Living in Hope

A Sermon preached on Lent V March 26, 2023 at St. Augustine’s, WI and St. Christoph, MZ

Ezekiel 37:1-14, Romans 8:6-11, John 11:1-45

It may seem a little strange to be hearing readings about people being raised from the dead before we have even entered Holy Week. And you will in fact hear the first reading from Ezekiel again soon, if you come to the Easter Vigil! But following the chronology of the Gospel of John, the raising of Lazarus is the last and greatest sign, that is miracle, before Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection! In some ways it anticipates it.

The first reading from Ezekiel is not really about dead people anyway, however much the story of the valley full of bones may make us think of them. The dry bones are the people of Israel. Physically and spiritually cut off from all that gives them life, from their home and the Temple, from their God – or so they believe – and therefore from all hope: ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ (Ezekiel 37:11) Israel in exile is danger of dying as a community, as God’s chosen, as a people of faith, just as the tribes of the Northern Kingdom did generations before, when they did not return from exile but were simply absorbed into the surrounding culture and population. What Ezekiel describes is the hope that God will act to restore the nation, it is not about personal, physical resurrection, although this passage was an inspiration for the development of that idea over the next centuries.  

Ezekiel’s description recalls the second of the creation stories. In Genesis 2.7 we hear that “then the Lord God (first) formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” It was a two-stage process of formation followed by inspiration, as it is in Ezekiel’s vision as well: First the bones came together, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Only then is Ezekiel told: “’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.’ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived.” (Ezekiel 37:9-10) I don’t think the connection with the creation story is a coincidence. Ezekiel’s vision expresses his hope for a re-creation of the nation of Israel. And just as Adam only became a living being when God breathed God’s spirit into him – remember, both the Hebrew Ruach and the Greek Pneuma can mean wind, breath or spirit - so also we – as individuals and as a community – are not truly alive without that divine Spirit and if we are cut off from God: hold that thought!

Unlike the dry bones, Lazarus’ death is anything but metaphorical. By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany, he has been dead for four days. Mary and Martha had hoped that he would arrive in time to save their brother, but Jesus came too late – we know that he did not even set off when the messenger arrived – and now the only hope left is Martha’s belief in the general resurrection of the dead on the last day. It’s unclear whether Jesus would have got there in time even if he hadn’t waited. Still, his comment that, “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.” (John 11:4) indicates foreknowledge and what sounds like a rather callous and even cruel plan to wait just to make it more spectacular.

Two things speak against that interpretation. Just as last week Jesus’ saying that the man “was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:2) did not mean that God made that man blind just so Jesus can heal him, so this week’s saying does not mean that God caused or exacerbated Lazarus’ condition just so Jesus could raise him. What it means is that this death of Jesus’ good friend will be used as the greatest sign – prior to Jesus’ own death – to glorify God and God’s Son, and as a result to save many, many more lives than just this one.

The other argument against such cruelty is how disturbed and emotionally affected Jesus was by Lazarus’ death and Mary’s tears: “Jesus was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep.” (John 11:33-35) This is the only Gospel passage that ascribes such an acute emotional reaction to Jesus. He shares in their pain, is angry at death, and saddened at grief.

The purpose of this final sign, the raising of Lazarus, is to identify Jesus as God’s Son and as the one who gives life. We are called to believe in him as one sent by God and endowed with God’s power over life and death. This belief brings eternal life. The purpose of all of Jesus’ signs in John’s Gospel, especially this one, is to awaken, affirm, and strengthen that belief. And so, he tells the disciples “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” (11:14-15) He asks Martha “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (11:26) And to all the people watching and waiting with the two sisters he exclaims: “I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” (11:42) As a result, many of those who had seen what Jesus did, believed in him and Martha is led to make a confession of faith as strong as Peter’s: “She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (11:27) In Matthew’s Gospel (16:16) Peter said “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” [As an aside, I wonder what would have happened, if Jesus had said to Martha “and on this rock I will build my church” instead of to Peter!]

In Jesus and in his signs, we see God's love and life-giving power. In Ezekiel’s day, vanquished and exiled Israel had lost hope. There is much around us today that could cause us to lose hope as well. To have faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, who cannot be stopped by anything, not even by death, not even by his own death, gives us hope and empowers us to act. That hope is grounded in God’s gift and promise of life – both a fulfilled and purposeful life in Christ now and life in God forever. Jesus tells Martha that those who believe in him, will live and never die and asks her, do you believe this? Her answer is not a yes or a no, but a confession of faith. Do you, do we believe this? Like Martha we too can answer with by confessing our faith - in the words of the Nicene Creed. Please stand as we say together:

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty…..

