Fifth Sunday in Lent,
Penelope Bridges
Our Scripture gives us some high drama today. Bones rattling, skeletons coming to life, conspiracy theories, Jesus weeping, decomposed corpses emerging from the tomb … If anyone ever tells you the Bible is boring, just direct them to one of these stories.
John’s Gospel is designed in two parts, generally known as the book of signs and the book of glory. In the first half of the Gospel, the book of signs, we hear of the miracles, teachings, and parables that identify Jesus as the divine Son of God: turning water into wine, feeding the multitude, healing the man born blind; and culminating here in the most dramatic sign of all, Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead.
The second half, the book of glory, beginning immediately after this story, describes the events that lead directly to Jesus’ death and resurrection: this is what John proclaims as Jesus’ glory. In today’s passage, John is setting us up for all that we will experience in Holy Week.
At this point in the Gospel we already know that Jesus is in increasing danger. The disciples are fearful of returning so close to Jerusalem. They are bound by fear for themselves and for Jesus. They are also bound by hopelessness: Lazarus is already dead, there is no hope of recovery. Why take the risk? They still don’t get the fullness of who Jesus is. Thomas – whom we will hear from again the Sunday after Easter – is the one who fatalistically says let’s go; we may as well die with him. Fear and hopelessness: perhaps we can relate to those feelings.
As so often in John’s Gospel, there are two parallel threads running through the story: the consciousness of the people around Jesus who are slow to recognize his divinity, and the consciousness of Jesus, Son of God, as understood by the post-resurrection faithful. Jesus knows that Lazarus is dead and that he will restore him; but the people around him are clueless. Nevertheless, they follow him, as disciples do, willing to go with him even into fearful and dangerous places. And Jesus himself demonstrates his own humanity as he weeps for his friend and for the community that mourns.
His sadness is real: he experiences the grief of those around him, with true compassion. They are suffering, and Jesus suffers with them. When we are suffering we can count on Jesus sharing in our pain: this is the unique claim of our Christian faith, that our God became one of us and learned how painful this human existence can be.
We hear this Gospel story today, a week before Palm Sunday, because it equips us for Holy Week with the reminder that Jesus is the lord of life. The subsequent events of the passion become even more poignant because of this demonstration of his life-giving power. Jesus gives us life, even as he gives his own life on the Cross. And he himself will rise again, defeating death and the power of evil.
Ezekiel’s eerie vision of the restoration of the dry bones is a strong message that our God is the God who gives life, even to the dryest of bones. All may seem hopeless in the shadow of the valley of death. But God can revive us. God can overcome the power of death. Death is not the end of the story.
Ezekiel’s parable is one of a whole community laid low, of God’s people corporately reduced to dry bones. But God takes the initiative to restore them, to give new life. When we too feel drained, dry, defeated, we can read this story and be reassured that God can bring us, ourselves and our communities, back to life just as those skeletons came back to life.
Both of these stories are centered on bodies, on solid flesh and bone. Our God cares about our bodies, cares so much that God entered into a body to experience to its fullness what it means to be a physical body, in all its glory and all its frailty. Jesus cared deeply for the bodies of the people around him, as he healed and fed and restored them; and we should do the same.
We live in a world where death is glorified and violence is sanitized: propaganda reels mix violent video game imagery with actual current war footage; politicians gloat over the number of bombs they can drop; movies and news accounts portray violent incidents in ways that haunt our minds and hurt our souls.
Our public discourse today contains a strange and disturbing mixture of hiding the reality of death by, on the one hand refusing to discuss it as a reality, while on the other hand exposing us to traumatically horrifying images disguised as entertainment.
The recent statements of the Secretary of Defense glorifying the war in Iran by claiming that Jesus is on the side of the bombs, are nothing short of blasphemy. I am sickened by the co-opting of the Prince of Peace, the giver of Life, as an icon of violent death. This is not any credible variety of Christianity. I am certain that Jesus weeps today over the shattered bodies of God’s children, wherever they live and whatever they believe.
We must do what we can to discredit such a parody of our faith. We must let the world know that this is not God’s will, and it is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We must rise above the fear and hopelessness that threatens to defeat us, because we have heard the call of Jesus to live and love fully.
And we must do what we can to bring new life to our neighbors who lie in the graves of oppression, prejudice, despair, and terror.
For the people of God, death is not the final act. The life that Jesus offers us transcends physical death. It lifts us above fear and hopelessness. It restores our souls as those bones were restored.
The Lazarus incident leads directly to the decision of the religious authorities to have Jesus killed. How ironic, that the act of Jesus giving life results in others bringing about his death. And why is this? Because Jesus stirs things up: he disturbs the status quo. The people holding onto corrupt power don’t like that.
Change makers will always face resistance, and sometimes their changes will be knocked back in brutal ways, as we are seeing now in our national life. Because the people with the power are deeply invested in keeping the power for themselves. It will always be so, until God’s Kingdom comes in its fullness: God seeks to turn the world upside down, and there are many, many people who want to keep it just the way it is, to their own advantage.
With all that is going on in the world around us, many of us are approaching Holy Week this year feeling a bit like those dry bones in the valley of death. But we can hear John’s tale of Lazarus unbound, and we can enter into Ezekiel’s vision of the bones reconnected and revived; and we can be encouraged that God will revive us; God will not let God’s people be destroyed. Easter is coming, when God will make all things new.
Jesus’ last words in this Gospel story are “Unbind him and let him go.” May this be our prayer for all whom we love and for ourselves, that we and they might be unbound from fear and hopelessness, from the power of the grave, and the lies of the culture of death; that we might finally be led out into the light of God’s liberating and life-giving love.
