A
Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
5th December
2021, 11.00am
The Valley of Dry Bones engraving by Gustave Doré
Ezekiel 37:1-14
John 11:1-3, 11-13, 17, 21-22, 32-40, 43-44
Over
the last few weeks, this congregation has had a bit of a run
of services to give thanks for the
life of friends who have died.
These
have been good occasions:
appropriately sad, but also with
time to remember
and to re-tell the good things about
those who are no longer with us.
We
have had laughter as well as tears,
and rightly so, because a life well
lived is worth celebrating,
even as we mourn its ending.
But
our engagement with the mystery of death
has also reminded us that there are
no easy answers, and no quick solutions.
As
C S Lewis memorably put it, the death of a loved one is an amputation,[1]
and although time can bring some healing,
the loss remains forever a part of
us.
Well,
our two lectionary readings for this morning,
invite us to face the reality of our
own human mortality.
Let’s
start with the Old Testament,
and this week we find ourselves with
the prophet Ezekiel.
He
was a contemporary of Jeremiah who we heard from last week,
but whereas Jeremiah had remained in
Jerusalem,
writing to the Jewish
exiles in Babylon to seek the welfare
of the city to which
they had been exiled;
Ezekiel was one of those exiles,
and his job was to
interpret God’s word
for those people who had
lost everything.
Many
of them would, I am sure, have been personally bereaved,
they would have lost family and
friends during the Babylonian invasion.
But
their grief and loss was more than personal, it was structural:
because they had lost their city,
their society, their homes, their futures.
And
so 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.
A
few years ago Liz and I visited Cambodia,
and we went to one of the killing
fields sites just outside Phnom Penh.
As
we walked around we could see scraps of clothing and fragments of bone
eroding out of the dry soil:
testimony
to the shallow mass graves
of the victims of the Khmer Rouge.
A
valley of dry bones is both the literal reality
of the aftermath of a battle or
massacre,
and
also a fitting metaphor for the people
who have suffered at the hands of
others.
And
as Ezekiel wanders in his vision around 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.
And
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?
These
same questions echo through the story of the death of Lazarus,
as we encounter Jesus living the
personalised agony
of the death of a dearly loved friend.
And
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,
and people experience in them in any
order,
often
returning to different stages over a period of time,
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,
and
I think it’s worth our while spending a bit of time with them today,
as we enter into these to texts of grief
from the books of Ezekiel and John.
Kübler-Ross
suggests that the first stage of grief is often 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?’ (v.37)
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,
knows this experience well.
In
Psalm 130 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. (v.39)
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!
In this story, at least, 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 on the Communion Table,
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)
The Christian doctrine of resurrection is not, contrary to popular opinion,
all about the afterlife;
and 'eternal life' can't simply be reduced
to ‘pie in the sky when you die’.
Rather, they are about living the eternal value of 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.
And
so back to Ezekiel’s vision, where 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.
But 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.
[1]
C S Lewis, A Grief Observed
[2]
On Death and Dying, pp.35-36.
[3]
On Death and Dying, p. 72.
[4]
On Death and Dying, p.74
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