Can These Bones Live?
Seeking: Honest Questions for Deeper Faith • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Can these bones live?
Maybe it’s a question you ask when you first get up in the morning and you wonder why your body sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies.
Maybe it is a question when you are in chronic pain and are wondering when you will feel like you are living again?
It was a question that God asked Ezekiel in chapter 37:1-14 as he planted the prophet in the valley of dry bones and told him to prophesy over them that the Spirit of the Lord would bring them back to life. God surrounded Ezekiel with piles of bones and said to him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” Can something that you think is impossible and beyond redemption rise again?
I remember when I was a young girl watching Ray Stevens videos. He had this one song Sitting Up With the Dead in which he sang “I ain’t sitting up with the dead no more. I don’t know about you. I ain’t sitting up with the dead no more, since the dead started sitting up too.” Can the dead sit up again? Can these dry bones live?
In today’s passage in the gospel of John, Jesus has once again escaped another stoning attempt like we saw last week. He has fled Judea and is safe again only to find out that one of his dear friends, Lazarus, is very sick and the prognosis and is not good. Time is short, but to go to him would mean going back into Judea and into Bethany, a place where Jesus could be harmed.
Normally when one you love is sick, you flee to their side. You buy the ticket. You get on the plane. You make the call. You are at their side. That is where you are supposed to be.
But kinda like last week when Jesus talked about the glory of God revealed through the blind man, this week Jesus says “this illness will not end in death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” And with that, Jesus stays in place two more days.
He doesn’t send a text. He doesn’t make travel plans. He doesn’t send a Get Well Soon card. He stays in place two more days. Seems to me like Jesus is exhibiting poor pastoral care.
After two days Jesus says “ok, now we will go to Judea.” At this point, perhaps the disciples think it is too late. Either way, they aren’t eager to head back to where Jesus has almost been stoned repeatedly. This would put their own lives at risk. “Why? Why would you go there again? It’s not worth it” they say. As Jesus did in last week’s text, he again references the light of the world. Perhaps you are starting to notice a pattern. Jesus says this will be for the glory of God that God’s works might be revealed coupled with a reference to being the light of the world.
He tells them “our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” So Lazarus is just taking an extended nap? Again the disciples aren’t eager to go. They say, “well goodness, if he is just asleep, he will be fine. See? There’s no need to travel all this way. Let’s stay here.” But Jesus tells them “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I’m glad I wasn’t there so you may believe.” I’m sure the disciples must be confused. Didn’t Jesus just say a few days ago that his illness wouldn’t result in death? But now he is saying is dead and is risking his life to go there anyways? Why are we bothering? Man Jesus, being your disciple can be so confusing. Well here comes Thomas with his sarcasm. “This is just great. I guess we can just go and die with him then, because that’s exactly what will happen if we go back there.”
But they go anyway. Jesus arrives on scene and finds that Lazarus has already been in the tomb for four days. People are gathered around mourning. Martha is the first on scene and says to him “Lord, if you had just been here, my brother would not have died.” In other words, if you had come, he would still be alive. But then she follows it up with “But even now, I know God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus says, “your brother will rise again.” Well the Jews believed in resurrection, but it had no connection with Jesus at this point. I wonder what this sounded like to Martha. Kinda like all the times we hear and say, “they’re in a better place. They’re not suffering anymore.” And in the face of such loss we are thinking “yes I know’re they are in a better place, but I am hurting because they are no longer in this place. This place where I can see their face, hold their hand, hear their laugh.”
Then Jesus says to her “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?” Martha isn’t quite sure what he means but she says Yes I believe you are the Son of God.
Then she goes back and tells Mary that Jesus is here. Mary comes out and kneels at Jesus’ feet and says “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Maybe some of you in grief and desperation have said “Lord, if only you had been here.” Grief can be so hard on our minds. We play over all the if only’s. If only I had gotten home a few minutes sooner. If only I hadn’t said what I said. If only the doctors had intervened sooner. They wouldn’t have died. If only God.
