EZEKIEL 37-1-14

PSALM 130

ROMANS 6:16-23

JOHN 11:1-44

Sermon – 3/17/02

Four weeks ago, on the first Sunday in Lent, we heard the profound story of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God in the Garden of Eden. They yielded to the temptation to try “to be like God” and be their own little gods and make their own rules for themselves. This is what is known as “Original Sin”, and it is part of the human situation. In ways large or small, human beings yield to the temptation to try to be our own individual gods and design our own rules for our own benefit. Those who strive mightily for holiness are also mightily tempted. One way or another, we learn that there has only been one perfect person – Jesus Christ.

Human sin, symbolized by that primordial act of rebellion in the Garden, produced a broken relationship between human beings and God (symbolized by Adam and Eve’s exile from the Garden), between human beings and the creation (symbolized by clothing Adam and Eve with animal skins – meaning that animals had to be killed for human benefit), between human beings (symbolized by the new relationship of dominance of Adam over Eve and the murderous jealousy between Cain and Abel) and within the human heart itself, in anguish over all the pain it was experiencing in the new, “real life” existence in exile from God’s presence.

The brokenness of these relationships I visualize as chasms like those severe earthquakes would produce: unbridgeable chasms between us and other human beings, between us and the creation, within ourselves and between us and God. Efforts at establishing complete and permanent healing of these great divides by human effort alone are themselves acts of human hubris, overweening pride in our own abilities. Though progress can be made in these areas – meaningful progress in terms of the effect on human lives – such progress is always incomplete, and vulnerable to being undone. Think of the state Sarajevo was in when it hosted the Olympic games, and what has happened in the former Yugoslavia since. Think of the hope many felt nine years ago for peace between Arabs and Israelis, and the state of the Middle East today.

We cannot mend these “earthquake faults” which run through human experience on every level from the cosmic to the personal by our own efforts alone, and we cannot build a bridge which will enable us to reach God.

But we don’t have to. God has reached out to us. Repeatedly, since the time of Abraham, God has reached out with love and grace to guide people back to him, and back to each other. And finally, God built a bridge from God to humanity, a bridge which spans that yawning chasm caused by the “earthquake” of human rebellion. The “yawning chasm” is Death, and the bridge that spans it and enables people to reach God fully is the cross of Jesus Christ.

St. Paul puts it succinctly in today’s Epistle: “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Death is our final “paycheck” for living in a world broken by human sin, our own and that of all others. It is a grim, sober thought, one human beings have often found depressing beyond description. Sometimes as well, human beings – even members of God’s Chosen People – have despaired. Such a time was the 6^th Century B.C., when the prophet Ezekiel (author of our first reading) lived and wrote.

In the 7^th Century B.C., the Israelite Kingdom of Judah (centered on Jerusalem) was independent, prosperous and (briefly) even powerful. But in 586 B.C. Jerusalem itself was conquered and destroyed, the Temple built by Solomon was burned to the ground, the King and all the leadership of the country was carried off into exile in Babylon, in modern-day Iraq. There they languished, year after weary year, until some thought they had as much chance of being restored to their homeland as, say, a valley full of dry bones would have of being restored to full life.

But as God showed Ezekiel in this vision, God is the Lord of life, God can make a way out of no way, and will – for those who believe. And in 539 B.C., the great return to the Promised Land began to the astonishment and delight of the exiles.

Lazarus, Jesus’ friend and the brother of Jesus’ good friends Martha and Mary of Bethany, was dead. By the time Jesus came to his tomb, Lazarus had been dead for four days – a key detail, for some First Century rabbis maintained that a person’s soul stayed near their bodies for three days, after which there was no hope for revival. For Jesus, however, nothing is impossible. That is why Jesus does not hurry in response to the “May Day” call from Martha and Mary, because whenever Jesus comes, he cannot be “too late”.

Jesus goes to Judea (near Jerusalem) to the surprise of his disciples because there have been death threats against him there. The Apostle Thomas, indeed, is convinced that they, too, are likely to be martyred with Jesus: none of them express hope for Jesus’ visit.

None of the male disciples, that is. Martha, Lazarus’ sister, is the exception. She greets Jesus with the words, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”

I wonder what her tone of voice was when she uttered that first sentence: angry? hurt? profoundly disappointed? Whatever it was, she had faith in the midst of her great sorrow. And her faith deepened in response to Jesus, first affirming the First Century Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead at The End of Time and then being the first person in the Gospel of John to say to Jesus “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.”

She said this in response to Jesus’ stunning provocative words, words which would lead people either to denounce him as a blasphemer or embrace him as the source of hope beyond all previous hopes. Jesus said, “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.”

These words of Christ are quoted at the beginning of the burial service in The Book of Common Prayer. They are crucial to our hope as Christians, crucial for understanding Easter and why Easter matters for us.

Especially when Jesus asks Martha and her friends to remove the stone over the grave, and he responds to her doubts by saying, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

If you believe, you will see. Oh, we humans like to have it the other way around – if we see, then maybe we’ll believe. But Jesus asked them, just as God asked Ezekiel, to do something to demonstrate their faith. And they did.

Please note what is, in the Revised Standard Version translation, the shortest verse in the entire Bible, John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” Jesus’ power does not at all make him immune from empathy, nor does his knowledge of what will come next make him skip mourning for the friend whose death he is about to undo.

Jesus says, “Lazarus, come out.” And a “rope” is tossed into the yawning chasm of death from God’s side, and one is brought up from that chasm and returned safely to the surface, on our side.

Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus; that is, Lazarus was restored to mortal life by Jesus. Lazarus eventually died, like the others Jesus healed or restored to life. New life, eternal life, “life²” would have to wait for Easter, when the “bridge” over the chasm of eternal death would have been completed.

It is a rugged bridge, made of “an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame” “where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain.”

For us to be able to cross the bridge from life to greater life, Jesus Christ gave his life. And so the healing of the world could begin. And so, in awe and wonder, we now journey toward Palm Sunday and Holy Week and the extraordinary story of our deliverance by the Savior.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church