Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City
March 9, 2008, The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A
The Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D., Rector
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45

   
     Many of us have noted  how our liturgical time is flying by this year.  There was hardly any Epiphany season.  Lent began in very early February.  Easter will be here in just two weeks.  It seems all a little strange.

     Well, guess what, it is.  Easter can only be one day earlier than it is this year.  And the last time Easter was this early was in 1913, and the next time after this year it occurs this early will be in 2228, some 220 years from now.  So maybe we can be excused just a bit for our disorientation.

     This sense of time being quite topsy turvy—if not dizzying—brought  me straight to our collect for the day—where we note “the swift and varied changes of the world” in which the human drama is played out—and in which we find ourselves needing to get our bearings.

      Actually, our collect starts out with the words, “Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners.”  Now we may be tempted to think this is surely those other guys—whomever, wherever.  How many of us are caught walking around musing about our own “unruly wills and affections”  much less thinking of ourselves as “sinners”?  I will confess to you, that is not my standard modus operandi.  To say the very least, such language is way out of style for most Anglicans—at least of the variety found in the Episcopal Church.

      Our collect goes on to say, “grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise.”  Ah, but the ambiguities and anxieties of life fill us with a range of emotions quite different from simply loving and desiring those good things.  Our vision is cloudy, our hearts are divided, our lives are troubled.

       And these days we can debate endlessly just how to understand not only God’s commands but also God’s promises.  And there are of course the fierce disagreements being played out in our church and communion on just these matters.

       The final phrase of our collect includes the plea, that “our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.”  That is surely what we all struggle for—yet the going is so tough so much of the time, that we settle for that which is immediate and graspable—so often losing sight of the depth of the phrase “true joys.”

       The human condition is, quite simply, fraught.  We, each and every one of us, are fraught.  Individually, in our communities, in our nation, in the world.  “The swift and varied changes of the world” seem to be simply an ongoing fact of our lives.

       These are, if you will, surely among the grand themes of Lent, however much we feel like either embracing or sidestepping them.

        But having said this, hold on just a minute!

        On this last Sunday before Palm Sunday—the Sunday of the Passion, and all that Holy Week will bring,  just look at the themes this day presents in our lessons.  We have Ezekiel’s wonderful story of the dry bones—dry bones not just coming to life, but with God’s spirit within them.  Of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  Of a beautiful psalm whose theme is mercy, forgiveness and plenteous redemption.

        In a way this all comes together in the second of the Lenten proper prefaces to the Great Thanksgiving—which we have traditionally used toward the end of Lent: “You bid your faithful people cleanse their hearts, and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast; that, fervent in prayer and in works of mercy, and renewed by your Word and Sacraments, they may come to the fullness of grace which you have prepared for those who love you.”  The initial heaviness of Lent seems for all the world to be giving way to something very different.

        All this juxtaposition of images reminds me of the Zen Buddhist parable that tells of a man walking across a field and encountering a tiger.  He runs—with the tiger in hot pursuit.  He finds himself at a precipice—and all he can see to do is to grab the root of a wild vine and jump over the edge, hanging on for dear life.  He looks down, and far below there is another tiger, looking up, and eagerly contemplating lunch.  The man is completely dependent on that vine, and his ability to hang on.  Then he sees two mice, one black and one white, start nibbling on that vine.  But then the man catches sight of a luscious strawberry that is just within his reach.  Hanging on with one hand for dear life, he plucks that strawberry.  How sweet it tasted.

       How we see our world, ourselves, those about us is so dependent on what we are prepared to see, on what we are prepared to let in.  On who we are prepared to let in.  On whether we can allow ourselves to see the glass we hold as being half full rather than half empty.

       If we are tempted to view the glass as mostly empty, just consider Ezekiel.  Ancient Israel is simply no more.  Wiped off the face of the earth.  No temple.  No monarchy, no nation.  A few exiles waiting to be deposited in the dustbin of history as they are either assimilated or die off.  It has become almost impossible to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.

       In Ezekiel’s vision, he is taken to the middle of a desert valley filled with bones—very, very dry bones—an all too apt image of what Israel had come to.  The Lord asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?”  This is an important question that we might all reflect on when we feel ourselves running very near empty, when we are running dry.  Of a draught both literal and figurative.  When we feel life is closing in on us.  When choices are few or non-existent.

      “Mortal, can these bones live?”  Rather than derisive laughter, Ezekiel manages an agnostic openness—“O Lord, you know.”  Then, Ezekiel is given one of the grandest visions and prophecies in the entire Hebrew Bible, so grand that it is one of the options to be read at the Great Vigil of Easter.  God says to those dry bones, “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live…I will bring you back to the land of Israel.... I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.”