These sisters are deep in grief. They believe Jesus could have healed their brother from his illness, but now it is too late. Their brother is dead. These bones can’t live. Resurrection is future, not present.
Jesus looks around him at his friends and their friends who came, all crying. It is the sight and sound of heartache. It is the language of grief. It says he is disturbed in his spirit, deeply moved. The word used here means that he felt compassion with his whole being, deep in his gut. He asked where they laid him. Some are wondering “how is it he healed the eyes of the blind man but can’t have kept this man from dying?”
Jesus walks up to the tomb and says “take away the stone.” Martha looks at him in disbelief. “No, Lord, the stench of death is already so strong.” Jesus says “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
I can just imagine them shaking their heads and crying as they shove the stone aside. The scent of death in their faces like a fresh wave of grief.
Jesus then prays, thanking God for hearing him and he stands before the open grave and yells into it “Lazarus, come out!” Life yelled at death and told death that it had no place here.
Jesus isn’t performing a magic trick. He isn’t putting on a show. This is the Word that spoke all of life into being. This is the Word that asked Ezekiel, “tell me mortal, can these bones live?” This is the Word whose very voice cures lameness, casts out demons, and multiplies food. This is the Word whose hem of the robe is saturated with healing. This is the Word who raises the son of the widow while he is still in the casket. Resurrection and life are not simply a by-product of Christ. It’s not a characteristic or trait that Christ takes on. We don’t simply hope in these things apart from Christ Christ himself is the resurrection and the life. This is the way, the truth, and the life. The bread of life. The living water. Jesus came so that we would have life, and life abundantly.
Lazarus stumbles out leaving a trail of gauze. The burial has turned into a birth. And Jesus says, “unbind him, and let him go.” Unbind these dry bones, and let them live.
Unbind him, and let him go. Let him live. Oh my how I have needed those words before. How I have needed to be called forth to resurrection. How I have needed the Spirit to fill rotting places in my life and bring them forth to life again.
Like the song says, “He called my name, and I ran out of that grave.”
What was it like for Lazarus’s resurrection. Out of the tomb and having a new lease on life? But what must it have been like for the community to see this? A leper? One who when he passed by you had to cry out “unclean, unclean” and steer clear. Like he had covid, except it was a lifelong quarantine. How do we as a community respond to those who have been set free? How do we respond to bones that are living again?
Chris Hoke, a young pastor, was wondering the same thing when he began training under a prison chaplain in Washington. It was in the prisons of that beautiful landscape that Chris began to wonder what happens after someone is released from their tomb. In doing a survey of Washington, he discovered that there were just as many churches as there were those who were incarcerated. He began to ask “what if every church could be in relationship with a single person coming home from prison?” This question is what led him to found Underground Ministries and begin a project known as One Parish One Prisoner that seeks to place released prisoners with a parish to help them thrive. He says it is about “empowering a community to know one Lazarus and roll away the stones of the civic and social barriers that keep folks underground.” He says “we are trying to create small estuaries, a cultural shift, where a community says ‘Hey, we actually don’t want you to go back away and get swept back into the system. We want you back. We love you.’”
Chris calls John 11, this text with Lazarus, as the framework for their ministry at One Parish One Prisoner. He says “Even before Jesus calls a community to help roll away the stone, to remove the death clothes, even before he raises him from the dead, Jesus weeps for his friend. We’re learning that when we haven’t wept for those who are in the tombs, we haven’t yet accessed the power of the resurrection.” As St. Oscar Romero said, “there are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”
I don’t know what the Spirit has in store for you this morning, but my hope is that some of our dry bones will come to life. That we will hear the words of Jesus calling out to us, “unbind him, and let him go.” And we look to see our teary-eyed savior who has released us. My hope is that we will be the kind of community who work together to roll back stones and welcome one another into new life. That we would celebrate that in Christ, the dead start sittin up too.
Amen.