No spring chicken
Commentary
Each year about this time, we in the church are fond of making a misplaced analogy. Tennyson wrote, "In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Perhaps if he had observed the contemporary American church, he would have written, "In the spring a preacher's fancy turns to thoughts of nature and Easter." Again and again each March or April, we see trotted out the symbolic connection between the event we celebrate on Easter -- Christ's resurrection -- and the season in which we celebrate it -- springtime. Spring, we are told, is the season of new life, and so the resurrection of Christ is tied to nature's annual display of spring flowers and buds on trees.
The association between Easter and spring is a lovely one and quite sentimental. Unfortunately, it is also quite misleading. Christ's resurrection is not at all paralleled by nature. Christ's resurrection was, in fact, entirely unnatural, and to make the association between the two is to apply the wrong analogy, and therefore to perpetuate a misunderstanding.
Our three lections for this week invite us to ponder the issue of dead things being brought back to life. Ezekiel witnesses a startling demonstration of that event in the valley of dry bones. Jesus brings dead Lazarus back to life, and Paul bears witness to the Spirit "who raised Christ from the dead" and who will do the same for us. We have the opportunity this week to set aside the beauty of what nature does each spring and see, in contrast, the beauty of what God does, what Christ did, and what the Spirit will do in us.
Ezekiel 37:1-14
A marvelous matrix of relationships is contained here in this familiar passage, and any of the relationships could be explored by the preacher to great effect.
There is, first, the relationship between Ezekiel and God. We could be endlessly fascinated by the biblical accounts of how God deals with his servants, for it gives us fresh insight into our own relationship with him. In this instance, we have the fascinating appellation consistently used by God for Ezekiel, ben adam. The NRSV translates the Hebrew phrase as "mortal," while the KJV, RSV, NIV, and NKJV all opt for "son of man." The Septuagint's translation (huie anthropou) seems to favor a "son of man" or "son of mankind" reading. Meanwhile, the Living Bible's paraphrase is perhaps more picturesque: "son of dust." Whatever the best translation, the title offers deliberate perspective and constant reminder to Ezekiel of who and what he is. It is not belittling; it is merely a reminder of fact, and a reminder that we and our native egocentricity need God.
The irresistibly appealing hallmark of Ezekiel's relationship with God, meanwhile, is its personal and dialogical quality. Most of the book is written in the first-person, which gives the account a very personal flavor. The personal testimony offered there is of a God who almost continuously speaks with Ezekiel. Nearly thirty times, the prophet recalls that the Lord "said to me," and it is not a one-way lecture, but more of a guided tour. Again and again throughout the book, as in our selected passage, the Lord shows Ezekiel things (e.g., 44:5), invites him to go and see (e.g., 8:5; 8:9), or asks him if he has seen (e.g., 8:17).
Even if the ben adam term is "off-putting" to us at first, the actual playing out of the relationship that we see between God and Ezekiel has a terrifically personal quality to it. The Lord is walking the prophet through a series of lessons, like a tutor, and it is experiential and conversational, at that. Our particular passage certainly has that quality. God does not merely say to Ezekiel what he wants Ezekiel to know -- or, a step further removed, what he wants his people to know. Rather, Ezekiel and the Lord experience the event together.
Next, we have the relationship between Ezekiel and the bones. That is an impersonal relationship, to be sure, but it is one that may resonate with our experience. We, and the people in our pews, will from time to time, look out over a hopeless landscape, and what shall be our relationship to that inanimate despair? Will we wave the white flag at what is an obviously lost cause? Will we shrug our shoulders in dismay? Or will we open our minds to the possibilities of what God can do, following his instructions all the way to new life in the midst of dried up and dismembered death?
Then there is the relationship between Ezekiel and the people of Israel. It turns out that they are the ones represented by that hopeless valley of dry and detached bones. The experience in the valley was meant by God to be a kind of training exercise for Ezekiel. Like the astronaut who goes through all sorts of simulation experiences on earth before being launched into outer space, so God walked Ezekiel through a simulation of what his ministry must be: prophesying in the midst of hopelessness and despair; believing upstream; and participating in the miraculous work, word, and will of God.
And, finally, there is the relationship between God and his people Israel. That is the central issue, of course. The entire ministry and message of the prophet are subsets of this larger matter: God's relationship to his people. That relationship is, we discover, an uneven two-way street. Love and loyalty flow in both directions, but the volume is so very much greater going one way than the other.
