O Death, Where Is Thy Vision?
David C. Myers
March 9, 2008
Lent - 5th Sunday
Ezekiel 37:1 - 14
John 11:1 - 7, 17 - 45
Text: "Take off the grave-clothes and let him go." . . . John 11:44
The Scripture Lessons from Ezekiel about the dry bones and John of bringing Lazarus back to life are revealing to our faith and how we live our lives. These are appropriately Lenten Scriptures, for we are being prepared for the way God deals with death, as we will experience it during Holy Week and how death is overcome on Easter.
In both Ezekiel's story of the dry bones and the Gospel story of Lazarus walking out of the tomb we see God's power over death - and not merely physical death. I think the message points to something far more important. I have four comments that might shed light on these Lessons.
1.) The first point is let us be sure where resurrection can occur for us. There are clues - bold clues - which almost shine as neon lights in this story - about where resurrection can occur for us. The first comes in the 26th verse when Jesus asks Martha, Lazarus' sister, if she believes. This comes after Martha recites, almost creedally, that Lazarus will arise at the resurrection on the Last Day. In other words, Jesus is not concerned with what she knows - that is much too passive; but rather what she believes.
What Jesus says to her next, though, goes far beyond anything that she had in mind. "No!" Jesus says in effect, "your brother will not rise on the last day, he will rise now, because I am the resurrection and the life; and those who believe in Me, though they die, yet shall they live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die."
One theologian said that this discussion depressed him because, he observed, "how sad it is, that after 2,000 years, the church has gotten most Christians only to the point that the Jews were at Bethany: [that is the] resurrection [happens] in the future; resurrection a week from Tuesday. Only a handful have ever gotten past that point and made the leap of faith that Jesus got Martha to make: the leap to resurrection now." (E.D. Maurice) Edith Wharton put it in a negative way when she said, "People all stopped living at one time or another, however many years they continued to be alive." It is like the adage that says, "You do not grow old, but when you stop growing, you are old."
It seems to me that we need to remember that God's primary purpose is not to get people into heaven, but to get heaven into people.
You see, the biblical term, "eternal life" is not about the length of life, but rather about the quality of life. Periodically we need to be reminded that "eternal" isn't restricted to "after death". In fact, it doesn't even mean "after death". Rather "eternal" means without beginning and without end - always was, always will be, and always is. In other words, eternal happens now. The resurrection is not a passport to another world, but it is a quality of life for this world.
Scripture shows that God coming in Christ is not simply a particular point in time, it is not simply something that happened 2,000 years ago; but that Christ is something that is happening to each and every one of us. Christ as eternal means that Christ is contemporary to every moment in time.
And this makes a considerable difference. If Jesus only happened 2,000 years ago, then the events are only limited to history and our memories. If Jesus is only a historical event and oddity, then Jesus makes no difference in our lives. . . . But if Christ is eternal and living in us now - than whatever the tomb we find ourselves buried in can be removed from us, and we can be set free.
And - do you know what?! - the Christ event can give you the resurrection now, and you can come alive again!
2.) The second comment is the caring and compassion that God shows in the face of death. Throughout the eleventh chapter of John the author goes to great length to establish the uniqueness of the relationship between Lazarus and Jesus. In verse 5, it notes that "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." In verse 33 we observe that all the weeping of the mourners angrily upsets Jesus; yet, in verse 55 Jesus Himself weeps, and in the next verse, as Jesus sees the tomb in which Lazarus is buried, the by-standers say, "See how much He loved him!" This is a remarkable amount of emotion for the Gospel writer to assign to Jesus.
William Sloan Coffin, then pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, spoke of God's compassion in his first sermon after his son had died when his car crashed into Boston Harbor said he was incensed when people, trying to be comforting and consoling, said to him, "it must be God's will." That question would only cause him to wonder why God would "will" his son Alex to have a few many frosty ones. Or why God would "will" that Alex never had his windshield wipers fixed. Or why God would "will" that the Boston DPW had not repaired the guard rail that, had it been repaired and in place, may have kept Alex's car from going into the Harbor. Rather, Coffin said, "I am convinced that God's heart was the first to break when the car crashed through the guard rail and slowly sunk into the frigid waters of Boston Harbor."
Indeed, our God, as revealed in Jesus, is a God of compassion and is with us in our pain and our sorrow.
3.) The third point about overcoming death is found in the Ezekiel story. And in that story we discover that we are confronting the despair of a people in exile, not a physically dead people. The people of Israel had suffered devastating defeat. Jerusalem lay in ruins. The walls had been battered to mere rubble. People had been transported as exiles into Babylon (the country we now call Iraq). Hopelessness and despair were everywhere. It was the exile, not the grave that had taken life from the Hebrew people. It was not so much the flesh and blood that needed resurrecting, but it was the inner life of the people. In this time of Exile they were in the depths of despair.