      Now it didn’t just happen like that.  Those bones had a voice of their own.  They said, “No Lord,  our bones are dried up and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”  But God and Ezekiel persisted—and the people of Israel survived.  Not because of their efforts, Lord knows, but because God would not let them go.

       I believe God is calling us as surely as he called Ezekiel so long ago.  When we feel cut off, dried up, hopelessly uncertain—can we not find somewhere deep within us or those we know, or in this community, that luscious strawberry? One glimmer or taste of the goodness of creation and of God that can be the beginning of our restoration, of rediscovering our place, of knowing that we are called to life—because we are loved by God.
 

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            Turning to our gospel lesson, Jesus’ active ministry is near its end.  It is becoming more dangerous for Jesus and his disciples. In John’s telling, it is time for the grandest action, the greatest disclosure of the identity and power of Jesus—just before his triumphal entry to Jerusalem, his passion and death.  Jesus has been close to Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha.  There is a real bond of affection there.  Jesus clearly cares about all of them.  After hearing of Lazarus’ illness and sensing his death,  Jesus and the disciples finally turn toward  Bethany.  By then, Lazarus had been dead four days.  Martha runs to greet him.  Then it is Mary’s turn and then they turn to visit the tomb.  The occasion is heavy—and all note how deeply moved is Jesus—showing more human emotion than in perhaps any other gospel story prior to his passion.  If only he had arrived before Lazarus had died.

       But on arrival at the tomb, rather than simply paying their respects, Jesus commands those who were with him, “take away the stone.”  Martha protests that there will be a stench.  But Jesus is undeterred.  The stone is moved, and then he shouts, “Lazarus, come out!”  And the dead man comes out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth.  “Unbind him, and let him go.”

      What are we to make of this story?  Clearly, in John’s telling of it, it is the largest, most stupendous miracle imaginable that finally gives rise to Jesus’ arrest by the fearful authorities.  It has had a hallowed place in the stories about Jesus, even though, curiously, it is not mentioned by Matthew, Mark or Luke. 

       Whatever we make of this story on a more literal level, it does seem to me to be one of the most powerful stories in all scripture in speaking to us on a deeply spiritual, inner level.  So many of us, so much of the time, can live in our own tombs, mummified, wrapped-up tight, breathing our own foul air.  Holding on desperately.  Defended and defensive.  Cut off from the living.  It is a scary place, and yet it’s home, it’s what we know all too well.  I know how easy it is to be stuck—because I’ve been there.  I think many of us can fill in the blanks of our own stories, or of those we care about.

      “Take away the stone.”  Those words can be initially terrifying, if ultimately liberating.  For we are discovered, seen through, known.  In Twelve Step programs it is the both the inner and outer very necessary first acknowledgement that something is terribly wrong—and that we are powerless as we are.  Only then we can hear ourselves called by name, “Lazarus, come out.”  “Bill, come out.”  “Mary, Martha, come out.”  And we are called back to life, given our life anew.  None of this is without struggle, God knows, and hard work.

       But that is not all.  For the community is engaged as well.  Jesus doesn’t call on a thunderbolt to roll away the stone.  He asks those of us gathered here to roll away stones.  He then asks for our assistance in unbinding, in loosing the bands that can so easily hold us tight.

       One writer I came across, Ann Abernethy,  puts it this way, “There are times when we are all bound in strips of cloth and someone comes to us and helps us unwind the bandages which keep us from fullness of life.  One strip is depression and another is grief.  One strip is jealousy and another is insecurity.  One strip is anger and another is loneliness.  One strip is illness and another is fear.  One strip is emptiness and another self-hatred.  On and on the strips go, encircling our beings, destroying our freedom, deadening our lives.  We understand Lazarus’ bondage, for each of us has been there too.”

      After that description, Abernethy goes on to suggest that pastoral care in a parish is defined by the work of unbinding one another, in which all of us both give and receive that pastoral care.  God is wondrously present in moments of liberation and new life, and we are called to participate in that life.

      One final word.  Again and again Jesus brings life out of death.  And we are enabled to sense new beginnings, new possibilities.  New life.  Although in some ways it is easier to die and to remain in a shadowy sort of lingering death—the very meaning of Sheol--we don’t have to be buried or entombed.  We need only surrender.

       In the Holy Week that is fast approaching, may we follow in the path and in the faith which leads ever-again to new life, new possibilities, new hope.

      Amen.

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