Sunday, March 26th - "Seeking: Can These Bones Live?"

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First United Presbyterian Church

“Seeking: Can These Bones Live?”

Rev. Amy Morgan

March 26, 2023

Ezekiel 37:1-14

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ 4Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.’

7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ 10I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

11 Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” 12Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.’ 

John 11:1-45

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

7 Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ 8The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ 9Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ 11After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ 12The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ 13Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ 16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’

17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ 23Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ 40Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Jack was a confirmed atheist. And who could blame him? His mother had died when he was just ten years old, even though he had prayed fervently for her recovery. He found no consolation for his grief at a religious boarding school characterized by dull and contrived observances of piety. He witnessed the worst of humanity’s violent impulses and felt the depths of God’s absence on the battlefields of war. And so he wrote poetry that described the temptations of faith and defended the need to resist them. 

Last week’s story from the Gospel of John addressed the question of whether God causes human suffering. Today’s story asks questions about whether God can and will prevent suffering. And not just any sort of suffering. The ultimate suffering. The suffering the comes from the death of one we love. 

The sisters of Lazarus and the people of Bethany question why Jesus did not prevent his friend from dying. If you had been here, my brother would not have died. Both sisters fire this accusation at Jesus. And those who have come to console the family wonder, Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying? 

Their faith in Jesus and his power to help and heal is called into question by his unwillingness to come to the aid of a dying friend. And who could blame them? This story is clearly set up to invite these kinds of accusations. Jesus is informed that Lazarus is ill. His sisters clearly expect that Jesus will come and heal this man he cares for as he has healed so many strangers along his path. But Jesus purposefully delays. He waits until after Lazarus is dead and buried before he makes his way to Bethany. 

This seems callous, and even cruel. To force Lazarus’s family and community to mourn his death for days before sauntering into town. We must hear the accusations of his sisters, of his community. And we must take them seriously. 

Because this is the accusation that led to Jack’s rejection of faith. He could not believe in a good God who would allow people to suffer and die. If there was a good God who heard his prayers, then that God would have shown up and saved his mother. If you had been here, my mother would not have died. 

This is the accusation that is on the lips and in the hearts of our neighbors who have suffered and who grieve. If Jesus can heal a man who was born blind, why couldn’t he save my sister, my father, my child? 

This is, perhaps, an accusation we ourselves have made. How could you let this happen, God? If you had been here…if you can help others, if you can perform miracles, why didn’t you show up and do something? 

This is an accusation that must be taken seriously, not just because it affects our neighbors, and not just because it is familiar to us. We must take it seriously because Jesus took it seriously. In that accusation, Jesus heard the lamentation that was behind it. He saw the tears and heard the cries of those who grieved for one they loved. 

And it greatly disturbed Jesus. 

The English translations of this text make it sound like Jesus was moved with compassion and empathy. We may picture Jesus looking sad. 

But that is not what John’s Gospel says in Greek. It says that Jesus was embrimaomai. The few other places in the New Testament that we find this term, it is translated as to scold, censure, or warn sternly. There is an element of anger, even danger, to this word. In Greek it literally means, to snort like a horse. Not exactly a groan of pain or deep emotional distress. Jesus is snorting mad. That’s the kind of disturbed and troubled in spirit he is. The lamentation he witnesses, the accusations he must endure, they make him angry. 

But who is he angry at? We don’t hear any scolding of those who mourn. He doesn’t censure them for their lack of faith. No, Jesus is angry at God. He is angry at himself. Not because of what he didn’t do or couldn’t do. But because of what he had to do. He had to let his friend die, he had to let his friends grieve. Because that was the only path to demonstrating God’s ultimate power at work in him, this final sign of his messiahship before he goes to his own death. 

In the Gospel of John, a healing is never just a healing. A resurrection not just a resurrection. In this gospel, these are signs. Signs that prove Jesus is with God and Jesus is God, as the first chapter of John says. Signs that he is the light of the world, and that he is life for all people. 

As much as Jesus may wish his story was about one man, his sisters and his community, and their friendship, he knows that he has a mission to accomplish that both incorporates and transcends those relationships. This means he cares deeply about these people, he loves them. But it also means he doesn’t get to spare them suffering, as much as he might wish to. 

I loved discovering this week that Jesus gets angry about this, that he maybe even resents this position he’s been put in. Because I want Jesus to respond that way to my suffering, and to yours. There are times I need Jesus’s indignation at the unfairness of human suffering more than I need his compassion. I need to know that he doesn’t think it’s okay and will all be worth it in the end. I need to know that when I hurl accusations at him he hears them and takes them to heart. Even if the ultimate outcome of suffering, and even death, is growth and new life and even a kind of resurrection, I need to know that it upsets Jesus to not prevent it. 

The grief and weeping of Mary and her community make Jesus snorting mad, and he immediately asks to be shown where they have buried Lazarus. The reply is “Come and see.” And then, Jesus weeps. 

The word used here in Greek for weep is not found anywhere else in the New Testament. In the previous sentences describing the weeping of those who mourn Lazarus, and everywhere else in the New Testament, the word for weeping is klaio. But when Jesus weeps, John’s gospel uses the word dakruo. Why make this distinction? What is so different about Jesus’s weeping in this moment from every other instance of weeping in the gospels? Even when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem in Luke’s gospel, he uses klaio. What is different about these two kinds of weeping? 

Klaio means to weep audibly, to cry out like a child, to weep and wail. This is the weeping of those who have lost someone dear, who are deeply grieved. In contrast, dakruo means to shed a tear or to weep silently. This is grief that is bottled up, a private sadness, isolated from that communal mourning that surrounds Jesus. His grief is not like theirs. Because he knows that, at some level, their accusations are not off-base. If he had been there, he could have saved Lazarus. He is, in a way, responsible for their weeping. And so he cannot share it in. These are tears of self-recrimination, of grief that turns in on itself. 

Jesus goes to the tomb, and prays aloud, giving credit, and blame perhaps, where it is due. And then he calls Lazarus out of the tomb. And with this sign, faith is restored. Jesus is not only the one who can heal, who can prevent death and suffering, but who can overcome the power of death itself. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, as Paul says. 

This sign leads some people to believe in Jesus, to trust that he is the Messiah, the one coming into the world, as Martha proclaims. But it leads others to plot to kill him. This sign is both hopeful and terrifying. It practically prolongs the earthly life of Lazarus, but it not the eternal life promised in Jesus Christ. Lazarus will die again, and will be held with God until the reign of God on earth comes to completion. This resurrection is a sign, not the promise. 

It was the promise that eventually changed Jack’s mind about religion. After many years of study and conversation with friends and scholars, Jack, who is better known to us as C.S. Lewis, came to believe in the promise of Christ that is at work in the world but not yet complete. After the death of his wife, Lewis wrote that “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”

In those moments when we must confront the reality of suffering and death, in those experiences when God doesn’t show up, doesn’t come through, that we must remember what we were promised. Sufferings are part of the program. But they are not the end of the story. And when our story involves grief and loss, Jesus can and does hear our accusations. Jesus is hurt when we are hurt. And Jesus allowed himself to suffer and die so that his ultimate promise, the promise of life now and always, could be fulfilled in time. 

Belief in Jesus is not belief in a life without suffering and death. It is not a belief that Jesus will heal all our ills, will save our loved ones, or bring them back from the dead. Instead, it is a belief that when we suffer, when out loved ones die, Jesus hurts with us, and Jesus will keep bringing life out of death, until the reign of God on earth is complete, until that time when there is no more weeping of any kind, when death and pain will be no more. That is the promise, and that is a promise worth believing in. 

To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.