Kicked the bucket, bought the farm, passed over, crossed the river, met the
grim reaper, rode the pale horse, slipped away, crossed the bar, joined the
angel chorus, or the last round up. There are undoubtedly hundreds more. You
know what I’m talking about. It’s right there but we don’t want
to talk about it, we don’t want to think about it. Perhaps that’s
why we make up so many expressions in reference to it so we really don’t
have to say that word out loud. Saying that word out loud gives it a reality
we don’t ever want to admit.
Death. Death is powerful, it’s scary and painful and
inevitable. While no one knows their day or hour there is certainly the surety
that every one of us will face that day and encounter that hour when we will
be no more. When we will die.
I think our reticence to blatantly face this word is an indication of our own
discomfort. We want to separate ourselves from this truth, to objectify the
reality of the potential of our not being. John Claypool compares contemplating
death to looking directly into the sun. The experience is so intense we can't
stand it for very long. Today we just won’t be able to ignore death. Today
we can’t avoid what is right in front of us. In a blatant, confrontational,
forthright way our texts talk about death. These lessons will not let us skirt
the issue of death but--- just as surely they will not leave us hopeless.
Ezekiel stood in the valley of dry bones. Israel was in exile.
Nebuchadnezzar captured Judah, destroyed Jerusalem, and carried the people off
to Babylonia. The temple was in ruins. The people lost everything. They were
desperate. It was the funeral of their nation, the funeral of their social life,
the funeral of their faith.
“Where is God,” the people ask, “when the flesh rots off our
bones and we are in the valley of death? Where is God, when everything is hot,
dry, parched? Not a blade of grass, a drop of water, or even the smallest desert
flower. Where is God when even the animals live in holes underground?”
The people of the Gospel lesson were feeling much the same
way. Where was God, as Lazarus breathed his last, as Lazarus was anointed and
wrapped in the grave cloths and carried to the tomb? For four days, Lazarus
lay in the tomb. For four days, the professional mourners shrieked and moaned
and wept. Four days of despair for Martha and Mary and the friends who gathered
there in Bethany. Where was Jesus, when he was needed? Jesus, who preached resurrection,
Jesus, who had been known to raise the dead, Jesus, who could have done something
to help if he just would have been there. Jesus finally showed up, but it is
too late. If we read only that far, both stories convey the stench of death
only too well. Not the kind of stories we come to church to hear. Thankfully
that is not where the story ends. Thankfully we have come to church to hear
the good news and the stories do not end in a valley of dry bones or the inside
of a tomb.
William Willimon recounts an episode the likes of which we
have all probably encountered in similar ways. He says. “Years ago when
I was a student we had a famous humanist philosopher come to our college to
speak. He spoke of the nobility, the grandeur of living life without the consolation
of religion. He noted all of the famous good people who had been produced by
nontheistic, purely humanistic philosophy. Then some student asked something
about death and the philosopher (an honest man) replied, “Well, yes, death
is definitely a problem for humanism. In the face of death there is not really
much to be said by an exclusively humanistic based philosophy of life. Death
tends to be the defeat of secular points of view.”
And that is true. For much of life we can take responsibility
for ourselves. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” can
represent a high moral road and it can be enough to live a good life. The belief
that we are ultimately in control and can control has a lot of appeal in a world
where we want to lay responsibility for the mess at someones doorstep. That
world view goes a long way but it can’t meet us in the valley of dry bones
or lead us one step away from Lazarus tomb. But God can. What we can’t
do for ourselves God can do for us. God starts the rattling and brings bone
to bone and sinew to sinew. God covers those dried up dead bones with flesh
and God brings his breath from the four winds and the breath comes into them
and they stand on their feet. Jesus stands at the tomb, he orders the stone
to taken away and he screams at the dead man, “Lazarus come out” and
the dead man comes out dragging his grave clothes behind him.
When we come to the end of our own abilities, our own resources,
our own intelligence and our own capability, God can and does step in. God can
bring life from death, hope from despair, possibility from impossibility. One
of the most significant questions we put to our confirmands is “What does
the death and resurrection of Jesus mean to you.” What I want them to understand
is that if God can deal with the power we consider the most substantial of our
existence then God is present and active in all the lesser struggles all the
little deaths and diminishments in our lives. If God can bring dry bones to
life, then God can lift us from the despair of a failed relationship. If Lazarus
can be called from the tomb then we can find new life after the loss of a job
or the failure on a test. If Lazarus can be unbound from those grave linens
that bound him so we can leave those things that bind and constrict and inhibit
us behind.
At a new pastors conference years ago we did a “get to
know you” exercise. Everyone was asked where have you found a Good Friday
and an Easter in your life. I’ll never forget Jerry Molgren telling about
his experience in the North Austin area of Chicago. He was pastoring a church
through some difficult transitions. The city had seen fit to tear up the street
that passed in front of the church. The project had begun in the Fall and then
been left. The mess, the traffic hassels, the devastating inconvenience to the
church programming and the businesses in the area had been unbearable. The community
had organized. The neighbors had had meetings and called alderman. The businesses
had complained but nothing had happened. Jerry told of finally getting a camera
crew from the news media to come out, ironically on Good Friday. He met them
down the church steps, behind the barricades, amidst the chewed up ashphalt.
This he told the newscrew, this is good Friday. The church,
the neighborhood, the community have done all we can do. We’ve besieged
the office of streets and sanitation, we’ve harassed our aldermen, we’ve
come to end of what we can do. This is Good Friday. Jerry says it was one of
the best sermons he ever preached. Cut down to sound bites it appeared on the
evening news. Monday morning the bulldozers and the trucks appeared to clear
the street. As he told us Monday was Easter. As we open our newspapers through
this Lent we see Good Fridays repeated over and again. We see ancient hostilities
that seem to have no solution, we see the dissolution of trust in those who
we expect to trust the most, we see futures squandered and expectations dashed.
All of which might logically lead us to despair or despondency. But Jesus calls
us to come out of our tombs. Jesus calls us back to life from death. Lazarus
come out.
Amen.