out of hand, and they’re scared that the Romans who run the place will think so too, and will ruin the temple and the nation as they try to get rid of him. So the plan to kill Jesus grows. And only a week or so after Lazarus is raised from the dead, Jesus will be place in a tomb much like that one that Lazarus was in. And Lazarus? Well, as great a day as this is, he’s still going to have to deal with the everyday goodness or grind of life. And one day he will breathe his last breath. Again. The miracle is never the end of the story, and I think it’s important for us to remember that. The miracle bears witness to what we believe: that God’s will for life and healing and love that keeps on is stronger than anything that tries to hurt or break down what God has made. And it’s important for us to remember that too. The miracle sustains us and strengthens our will to live out that loving will of God in the world around us.

Let’s back up a ways. About six hundred years before Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave, a priest named Ezekiel had a dream about a valley full of dead dry bones. Ezekiel was a priest from Jerusalem, but a few years ago the Babylonian army marched into Jerusalem, and levelled the city walls, destroyed the temple, and took away thousands of people off to Babylon, hundreds of kilometres east, to live in forced exile. So Ezekiel is one of those exiles, living far far away from home, and he has been getting word over all these years about how his home is drying up, and the people are dying or leaving or barely getting by, and it’s looking more and more like, well, I guess the kinds of images we see when one country decides to crush another. But he has this dream where he sees a valley full of dry dry bones. God takes him for a walk through the valley and through the bones and says, “Can these bones live, Ezekiel, you mortal? Tell them that I’ll breathe on them, and my breath, my Spirit, will cover them with flesh and skin and will enter in and these bones will live.” So Ezekiel speaks. The bodies take shape. God says, speak to the wind, the spirit, the breath, and tell it to come from north and south and east and west and fill these bones with life.” And Ezekiel speaks to the wind. And the bodies come alive and rise up; a living nation covering the valley and the hills…. And God says, “These bones are all of Israel. They say they’re dried up and their hope is lost, but you tell them that they will live again. My Spirit will blow, my breath will bring them back, your nation will live again; it won’t be filled with rubble and empty of people. You all will be alive again. You will thrive.” A dream like this one is enough to keep a people alive. It’s a dream breathed by the Spirit of God; it’s a vision in flesh and blood and bones of God’s promise that has been spoken since it all began, spoken since God’s Spirit moved over the waters and breathed a universe into life. It’s a promise that God’s spirit can make everything live. God’s Spirit will make everything live. Just imagine that vision and that promise being spoken over a broken country or a dried-up neighbourhood or a suffering people, or even a broken heart. Anytime, anywhere. It’s a vision that can keep people alive.

Now come back to Lazarus’ grave for a minute or two. Use your imagination and be Lazarus. You’re suddenly aware…that you’re aware. You have no idea where you are or what’s happened and maybe there’s this little thought in your head: “I thought I was dead, my hope was lost.” (Yes, Lazarus, you were dead.) You hear the sound of rock grinding on rock, like a stone being dragged away, and then the sound of a quiet rush of air while the stale air rushes out and a whisp of fresh air moves in to take its place. Maybe you remember a story you heard at synagogue one day, and you remember hearing, “Come from the four winds, O Spirit, O wind, and make these bones live.” You can feel that you’re all wrapped up in cloth, just like all the dead are wrapped up in cloth and then buried, and you can’t see because your head’s wrapped up too, and then a voice you recognize says, “Lazarus? Come on out.” So you try your legs, you roll over on to your elbow and push yourself back up on your feet and you kind of stumble blindly for the door, following the sound of the wind and the voices, and then there are hands tugging to open the cloth that has bound you. You hear your sister Martha say, “See, Jesus? I told you this would happen. Sooner than I thought, but I told you.” Of course, we don’t really know anything much more at all about Lazarus, or Mary or Martha, or their friends. But I’m guessing that a few of the people who saw Lazarus alive again were thinking that that thing that Ezekiel saw all those years ago, that thing about God’s spirit giving life back to dry dead bones…it’s true! Then maybe the next day, or the next day after that, they might have come to grips with the fact that even though Lazarus is alive and fresh and new again, it’s still the same old world, and now it’s the Roman Empire instead of the Babylonian Empire that threatens to turn their homeland into a valley of dry bones. But some of them might still think, “That thing about God’s Spirit giving life to dry bones, to the nation, to Lazarus…it’s still true.” Then maybe a week or so later when they all heard or saw with their own eyes that another friend, Jesus, had been killed and placed in his own tomb…maybe some of them would have said something like those people of old thought: “Our bones are dried up. Our hope is lost. We are cut off completely.” But maybe, just maybe, someone in the group said, “Sure, but remember that dream Ezekiel had about God’s spirit breathing life into dry bones? And remember what happened to Lazarus? It’s true.” And then a few days later maybe, just maybe, someone said, “See, that thing about God’s Spirit raising the dead? It’s true.” And maybe one day, while Lazarus or Mary or Martha were breathing their last, they would remember, and the people around them would remember and say, “But remember that thing about God’s Spirit raising the dead? It’s true.”

An Israelite priest twenty six hundred years ago or a gathering of surprised friends two thousand years ago had no idea that we’d still be talking about all this in Winnipeg today. In Fort Richmond and Point Douglas and the Maples and Charleswood and Transcona people are still saying, “You know, that thing about Ezekiel and those bones and Lazarus and Jesus and the Spirit of God that breathes life where there was only death, that thing that Martha said about resurrection, it’s all true, you know.” Some of us just can’t believe it, and maybe for good reason. So some of us keep on saying it in some form or another so that we can lift up and care for the ones who really do feel like their hope is dried up. And some of us who are sure it’s true will probably have a hard time believing it some days, and someone else will say for us, “Remember that thing about the Spirit and the dry bones? It’s true, you know.” That’s just how it works in community. When I can’t believe or you can’t believe, someone else comes along and says that it’s true. And they say it again when we need to remember. In other places, like Kiev and Mogadishu and Tel Aviv – you name the places and people and lives that you know, maybe even your own, where bones are dried up and hope seems lost - the stories and the promises are still being spoken, still keeping hope alive. Dry bones snap back together and Lazarus is called up from the grave: it all points us to the one who speaks to dry bones and bodies and relationships, to dried up neighborhoods and nations, to a world, to the whole creation, and says, “I will put my spirit within you, and you will live.” And you know what? It’s true.

AMEN.