Looking for life.

Lent V

Ezekiel and the Dry Bone (Ezekiel 37)

Raising of Lazerus (John 11:1-45)

These are outrageous stories, not really suitable for the polite nodding of the heads and mumbling of the “Thanks be to God” that just occurred.  We were just told about visions of mass graves getting up and doing a jig and then we just heard the story of a man so dead his body had begun to give off the stench of death and then he got up and lived.  I am not sure the standard response is the most appropriate – it at least deserves a little stunned silence, or tilted head furrowed brow suspicion. 

These two pieces of scripture are outrageous because they give voice to two common experiences in this bodily life we are all living. These stories raise questions that we, as mere mortals who live finite lives, must address again and again.  First, God asks his prophet Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?”  God asks Ezekiel if he can look straight into a grave of dry, dry bones and see life?  Ezekiel pivots the conversation back to the Immortal “Lord God, you only know the answer”.

Then, we move from the vast, anonymous grave into the intimate, beloved home of Jesus’ friends.  Grief stricken Mary, Martha both speak out the other deeply human question, “Lord, if you had been here our brother would not have died.”  This is grief and shock and anger that are inescapable and expected in the face of such loss – O Immortal one… where were you, when I needed you?  Mary and Martha were not the last to speak such a truth of human understanding.  How often do we look and doubt and cry out at the absence of healing when we so desperately prayed and looked to God?

On this last Sunday of Lent we come to the brink, we come to the place where glib answers are inappropriate and trite responses offensive. Depth of questioning is what we find when mortals look into death.  These outrageous stories bring us to the fullness of death and grief.

These are stories about resurrection, which could feel like a glimpse into the Easter story close at hand.  Yet before we dive into resurrection we need to stand firmly with Ezekiel, Mary and Martha – we need to remember what happens before the resurrection for that is what makes it outrageous and miraculous at all.   The new life, or life-again, came from death.  Long, hard, dry and stench filled death.  And that is the physical, as God is speaking to Ezekiel there is more and more death that is described.  Certainly, God understands the fullness of loss and grief in the human experience.

God says that the valley full of dry bones is like the whole house of Israel, without hope and cut off from their home.  It is death of body, death of faith, death of relationship and exile from their land.  The death of Lazarus is not a foreign and unknown man, it is the death of a dear friend, a brother, a man gone too soon. This was a death for the whole community, a smack of injustice and mortality.

It is here that God’s promise of life-again is enacted.  God’s will to bring life is so outrageous and miraculous is comes from these places of deep, despairing death.

We have heard and seen the fullness of death.  So, what of this resurrection? Is it so easily seen and experienced, what do we do with God’s question to Ezekiel,

               “Mortal, can these bones live?”

At Bible and Brew we discussed at length hopelessness, loss, scenes of death and exile both from scripture and from our real life experiences.  And then we went somewhere in between real life experiences and that other place.   Stories went around the circle of white lights, seeing loved ones who have certainly died yet appeared in dreams, in visions, voices of the dead speaking to the living.  By all the perimeters I know I believe our Bible study went in the direction of ghost stories.

This too, is a common human experience.  Not ordinary, not commonplace, but common indeed.  It is difficult to parse out dreams from visions and strong memories from sightings.  I wonder what Ezekiel would qualify his surreal visit to the valley of dry bones as?  Whatever the name, these experiences of the thin place between physical life and spiritual life is difficult to draw a firm line down and even more difficult to speak of.

I have had my own strong vision while singing Gilbert Martin’s arrangement of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross with the Minnesota Lutheran Choir. Looking up into the church balcony from my place in the soprano section and seeing my mother as clearly as I see any of you.  This was the same choir piece that was sung at her funeral, so there could be many neurological, emotional, memory-based explanations to my experience.  But I do not wish to hear them, I’ll take my sighting as a powerful moment and experience of life beyond anything I can reason or totally understand.

It was a happy moment, a relieving presence.  Yet, it is not all that God has promised us.  It is not the place for faith to rest.

The sightings and encounters with those we have known and lost are powerful, but they are not the full promise of resurrection spoken of in Ezekiel, nor are they the fullness of restored life given to Lazarus.

Resurrection, life-again is not a ghost story, it is a full, spiritual, relational, bodily promise fulfilled in Jesus’ full death and spiritual, relational, physical rising.  In Jesus’ resurrection we were and will be given the Holy Spirit, the birth of the church and forgiveness so immense it will stitch us, our relationships, our exiled beings back together again.  Skin and sinews on our dry, dry bones, miraculous life over earth’s most massive graves.

God asked Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” And Ezekiel turned to God for the promise of outrageous, miraculous life. 

This is the work of God, to not only restore the physical body – but to return our hearts and our faith again to God.  To be so filled with hope and to be returned our home in God’s love.  This is not our work, nor is this what happens when we dream dreams or see visions or have strong experiences of life and death.  The resurrection promise of God is fullness and resurrection of every aspect of everyone and everything that has died – we will not miss it, we will know it on the last day when our dry bones dance and our dear friends are brought to us again, not figments or memories but fullness of life before our eyes. 

“Mortal, can these bones live?” This could be the great challenge of this life, to stare into deep graves and trust that, with the love of God and the mercy of Jesus Christ, we can speak in faith, “Yes, Lord God, with you they will live.”