John
11:1-45, Ezekiel 37:1-14
Resuscitation is nothing at all like Resurrection
The lessons appointed for each
Sunday are very carefully chosen. There is
a committee (or was a committee) who worked tirelessly to arrive at the
three-year cycle of readings we follow. So,
it is no accident that the Gospel story of Lazarus is read on the same Sunday
as we read Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones.
These two readings are paired in order to better illustrate what each is
trying to say.
I want to thank Julie Gibson for
her dramatic recitation of the Ezekiel passage.
She let it slip that she had once done this – and I begged her to share it
with us today. Luckily, I didn’t tell
her that if she prepared a retelling by memory of that passage, I would do the same
for the Gospel reading. Though I should
have. It would have aided our
appreciation for these verses as real-life encounters.
The common thread in both these
passages is the ability of God to bring forth life. There is a shared confidence that God is the
creator of life and is therefore capable of restoring life – particularly when hopelessness
has set in.
In Ezekiel, there is a valley
filled with dry bones – very dry bones. Ezekiel
is asked if he thinks these bones can live.
Ezekiel is reluctant. He doesn’t
want to say what he is probably thinking.
The best he can muster is to say if anyone knows whether the bones can
live it would be the one asking the question.
“O Lord God, you know.”
Of course, God does know, and the
answer is “Yes.” But we are getting a
bit ahead in the story. The opening of
the vision needs to be allowed to run parallel with the opening of our reading
from John 11.
In John 11, it is the mortals
asking the question. Mary and Martha
send word to Jesus that Lazarus is ill.
They are the ones asking if those bones will live. The opening of the story encourages us to
think they believed that Jesus would be able to do something. The middle section of the story exposes their
anger and frustration that Jesus had delayed two additional days before coming.
Both sisters greet Jesus with the same
words: “If you had been here my brother would not have died.”
But Jesus is there now. And while he shows compassion (particularly
when Mary speaks these words to him), Jesus is prepared to reveal something
greater than his competency as a healer.
He offers assurances, that where he is found there is no death. For one of the very, very few times in the whole
of the Gospel account, he makes a clear statement of who he is and what he has
come to accomplish. “I am the
resurrection and the life” he says to Martha. Something greater is going on here. Something which we will better understand if
we once more yoke this encounter with the one of Ezekiel as he stands in that valley
of dry bones.
God is the one who created life and
God is the one who brings life. Healing is
a marvelous gift, as is the ability to resuscitate another. But both of these stories reveal God’s desire
to do more than pump oxygen into lungs. God
brings life.
Life is that what happens when God’s
spirit resides within us. Remember that the
same Hebrew word can be interpreted wind or breath or spirit. God says to Ezekiel, “Prophesy to the breath…” “Come from the four winds, O breath, and
breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”
Don’t think that I fail to realize
how grateful Mary and Martha were to have Lazarus back to do his share of
household chores. They probably enjoyed
his jokes and took great comfort from his companionship. But everyone in Bethany on the day that Jesus
called out to Lazarus knew that something greater was afoot than the ability to
resuscitate someone who had stopped breathing.
I wish I could tell you more about
resurrection. I wish I could describe for
you what it is like or what it is going to be like. There are some who will try – and others who
will offer corrections of what the first attempted to do. Individual faith communities and most individual
Christians finally made a choice between believing that resurrection which
happens immediately upon physical death or happens on the last day, at one final
sound of a trumpet. Pick a side – but know
there is ample reason for picking the other side. We just don’t know.
But here is what we do know: Resurrection is unlike anything we have
experienced and it is unlike anything we have ever encountered. We will look for metaphors – but none is adequate.
I want to say I learn more about
resurrection from the Ezekiel passage than I do from John 11. John 11 assures me of Jesus’ love for each
and everyone of us. John 11 allows me to
see Jesus as compassionate and caring and self-sacrificing. (Don’t overlook the warning from his disciples
that returning to Judea might lead to his own death!)
Ezekiel’s vision allows me to know
that in the midst of what seems to be desolation and destruction, God will do
God’s thing. Ezekiel speaks of hope in a
valley where all hope seems to be lost.
Resurrection is a technical term of
Christian theology. It should never be
used in a situation where resuscitation is what has happened. It might be appropriately used when a child
of God is lifted out of despair. Resurrection
is surely at work when an addiction is kept at bay or a contrite spirit allows
for confession. In those instances, we
glimpse the power of God and the ability of God to bring life where none was to
be found. That is what Christian
theology means when it speaks of resurrection.
And that is the gift which Christ brings. This is what the Church seeks to make real in
the life of every child of God. This is
the Word of God and the promise of God which will guide us through our days of
mourning Lazarus or looking out over a valley of dry bones.
Amen.
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