God's people had been scandalously disloyal to him, and their unfaithfulness is chronicled and condemned in earlier chapters of Ezekiel. So, too, are the details of God's judgment on his people for their infidelity. In the end, however, the Lord does not abandon his people. They deserve to be divorced, to be sure, but that is not God's choice. They deserve to be utterly crushed, but instead he preserves a remnant. So here, in this episode, the people are represented by the brokenness and hopelessness of the valley of dry bones, but God will not leave his people in that condition. Rather, as only he can do, we read that the Lord will "open your graves, and bring you up from your graves ... and you shall live."
Romans 8:6-11
The operative word in verses 6 and 7 is not immediately apparent in most translations. The King James and New King James Versions render the first part of verse 6: "For to be carnally minded is death." Meanwhile, the Revised Standard and New Revised Standard Versions take a slightly different approach: "To set the mind on the flesh is death." The New English Bible, by contrast, reads: "Those who live on the level of our lower nature have their outlook formed by it, and that spells death."
If a person in your congregation sat down and read several such English translations side-by-side, he or she might be confused. The various translations lead one to think that there must be a very complex verb in the original Greek. It seems to be a verb that can be variously translated as "to be," "to set the mind," or "to live on the level of."
In fact, however, what lies behind the different translations is not a very complex Greek verb, but rather no Greek verb at all.
The New International Version, in this case, may come nearest to giving the sense of it: "The mind of sinful man is death." Even the English word "is" represents an insertion, for the Greek has no verb at all. Rather, the construction of verse 6 simply juxtaposes two subjects, and in the absence of a verb it almost suggests the mathematical sign for "equals" in between.
Read literally, verse 6 would run like this: "For the mind of the flesh death, and the mind of the Spirit life and peace."
The original Greek word that Paul uses, which I have translated above as "mind," is not the standard New Testament Greek word for "mind." Rather, it is a word that appears only three times in the entire New Testament, and all three occurrences are right here in Romans 8 (vv. 6, 7, and 27). It is perhaps more satisfactory to translate it as "mindset" or "way of thinking."
It is really just two equations that Paul presents: The way of thinking of the flesh equals death; the way of thinking of the Spirit equals life and peace. "You do the math," Paul says in effect. If our mindset is of the flesh, it follows naturally that we will not submit to God's Law and cannot please God, so we are invited to have the mindset of the Spirit.
The other fascinating intersection of grammar and theology in this passage is found in the use of the preposition "in." On the one hand, Paul says that the Christians to whom he is writing are not "in the flesh" but rather "in the Spirit." On the other hand, he also notes that "the Spirit of God dwells in you." Moreover, "if the Spirit ... dwells in you," that becomes the key to the resurrection of the body.
There are no special things to be said about the Greek preposition involved here. It is not uncommon or profound. Our English "in" is an adequate translation of it, but its recurring usage here does invite the preacher to ponder these three realities: our being in the flesh; our being in the Spirit; and the Spirit being in us.
The reference to the resurrection within this context suggests another kind of mathematical equation. The church has, for years, struggled with the relationship of our works and our salvation. Even apart from the in-depth theological debates throughout church history, there are the over-the-back-fence theologians who also weigh in on the subject. They, the folks in our culture who believe that there is a heaven, find it almost irresistible to assume that it's "good people" who go there.
The components of this passage, however, suggest another factor that can help the equation to make sense. That factor is the Spirit. Rather than limping along with the happy but somewhat shallow assumption that folks who live good lives will go to heaven, we see in Paul's understanding that the Spirit is actually the key. Namely, it is the Spirit that engenders righteous living, and it is the Spirit that raises us from the dead. We might conclude, therefore, that our salvation is not the by-product of our good lives, but rather our good lives and our salvation are both products of the Spirit's work within us.
John 11:1-45
The preaching potential of John 11 is staggering. I'm a believer that the whole Bible is worth preaching -- every book, every chapter -- but I will quickly concede that the sermon material is a bit more obvious in some passages than in others. In John 11, there are more sermons than one Sunday can accommodate. So many larger themes come into play in this passage.
First, there is the relationship between Jesus and this particular family -- Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. In addition to this episode, we have at least two other glimpses into this group of friends (Luke 10:38-42; John 12:1-11).
