Thoughts on the 5th Sunday of Lent (22/03/26)
Ezekiel 37.1–14; Psalm 130;
Romans 8.6–11; John 11.1–45
As the great Existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom wrote: Each person fears death in his or her own way. For some people, death anxiety is the background music of life, and any activity evokes the thought that a particular moment will never come again. Even an old movie feels poignant to those who cannot stop thinking that all the actors are now only dust (Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death).
But we are rooted in a Christian tradition that makes a remarkable claim. Death is not our master and we are no longer its subjects because death’s dominion over the human race has been nailed to the cross of Christ and stripped of its power. Death has always been subordinate to God who is the Author of Life, and now that God the Son has grafted us into his own life, death is not the final word for us humans either.
In our 1st reading from the Prophet Ezekiel we are dealing with death and resurrection as a metaphor for the re-animation of the nation of Israel.
The people have been faithless, to say the least, and it is in Ezekiel that we find rather a graphic comparison of both Israel, the Northern Kingdom, and Judah, the Southern Kingdom, compared to a couple of harlot-sisters, who have pursued and offered themselves to false Gods, while neglecting the One True God who calls himself Israel’s Husband.
Judgement has visited the land on account of the iniquity of the people - both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms have fallen and Ezekiel is actually prophesying from exile in Babylon.
But it’s here, when things are at rock-bottom, that God takes Ezekiel, in a vision to a valley of dry bones. Actually, it might not be a vision in the ordinary sense of that word - all we are told is that God brought him out by the spirit of the Lord and set him down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. (I’ve known of people who have had near-death and out of body experiences and they would never describe those experiences as ‘visions’, as though they were seeing something in the confines of their imaginations, so who knows?)
The people represented by these bones were not only dead; they were also disgraced. In the thinking of the ancient Near East, an unburied corpse with exposed remains was a shocking disgrace. These were people denied proper burial.
And then the question comes to Ezekiel: Mortal, can these bones live?
That’s a question for us too.
I’ll speak for myself here in the hope that some of what I say will resonate for some of you and speak to some of your own life experience.
Where do we go when aspects of our lives seem so decimated that they can fruitfully be described as a valley of dry bones? Where do we go when we are faced with what is clearly impossible? Dry bones belong to those long dead, and I don’t know about you, but I have been in circumstances where my life looked like a story that was well beyond rescuing.
Part of that, for some of the time, was because of my own foolishness. Like the harlot-sisters I have chased after the false Gods of wealth and success. I have been seduced by the lust for popularity, and danced to tunes I shouldn’t have danced to. I have also indulged in things that should’ve been left alone.
But life has also dished up certain catastrophic events that have wiped out any hope I had for anything like a future to look forward to.
In times like this it seems that Ezekiel’s answer to God’s question is the only fitting one: Ezekiel, can these bones live? O Lord God, only you know!
This is faith in action, I think, because there’s nothing triumphalistic about Ezekiel’s answer. This isn’t wishful thinking or even the positive, ‘name-it and claim-it’ theology of some of our brothers and sisters.
This is acknowledging that God is God, and that there are all manner of things that are well beyond us.
The encouraging thing is that God seems to turn up when we reach the end of our own strength. When our control over our own lives seems tenuous at best. God is a saviour after all, and I suppose that if we never see that we actually need saving from something, we will have no need of him (Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Mark 2:17).
God breathed life into the dry bones in Ezekiel’s valley, just as he breathed life into mine after my own catastrophes, and I am still struck by God’s mercy in that regard, and in his ability to bring life out of death. As St Paul says: We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).
So I have had some metaphorical resurrections (as I imagine some of you have) but in our Gospel reading we are getting even closer to resurrection in the literal sense, even though we are not quite there yet. We will have to wait for Easter Sunday for that reveal, because what happens to Lazarus isn’t resurrection in the full Christian sense of the word.
In the Letter to the Hebrews (9:27) it says that it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: Well in the case of Lazarus it was appointed unto him to die twice and then the judgement. Poor old Lazarus will have to die again before he is resurrected!
Lazarus is reanimated not resurrected. Resurrection isn’t a corpse coming back to life, it’s the transition, through death, to a new and glorified life in a spiritual body unconstrained by realities like time and space.
Our story does allow for something to come into view though, and that’s Jesus’ mastery over death and his startling claim that he IS the resurrection and the life. Jesus says to Martha, one of the sisters of Lazarus, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ (John 11:25-26)
Do you believe it?
Well maybe for most of us the answer has to be the same as the one given by Ezekiel: O Lord God, only you know!
I don’t think the kind of belief Jesus is asking for is something we simply switch on from one moment to the next. Perhaps it’s like that for some people who are graced with a powerful epiphany, but for me it was more of a gradual realisation.
There’s something about living the Christian life, and practicing the Christian practices, that allows the Holy Spirit to form us into those who can answer ‘Yes!’ to Jesus’ question. ‘Yes, Lord! We believe that you are the resurrection and the life!’
St Paul says that the process might be described as ‘developing the mind of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 2:16). Developing a consciousness that is so deeply imbued with the Holy Spirit that somehow we just know that he is the resurrection and the life, and that death is no longer our master and our final end.
Lent is all about developing that mind – that consciousness. So let’s press on for the next couple of weeks and make space for the Holy Spirit in our lives. As St Paul tells us in our 2nd reading: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
God bless you all.
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