6th April 2014
11.00am
Ezekiel 37:1-14 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he
brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a
valley; it was full of bones. 2
He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they
were very dry. 3 He said to
me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord GOD, you
know." 4 Then he said to
me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word
of the LORD. 5 Thus says the
Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall
live. 6 I will lay sinews on
you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put
breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the
LORD." 7 ¶ So I
prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a
noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews
on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was
no breath in them. 9 Then he
said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the
breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
upon these slain, that they may live."
10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into
them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. 11 ¶ Then he said to me,
"Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones
are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.' 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to
them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up
from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of
Israel. 13 And you shall know
that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves,
O my people. 14 I will put my
spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil;
then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the
LORD."
John 11:1-45 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany,
the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and
wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to
Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." 4 But when Jesus heard it, he
said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory,
so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." 5 ¶ Accordingly, though Jesus
loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,
6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days
longer in the place where he was. 7
Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea
again." 8 The disciples
said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are
you going there again?" 9
Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk
during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night
stumble, because the light is not in them." 11 After saying this, he told
them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to
awaken him." 12 The
disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all
right." 13 Jesus,
however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was
referring merely to sleep. 14
Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was
not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." 16 Thomas, who was called the
Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with
him." 17 ¶ When
Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four
days. 18 Now Bethany was near
Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19
and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their
brother. 20 When Martha heard
that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus,
"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God
will give you whatever you ask of him."
23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise
again." 24 Martha said
to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last
day." 25 Jesus said to
her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even
though they die, will live, 26
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe
this?" 27 She said to
him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the
one coming into the world." 28 ¶
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her
privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." 29 And when she heard it, she got
up quickly and went to him. 30
Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where
Martha had met him. 31 The
Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and
go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb
to weep there. 32 When Mary
came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him,
"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and
the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and
deeply moved. 34 He said,
"Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and
see." 35 Jesus began to
weep. 36 So the Jews said,
"See how he loved him!" 37
But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man
have kept this man from dying?" 38 ¶
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a
stone was lying against it. 39
Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead
man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead
four days." 40 Jesus
said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the
glory of God?" 41 So
they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I
thank you for having heard me. 42
I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd
standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." 43 When he had said this, he cried
with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44 The dead man came out, his
hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.
Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." 45 ¶ Many of the Jews
therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
The death of a good friend is never going to be anything other than
dreadful.
There are no easy
answers, and no quick solutions.
The death of a loved one, as C S Lewis memorably put it, is an
amputation,[1]
and although time may
bring some healing,
the loss remains
forever part of us.
Our two lectionary readings for this morning,
invite us to spend
time face to face with human mortality.
In Ezekiel’s vision, we are confronted with a horrific scene:
It’s the aftermath of
a war, and the vision is of the site of a battlefield.
Ezekiel sees an open mass grave, with the bones of so many bodies,
lying intermingled and
bleached by the sun,
stripped clean by the
carrion.
It is hard to read this passage,
without thinking of
the killing fields of more recent years.
From the war graves of
Flanders and the Somme
to the European
death camps of the mid twentieth century,
to the
massacres of Bosnia and South Sudan ;
mass death, and mass
burial,
remain a
tragic and traumatic part of the human story.
So many lives lost,
so many hopes and
dreams cut short.
And as Ezekiel wanders the field of bones,
it speaks to him of
his people,
taken from their homeland, into exile in Babylon
the victims of an ethnic
cleansing
from which it seemed
there was no way back.
For Ezekiel, death had come not just to a person, but to a whole
nation.
In a terrifying
precursor to the holocaust,
the dry
bones of Ezekiel’s vision
are the
bones of his fellow Jews,
broken and cast aside
by the
nationalistic ideology of another nation-state.
An in the midst of this vision of devastation,
Ezekiel hears the
voice of the Lord,
asking him
a question:
‘Mortal, can these
bones live?’
And in this question, we are taken to the central question of human
mortality.
Is death the end?