Second, we are met, again, here with this matter of purpose. Jesus does not merely chalk up Lazarus' sickness and death to the natural order, but rather claims that "it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." The teaching is reminiscent of the healing of the blind man earlier in John's Gospel, when Jesus explains, "He was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him" (John 9:3).
Third, this occasion is part of the larger plot of Jesus' opponents who seek to kill him. The disciples were conscious of this issue (John 11:8), though it is interesting that danger, fear, and opposition, which can be primary factors in most human decision-making, do not play a part in where Jesus goes or what Jesus does. Also, just beyond the boundaries of our selected passage, Lazarus' return to life becomes another point of controversy and consternation for Jesus' opponents.
Fourth, there is the faith-crisis issue of God's timing. This is not limited to some theoretical theme in scripture, of course; this is a daily faith issue for the people in our pews. Early in the episode, we see Jesus deliberately delaying his trip to Bethany. Later, observers at Lazarus' tomb asked, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" (v. 37). And, in the most poignant, human moment of all, both Martha and Mary individually lament to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (vv. 21 and 32).
Finally, this passage features one of the "I am" statements of Jesus. These statements are a significant theme in John's Gospel, accumulating and cooperating to reveal who Jesus is, which is the real issue of the gospel. What Jesus said and did are reported, it seems, as a means to that larger end: recognizing who Jesus is, and the occasion of Lazarus' death yields one of the most famous of those statements: "I am the resurrection and the life" (v. 25).
Application
We have often used the surrounding context of springtime as a metaphor for the resurrection we celebrate at Easter. As we consider the three death-to-life passages we have before us today, we should consider a revamping of the analogy. Use nature's springtime not in comparison with but in contrast to Christ's resurrection.
At springtime, we say, nature shows its signs of new life. The flowers begin to poke through the ground and the branches on the trees show the buds of new leaves. That's all very lovely, of course, but it is not resurrection. It is not even resuscitation.
Ezekiel was confronted with what must have been a horrid sight: a valley full of dry bones. Every syllable of the phrase connotes death, doesn't it? We already figuratively associate death with a valley. The bones are surely a symbol of death, and the fact that they are just scattered bones -- not assembled skeletons -- makes them seem still further removed from life. Finally, they are dry. Whenever they were alive, it was a long time ago.
Lazarus had not been dead so long, of course, but it was long enough. Long enough that he had been wrapped up and buried. Long enough that the tomb was sealed off with a stone. Long enough that the ever-fastidious Martha was concerned about the stench.
How shall we set nature side-by-side with Ezekiel's valley? How shall we take springtime and contrast it with Lazarus?
Ezekiel's valley would not be full of trees that are bare in the winter -- for those trees are still alive. No, Ezekiel's valley would be full of leaves that have turned brown, fallen off, and been mulched. For those leaves to come together, turn green, and reattach themselves to trees -- that would not be nature and springtime, that would be Ezekiel's dry bones coming to life again.
Lazarus' tomb would not have an empty garden within it waiting for spring to bring dormant bulbs to bloom. No, Lazarus' tomb would have within it the bagged clippings from last month's lawn mowing. It would be dead, yellowed, stale, and smelly. Jesus calls in, and the bag bounces out. "Tear it open," he commands, and we find the clippings alive, verdant, and growing.
What God did at the valley of dry bones was not natural. What Jesus did at Lazarus' tomb was not natural. What the Spirit did at the empty tomb was not natural. It is not mimicked by spring.
What Christ can do in our lives -- and in our deaths -- is not bound by the limitations of nature or dictated by the natural order. Because real resurrection and life are not found in nature: they are found in him.
An Alternative Application
Ezekiel 37:1-14. Typically a question raises doubts. A question challenges our certainty. Are you sure? Can you prove it? But what if...?
We see the phenomenon at work right from the beginning. The serpent asked a question in an effort to raise doubts in Eve's mind. "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1). Well, no. No, that's not at all what God said. But the question raised that bit of doubt in Eve's mind: a doubt about God, on which the serpent later expanded and capitalized.
The writer of Proverbs observes, "The first man to speak in court always seems right until his opponent begins to question him" (Proverbs 18:17 TEV). So it is that a question typically raises doubts.
When Ezekiel stands before his own Death Valley, however, God asks a question that points in a different direction. "Can these bones live?"
