Can we yet live?
“You Shall Live,” a tinted print from the 1534 Luther Bible, depicting the Valley of Dry Bones, Ezekiel 37:1-14.
Source: Cranach, Lucas, 1472-1553. You Shall Live, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57313 [retrieved March 30, 2023]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lutherbibel_1534_Hesekiel_37.jpg.
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A (March 26, 2023).
View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Fifth Sunday in Lent (Year A)
Preached at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of our whole 10 am service for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 26, 2023) is available here.
Listen:
Like what you hear? Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher.
Then God 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.’ Therefore 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.”
“And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I 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. Ezekiel 37:11-14
Edited Transcript
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: One God, Mother of us all. Please be seated.
I want us to know the power of God: to raise up what was cast down; to repair what seemed to be completely broken; to restore what seemed to be completely lost. I want want us to know that power. To be able to witness to it with our lives. I want to know that power.
I read a commentary that asked, Why did Jesus name Lazarus when he called him out? It's because if Jesus had stood there and simply said, "Come out!"—All the dead would have been raised. As we know they will be on the last day.
But in the meantime, we are witnesses to the power of God, which we often cannot see.
When God brings the prophet Ezekiel out into a valley of bones, it seems there is nothing left there that can be raised up. Nothing left there. It is broken beyond repair. It is lost. And God says, "Mortal, can these bones live?" And Ezekiel says, "Well, God, you know." And God says to Ezekiel: "You prophesy. You tell them! You tell them that they shall be raised up, that they shall be knit together. I will put sinews on those bones. I will put flesh on those bones, and I will breathe into those bodies and bring them back to life. But YOU have to tell them!" And he does.
So often we find ourselves where we look on our own life—or maybe we look on our life as a people—and we see only what seems to be lost, broken, dead. Even with the little things—you know, it's the fifth Sunday of Lent, we're deep into Lent. And I don't know about you, but I find that of my own power, all the good disciplines that I started out with at the beginning of Lent, all the things I was gonna do, somehow I didn't do them perfectly!
Lenten disciplines are meant to teach us is that of our own power, we can't even do (or not do) one good thing for forty days! It's meant to teach us not how to be perfect, but the limits of our own power. And this is important to practice, so that in those times when we REALLY come upon the limits of our own power or really experience our own failing, as a valley of totally dead, totally dry bones... We learn to turn to God and to know the power of God, to bring back and raise up what we thought with our own power was lost.
Lent prepares us for Resurrection. And you know, the power of God is not just how nice it is to see crocuses bloom again after winter. Yes, that's something we love about Easter. But Resurrection goes so many layers below that.
The power of God to bring new life is a power that strikes awe. It's not just a simple renewal after winter, but the almost horrifying power to open the tomb, to bring out what is dead—but does not stay that way.
Yesterday, Deacon Gail and some members of this congregation and I participated in a diocesan service. (The Episcopal Church is organized by dioceses; our church is part of diocese, a group of churches that is led by a bishop). Our diocese held a service in our cathedral in New York City wherein the Bishop of New York apologized for the Episcopal Diocese of New York's complicity in the institution of slavery; for the ways that we benefited and still benefit, as a church and as a people, from slavery. And the bishop and the clergy and the people of this diocese got down on our knees and prayed to God to forgive us for what this church has done to our brothers and our sisters and our siblings in Christ, who God created in God's own image.
God created us in God's own image, and yet our ancestors—and so, because we are one body, we ourselves—allowed, with the blessing of the Church! allowed God's children to be tortured and humiliated and killed so that we might profit. And we could only beg for forgiveness and apologize. When we look out on a history that would seem to be death, humiliation, dry bones, can we still live?
When Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus, his sister says, don't open that tomb! Because Lazarus has been dead for four days. There is a stench, she says. She is ashamed, embarrassed by the death and the loss and the destruction that is in there. And yet Jesus says, take away the stone.
There's nothing in ourselves, in our history, but Jesus doesn't already know. There is nothing that we can hide from the God who loves us.
And I believe that it is only because of the power of God to raise us again from the dead, that we can dare to look upon our own sinfulness and smell the stench and yet dare to say: We are sorry, and we humbly repent. For the sake of your son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and and forgive us, that even now, we may delight in your will, O God, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name.
Whoever you are, whatever you have done, no matter how battered our lives or our history as a people may have been or become, the power of God can raise the dead again. Amen.