Rise and Shine
Commentary
Eternal life. Real life. We get up in the pulpit and promise the one after death and the other before it. What are we talking about? An endless succession of mornings where we get up, let the dog out, bring in the morning paper, and sit down to our first cup of coffee? That certainly sounds attractive to some of us, and perhaps appalling to others, but is that what scripture is telling us? Is that our faith? As we gather together, days before we observe our remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, let us consider a few things.
Ezekiel tells us there is no life, temporal or eternal, without the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God moves among us and brings us back to ourselves. This is real life. It cannot be negated by genocide, nor can it be lost in obscurity against the backdrop of the vastness of the universe.
Real life comes with the knowledge of who Jesus is. That’s what we learn in our passage from John. John has been telling us who Jesus is through the words of Jesus. There has been a succession of I AM statements. And now we see this raising of Lazarus is not a party trick. It’s really the resurrection of Martha. Much maligned (unfairly) because of her contention with Jesus in Luke 10:38-42, Martha takes Jesus to task for lollygagging when it came to coming to her brother’s aid. Yet Jesus engages her in dialogue, and she responds to all the I AM statements with a staggering You Are! It is who Jesus that makes this life worth living and all the life that follows worth having.
This is what Paul is saying in his letter to the Romans. Putting away the flesh (and we’re not talking about this life, because Paul through both his Greek and Hebrew backgrounds has a high view of the physical body) which means the aims of this world, we live now in Christ. We are alive, finally, in Christ.
The life with Jesus begins now. It changes everything! The life with Jesus continues eternally. It changes everything. We are given not just eternal life, but REAL life -- let us live as the redeemed!
Ezekiel 37:1-14
In Jonathan Swift’s satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver travels to the floating island of Laputa. Among the many things he observes is that there are certain people born with a mark on their foreheads who will live forever. Gulliver rhapsodizes over these individuals who could invest money wisely so they would be always rich, study every field of knowledge so they could grow perfectly wise, and gather about themselves other immortals so that they might with that wisdom and wealth guide the destiny of humanity. But the Laputans laugh at him. They see immortality as a curse. To be immortal in this life means to always grow older, more infirm, unable to hear, see, enjoy food, and to lose the company of all your contemporaries. To simply go on and on and on is a horrible fate. More life is not better life.
In a recent article in the New Yorker on the possibility of immortality in this life some researchers are tackling a more important question is: What will that life be like? Here’s a quote from that article.
"Last year, the geneticist Nir Barzilai hosted a screening of a documentary about longevity, and afterward he posed a question to the three hundred people in the audience. He told me, "I said, 'In nature, longevity and reproduction are exchangeable. So, choice one is, you are immortalized, but there is no more reproduction on Earth, no pregnancy, no first birthday, no first love' -- and I could go on and on and on." He laughed, amused by his own determination to load the dice. "'choice two,' I said, 'is you live to be eighty-five and not one day sick, everything healthy and fine, and then one morning you just don't wake up." The vote was decisive, he said. "choice one got ten or fifteen people. Everyone else raised their hands for choice two."
(“Silicon Valley’s Quest to Live Forever,” by Tad Friend, The New Yorker, April 3, 2017)
There’s a lot to unpack in this Ezekiel passage and if you’ve been preaching for any length of time this is not your first rodeo when it comes to the valley of dry bones. This place of dry bones, of a slaughter from long ago, an attempt to eradicate a people and the memory of that people, has much to offer, but one central message is real life begins with the Spirit of God.
After the destruction of Jerusalem, after the destruction of the temple, after great loss of life and displacement and hopelessness -- Ezekiel preaches hope!
This famous passage seems impossible. The whole point of the vision is that the prophet sees the remains of an ancient killing field (much as we discover in our world today). The people are not just dead. They’re gone. We're not coming upon someone who has been clinically dead who can be revived.
Then Ezekiel feels a touch on his shoulder. It is no one less than the Spirit of God. In this distant land, this ancient battlefield, this gruesome scene, we learn that the Spirit of God is what we need to experience real life. To simply offer life is not sufficient. The bones are knit back together, sinew and flesh restored, but it is not enough.
What we learn is that what we really need is real life! Ezekiel saw the bones come to life, but more important, only with the Spirit of God does real life began. This message for the exiled had hope only because the breath of God, which hovered over the face of the deeps at the dawn of time, which lives and moves and breathes among us, something even the pagan poets knew, is what gives the exiles in Babylon hope!
Here is hope to those struggling. Hope for those falsely accused. Hope for those who are ill and find no easy cure. God has power to restore life. Sometimes we think it is enough to say, “You are saved. Go your way and sin no more.” But we ignore the fact that people yearn for life with real meaning.