If the question came from anyone else, it would be an insult, an offense, salt in the wound. Walk into the lawyer's office where the divorce papers are being signed and ask, "Can this marriage be saved?" Stand in the hospital room beside what remains of a disease-riddled body, struggling through its final breaths, and ask, "Can this person be healed?" Preposterous questions.
But God's question is meant to raise a wholesome doubt in Ezekiel's mind. Or, perhaps it was something else. Surely doubt already prevailed in the face of that panorama of death. Can you raise a doubt about doubt? God asked a question to raise faith in Ezekiel's mind!
As we noted above, both we and the people in our pews might -- today, tomorrow, or one day soon -- look out over a seemingly hopeless landscape. The hymn writer encourages us to "ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with his love he befriend thee" ("Praise To The Lord, The Almighty" by Joachim Neander, translated by Catherine Winkworth). We might help ourselves ponder anew what the Lord can do by asking questions -- preposterous questions, outlandish questions, questions that raise faith.
Can this marriage be saved? Can this body be healed? Can this addiction be broken? Can this person ever change?
Can these bones live?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 130
There's an old Peanuts cartoon that has Charlie Brown sitting at Lucy's psychiatric booth. After Lucy dispenses one of her typically twisted diagnoses, Charlie Brown is left sitting there, head in his hands. With a forlorn look on his face, he implores the cosmos: "Where do I go to give up?" Perhaps that's a question some of us have asked when we've found ourselves at the end of our rope. It's much the same question the writer of Psalm 130 is asking:
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice!
As with many of the psalms, we can't know with certainty who wrote those plaintive words, or what the precise difficulty is. But we can empathize. We've been there. The only thing we can tell for sure about the psalmist's problem is this: it has something to do with guilt.
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
The scholars call this a penitential psalm. That's surely why it ends up in the lectionary, deep in the season of Lent.
Although this song may have been born "out of the depths," it does not dwell there. For not many verses after that despairing cry there comes, abruptly, a confession of faith:
... my soul waits for the Lord,
more than those who watch for the morning ...
In this age of technology -- when streetlights cast their broad circles across the pavement and garish neon and subtle night-lights are both, alike, commonplace -- there aren't many people who stand still anymore, and "watch for the morning." Yet, this was a common practice in biblical times. Each town had its night watchmen, public servants who would stay up all night on guard duty at the town gates. They would trudge up and down the streets in the early-morning chill, making sure no enemies were lurking and that everything was all right.
Maybe only someone who's worked nights can fully discern what the psalmist is talking about. The sentry on the army post knows all about it: how the hours drag on, how the senses get sharpened in the silence, how even the crunch of boot-heel on gravel sounds like it carries for miles. Anyone who's ever kept bedside vigil with someone who's dying knows it, too. Such a one knows how, in the wee hours, the mind plays tricks: how one hears imaginary, muffled conversations out in the hallway and how absurd images pass before the mind's eye.
Yet somehow, in the sepulchral blackness, the psalmist finds it within himself to calm his nerves and wait. He waits for the Lord, "more than those who watch for the morning." Who is to say how he makes it to that turning point: how, precisely, he manages to transform his situation from despair into hope? But transform it he does.
For the psalmist, the secret of getting through the "dark night of the soul" is very simple (simple to say, but hard to live out). It's a matter of waiting -- but not of aimless waiting, of passing time without purpose. Rather, it's a matter of attentive waiting: of sitting, with sharpened senses, attending to the things the Lord is doing as we wait.
In his autobiographical book, Telling Secrets, Frederick Buechner frankly relates a family secret: how his teenage daughter struggled with anorexia. There came a day when Buechner was in the pits of despair, worried sick that his daughter would never be well again. Listen for the odd way God chose to speak to him in that dark night:
"I remember sitting parked by the roadside once, terribly depressed and afraid about my daughter's illness and what was going on in our family, when out of nowhere a car came along down the highway with a license plate that bore on it the one word out of all the words in the dictionary I needed most to see exactly then. The word was trust. What do you call a moment like that? Something to laugh off as the kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while? The word of God? I am willing to believe that maybe it was something of both, but for me it was an epiphany. The owner of the car turned out to be, as I suspected, a trust officer in a bank, and not long ago, having read an account I wrote of the incident somewhere, he found out where I lived and one afternoon brought me the license plate itself, which sits propped up on a bookshelf in my house to this day. It is rusty around the edges and a little battered, and it is also as holy a relic as I have ever seen."