Does death get the
final word on life?
The same question echoes through the story of the death of Lazarus,
which takes us from
the incomprehensible horrors
of death
on a grand scale,
to the personalised
agony of the death of a friend.
And yet the questions are the same:
Is death the end?
Does death get the
final word on life?
Mortal, can these
bones live?
The story of Lazarus is a long one,
continuing even beyond
the end of this morning’s reading,
and within the structure of John’s gospel
it is the seventh of
seven signs of the kingdom
which reveal to the
reader
the nature
of the new world that is coming into being through Christ.
And it’s as if the author of John’s gospel
invites us to enter
into the detail of this story,
to spend time with those who are
affected by the death of Lazarus,
and to share with them
in their range of responses.
One of the books which I have turned to again and again over the years,
is a study called On Death and Dying,
which was
published in 1969
by
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist.
In this, she proposed that those faced with a diagnosis of a terminal
illness
typically experience
grief in five stages.
These five stages of grief,
as they have come to be known,
can also often be seen
in the lives
of those who have
experienced a bereavement,
and although they shouldn’t be thought of as a programme to work through,
many people have found
them a helpful guide
to what
they find themselves experiencing
as they are brought
face to face with the reality of death.
I have often thought that Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief
can be seen in the
various responses of the people around Lazarus,
in John’s
story of his illness and death.
She suggests that the first stage of grief is that of denial,
these are the ‘it
simply can’t be true’ feelings,
where we
keep expecting the person to just walk through the door,
or we convince ourselves that we can
still hear them speaking.
The disciples do just this when Jesus tells them that Lazarus had died.
He breaks it to them
gently, using the euphemism of sleep for death,
telling
them that ‘our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep.’ (v 11)
And the disciples
grasp onto this and respond with hopeful denial of the reality,
‘Lord,’
they say, ‘if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right’ (v.12).
And so Jesus has to
tell it to them plainly,
‘Lazarus,’
he says ‘is dead.’ (v.14)
Kübler-Ross says that ‘Denial is usually a temporary defence
and will soon be
replaced by partial acceptance.’[2]
But what this acceptance brings with it is often the next stage in the
grieving process,
which for many people
is an experience of anger.
Anger is an emotion that is hard to control or to predict,
we don’t know where it
will strike, or in which direction.
Some people become angry at the doctors that have been caring for their
loved one,
convincing themselves
that with better care things could have been different.
Some people become angry at themselves,
blaming themselves for
letting their loved one down.
Some people become angry at the person who has died,
furious with them for
leaving like this,
for depriving them of
the future that had been planned together.
Some people become angry at God, or at their friends or family,
desperate for
somewhere to direct the blame for the loss they have suffered.
All of which can seem quite negative,
as if these feelings
of anger are something to be avoided,
or to be ashamed of,
or to feel guilty about.
Which is why I find it so helpful and interesting,
that the character in
the Lazarus story who exhibits anger,
is none other than
Jesus himself.
When Jesus sees Mary and the other Jews weeping over Lazarus’ death,
we are told that he
was greatly angered, greatly agitated. (v.33, 38)
Some Bible translations have tried to downplay the extent
of Jesus’ emotional
response to the death of his friend,
and our
own NRSV describes him as being
‘greatly
disturbed’, and ‘deeply moved’.
But whilst some may not like to think of Jesus
exhibiting raw anger
in the face of death,
the reality of the words that John uses here to describe Jesus’
response
are more indicative of
uncontrolled anger than anything else.
And it’s not just Jesus,
some of those around
him are angrily looking for someone to blame,
and so they say loudly, with accusation in their voices,
‘Could not he who
opened the eyes of the blind man
have kept this man
from dying?’
Anger is, it seems, part of the human response to death;
it is an appropriate
and natural emotion
in the face of tragic loss.
The next stage of grief which Kübler-Ross observed
is that which she
called bargaining.
