St. Andrew’s Pictou, LENT V; March 13^th 2005

 

Resurgent Life!

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14

John 11:1-45

 

“There will be one day in the future, date and time unknown, that I will die;” a true and simple statement.

 

There is nobody that will disagree with that statement. It is totally and absolutely true.

 

Now it is as true for all of us and everyone that we ever meet, as it is for me. But as true as it is for everyone, in the course of every day life, we hardly ever actually hear someone admit to the truth, that they are going to die at some point in the future.

 

I remember going to visit a parishioner in Toronto who was in hospital; “Bud” Lundy. He told me about two medical conditions that he had and then said. “One of them will take me. I just don’t know which one, or when.” Shocking honesty.

 

Death is as certain as birth, but we talk and plan a lot more about pregnancies and having babies, then we ever do about the reality of our departure.

 

There are two related things that come to me about our reluctance to talk about something so real and so vitally important as death and how death’s reality affects our lives:

-the denial of death, and

-that very same denial affects the importance of our own death, as a teacher and framer of our lives.

 

To put what I have just said together in one sentence, it seems to me that to be in denial about our own death handicaps us from living well while we are alive.

 

EXAMPLE: Take the whole issue of whining and complaining. We listen to others and we often complain ourselves about various issues that we think shouldn’t be the way that they are. This is a fact, correct? People whine and complain that something isn’t what it is supposed to be.

 

To all those negative people, we can tell them that the only time they will never have anything to complain about is when they are six feet under at Seaview Cemetery!

 

Am I right? You have to be alive to complain! We can’t complain when we are dead. So thank God for our complaints!

 

This passage from Ezekiel was written at a time when the Jewish people were in exile in Babylon six centuries before Christ. The people had been beaten in battle, their country destroyed, the temple obliterated, so they thought that their God has deserted them, and they had been taken hostage to another country. Everything was lost.

 

With those kinds of losses, do you think that there was any complaining?

 

I would imagine that like most of us, when things went wrong, they were upset, and they must have complained; an absolutely normal human thing to so.

 

In the midst of massive loss, Ezekiel had an amazing vision of the people’s experience: a valley full of dry bones; human bones; dead people’s remains.

 

Now you have to know that the dry bones represent “the exiles,” people without hope who just as well might be dead and who had about as much hope of resuscitating the kingdom of Israel as they would putting skin and muscle on these dry bones and calling them back to life.

 

One of the strongest themes in the book of Ezekiel is the whole notion of God’s participation in the events of the day and that all “will know that I am the Lord.” So the identity of God and the notion of God as an active player are central.

 

This prophecy of the valley of the dry bones is a vital transition of the people moving from the devastation of exile to post exilic Judaism when they resettle back home.

 

While there is no theological connection between resurrection in the valley of the dry bones to Jesus’ theme of resurrection, we might note the dynamics of life coming from what was thought to be sure and certain death as the people of God experienced hope in the midst of the pain of exile.

 

The hand of God is shown to be vitally active in this resurrection event:

“The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.”

 

When the prophet is asked if he thinks that these bones can live, Ezekiel faithfully answers, “O Lord God, you know.”

 

Ezekiel also has to prophesy to the breath to bring life to the bodies after they are covered with skin, tendons and muscle. “I prophesied as he commanded me, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

 

God states that he will bring the people back to Israel. “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I the Lord have spoken and will act, ‘says the Lord.’”

 

This dramatic vision has a counterpart with the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead as we find it recorded in the Gospel of John.

 

We are given to believe that Jesus purposefully seemed to delay his travel to Lazarus for several reasons, (he stayed two days longer where he was after receiving the news.) There was purpose in the delay:

-it was dangerous for Jesus to go back to Judea (“The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the (authorities) were just now trying to stone you, and you are going to go their again?’”)

-and Jesus explanation before the events unfolded, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

-Jesus also uses the delay for teaching purposes saying that the issue is between light and darkness and if they walk in the light they are doing God’s will and so that must be done.

 

He even goes on to say, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” The delay was to foster belief.

 

Like the passage from Ezekiel, the issue is for people to believe, and to know that God is God as it is in the Gospel of John to know that Jesus in the Son of God.

 

The key concept of resurrection is that “life can come from what we mortals think is death,” so the fact of death has to be firmly established:

-we read that Lazarus was in the tomb for four days,

-both Mary and Martha lament that Jesus was not there before Lazarus died,

-the whole community is lamenting the death. Lazarus was unquestionably dead!

 

The difference from the Ezekiel text and the John text concerns Jesus’ identity. When Jesus says to Martha, that Lazarus will rise again, Martha interprets this that “he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” meaning that she will see Lazarus at the end of the world.

 

But we have a cosmic shift here in Jesus’ response to her, because he gave Martha a radically new and different response to her comment about the end of the world,

 

Jesus 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.”

 

So Jesus made a profound statement to Martha and to all of us: If we believe in Jesus, he “will not allow spiritual death to touch those who believe in him.” (Ray Brown p. 63)

 

With this statement to Martha we have enshrined the purpose of the raising of Lazars from the dead. Jesus asks Martha if she believes what he has said.

 

Jesus gets Martha to tell us all what we need to hear. Martha established Jesus’ identity:

“Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

 

But why?

 

Why do we have “the word of the Lord” in Ezekiel? Why did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? Why did Jesus come into the world at all?

 

So that you and I might have LIFE! Resurgent Life!

 

Life that keeps bubbling up like springs of living water even though bad things happen.

Life that must and will go on, in spite of exile, sickness, famine, and death.

Life that is and was and shall be born of God the Father, and God the Son, and infused into our very being by God the Holy Spirit.

 

We were created for life.

We are called to life.

We must live while have the breath of life, the breath of the Spirit of God in our lungs.

 

Can you imagine the rediscovery of the experience of life when they saw Lazarus walk forth from that grave?

 

Can you imagine the resurgent feeling of joy and exaltation of seeing the dead come back to life?

 

That reality is nothing compared to people we know who live like they were dead before they die.

 

They whine and complain when they have good health.

*

It is a sin to let your life pass you by.

It is a sin to waste a day or a minute of the wonderful gift of life that God has given you.

 

If one of those four Mounties that were murdered came back to life, thousands, millions would be lining up to hug him.

 

There are lots of Mounties around here; this afternoon at the Memorial Service. You could hug one of them. I am sure that they wouldn’t mind, just ask them. You know that you are alive when you are hugged.

 

Do we need to have someone come back to life to show us how precious life is?

 

I heard that one Mountie came home from work recently and his 17 year old daughter threw her arms around him and just held on and wouldn’t let him go.

 

Can’t we do that for… and with… each other?

 

God is love and love is about life: the gift from our Creator; resurgent life.

 

While we have breath, let us vow to live the gift of life we were given!

AMEN                       Rev. Alan Stewart