It may sound pollyannaish to say to someone in the slough of despair, "Just wait, things will get better" -- but the simple truth is, very often they do. They certainly do if we boldly place ourselves in the caring hands of the God of love.
The association between Easter and spring is a lovely one and quite sentimental. Unfortunately, it is also quite misleading. Christ's resurrection is not at all paralleled by nature. Christ's resurrection was, in fact, entirely unnatural, and to make the association between the two is to apply the wrong analogy, and therefore to perpetuate a misunderstanding.
Our three lections for this week invite us to ponder the issue of dead things being brought back to life. Ezekiel witnesses a startling demonstration of that event in the valley of dry bones. Jesus brings dead Lazarus back to life, and Paul bears witness to the Spirit "who raised Christ from the dead" and who will do the same for us. We have the opportunity this week to set aside the beauty of what nature does each spring and see, in contrast, the beauty of what God does, what Christ did, and what the Spirit will do in us.
Ezekiel 37:1-14
A marvelous matrix of relationships is contained here in this familiar passage, and any of the relationships could be explored by the preacher to great effect.
There is, first, the relationship between Ezekiel and God. We could be endlessly fascinated by the biblical accounts of how God deals with his servants, for it gives us fresh insight into our own relationship with him. In this instance, we have the fascinating appellation consistently used by God for Ezekiel, ben adam. The NRSV translates the Hebrew phrase as "mortal," while the KJV, RSV, NIV, and NKJV all opt for "son of man." The Septuagint's translation (huie anthropou) seems to favor a "son of man" or "son of mankind" reading. Meanwhile, the Living Bible's paraphrase is perhaps more picturesque: "son of dust." Whatever the best translation, the title offers deliberate perspective and constant reminder to Ezekiel of who and what he is. It is not belittling; it is merely a reminder of fact, and a reminder that we and our native egocentricity need God.
The irresistibly appealing hallmark of Ezekiel's relationship with God, meanwhile, is its personal and dialogical quality. Most of the book is written in the first-person, which gives the account a very personal flavor. The personal testimony offered there is of a God who almost continuously speaks with Ezekiel. Nearly thirty times, the prophet recalls that the Lord "said to me," and it is not a one-way lecture, but more of a guided tour. Again and again throughout the book, as in our selected passage, the Lord shows Ezekiel things (e.g., 44:5), invites him to go and see (e.g., 8:5; 8:9), or asks him if he has seen (e.g., 8:17).
Even if the ben adam term is "off-putting" to us at first, the actual playing out of the relationship that we see between God and Ezekiel has a terrifically personal quality to it. The Lord is walking the prophet through a series of lessons, like a tutor, and it is experiential and conversational, at that. Our particular passage certainly has that quality. God does not merely say to Ezekiel what he wants Ezekiel to know -- or, a step further removed, what he wants his people to know. Rather, Ezekiel and the Lord experience the event together.
Next, we have the relationship between Ezekiel and the bones. That is an impersonal relationship, to be sure, but it is one that may resonate with our experience. We, and the people in our pews, will from time to time, look out over a hopeless landscape, and what shall be our relationship to that inanimate despair? Will we wave the white flag at what is an obviously lost cause? Will we shrug our shoulders in dismay? Or will we open our minds to the possibilities of what God can do, following his instructions all the way to new life in the midst of dried up and dismembered death?
Then there is the relationship between Ezekiel and the people of Israel. It turns out that they are the ones represented by that hopeless valley of dry and detached bones. The experience in the valley was meant by God to be a kind of training exercise for Ezekiel. Like the astronaut who goes through all sorts of simulation experiences on earth before being launched into outer space, so God walked Ezekiel through a simulation of what his ministry must be: prophesying in the midst of hopelessness and despair; believing upstream; and participating in the miraculous work, word, and will of God.
And, finally, there is the relationship between God and his people Israel. That is the central issue, of course. The entire ministry and message of the prophet are subsets of this larger matter: God's relationship to his people. That relationship is, we discover, an uneven two-way street. Love and loyalty flow in both directions, but the volume is so very much greater going one way than the other.