Light and Dark

 

A Sermon preached on Lent IV March 19, 2023 at St. Augustine’s, WI and St. Christoph, MZ

1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, and John 9:1-41

This is the third week in succession, in which we have had a passage from John as our Gospel reading, and they have been getting successively longer! First, we had Nicodemus ‘s encounter with Jesus, then the encounter of the Samaritan woman with Jesus at Jacob’s Well, this week the story of the man born blind, and next week we will hear how Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Why are we getting all these passages from John’s Gospel and why are they so long? Well, as we have a three-year lectionary cycle and four gospels, we have to fit John in somehow and so episodes from his account of Jesus ‘s life and teaching and of the meaning of his life and death are spread over the three years. In fact, we read about 1/3 of his Gospel each year, particularly in the Lent and Easter seasons.

And why are they so long? Johns’ gospel is the last to be written. We could call it the most literary of the gospels, the most carefully composed. By the time it was written, Christianity had begun to split off from Judaism, which is one reason for some of the problematic statements about “the Jews” that I’ll talk about more in a moment. The members of John’s community, his audience, will have known the other gospels so John does not need to cover the same ground. Instead, he takes just a few of the events from Jesus ‘s life and death and resurrection, some held in common with the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), some unique to him, and puts them into a theological context, surrounds them with teaching. He uses them to tell his readers about God, Jesus, and the Spirit, about life and light, about word and witness. We call the first part of the Gospel the Book of Signs, as each miracle points towards a greater truth.

This Gospel is full of long speeches and monologues and other literary devices. Today’s story reminds me of a play in five acts. You might have found it easier to listen to if we had staged it as one!

In Act One, Jesus sees and heals the man blind from birth. This is important for two reasons. It makes it a very significant miracle. “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind,” the man himself will say later (9:32) And it allows Jesus to teach that the man’s condition is not caused by sin, neither his nor his parents. God does not work or punish that way. In Act Two the neighbours bring the man to the pharisees. I expect they thought the pharisees would be pleased and amazed …. Some were, but the majority only sees a challenge to their authority. In Act Three, the man’s parents are cited to the tribunal and questioned. They confirm that he was really blind – it’s not a scam – but won’t explain why and here we get that problematic statement “His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.” (John 9:22) This is a dangerous anachronism. No one was being excluded from the Jewish community during Jesus’ ministry, only much later as what we now call Christianity was no longer considered compatible with the Jewish faith. Here it is a rhetorical device that seems intended to create or reinforce fear of the Jews. And we know what that lead to.

In Act Four the man who had been blind is recalled to the tribunal and questioned again – but now in a much more hostile manner. The questioners want him to denounce Jesus as a sinner. But in a lovely little speech, full of irony, that man turns the tables on them “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” (9:33) (see also 3:2 Nicodemus: “No one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”)

At the end of a play, in the final act, we usually have what is called the denoument in which the strands of the plot are drawn together, and matters are explained or resolved. And that is exactly what happens in the fifth and final Act. Jesus looks for and finds the man – acting just like a good shepherd. The man acknowledges Jesus not just as a prophet as he did in Act One, or as someone sent from God, as he told the pharisees in Act Four, but as God: “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshipped him.” (9:38) I am reminded of the episode with the 10 lepers in Luke’s Gospel (17:11-19) when only one returns praising God, to prostrate himself at Jesus’ feet and to thank him. In Act One, the man born blind had been physically healed and was able to see daylight for the first time. Now he has also been spiritually healed and sees and knows and believes in the light of the world.

For Jesus healing is always both a physical as well as a spiritual act, and a sign. The Gospel passage opened with the message that physical blindness – and other sicknesses – are not caused by sin and ends with the message that spiritual blindness, wilfully ignoring the truth, is. In the prologue to John’s Gospel, we were already told (1:9) that Jesus “the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” That not everyone, including some of his own people, will accept him as such. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,” (1:12) just like the man born blind.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (9:5) And what happens then? Is the work of God no longer possible?

The Letter to the Ephesians, which further develops the theme of light and dark, gives us one answer. Christ did not take that light with him. Those who truly follow Christ live as children of light, radiating the light and love of God that is within us, and that grows in strength and power as we grow in faith. Anything we do that is good and right and true is a fruit of the light of Christ. It is only dark in the metaphorical sense of a time of evil and deceit, when we let it be dark.

Another answer comes from the Episcopal priest and author, Barbara Brown Taylor. She was uncomfortable with our tendency to associate all that is good with lightness and all that is evil and dangerous with darkness and wrote a book, “Learning to Walk in the Dark” to counteract that tendency. It reminds us that physical darkness and night are necessary, and also that God works in the night time as well, to quote:

“Even when light fades and darkness falls--as it does every single day, in every single life--God does not turn the world over to some other deity...Here is the testimony of faith; darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day.”[1]

Amen.

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[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark