One of the ways we teach how to read Scripture is to read it in four contexts; that is, to read (1) as a devotion, paying attention to what the text says about my relationship to God and who I am as a child of God and a person of faith;
(2) as a historical text that has something to say about the time and place and audience to whom it is addressed, being attentive to what those details teach us;
(3) as literature, noticing what the author is doing and what kind of writing it is. Remembering the Bible is a library of 66 books, we can expect to find different kinds of writing in it;
(4) and finally, because we are Lutheran, how do we relate our Lutheran theology and teaching to the Scripture; for example, where do we see both law and gospel and how does the text point to who Christ is for us as a community of faith?
I say all this because as we begin this fifth week of Lent, I hear the stories of Ezekiel prophesying to the dry bones and of Jesus calling to Lazarus in his tomb differently than I have in the past.
While I’m familiar with the image of breath being blown into dry bones, I hadn’t thought about how significant it was that the prophecy was spoken to the exilic people living in Babylon.
And, while I knew that in John’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus was a catalyst for the religious leaders wanting to kill Jesus, I hadn’t read the story of Lazarus as a foreshadowing of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
Reading the texts again this time was a good reminder that every time
we hear the living Word of God, we are different from the last time and God
continues to speak through it in new and fresh ways.
So, let’s start with Ezekiel.
Unlike some of the other prophets who were warning Israel and Judah to
repent before their destruction, Ezekiel is speaking to the community now living
in exile in Babylon. His listeners are living in the throes of upheaval, death
and hope-lessness.
And we hear God say, “[The whole house of Israel says], “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”
But the Lord God says to them: “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.”
They are in deep mourning, but it is not without hope because God is
there.
Similarly, in John’s Gospel,
when Jesus goes to the village where Lazarus had lived with his sisters
Mary and Martha,
he hears Martha’s anger and he sees Mary,
and the other Jews who are with her,
weeping because Lazarus is dead.
Traditional Judaism teaches that the soul stays near the body for three
days after death, but by the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb
four days, leaving no doubt that he was dead.
Jesus’s first response is, like God’s response to the exiles, a
statement of promise.
He says to Martha, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they died, will live…”
In Jesus, there is life, even when what we see is death.
We can, like the Israelites and like Martha, Mary and their friends, grieve deeply for what we have lost, but our mourning is not without hope, because God is there with us.
Importantly, even as we recognize the meaning of these stories in their historical time and place, we hear God’s promises for us today.
The Scriptures give us permission
to lament the things that cause us sadness and pain, and
grieve our losses and the deaths we experience.
We are invited to name the ways we feel like we are beyond God’s reach and when we feel like God is distant and unresponsive.
We are encouraged to employ rigorous honesty and name that there are
“times of life that really suck” and despair overshadows hope.
And we are reminded to wait on God’s redeeming action,
confident that God will fulfill God’s promises.
When Jesus makes his “I AM” statement to Martha, he is saying that in
Him, even those things that were dead can be redeemed.
That is the promise we receive in the Resurrection, right?
Death does not get the final word. Our God is an active, life-giving
God who conquers death.
In these stories, Israel and Lazarus are exposed. For the exiles and
for the dead man, their separation from God is visible and public, but often I
think we hide what is dying.
Do we think God doesn’t know us and see us?
That God cannot be trusted to restore what is life-giving?
In this fifth week of Lent,
I wonder
how are we cut off from God or feel like we’re beyond God’s reach?
what is the tomb Jesus is calling each of us out of?
what deaths have we experienced that we need to trust God to redeem?
In Lazarus, we witness this redemptive and life-giving power when Jesus
commands the man who has been entombed four days:
“Lazarus, come out!”
But God’s work employs our hands. John tells us that when the
dead man emerges from his tomb, he is still bound, and Jesus orders the crowd
of witnesses, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
If Lazarus had come out and been ostracized or shunned by his family
and neighbors, the story might have had a different outcome.
Remember the Jewish laws that prohibited touching dead bodies? We
talked about these rules when we studied the story of the Good Samaritan a
couple of Wednesday nights ago.
If the people who saw Lazarus emerge had not risked being rejected
themselves as ritually unclean,
Lazarus would have remained bound,
just like he was inside the tomb.
Jesus shows us that
the freedom we gain in Christ is not solitary, and
new life is nurtured by relationships
and sustained in community.
As we continue in Lent toward Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week
when we will again witness God’s redemptive action in Jesus Christ,
I pray we will place ourselves in God’s loving care,
trusting in God’s promise to restore us to life and
to plant us in places where we nurture and sustain our faith and lives in Christ.
Amen.
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