She sees this as a helpful stage in the process of moving towards
acceptance,
and says:
‘If we have been unable to face the sad facts in the first period,
and have been angry at
people and God in the second phase,
maybe we can succeed
in entering into some sort of an agreement.’[3]
She uses the example of a teenager,
who has been told that
they cannot spend the night at a friend’s house.
Initially they may be angry and stamp their feet,
or lock themselves in
their bedroom,
temporarily expressing
their anger towards their parents by rejecting them.
But then they have second thoughts,
and coming out of
their room they start volunteering
to do
tasks they’d never normally do,
in the hope that if
they are especially good this week,
maybe
they’ll get what they want next week.
And maybe we’re not so different in the face of death.
We construct deals, or
ultimatums,
and
address them to God, universe, and ourselves.
‘If only this… then that…’ is the pattern.
If only I can have
another year with them,
then I’ll
be a better person…
If only the doctors
could have done things differently,
then
they’d still be with me.
If only you’d been
there Jesus,
my brother
would not have died.
So says firstly Martha (v.21)and later Mary (v.32).
If only, if only, if
only…
The bargains and the regrets intermingle in the mind of the bereaved,
and we imagine a world
where reality is different,
and we construct
scenarios that would bring that world into being.
Kübler-Ross notes that
‘most bargains are
made with God and are usually kept a secret’[4]
And she suggests that they are usually motivated by quiet guilt.
Where Martha and Mary are different is that they speak their bargaining
aloud,
they offer to Jesus
the their wish that the world was different,
and he receives their plea,
offering
them comfort and compassion,
as they
move towards acceptance of their brother’s death.
But there is another difficult stage yet to speak about,
and that is the stage Kübler-Ross
identified as depression.
For many of us, the experience of staring death in the face
creates within us a
void of emptiness that simply will not leave us.
So great can this void become
that our own existence
ceases to matter to us in any meaningful way.
The Psalmist in the Old Testament, which we heard in our call to
worship,
knows this experience
well.
He says,
Out of the depths I
cry to you, O LORD.
Lord, hear
my voice!
Let your ears be
attentive to the voice of my supplications!
And we meet this uncontrollable sadness in the Lazarus story,
and again it is Jesus
who embraces his humanity most fully.
In what is known as the shortest verse in the Bible,
John tells us that
‘Jesus began to weep’ (v.35).
He is overcome by sorrow and sadness
to the point where
uncontrollable tears from a grown man
is the entirely
appropriate response
to the
death of his friend
and the
grief of all those who loved him.
But it’s not just Jesus who weeps,
Mary does so too, as
do Lazarus’s other friends (v.33).
The adage that big boys and girls don’t cry
is one which, it
seems, can be set aside
in the face of the
depression of bereavement.
But eventually, says Kübler-Ross, if the grieving process is healthy,
the depression can
begin to lift, and give way to the final stage,
which is
that of acceptance.
She says that if a person has enough time,
and has been given
some help in working through the other stages,
they will reach a stage where they are accepting of the reality of
death,
neither angry nor
depressed.
In the Lazarus story, Martha seems to be moving to this stage
by the time they come
to open the tomb where they have laid Lazarus.
Some time has passed,
and she is concerned
that the body will already have started to decompose.
She has, to some extent at least, come to accept the reality of her
brother’s death,
and recognises the
natural processes at work
in a body
that has been laid in the ground.
And then,
and then…
Up until this point, this has been a story of death much like any
other.
The stages of grief
are all there,
the characters
all behave as they should,
including
Lazarus, whose life has ended.
But then, the most unexpected thing in the world happens,
and Jesus calls
Lazarus back from the grave.
The point of the story suddenly comes into focus:
Is death the end?
Does death get the
final word on life?
Mortal, can these
bones live?
Yes, it seems that they can!
Death is not the end,
and it does not get the final word on life!
It is at this point that the story of the death of Lazarus
stops being a
carefully observed study on grief,
and becomes something else altogether.
