LENT 5A - Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45 - 9 March 2008 - A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

 

New Life Begins Now

 

INTRODUCTION - One Reality: Difficulty and Struggle

 

What is the hardest thing going on in your life right now?

 

Does it have to do with some sort of relationship that you are in? Or maybe you’re longing for a certain kind of relationship that you don’t have right now...

 

Does it have to do with a job? Job insecurity? Being in between jobs? Being in a job that you don’t really like?

 

Does it have to do with health issues? For you, or for you spouse? For one of your children, or one of your siblings, or one of your parents, or perhaps for a close friend?

 

Does it have to do with some sort of loss you have recently suffered? A person close to you who has recently died? A drop in the quality of your life? Loss of a job or the break-up of a relationship?

 

This is one reality of life. We go through times of hardship, extreme difficulty, and loss. It doesn’t help to deny it or try to sugarcoat things when we are in the midst of these very difficult times of struggle. It’s extremely difficult. Most of us learn that trying to make an end-run around our struggles doesn’t cut it. Numbing ourselves with alcohol or drugs doesn’t work, because when we come off the high, our challenge is still there. Going on a shopping spree doesn’t help. Usually, right after we’ve gotten home with the new thing, whatever it might be, we feel even worse, even emptier than we did before. Stuffing the feelings doesn’t work. With that strategy we usually discover that the feelings leak out in some way that is much more explosive, in a way that ends up being destructive to someone else that we care about, or to ourselves, or to both.

 

Usually we learn the hard way that what works best is to somehow enter into the struggle. There is no way out of the struggle except to face it, to deal with it, to name it - perhaps out loud to another - and to go through it. Someone I know said one time, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) There is no sugarcoating in that statement. Instead, there is acknowledgment of the struggle. There is acknowledgment that not all of life is a stroll through the park.

 

This is not only true for our generation. This has always been one of the realities of being a human being. Do you want to be entertained every minute of your life? Do you want to always be laughing, never sad, always feeling good? Sorry. Life is just not like that. We have two ancient stories today to remind us that this is not a new phenomenon.

 

THE EXILES AND LAZARUS

 

2,700 years ago, the nation of Israel was overrun by a foreign power. Their beloved temple was destroyed, and many of the people were sent into exile, forced to live in a foreign land. They were alienated and cut off from almost everything that they held dear. Hope was in very short supply. Every morning when they got up, they took a look around, and were reminded of all that was wrong with their world. They were going through the motions of living, perhaps - but inside they were dying. It would have been very easy to say, “There is no God! If there was a God, he would not have allowed this to happen!” In fact, according to Ezekiel, some of those exiles - perhaps many of them - were saying, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”

 

In the Gospel lesson, we meet Martha and Mary, who, with their brother, Lazarus, were very close to Jesus. We meet them four days after Lazarus had died. Their grief is palpable and new, as it is also for the friends of the family. Their grief is compounded by the fact that their friend Jesus was not around when Lazarus died, and they sense that Lazarus’ death could have been prevented. Jesus healed the man born blind. Surely he could have healed Lazarus. Yet Jesus didn’t get there in time. They could have written Jesus off as someone who was not there for them during their time of need. And they could have said, with others before them, “Our hope is lost!”

 

What the Israelites and Mary and Martha did was different from that. In both cases, what they did was acknowledge the reality of the situation. Rather than cutting themselves off from their feelings, they came to terms with them. Feelings, after all, are God-given. They are there for a reason. They mark our connection to others. They also mark the disconnections and losses that we are going through.

 

Ezekiel, in the midst of the Exile, was brought by the Lord and set down in the middle of a valley, and it was full of dead, dry bones. And he heard the Lord say to him, “Mortal [or, if the prefer, “Son of Man”], can these bones live?” This probably felt like another punch in the gut to Ezekiel. He didn’t need to see a panorama of a valley with dry bones. He and all his fellow exiles Jews had been living it. He thought to himself, “Ah, Lord, why do you ask me that? We are out in a foreign country, separated from our land, from many of other fellow Jews, and from our temple, and you’re asking me if a bunch of dry bones can live?” It was all he could do to keep from saying, “Hell no, Lord! They can’t live! They’re dead. It’s clear there’s not life in them!” Ezekiel said as much as he could bring himself to say, because he was an honest man, and he and his fellow Jews were in a terrible place. “O Lord God, you know.” Muttering under his breath, “I really doubt it, Lord. But you know.”

