The Sounds of Resurrection (March 22)

Readings, Ezekiel 37:1-14 and John 11:1-45
Image, The Raising of Lazarus, 1943, by Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949)
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We have two incredibly famous passages today, both perfectly placed by the lectionary as the sun begins to set on Lent. Both point to what we are moving toward, what we will come to celebrate at Easter: the power of God over the forces of death.
 
We have talked before that the gospels record much of Jesus’ ministry in a way that points to his power to cure and dispense with the forces of death. Across the gospel Jesus meets with, tends to, and heals those who have been made impure, all to foreshadow his crucifixion, where death will be taken up in Jesus’ own body, where death will seemingly overwhelm Jesus’ body, only for the resurrection to reveal Jesus’ ultimate triumph. The message of the Lazarus story, in such a sequence, is one of amplification. Jesus has healed those who are living but have the signs of death on their body (such as lepers), Jesus has healed those who have only recently died (such as the young woman), but now, Jesus heals Lazarus who has been dead for four days, whose very body stinks of death. And what’s more, Jesus heals him from a distance. The difficulty, as it were, of these conflicts with the forces of death have been increasing, amplifying the wonder of Jesus’ power, preparing the way for the greatest wonder of them all, which we will see with the Easter dawn.
 
But we when we pause and pay attention to just how very dead Lazarus is, especially when we couple it with the Ezekiel reading, we can learn something more still.
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Ezekiel is swept by the wind to a valley of dry bones, bones scattered hither and thither. It is remains, much more than bodies that lie strewn around him. And this point is emphasised in the first part of the reading, as God makes Ezekiel pass by the bones, surveying the reality of the scene. These bones – as their resuscitation makes clear – show no signs of life. No sinew or flesh binds them, no frame orders them.
 
In more intimate terms, the gospel passage makes the same emphasis, the signs of death are strong upon Lazarus, the grave is closed, the mourning commenced, the hope placed in the far-flung future of the eschaton.    
 
In some ways, resurrection relies on us taking heed of death. Of paying attention and looking directly at what has died. To face, without denial, the reality and tragedy of death. This is no less true of Jesus’ resurrection, for the first to encounter this momentous truth are the very ones who go to his tomb to look upon his dead body and prepare it for burial.
 
This is the power of these readings (read on the precipice of Easter): they give us the capacity to look honestly on death, to survey the scattered bones, to reckon with the weight of that stone at the tomb. It gives us this capacity because the power of the resurrection, the power of God to restore to life, does not depend on things being only a little dead, only recently dead. God’s power is not like that of a microwave, only able to reheat what is still more or less fresh. God can take what has faded to dust and ash and breathe into it new life. God can take that which was scattered and restore it to the body, God can take that which has been mourned and wept over, and renew it as a site of joy.  
 
And while with the story of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus we are speaking of the resurrection of the dead, the great hope of the gospel, the Ezekiel reading reminds us that this lesson also has a symbolic dimension. For the story of the dry bones is about the restorations of the exiles to their homeland, the restoration of a people scattered and despairing. Just as God is able to raise the dead, God is also able to resurrect and restore that which has died or faded in a more metaphorical way.   
 
But again, this kind of renewal or resuscitation comes through death and the acknowledgment of death. It comes through looking without denying; reckoning with and mourning the loss. It will not come if we ignore what has died, and perhaps, more importantly, is that its coming might be frustrated if, in our fear and habit, we refuse to let it die, if we cling to it in a kind of half-life out of fear that if we were to truly let it go there would be no way for it to return. But these stories today make it clear, with God, there is always a way for return, always hope for resurrection, always potential for new life (not in spite but) through death.
 
This is not to say it is not hard, not sorrowful to let something die – a ministry, a mode of service, a community initiative, a campaign for justice, a particular vision of a relationship, an institution, a mode of meaning making. Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend even though he himself is the resurrection and the life – we might even say because he is. He weeps for what has happened, for the sorrow of death, even as he knows new life is coming.
 
This also says something to about the Christian vocation, the life of discipleship. We are, like the community of the psalmist, those who watch for morning. We are those who seek to attune ourselves to the first sounds of new life, to what is coming on the wind of the Spirit. Fundamentally – in that we build from this foundation – this is about waiting for the great and glorious day when all shall be called from their rest to rise with Christ, transfigured in glory. But in anticipation of and in witness to that day, we are called to help one another and our neighbours with searching out the signs of new life now, through seeking the rushing winds of resurrection today, through pursuing in our time the restoration of that untimely scattered and crushed. In part this is about bearing together the sorrows of death by holding fast in the strength that something new will grow into life. But this also comes by naming the forces of death at work in our world, forces which isolate, subjugate, exploit, and too often annihilate. It comes as we name these as anathema to the gospel, and so needing to be transformed or replaced through works of justice and love into something life-giving, peace-making, and worth affirming. It is by this we express and affirm our hope in the creative breath of God and the power of Christ the resurrection and the life!   
 
The Christian hope in the resurrection does not depend on the denial or ignoring of death, because the Christian hope in the resurrection is not threatened by death. All of this is held together, it is a strange mix, but something a peculiar as hope requires nothing less. We are called to look at death honestly, to recognise where its forces have infringed and interfered with life. Having looked we are, like Jesus, able to weep, to mourn, for while death is not the end, it is nonetheless often unsought, often a tragedy. But having looked, having acknowledged, having mourned, we are free to watch for the morning, watch and listen for the sounds of resurrection coming on the wind echoing the voice and will of God.