What was Exile like? It was a psychological and spiritual prison more than it was a physical prison. Although the Hebrew captives had some autonomy, were allowed to gather, and could continue some of their religious practices, it is, none-the-less, difficult to exaggerate the seriousness of the Exile as a national disaster and a crisis of faith. We had something of that experience in the aftermath of the 9-11 tragedy of 2001, when our economic center in New York City was demolished by terrorists. To the Hebrew people they had lost what they had regarded as their promised land. Furthermore, their Temple - where the Lord made His name to dwell - was in ruins; and the last of the Davidic kings was held captive. As a people they were defeated, and in hopeless despair.
So Ezekiel's vision of God breathing life into the dry bones is unqualified Good News to a people who considered themselves dead. It is the Good News that people can live, that they can be enlivened by the spirit of God on this side of the grave. Ezekiel's prophetic vision is good news to the oppressed exiles that have been beaten down by their own sins and are suffering under the weight of the sins of their ancestors. To such people, it is the voice of God calling them to come out of the grave.
Maybe this is what Rabbi Kushner had in mind when he said, "We need to get over the questions that focus on the past and on the pain . . . and ask instead the question which opens doors to the future: 'Now that this has happened, what shall I do about it?'"
Ezekiel gave the Hebrew people a vision of hope, an anticipation; a forward posture.
4.) The fourth point comes again from John's Gospel story of Lazarus rising from the grave - and that is Lazarus' resurrection is not complete until other people take off his grave clothes. After Jesus has called Lazarus out of the grave, He instructs the gathered friends and family, to "take off his grave-clothes, and let him go." Like all the little details we find in John's Gospel, this is not there by accident; there is an important point to make.
In the Hebrew funeral tradition, part of the mourning ritual is to have the family "rend" the garment - it is a tearing of the deceased's clothes to help understand the finality of death. In this way the family is actively involved in the ritual of mourning.
When Jesus asked Lazarus' family and his friends to take off the grave-clothes and remove the stone He was asking them to actively take part in the giving of life!
It is a corporate process! We do not have life and meaning apart from the community. Resurrection happens in the community; it happens in the presence of those who are, for you, the Christ - the risen Christ!
I want to share a story about what happened to me in seminary. It was, if you will, a visioning occurrence for me. I took a course called the church in contemporary urban community. In that course we looked at five issues that were significant at that time. Among them were drugs, homosexuality and racism. Not so unlike our current times. At any rate, one of the requirements for the course was to attend a "Consultation on White Racism." Let me say at the outset, that there is nothing more resistant to such a consultation than 60 white, mostly liberal, mostly male seminary students. We resisted the process so much that 2 of the consultants leading us threw up their arms in anger and went home. But there was a most significant happening - at least for me. Early in the evening on Saturday night, I and four other husky white males were called in the center of the room by the leader. He also called one black consultant to join us. The five white males were given the assignment to physically hold the black man down, while the black man was told to try to escape. It wasn't long before this ceased being role-playing. And we male, liberal males we getting real uncomfortable physically trying to hold those black man down. We succeeded, but he put up an incredible fight. Then the leader asked me to turn and face the outer circle of observers and talk to them - my classmates and friends. Meanwhile we were still supposed to keep holding him down. And we couldn't do it; the black man escaped our domination.
When we processed the event it became so very clear to me how racism and what is now called white privilege affects all people. In order to hold the black man down we had to expend an incredible amount of energy. In order to hold the black man down, we had to give up the freedom of talking and being with our friends. You see, as long as he was in captivity, we were all in captivity; or more to the point - as long as he was oppressed, we, too, were oppressed.
I have thought of that "visioning" lesson often during my life - especially when I served affluent communities in Massachusetts and now in Chevy Chase. I have seen people be held in suburban exile, robbed of their freedoms as they try to keep up in a "material culture." I have often thought that when we succumb to the lure of material wealth we are in a kind of exile not unlike the people of Israel to whom Ezekiel told the story of the dry bones.
So I am impressed when churches struggle with justice issues. And this church is doing that. Let me give you an example. Well, actually you began to hear about it last week when the group that went to Nicaragua reported back.
You see, lives are transformed through this exchange - north and south, rich and poor, we learn so much about our faith - about gratitude and hospitality; about things that really matter. And conversely, they learn that as people of a developing country they are not totally abandoned by the world, that they have brothers and sisters in the North. Through the feeding programs, and the Women and Cows project we save lives there, give them new life; through the education programs and our relationship we give them vision. And they give us vision to. After we have had an encounter with their faith, their friendship and hospitality and their sense of gratitude, our vision of what is important in life becomes so much clearer and focused. For both peoples of this relationship, it is a vision of dry bones coming to life - a life of resurrection; not only for ourselves, but for an entire global community.