Sermon: Lent 5
Brenda Faust
With thanks to Rev. T. Hall
This has been quite a windy weekend. Friday night I was awoken by the sound of roaring of wind in the trees. Yesterday, running with the Sun Run clinic we were pushed and pulled by the wind. What a beautiful bright windy day. As I watched, the ash trees were bending and swaying in the wind. The branches groaned and roared with the force of the wind. All the while, I thought “Spring is sweeping the winter from the land, sweeping the paths and forest floors clean, preparing the land for new growth”. I couldn’t help but be reminded of God blowing life into the dry bones, while roaring across the skies “Will these bones live?” Yet even now, dry brittle limbs sprout buds; more than the promise of new life, they are new life. Like Ezekiel, with the breath of God the bones of the people lived, a huge, living, breathing crowd of people.
New life out of death was not only visible in the treetops, but also at the bottom of the streams. As I walked through the trails along the golf course, I saw in the creeks the rotting remains of salmon bodies. The sunlight lit up their ghoulish white bodies at the bottom of the streams. The air was filled with the stench of decaying meat. Yet their bodies are the food supply for new life, new generations that I couldn’t see, yet I knew were there in the streams. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Jesus calling Lazarus forth out of the stench of death into life. Mary and Martha couldn’t see the new life- only the dead corpse- and so Jesus called him forth.
Like the winds of March, on this fifth Sunday of Lent we open ourselves to the possibility of new life in impossible situations. Like the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, and Jesus facing Lazarus’ tomb, we are called to find life where all others have given up hope. And so when we lit the Lenten candles this morning, we said:
“Your Spirit is alive in places where we see only death. Help us to be open the possibilities of new life that lie before us”.
In the world around us, and in our own lives and within us we are surrounded by death, tombs, and valleys of dry bones, where there seems to be no life. But we don’t talk about death very well. We are confronted and confounded by the dry bones of our past, and the tombs of our present. We are surrounded by a world of suffering and become overwhelmed. Where is there possibly new life in my pain we ask , or in death, or in lost opportunities, or in the marriage that fails, or in the job that is lost. We want security, stability, no pain, no loneliness, no uncertainty, no struggle.
When I was growing up, I took the familiar, safe route to worship. I clutched my familiar church bulletin in my hand. I never bothered with lean, gaunt Lent and completely avoided good Friday. Easter was my kind of worship: Familiar. Safe. Uplifting. Forgiving. Nothing negative about Easter. But today’s gospel lessons remind us that en route to Easter, we must first travel the Lenten road, a road that leads through hopelessness and death.
With Ezekiel, we peer down into a deep imaginary valley, filled with bleached bones. No skeletons, but disconnected and weathered bones strewn on the floor of a forgotten valley. It’s quiet. Dead quiet. Imagine no birds singing or butterflies soaring; just a few buzzards taking a lazy look at the banquet they’ve enjoyed.
Ezekiel’s vision allows us to see hopelessness. Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king had captured Judah, destroyed Jerusalem, sacked the Temple, and carried off the population to Babylon. A national disaster! A crisis of faith. The promise of God had been broken. Like Lazarus, these exiles were dead. They breathed, but were dead. And while they were trying to reinvent life a thousand miles away from home, perhaps they were saying: “It’s no use, Just give up. Go ahead and die out here. Who cares?”
They were right. They weren’t home. And they had ? most of them ? lost their property and land. What hope could anyone have when the things you’ve loved most deeply have been ripped away from you? No, there’s no hope around these bones. No faith in the future. No aspirations. Life can be such a graveyard; hopelessness can rob anyone of faith and turn dreams into a bag of bones-bleached and cracked.
Mariam Mohammed Jawar no longer wears her wedding ring. She sold it years ago to buy food for her family. But she still carries two tiny photos ? one of her husband, Abdullah, a stone mason and the other, a picture of her son. They are no longer home. Both men were seized by soldiers in the Kurdish town of Harir. Now their bones are scarttered in a six foot wide, twelve foot deep trench, along with 400 other bodies. So Mariam Mohammed doesn’t wear her wedding ring anymore. Bleached bones leave little hope.
That’s the feeling I had when I drove into Vancouver, east side, this past week to meet a friend for lunch. Old men sitting on benches around Victory Square, a man lying in an alley under cardboard, people lined up at a food bank, others offering to sell me cheap parking tickets, drug dealers on the corner, an old man talking to the air. People wandering aimlessly, who should be in health care facilities. On their faces, despair, hardness, no hope. Bleached bones leave little hope.
Lazarus is dead
We may not have to drive to East Hastings to find hopelessness. We might just drive into our own inner city. Inside, maybe your faith this morning resembles this shriveled plant. Maybe you see yourself buried in a heap of hopelessness. Maybe for you, Lazarus is still dead; maybe he’s been dead for a very long time. Maybe years.
Now look to the last chapter of the story in Ezekiel 37 and to John 11. What do you see? Bones? Look again! What do you hear? The silence of a funeral home? Listen again! What do you smell? Death? Take another whiff! See the unexpected spectacle! See someone speaking God’s Word and even while speaking, as the Negro spiritual goes, the leg bone’s getting connected to the hip bone, the hip bone connected to the back bone.
Roll the stone away!
Hear the unexpected sounds of transformation! Thousands of rattling bones reforming into skeletons; Hear the rush of god’s breath sweeping down in gale force upon those bones. The sound is deafening
I AM the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me shall never die!
Smell the unexpected scent of life! Nature again sings and soars, salmon die and feed their young, seeds pollinate and die and resurrect in the endless, life-cycle of creation. Smell life.
Lazarus, come forth!
The Good News is that the unexpected happens! The Cannucks win all their games. The schools and medical system gets their funding. Palestinians and Israelis stop fighting. The Berlin wall did come down.
The Good News is that God promises us not just life after death, but life before death. Abundant life. Empowered life. Life that is buoyant with hope. That is what resurrection is ? life in the midst of graveyards and dead ends. Hope in the midst of hopelessness.
We cast aside the tombs that imprison us. We see God’s breath in our lives, in our relationships, in our work. The very way we hold the tension of reality and hope in life carries the witness that because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, there is Hope. Hope for world peace. Hope of care for the poor. Hope for Squamish United Church. HOPE!
And the dead man came out!