God's people had been scandalously disloyal to him, and their unfaithfulness is chronicled and condemned in earlier chapters of Ezekiel. So, too, are the details of God's judgment on his people for their infidelity. In the end, however, the Lord does not abandon his people. They deserve to be divorced, to be sure, but that is not God's choice. They deserve to be utterly crushed, but instead he preserves a remnant. So here, in this episode, the people are represented by the brokenness and hopelessness of the valley of dry bones, but God will not leave his people in that condition. Rather, as only he can do, we read that the Lord will "open your graves, and bring you up from your graves ... and you shall live."
Romans 8:6-11
The operative word in verses 6 and 7 is not immediately apparent in most translations. The King James and New King James Versions render the first part of verse 6: "For to be carnally minded is death." Meanwhile, the Revised Standard and New Revised Standard Versions take a slightly different approach: "To set the mind on the flesh is death." The New English Bible, by contrast, reads: "Those who live on the level of our lower nature have their outlook formed by it, and that spells death."
If a person in your congregation sat down and read several such English translations side-by-side, he or she might be confused. The various translations lead one to think that there must be a very complex verb in the original Greek. It seems to be a verb that can be variously translated as "to be," "to set the mind," or "to live on the level of."
In fact, however, what lies behind the different translations is not a very complex Greek verb, but rather no Greek verb at all.
The New International Version, in this case, may come nearest to giving the sense of it: "The mind of sinful man is death." Even the English word "is" represents an insertion, for the Greek has no verb at all. Rather, the construction of verse 6 simply juxtaposes two subjects, and in the absence of a verb it almost suggests the mathematical sign for "equals" in between.
Read literally, verse 6 would run like this: "For the mind of the flesh death, and the mind of the Spirit life and peace."
The original Greek word that Paul uses, which I have translated above as "mind," is not the standard New Testament Greek word for "mind." Rather, it is a word that appears only three times in the entire New Testament, and all three occurrences are right here in Romans 8 (vv. 6, 7, and 27). It is perhaps more satisfactory to translate it as "mindset" or "way of thinking."
It is really just two equations that Paul presents: The way of thinking of the flesh equals death; the way of thinking of the Spirit equals life and peace. "You do the math," Paul says in effect. If our mindset is of the flesh, it follows naturally that we will not submit to God's Law and cannot please God, so we are invited to have the mindset of the Spirit.
The other fascinating intersection of grammar and theology in this passage is found in the use of the preposition "in." On the one hand, Paul says that the Christians to whom he is writing are not "in the flesh" but rather "in the Spirit." On the other hand, he also notes that "the Spirit of God dwells in you." Moreover, "if the Spirit ... dwells in you," that becomes the key to the resurrection of the body.
There are no special things to be said about the Greek preposition involved here. It is not uncommon or profound. Our English "in" is an adequate translation of it, but its recurring usage here does invite the preacher to ponder these three realities: our being in the flesh; our being in the Spirit; and the Spirit being in us.
The reference to the resurrection within this context suggests another kind of mathematical equation. The church has, for years, struggled with the relationship of our works and our salvation. Even apart from the in-depth theological debates throughout church history, there are the over-the-back-fence theologians who also weigh in on the subject. They, the folks in our culture who believe that there is a heaven, find it almost irresistible to assume that it's "good people" who go there.
The components of this passage, however, suggest another factor that can help the equation to make sense. That factor is the Spirit. Rather than limping along with the happy but somewhat shallow assumption that folks who live good lives will go to heaven, we see in Paul's understanding that the Spirit is actually the key. Namely, it is the Spirit that engenders righteous living, and it is the Spirit that raises us from the dead. We might conclude, therefore, that our salvation is not the by-product of our good lives, but rather our good lives and our salvation are both products of the Spirit's work within us.
John 11:1-45
The preaching potential of John 11 is staggering. I'm a believer that the whole Bible is worth preaching -- every book, every chapter -- but I will quickly concede that the sermon material is a bit more obvious in some passages than in others. In John 11, there are more sermons than one Sunday can accommodate. So many larger themes come into play in this passage.
First, there is the relationship between Jesus and this particular family -- Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. In addition to this episode, we have at least two other glimpses into this group of friends (Luke 10:38-42; John 12:1-11).
Second, we are met, again, here with this matter of purpose. Jesus does not merely chalk up Lazarus' sickness and death to the natural order, but rather claims that "it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." The teaching is reminiscent of the healing of the blind man earlier in John's Gospel, when Jesus explains, "He was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him" (John 9:3).