Romans 8:6-11
At one point in Acts, the evangelist Luke notes that instead of riding the boat Paul stepped out on shore and took a brisk twenty mile walk to stretch his legs. He walked over a pass, which meant he got some pretty vigorous exercise. This shows if nothing else does that Paul was interested in something more than just getting to his destination to reach the gospel. Paul enjoyed the physical world. He saw value in living right now, in stretching his legs and enjoying the great outdoors.
I bring this up because sometimes we fail to understand that the word translated as the flesh and used in a very negative sense in this passage, is really speaking about the aims of those anchored in the physical world, not the physical world itself. There is a high view of the body in both Greek and Hebrew thought. What Paul is talking about when he speaks of the flesh is not our bodies as such. He does not consider them evil. It is the anchoring oneself in the aims of the world.
In talking about this contention between “the flesh” that “is hostile to God, and “The Spirit of God” and the “Spirit of Christ,” we are really talking about attitudes and aims. Romans is about the resurrection right now as well as the resurrection of the dead at the judgement.
John 11:1-45
I suppose it’s too late to change the fact that people talk about this chapter as being about the resurrection of Lazarus, but I think we might call it The resurrection of Martha.
This is not only a long passage, but also a very familiar one. Jesus stalls and Lazarus dies. Well, it was all to show Lazarus was really dead, not just sick. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Happy Ending.
But because of its familiarity we might miss a few things. First of all, Jesus had friends: Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. Friends are different than apostles or disciples. There will always be a boundary between Jesus and his followers. There is no such boundary when it comes to those who are personally dear to him. For all of us there are those who are friends who dwell in our hearts, but others who are good people, good companions, good folks who fill other niches in our lives. Friends are a part of real life!
Also, in this passage the tables are turned. In another gospel Jesus chides Martha for not recognizing what’s important and what isn’t. But in this passage Martha scolds Jesus because he didn’t get it. His friend was more than just an object lesson to strengthen the faith of others across millennia. And Jesus weeps. In this passage the divine Son of God finally “gets” what it means to be fully human, to experience the grief of loss that cannot be fully cured.
But if Martha scolds Jesus, she also pronounces an amazing confession of faith: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” In response to the many I AM statements from Jesus that pepper the Gospel of John, and his specific claim here, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,” Martha says, “You Are!” In the Gospel of John people either get it or they don’t. Nicodemus doesn’t get it. The Samaritan woman gets it. The blind man gets it, but the religious leaders don’t get it. Martha gets it.
Martha's confession showed it was not a question of more life — but real life. Believe.
Ezekiel tells us there is no life, temporal or eternal, without the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God moves among us and brings us back to ourselves. This is real life. It cannot be negated by genocide, nor can it be lost in obscurity against the backdrop of the vastness of the universe.
Real life comes with the knowledge of who Jesus is. That’s what we learn in our passage from John. John has been telling us who Jesus is through the words of Jesus. There has been a succession of I AM statements. And now we see this raising of Lazarus is not a party trick. It’s really the resurrection of Martha. Much maligned (unfairly) because of her contention with Jesus in Luke 10:38-42, Martha takes Jesus to task for lollygagging when it came to coming to her brother’s aid. Yet Jesus engages her in dialogue, and she responds to all the I AM statements with a staggering You Are! It is who Jesus that makes this life worth living and all the life that follows worth having.
This is what Paul is saying in his letter to the Romans. Putting away the flesh (and we’re not talking about this life, because Paul through both his Greek and Hebrew backgrounds has a high view of the physical body) which means the aims of this world, we live now in Christ. We are alive, finally, in Christ.
The life with Jesus begins now. It changes everything! The life with Jesus continues eternally. It changes everything. We are given not just eternal life, but REAL life -- let us live as the redeemed!
Ezekiel 37:1-14
In Jonathan Swift’s satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver travels to the floating island of Laputa. Among the many things he observes is that there are certain people born with a mark on their foreheads who will live forever. Gulliver rhapsodizes over these individuals who could invest money wisely so they would be always rich, study every field of knowledge so they could grow perfectly wise, and gather about themselves other immortals so that they might with that wisdom and wealth guide the destiny of humanity. But the Laputans laugh at him. They see immortality as a curse. To be immortal in this life means to always grow older, more infirm, unable to hear, see, enjoy food, and to lose the company of all your contemporaries. To simply go on and on and on is a horrible fate. More life is not better life.
In a recent article in the New Yorker on the possibility of immortality in this life some researchers are tackling a more important question is: What will that life be like? Here’s a quote from that article.
