The 5th Sunday of Lent 2005

Jesus said to her,
‘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

“Them bones, them bones, them dry bones.” It’s a quaint song, one that you might teach your children or grandchildren. It’s not a song you’d see as being subversive or revolutionary – which just goes to show how wrong you can be.
The song is based on the vision of Ezekiel which formed our first reading today. Ezekiel was someone who spoke out God’s message at a time when his nation seemed beyond hope. The Babylonians, the superpower of the day, had conquered their land, destroyed their temple and deported the population, leaving their cities as empty ruins. It is in this situation that Ezekiel has his vision of the valley of dry bones. In a heightened state of awareness Ezekiel sees a valley full of corpses, so dead that the flesh has fallen away from them leaving just the bones. And God asks him, “Can these bones live?” The answer is obvious, and yet Ezekiel does not give the obvious answer. Instead he acknowledges that even in a situation as seemingly hopeless as this one there is still the possibility that it can be transformed by God. “Can these bones live?” “O Lord God, you know.” And instructed by God Ezekiel speaks to the bones and the bones come together, flesh grows over them, breath enters into them and they stand “a great multitude”.
The message that Ezekiel is given to draw from this vision is this. That although things look hopeless for Ezekiel’s nation it is still possible for God to transform their situation and, says Ezekiel, he will. They will be brought back from their land of exile, and their nation will be restored.
Now to the African slaves in America this seemed like a picture of there own situation. Like Ezekiel’s people they had been taken from their homes as captives and deported to a distant land. Like the situation of Ezekiel’s people, their situation looked utterly hopeless. And in that situation, like Ezekiel’s people, they found hope in the God who can transform hopeless situations. So they sang a song of transformation about the bones joining together and dead coming to life, knowing that it spoke it hope when no hope seemed possible.
One can imagine the slave owner looking on complacently as these human beings, whom he regarded as possessions, sang what he must have regarded as a comic song, unaware that they sang of his downfall and their own vindication and liberation.
God gives hope when hope does not seem possible. God gives life when all possibility of life seems to have gone.

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This message of hope when hope seems impossible, life when all possibility of life seems to have gone is, of course, implicit in the story of Jesus and Lazarus.
Lazarus is dead, there can be no doubt of that. Some scholars suggest that the mention of the fact the he has been in the tomb for four days is meant to emphasise the reality of Lazarus death. There was apparently a superstition amongst the Jews of this time that the soul hung around the body for three days after death but by the fourth day had gone from it. Others simply take the text at face value. By the fourth day, in the hot Mediterranean climate decomposition would be well underway. However we read this there could be no doubt that Lazarus was dead. The situation was hopeless.
And yet into this hopeless situation comes hope, as Jesus arrives. The tomb is opened, Jesus speaks and the dead man lives.
In one sense this is a unique event. Whilst there are other reports of the dead being raised, both in the Bible and in later Christian experience, such events are very rare and I personally would regard those reports from outside the Bible with a great deal of scepticism. I know there are people who have prayed beside the bodies of their dead loved ones firmly believing that that person will be raised from the dead. I have never yet heard a convincing account of this happening. But I have heard of people who have moved on from the depths of grief to find new hope. In this sense what happens in this story is typical of what Jesus does. He gives hope when all seems hopeless and life where no life seems possible.

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But giving that hope is costly. John makes it clear that the raising of Lazarus is, for the Jerusalem authorities, the last straw. Confronted by such a powerful miraculous act they must either accept that Jesus is who he says he is, and worship him, or do away with him. And they choose the latter. The cost of new life for Lazarus is Jesus death on the cross.
And that is true for us too. Today Lent moves into higher gear. We begin to focus more intently on the cross and the suffering of Jesus, on what is called his passion. From the earliest days Christians have believed that Jesus death on the cross is more than simply the suffering a good person and an example of how such suffering can be born. Christian’s believe that Jesus death has in some way transformed our situation so that we may experience new life and new hope because of him. There are many ways that people have sought to explain how that was accomplished. Some of those explanations are more satisfactory than others and none seems completely adequate. I’m going to look at some of those pictures when I speak on Good Friday, but I warn you none of them are completely satisfying explanations. They are like pictures attempting to portray a reality beyond depiction. They have value and point to the thing they describe, but they are not that thing.
That thing is the fact that Jesus death gives us new hope and new life. When everything seems lost, when all seems hopeless Jesus tells us “I am the resurrection and the life.” And then he challenges us, as he challenged Martha long ago, “Do you believe this?”