I heard about a playground that had been wrapped in Caution tape because a sign would not be enough to keep the children away, and the people who did the tape-wrapping were very concerned that we do everything we can to keep everybody safe. And I am all about safety! But it seemed like a good day to talk about Resurrection. So off I went to Euclid Road Play area in the Parkwood neighborhood, Lisa agreed to be my videographer, and there result is for you to watch here.
The lectionary texts for the day are:
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45
God of goodness and grace, who fills the universe with joy and is constantly redeeming and recreating us. Bring us an extra measure of your grace and soothe our hearts with your love and all the promises of Resurrection. Amen
Those are two big stories today, aren’t they? Even if you don’t know a lot about the Bible, the first story, from the Old Testament, may ring familiar to you. Remember the song “Dem Bones Dem Bones Dem Dry Bones”? That’s based on this passage… “Now hear the word of the Lord!”
It’s quite the story, isn’t it? Ezekiel is in a canyon filled with dry, dusty bones and he prophesies and God knits those bones together back into people, and breathes life back into them. God can and will create life. Even out of dusty old bones. Even, Ezekiel is telling the people of Israel, out of their dusty dry way of living as a community.
And then the second story – known by many a Sunday School child for including the shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus wept. We tend to think Jesus wept because his friend Lazarus had died, but the passage is quite clear: Jesus wept because his friends were sad. The death of Lazarus was not a barrier to Jesus. He called Lazarus’s name and Lazarus is alive again – not even stinky after four days in a tomb of not being alive.
Jesus was so much about relationship that even though he knew FULL WELL that Lazarus was going to be alive again in a few minutes… he wept. In weeping he shared in the sorrow of his friends.
What do we take from this? Well, there seems to be a pretty clear message that in God’s economy, death will not have the last word. There is also a message of compassion and relationship, of sharing in the pain of friends. A message of RESURRECTION for a people who had gone so far as to be dried up bones.
And as we are here in the Lentiest Lent many of us have ever Lented, I began to wonder why. Why do we do the things we do in Lent? Why do we have these long stories of sorrow, but always sorry mediated by something miraculous?
When my mother was a child, they were not allowed to have birthday parties or weddings during Lent. That was really bad news for my aunt, with her April 15 birthday.
There is always much talk of what we will give up for Lent. Chocolate? Coffee? Cursing?
Or the more recent trend, that instead of giving up something you take on something new, make a positive change. That might be walking, eating more salads, maybe even eating more Cheetos if the idol in your life is pristine dietary practices.
It all seems very behavioral to me. Now, Lutherans are very big on being saved by grace and get a little antsy when there is talk of how our behaviors interact with our relationship with God. God always comes first. Love always comes first. Our behaviors are a response to that loving God, who gives us grace over and over and over.
But even I have to admit that behaviors are important. They will not save us but they can certainly give us perspective. How we behave is a reflection of what we value.
Sometimes looking around it can seem that the only thing we value is happiness and pleasure.
Party all the time, yo! We don’t want to go through the dark times. Even when times have been hard, we don’t want to remember that. We want to have good old days and overnight success, and skip right over the years of trying and waiting and worrying and the long nights of anxiety and uncertainty and wondering what all this means.
But there is another side to that. Have you noticed that everybody complains? No matter how great things are – how wealthy, how healthy, how talented – we all find things to complain about. I wonder if that is because the difficulties are the contrast that show us how good things can be? The complaints do not always illuminate the reality of God’s goodness and grace, but in complaining about what we do not have we see images of what else could be.
And so it is with Lent.
* In recognizing the sorrow that really does infiltrate our lives instead of repressing and denying it, or blaming someone else….
o In admitting that pain and sorrow are real
* In coronavirus pandemics
* Abusive homes
o Poverty
* Hunger
* Isolation
o War
* Loneliness
All of those very real things that we cannot easily fix for ourselves, much less for anyone else or our society as a whole…
It’s all real.
And WOW are we getting a dose of that right now. The reality that the economy really ISN’T the most important thing.
The reality that no amount of money or power can keep a person safe from the virus – just ask Prince Charles, or Tom Hanks, or all the other rich and powerful people who have been affected.
The reality that businesses, and schools, and even playgrounds are shut down in an act of LOVE, to try and protect the most vulnerable among us.
BUT ALL THAT SORROW AND PAIN AND SADNESS WILL NOT HAVE THE LAST WORD.
During Lent we remember the parameters of the story, yes.
We remember that we will all die (hence the ashes on Ash Wednesday).
We remember that Jesus did wonderful things – and was dearly beloved by those who were healed but was not loved at all by the religious elite of the day.
And in today’s stories we remember that
DEATH WILL NOT HAVE THE LAST WORD
Because Resurrection is coming!
Just like the Resurrection of those dry bones, and the Resurrection of Lazarus, and all the other Resurrections in the Bible before the big one: the Resurrection of Easter.
The Resurrection of Easter and because of Jesus dying and not staying dead, the Resurrection of ourselves someday.
Will we be flat broke at the end of this pandemic? I don’t know, because money is easy for God.
Will there be many, many people who died from the virus? Probably so, but death was no barrier for Jesus – or for the God who reassembled all those bones in the canyon with Ezekiel.
Will our shame and brokenness stop God from loving us? Absolutely not! Never! The God who came to us in Jesus showed that over and over again – that relationship and love of his friends was more important even than death.
Jesus can share our sorrow – because Jesus loved us and loves us still.
God will carry us to the end and even after that – because God loves us.
Money, the economy, power – it’s all so small as to be nothing to a God who would come, and live among us, and get it completely right.
Because God, in Jesus, always chose relationship over everything else.
And so we can bring our shame into the light of vulnerability now. We can admit how wrong we are because we know…
RESURRECTION IS COMING!
This may be the Lentiest Lent ever Lented, but if it is, it will only make the Resurrection brighter and more joyful.
When Easter comes this year, the Feast of the Resurrection, we might be in our churches or we might be at taped off playgrounds.
We might be starting to see signs that the pandemic is abating or we might be even more alarmed at how things seem to be falling apart.
But we need not worry – not now and not then – because Lent will not win. It can’t. Because Love already has.
Amen.
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