"Last year, the geneticist Nir Barzilai hosted a screening of a documentary about longevity, and afterward he posed a question to the three hundred people in the audience. He told me, "I said, 'In nature, longevity and reproduction are exchangeable. So, choice one is, you are immortalized, but there is no more reproduction on Earth, no pregnancy, no first birthday, no first love' -- and I could go on and on and on." He laughed, amused by his own determination to load the dice. "'choice two,' I said, 'is you live to be eighty-five and not one day sick, everything healthy and fine, and then one morning you just don't wake up." The vote was decisive, he said. "choice one got ten or fifteen people. Everyone else raised their hands for choice two."
(“Silicon Valley’s Quest to Live Forever,” by Tad Friend, The New Yorker, April 3, 2017)
There’s a lot to unpack in this Ezekiel passage and if you’ve been preaching for any length of time this is not your first rodeo when it comes to the valley of dry bones. This place of dry bones, of a slaughter from long ago, an attempt to eradicate a people and the memory of that people, has much to offer, but one central message is real life begins with the Spirit of God.
After the destruction of Jerusalem, after the destruction of the temple, after great loss of life and displacement and hopelessness -- Ezekiel preaches hope!
This famous passage seems impossible. The whole point of the vision is that the prophet sees the remains of an ancient killing field (much as we discover in our world today). The people are not just dead. They’re gone. We're not coming upon someone who has been clinically dead who can be revived.
Then Ezekiel feels a touch on his shoulder. It is no one less than the Spirit of God. In this distant land, this ancient battlefield, this gruesome scene, we learn that the Spirit of God is what we need to experience real life. To simply offer life is not sufficient. The bones are knit back together, sinew and flesh restored, but it is not enough.
What we learn is that what we really need is real life! Ezekiel saw the bones come to life, but more important, only with the Spirit of God does real life began. This message for the exiled had hope only because the breath of God, which hovered over the face of the deeps at the dawn of time, which lives and moves and breathes among us, something even the pagan poets knew, is what gives the exiles in Babylon hope!
Here is hope to those struggling. Hope for those falsely accused. Hope for those who are ill and find no easy cure. God has power to restore life. Sometimes we think it is enough to say, “You are saved. Go your way and sin no more.” But we ignore the fact that people yearn for life with real meaning.
Romans 8:6-11
At one point in Acts, the evangelist Luke notes that instead of riding the boat Paul stepped out on shore and took a brisk twenty mile walk to stretch his legs. He walked over a pass, which meant he got some pretty vigorous exercise. This shows if nothing else does that Paul was interested in something more than just getting to his destination to reach the gospel. Paul enjoyed the physical world. He saw value in living right now, in stretching his legs and enjoying the great outdoors.
I bring this up because sometimes we fail to understand that the word translated as the flesh and used in a very negative sense in this passage, is really speaking about the aims of those anchored in the physical world, not the physical world itself. There is a high view of the body in both Greek and Hebrew thought. What Paul is talking about when he speaks of the flesh is not our bodies as such. He does not consider them evil. It is the anchoring oneself in the aims of the world.
In talking about this contention between “the flesh” that “is hostile to God, and “The Spirit of God” and the “Spirit of Christ,” we are really talking about attitudes and aims. Romans is about the resurrection right now as well as the resurrection of the dead at the judgement.
John 11:1-45
I suppose it’s too late to change the fact that people talk about this chapter as being about the resurrection of Lazarus, but I think we might call it The resurrection of Martha.
This is not only a long passage, but also a very familiar one. Jesus stalls and Lazarus dies. Well, it was all to show Lazarus was really dead, not just sick. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Happy Ending.
But because of its familiarity we might miss a few things. First of all, Jesus had friends: Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. Friends are different than apostles or disciples. There will always be a boundary between Jesus and his followers. There is no such boundary when it comes to those who are personally dear to him. For all of us there are those who are friends who dwell in our hearts, but others who are good people, good companions, good folks who fill other niches in our lives. Friends are a part of real life!
Also, in this passage the tables are turned. In another gospel Jesus chides Martha for not recognizing what’s important and what isn’t. But in this passage Martha scolds Jesus because he didn’t get it. His friend was more than just an object lesson to strengthen the faith of others across millennia. And Jesus weeps. In this passage the divine Son of God finally “gets” what it means to be fully human, to experience the grief of loss that cannot be fully cured.
But if Martha scolds Jesus, she also pronounces an amazing confession of faith: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” In response to the many I AM statements from Jesus that pepper the Gospel of John, and his specific claim here, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,” Martha says, “You Are!” In the Gospel of John people either get it or they don’t. Nicodemus doesn’t get it. The Samaritan woman gets it. The blind man gets it, but the religious leaders don’t get it. Martha gets it.
Martha's confession showed it was not a question of more life — but real life. Believe.