 

Martha and Mary, weeping because their brother is no longer with them, both say the same thing when Jesus arrives four days after the burial. They say what has been on their mind for the last four days. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

 

You want to know how we see it, Jesus? That’s how we see it. Like Ezekiel before them, they’re real, authentic - they call it as they see it.

 

If we want to get through difficult times, we start by acknowledging the truth to anyone who will listen - to ourselves, to our friends, and to God. “This really stinks! I feel terrible! I am in despair. Hope is hard to find right now. Do you hear what I am saying? Does anyone understand what I am going through right now?”

 

A SECOND REALITY

 

There is a second reality, though. There is this first reality, that sometimes we go through awful, terrible things in our lives. That’s true. But that is not the whole story. The second reality is that God breaks into our lives, and that means that one of the times when God breaks in is right when we are in the midst of all the pain and struggle and loss, right when we feel like we’re in exile, cut off and isolated from everyone and everything that we once knew. God comes to us in that place - the place of darkness, the place of pain, the place of struggle and even despair, the place where we feel all alone and isolated. God comes alongside of us right there. And because God shows up, there is suddenly some light, and the possibility of a different future.

 

It was God who came to Ezekiel and gave him the vision of the dry bones - the whole house of Israel - coming to life. It was God who said, “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of 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.” And it wasn’t just empty words, or a lame promise. God did act. The people of Israel were back on their own soil, and rebuilding the temple, within fifty years.

 

It was God in Christ who returned to Bethany and the home of Martha and Mary, and who listened as each of them confronted him. It was God-in-the-flesh who was deeply moved, and who wept, when he saw how grief-stricken they all were, and when he felt his own deep sense of loss about Lazarus being dead. And some of them, as Jesus wept, said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this many from dying?”

 

They were on the right track. But they were about to find out that he could do even more than they could ask or imagine.

 

“Lazarus, come out!” And with the strips of cloth still bound around his entire body, he did.

 

OUR STORY

 

God has broken into our lives, too - even during the awful, terrible times. For the promise that God made to the people of Israel through Ezekiel became the same promise that Jesus made to his followers.

 

Listen: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live... then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” That if from Ezekiel 37, verse 14. And listen to this: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go way, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you... When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth...” (John 16:7, 13) That is Jesus talking to his disciples, promising them that they will receive the same Spirit that was promised to the exiled people of Israel.

 

And that same Spirit - the Advocate, the Comforter, the Guide, the One who leads us into all truth, who sustains us through the awful times, and empowers us - not only to go on, but to do amazing things that we didn’t think were possible - that Spirit has been given to you and to me.

 

The kingdom of God doesn’t come to us when you and I go to heaven. New life doesn’t just come to us when we die. No, no, no. The kingdom has come. It may not be fully realized throughout the earth, but the kingdom has come. And with it comes new life. New life comes to us now. In the midst of our pain and struggle and darkness and isolation, new life comes, because God comes, and God - whenever God comes - brings transformation, and new life.

 

CONCLUSION

The sermon can’t end here. It seems to me that the sermon needs to end with our own testimonies of that new life.

 

How have you been given new life in Christ? How have your dead, dry bones come alive? When was a time that you were “in the tomb”, and something happened, and you walked right out of that place, and suddenly you were not bound anymore? How has the Spirit of God - the presence of God in you and with you - brought transformation in you?

 

I invite you to share one of these times with the rest of us, so that we can celebrate that our God is the God of new life, and celebrate the fact that new life comes to us right now, right where we are, and sometimes it comes to us right in the midst of what have been some of our worst times, some of the most awful times. Thanks be to God!

 

(Stories)

 

O God, the Author of love and healing and new life, we thank you that you do not abandon us during the worst times of our lives. We thank you that you come to be with us, that you weep with us, hold us, and guide us to a new place - that place where there is light and hope and new growth. We thank you for the gift of your Spirit, present and working in us. We thank you that you don’t shy away from us when we get angry with you, Lord, or when we wonder where you are. We thank you for your great compassion and love for us. Sustain us, we pray, especially during the terrible times, when life seems very bleak, and when hope is hard to find. We thank you for giving us that daily bread that is our spiritual sustenance in You. Help us to share the stories of all the ways that you give us new life. We pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.