Fifth Sunday in Lent – Passion Sunday
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Readings: Ezekiel 37: 1-14 and John 11: 1-45.
‘Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones; dem bones gonna walk around….Toe bone connected to the foot bone, foot bone connected to the heel bone…and so on’. I’m sure everyone remembers that popular song, written in about 1928 by the author and songwriter and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson in collaboration with his younger brother J. Rosamund Johnson. It’s been sung by various vocalists and music groups, notably The Famous Myers Jubilee Singers and The Delta Rhythm Boys. I read that the song was/is used to teach basic anatomy to children. But, of course, it’s not a folksong, but a spiritual.
“Can these bones live?” asked the prophet Ezekiel. We’re quite used to hearing the story of the dry bones being given life. Perhaps we don’t always appreciate the context of the story.
Ezekiel is writing from exile. He was deported to Babylonia with the other Israelites in the terrible exile inflicted on the people in 597 BC. How dreadful it must be to be forcibly moved from your homeland. The last century has seen hundreds of thousands – millions – of people on the move; driven away by pitiless captors or invaders to a bleak future. Each new conflict in our world throws up fear and instability, and, usually, a flood of refugees.
The valley of dry bones in Ezekiel, whether real or imaginary, is a scene of defeat and devastation after the victors have left. Can these bones live? It seems impossible, but all is not lost. Note that God doesn’t just raise up the bones himself, but he instructs the prophet to speak to them. Yet they are still without life, so God acts through the prophet again. Ezekiel summons the four winds so that the newly-enfleshed bones may breathe. But for this to happen, Ezekiel must prophesy to the people of the nation. They, too, can rise and live, but, like Ezekiel, they must be obedient to God’s commands. Then the Lord says “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”
The miracle of the raising of Lazarus takes place as opposition to Jesus by the authorities in Jerusalem continues to mount; in fact we may say that this event is really the beginning of Jesus’ own Passion. Our lectionary compilers, and indeed St. John in writing it, are giving us this passage today to assure us of the truth of the resurrected power of Jesus, before he enters Jerusalem for the final conflict. Jesus had already been in danger of being stoned, and the disciples are alarmed that he is returning to a place of danger.
One may be tempted to ask, Why Lazarus? Why did Jesus choose to employ his miraculous powers in the case of this particular man? One commentator says, “This miracle of the raising of Lazarus is truly a prophecy of faith: Lazarus was dead and decaying; dust returning to dust. The intervention of Jesus raised him from this death, to the life that is shared by all who loved the Lord.”
Jesus was evidently very close to Mary, Martha and Lazarus, but how odd that after being told that he was ill, Jesus stayed where he was for another two days. But he did know what he was going to do; what was going to occur would be for God’s glory, and that the Son of Man would be glorified in it. Possibly he waited those two days to avoid any rumour when he got there that Lazarus was actually asleep, or in a coma, and so not really dead.
When Jesus reaches the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, some very human emotions come to the fore. Firstly, Martha seems slightly aggrieved with Jesus. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Where were you when it mattered? I’m sure we’ve all have the difficulty of knowing when and whether we should visit a dying person, and the guilt and regret we feel when we get the timing wrong, and the opportunity is missed.
Then, Jesus himself is overcome by emotion when he reaches Lazarus’ body. He begins to weep. Maybe you know that famous passage by Canon Henry Scott-Holland of St. Paul’s Cathedral, beginning ‘Death is nothing at all…’ In the earlier years of my ministry I was asked for it at funerals frequently, but not so much now; in fact, I wouldn’t always suggest it nowadays. The faithful believer may be able to say ‘Death is nothing at all’ in the sense that we believe the deceased to be in a better place, but death is horrible and we must not diminish the reality of it. Jesus weeps at Lazarus’ grave, but does he weep for all the others who are not summoned back from the grave, and for all the bereaved whose loss remains? Did he also weep for himself, because of what he had to do, and would suffer, in the coming days?
These days, of course, medics, sometimes with a family’s agreement, will do all they can to prolong a person’s life. Death is considered almost a defeat. The world, it seems, strives for immortality, but it is resurrection that Jesus offers us. Paul affirms this truth in the passage from Romans today; “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.”
Consider the difference between the raising of Lazarus and the rising of Jesus. Lazarus was resuscitated and unchanged. Though in his heart he must have been altered by this miracle, he continued his life within the same limits of humanity, and died again. But the rising of Jesus, on the other hand, which we call his resurrection, transformed him into the divine Christ, and a new being. The raising of Lazarus was less for his sake than for Martha’s, to show her that living within the love of Christ is a risen life.
So this is the life we are promised as Christian believers, and the belief Paul reinforces. In God’s loving purposes, we are called out of darkness into light, as Lazarus was summoned from the tomb, to be freed to new life in Christ, to be unbound as Lazarus was. Today we enter Passiontide and will begin to follow the story as we walk with Jesus the way of the Cross. It’s as if we’re being asked, “Do you choose for or against God? Light or darkness? Spiritual life or spiritual death?” May we be given grace to follow Jesus’ Passion faithfully and to find new meaning in the mystery of his death and resurrection.