The Fifth Sunday in Lent
In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen.
We begin Lent on Ash Wednesday, recalling our mortality.
“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Today, our mortality glares back at us once more.
Ezekiel the Prophet, wide-eyed and mouth agape, glares at the horror of a valley filled to the brim with bones picked dry and dusted under a scorching sun.
Mary and Martha, wailing and weeping, eyes red with grief over the death of their brother, turn to their teacher and Lord. Mary stutters, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
The horrors of death swirl around us.
We may find ourselves, like the prophet Ezekiel, stunned and trembling as we observe a world whirling in death-dealing affairs. Wars and rumours of wars, plague and pestilence, earthquakes, fires, and floods. These pound at our hearts as we teeter in a seemingly unraveling world.
We may find ourselves like Mary and Martha, grieving for loved ones who have died; lamenting for the families who are being torn apart within our own nation and abroad through acts of state-sponsored violence.
We may find ourselves like Mary and Martha, saying to Jesus, “if you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Mary and Martha embody the question which often weighs on our hearts in the midst of tragedy: Where is God in this?
The Scriptures today offer us a glimpse of an answer: That God is in the midst of tragedy, suffering, and death with us. Alongside us. Calling us to restoration and hope. Reminding us that tragedy, suffering, and death do not, ultimately, triumph.
God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?”
God proclaims an answer to God’s own question, declaring, “I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people!”
Jesus turns to Mary and Martha and tells them to “take away the stone” from Lazarus’ tomb.
And Jesus opens the grave of Lazarus and declares “Lazarus, come out!… Unbind him, and let him go.”
Restoration and hope are an outpouring of the love of God.
The word love shows up multiple times in the Gospel today. “Lord, he whom you love is ill,” and again, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,” and the crowds when they see Jesus mourning the death of Lazarus, cry out “See how he [Jesus] loved him [Lazarus].”
Death in the midst of life and love is on full display in the Gospel.
“O mortal can these bones live?”
It is love by which God creates and sustains the cosmos
”O mortal can these bones live?”
It is love by which God continues calling and covenanting with humanity through our stumbling eons.
”O mortal can these bones live?”
It is love by which the eternal Word incarnates as Jesus to enter our fallen world.
”O mortal can these bones live?”
It is love by which God offers life, and life eternal, through Christ’s saving work in this world.
The Gospel today presents an interesting development on love and life and death as well.
The Gospel according to St. John is arranged into roughly two “books.” Raymond Brown, renowned New Testament scholar, refers to them as “The Book of Signs” and the "Book of Glory.”
The first half, the book of signs, is structured with 7 major accounts of Jesus’ miracles beginning with the wedding at Cana. These records focus on the divinity of Christ, and offer us a glimpse at the power of God active in the world through Him.
The 7th and final sign is the high point of the miracles - the raising of Lazarus from the dead.
This is the hinge point between the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory. Ironically, it is the very raising of a dead man to life that ultimately sends the religious authorities over the edge, who condemn Christ to death just a few verses later in 11:45-53.
It is, specifically, the bestowing of life that activates that power of death to mobilize so ferociously against Christ.
Life’s very Self comes into the world incarnate in Jesus Christ, and the world rejects Life.
“O mortal, can these bones live?”
As disciples of Christ, we take refuge and strength in knowing that life is given to us by the One we follow, Jesus Christ, as he declares, “I am resurrection and I am life.”
”O mortal, can these bones live?”
O mortal, can the despair and desolation of a fractured world be repaired?
O mortal, can the liberation of the oppressed, the impoverished, the outcast and foreigner be ultimately achieved?
O mortal, can there be life even in the midst of death?
The scriptures are replete with God’s saving actions in the midst of humanity’s folly and pain over and over again. On this fifth Sunday in Lent, we are invited to deeply reflect on the saving work of God in our lives. To root into the One who is LIfe and is Resurrection, Jesus Christ.
The one who walks with us, and loves us, and knows us, and calls us to be bearers of light and life in our world.
O mortal can these bones live?
The answer we receive today is:
Yes.
They can.
Amen.