Third, this occasion is part of the larger plot of Jesus' opponents who seek to kill him. The disciples were conscious of this issue (John 11:8), though it is interesting that danger, fear, and opposition, which can be primary factors in most human decision-making, do not play a part in where Jesus goes or what Jesus does. Also, just beyond the boundaries of our selected passage, Lazarus' return to life becomes another point of controversy and consternation for Jesus' opponents.
Fourth, there is the faith-crisis issue of God's timing. This is not limited to some theoretical theme in scripture, of course; this is a daily faith issue for the people in our pews. Early in the episode, we see Jesus deliberately delaying his trip to Bethany. Later, observers at Lazarus' tomb asked, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" (v. 37). And, in the most poignant, human moment of all, both Martha and Mary individually lament to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (vv. 21 and 32).
Finally, this passage features one of the "I am" statements of Jesus. These statements are a significant theme in John's Gospel, accumulating and cooperating to reveal who Jesus is, which is the real issue of the gospel. What Jesus said and did are reported, it seems, as a means to that larger end: recognizing who Jesus is, and the occasion of Lazarus' death yields one of the most famous of those statements: "I am the resurrection and the life" (v. 25).
Application
We have often used the surrounding context of springtime as a metaphor for the resurrection we celebrate at Easter. As we consider the three death-to-life passages we have before us today, we should consider a revamping of the analogy. Use nature's springtime not in comparison with but in contrast to Christ's resurrection.
At springtime, we say, nature shows its signs of new life. The flowers begin to poke through the ground and the branches on the trees show the buds of new leaves. That's all very lovely, of course, but it is not resurrection. It is not even resuscitation.
Ezekiel was confronted with what must have been a horrid sight: a valley full of dry bones. Every syllable of the phrase connotes death, doesn't it? We already figuratively associate death with a valley. The bones are surely a symbol of death, and the fact that they are just scattered bones -- not assembled skeletons -- makes them seem still further removed from life. Finally, they are dry. Whenever they were alive, it was a long time ago.
Lazarus had not been dead so long, of course, but it was long enough. Long enough that he had been wrapped up and buried. Long enough that the tomb was sealed off with a stone. Long enough that the ever-fastidious Martha was concerned about the stench.
How shall we set nature side-by-side with Ezekiel's valley? How shall we take springtime and contrast it with Lazarus?
Ezekiel's valley would not be full of trees that are bare in the winter -- for those trees are still alive. No, Ezekiel's valley would be full of leaves that have turned brown, fallen off, and been mulched. For those leaves to come together, turn green, and reattach themselves to trees -- that would not be nature and springtime, that would be Ezekiel's dry bones coming to life again.
Lazarus' tomb would not have an empty garden within it waiting for spring to bring dormant bulbs to bloom. No, Lazarus' tomb would have within it the bagged clippings from last month's lawn mowing. It would be dead, yellowed, stale, and smelly. Jesus calls in, and the bag bounces out. "Tear it open," he commands, and we find the clippings alive, verdant, and growing.
What God did at the valley of dry bones was not natural. What Jesus did at Lazarus' tomb was not natural. What the Spirit did at the empty tomb was not natural. It is not mimicked by spring.
What Christ can do in our lives -- and in our deaths -- is not bound by the limitations of nature or dictated by the natural order. Because real resurrection and life are not found in nature: they are found in him.
An Alternative Application
Ezekiel 37:1-14. Typically a question raises doubts. A question challenges our certainty. Are you sure? Can you prove it? But what if...?
We see the phenomenon at work right from the beginning. The serpent asked a question in an effort to raise doubts in Eve's mind. "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1). Well, no. No, that's not at all what God said. But the question raised that bit of doubt in Eve's mind: a doubt about God, on which the serpent later expanded and capitalized.
The writer of Proverbs observes, "The first man to speak in court always seems right until his opponent begins to question him" (Proverbs 18:17 TEV). So it is that a question typically raises doubts.
When Ezekiel stands before his own Death Valley, however, God asks a question that points in a different direction. "Can these bones live?"
If the question came from anyone else, it would be an insult, an offense, salt in the wound. Walk into the lawyer's office where the divorce papers are being signed and ask, "Can this marriage be saved?" Stand in the hospital room beside what remains of a disease-riddled body, struggling through its final breaths, and ask, "Can this person be healed?" Preposterous questions.