It becomes what John intends it to be within his gospel:
a sign of the kingdom of God
It is a story that reveals something profoundly important to us,
about the nature of
the new world that is coming into being,
through
the person of Jesus Christ.
The point of the resurrection of Lazarus
is that when God is
involved in the story of someone’s life,
death is never allowed
to have the final word.
This has been true in the story of Lazarus’ death,
it will be true in the
story of Jesus’ death,
and we are invited to
realise that it will be true for us also.
The calling forth of Lazarus from his tomb
prefigures Jesus’ own
dramatic desertion of the grave later in the gospel story.
Just as Lazarus died, so Jesus will die,
and so, I am afraid to say, will each of us,
in our turn.
Symbols of death are all around us as I speak:
From the cross on the
wall behind me,
to the bread and wine
before us all,
bodies break, blood is
spilled, and mortal life comes to its end.
It’s not always recognised these days that death is at the heart of the
Christian faith.
We tend to devote far
more time focussing on life in all its fullness,
than we do
confronting the reality of death.
And in this, of course,
we mirror the world around us,
which
consigns death to the specialists,
and
dangles the goal of eternal youth before us all.
As seventy becomes the
new fifty,
we pursue
the dream of health and activity into old age,
and we
deny to ourselves the truth of our own mortality.
It was once the case, before modern medical advances,
that death was a
regular reality for all people.
Death occurred primarily in the home,
and it was not unusual
to sit with the body of a family member who had died.
These days, we confine death to the hospitals,
and many of us have
never been with a dead body.
Within the medical profession, death has become the great enemy,
to be avoided at all
costs.
And we focus our energies on keeping people alive,
even sometimes beyond
the point where death would be more appropriate.
Christianity, with its focus on death at the heart of its faith,
can bring a different
perspective on death,
which we can offer as
a prophetic witness to the world.
And that perspective is this:
Death is no longer the
mortal enemy of humankind.
Death’s power over
people is broken,
because in
Christ we find the hope of resurrection;
in Christ
we find the promise and hope of eternal life.
It’s important that we don’t confuse ‘eternal life’ with ‘living
forever’,
they aren’t the same
thing at all.
‘eternal life’ is a quality of life that endures beyond the grave,
and it comes as the
gift of God, given through Christ Jesus.
‘living forever’ is simply an attempt to deny the mortality of
humanity,
and is ultimately
always going to founder in the face of death.
Even Lazarus, called forth from his tomb, would die again.
And it may well be
Lazarus about whom Jesus has to scotch the rumour
that he is
going to live forever,
in the last few verses
of the gospel (21.21-24)
But another thing about ‘eternal life’
is that is can’t
simply be reduced to ‘pie in the sky when you die’.
Rather, it is about living eternally each day
so that all that is
good in life is not lost.
Eternal life is eternity in each present moment,
it is, as William
Blake put it:
To see a World in a grain of
sand,
And a Heaven in a wild
flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of
your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.[5]
God is love, and God is eternal,
and at our life’s
conclusion all that we have ever been,
from young
child, through strong adulthood, to infirmity and helplessness,
is swept up within the
love of God
and held
in God’s eternal loving embrace.
This is the Christian perspective on eternal life,
and it is Christ’s gift
in the face of death.
It is no coincidence that so many Christians in the medical profession
are so involved in
palliative care and the hospice movement.
In Christ we are enabled to face death without fear
because we know that
it does not get the final word.
In Ezekiel’s vision we hear the word of the Lord
to those who have been
taken hostage by the power of death,
and it is a word that echoes down to our own age with startling
clarity:
Mortal, can these
bones live?
Is death, ultimately,
all that there is?
Is all lost, in the
face of death?
Mortal, can these
bones live?
There is a west African proverb,
which says that when
an elder dies a library is burned.
And yet, that is not the Christian perspective,
because within the
love of God in Christ,
nothing
that is good is ever lost,
each
moment is of eternal value
to
the Lord of all eternity.
Mortal, can these bones live?
Yes, we may answer,
they live eternally.
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