But God's question is meant to raise a wholesome doubt in Ezekiel's mind. Or, perhaps it was something else. Surely doubt already prevailed in the face of that panorama of death. Can you raise a doubt about doubt? God asked a question to raise faith in Ezekiel's mind!
As we noted above, both we and the people in our pews might -- today, tomorrow, or one day soon -- look out over a seemingly hopeless landscape. The hymn writer encourages us to "ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with his love he befriend thee" ("Praise To The Lord, The Almighty" by Joachim Neander, translated by Catherine Winkworth). We might help ourselves ponder anew what the Lord can do by asking questions -- preposterous questions, outlandish questions, questions that raise faith.
Can this marriage be saved? Can this body be healed? Can this addiction be broken? Can this person ever change?
Can these bones live?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 130
There's an old Peanuts cartoon that has Charlie Brown sitting at Lucy's psychiatric booth. After Lucy dispenses one of her typically twisted diagnoses, Charlie Brown is left sitting there, head in his hands. With a forlorn look on his face, he implores the cosmos: "Where do I go to give up?" Perhaps that's a question some of us have asked when we've found ourselves at the end of our rope. It's much the same question the writer of Psalm 130 is asking:
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice!
As with many of the psalms, we can't know with certainty who wrote those plaintive words, or what the precise difficulty is. But we can empathize. We've been there. The only thing we can tell for sure about the psalmist's problem is this: it has something to do with guilt.
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
The scholars call this a penitential psalm. That's surely why it ends up in the lectionary, deep in the season of Lent.
Although this song may have been born "out of the depths," it does not dwell there. For not many verses after that despairing cry there comes, abruptly, a confession of faith:
... my soul waits for the Lord,
more than those who watch for the morning ...
In this age of technology -- when streetlights cast their broad circles across the pavement and garish neon and subtle night-lights are both, alike, commonplace -- there aren't many people who stand still anymore, and "watch for the morning." Yet, this was a common practice in biblical times. Each town had its night watchmen, public servants who would stay up all night on guard duty at the town gates. They would trudge up and down the streets in the early-morning chill, making sure no enemies were lurking and that everything was all right.
Maybe only someone who's worked nights can fully discern what the psalmist is talking about. The sentry on the army post knows all about it: how the hours drag on, how the senses get sharpened in the silence, how even the crunch of boot-heel on gravel sounds like it carries for miles. Anyone who's ever kept bedside vigil with someone who's dying knows it, too. Such a one knows how, in the wee hours, the mind plays tricks: how one hears imaginary, muffled conversations out in the hallway and how absurd images pass before the mind's eye.
Yet somehow, in the sepulchral blackness, the psalmist finds it within himself to calm his nerves and wait. He waits for the Lord, "more than those who watch for the morning." Who is to say how he makes it to that turning point: how, precisely, he manages to transform his situation from despair into hope? But transform it he does.
For the psalmist, the secret of getting through the "dark night of the soul" is very simple (simple to say, but hard to live out). It's a matter of waiting -- but not of aimless waiting, of passing time without purpose. Rather, it's a matter of attentive waiting: of sitting, with sharpened senses, attending to the things the Lord is doing as we wait.
In his autobiographical book, Telling Secrets, Frederick Buechner frankly relates a family secret: how his teenage daughter struggled with anorexia. There came a day when Buechner was in the pits of despair, worried sick that his daughter would never be well again. Listen for the odd way God chose to speak to him in that dark night:
"I remember sitting parked by the roadside once, terribly depressed and afraid about my daughter's illness and what was going on in our family, when out of nowhere a car came along down the highway with a license plate that bore on it the one word out of all the words in the dictionary I needed most to see exactly then. The word was trust. What do you call a moment like that? Something to laugh off as the kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while? The word of God? I am willing to believe that maybe it was something of both, but for me it was an epiphany. The owner of the car turned out to be, as I suspected, a trust officer in a bank, and not long ago, having read an account I wrote of the incident somewhere, he found out where I lived and one afternoon brought me the license plate itself, which sits propped up on a bookshelf in my house to this day. It is rusty around the edges and a little battered, and it is also as holy a relic as I have ever seen."
It may sound pollyannaish to say to someone in the slough of despair, "Just wait, things will get better" -- but the simple truth is, very often they do. They certainly do if we boldly place ourselves in the caring hands of the God of love.
