Only you know, O Lord...

{Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Lent, based on the texts from Ezekiel 37 and John 11]

Jesus wept. Not necessarily for Lazarus, or for Mary or Martha, but for you. Jesus weeps because no amount of friendship with God, no amount of nearness to Christ, no amount of love for one another even, can keep you from being one who will one day “stinketh” as the King James Version reads. For one day, possibly sooner, rather than later, you will die. Your body will give out, breath will leave you, and as your pastor I will commit what remains to the ground or niche, where you will await the fulfillment of the promises of God given to you in our readings this morning. ​

Jesus weeps because the reality of the sorrow of this death still remains. Even in the days of his walking the world, people died. John the Baptist, his cousin, was beheaded; Simeon died, Joseph his foster father died; after the resurrection the disciples eventually die. Even Lazarus, poor Lazarus, had to taste again the pains of death, as he awaited the coming of the Lord in glory to raise our bodies from the dust. Jesus weeps because he knows that even the promise of the resurrection is not enough for us at times.

I have told it before, but about 9 or so years ago, I began a journey to lose weight. My father had a heart attack that year, and we both were not in the best shape body or health wise. With no history of real heart problems, we both sort of knew it was because of our lifestyle, so I set out to lose weight and at my lowest I had lost 100 pounds. With the hopes that with all this diet and exercise business I would be able to prolong my life and avoid health issues. But can I? Do I know for certain what the number of my days might be? How often I deny the mortality of my body and the promises of the resurrection by assuming that the old creation, this conglomeration of Old sinners walking around, sitting here now, is all that there ever shall be. What a poor existence we have if death is always our haunting nemesis.

Regardless of what might be done by me or for me, by you or for you, the terminal destiny of the end of our days leaves us in a barren place. Knowing that what we do now cannot add one moment of life to us, because all we have that is ours is captured in the hands of the Father who knows our days, holds our very breath in the palms of his hands because he is the one who breathed his very spirit into you, and so with no regard for your own personal morality the final questions left for us to answer are one – What kind of God do you have? What kind of Lord do you have?

The disciples didn’t understand. They thought, as we often do, that this miracleworker is only that. So do Mary and Martha. “if you had only been here Lord, then my brother would not have died!” “No, don’t roll away the stone, for it has been four days Jesus. He stinketh.”

If I only would pray enough. If only I had done that one last thing. Or like Oskar Schindler at the end of Schindler’s List after saving the lives of so many Jews, “Why did I keep the car? I could have got 10 more of you!” What a fearful thing it is to see that in both life and death there just might be this accounting of sorts. Of actions and lives wasted or lived for God. The burdens and weights of life leaning upon you. The necessity of the commands of God compelling us, as we think they do - be this. Do that. Think this. Look this way. But all of that accounting is just law. The law of death. The calling to think if only we would do this thing we might trick the old enemy into ignoring us. Death, not just yet. I am not ready just yet.

But ready has no bearing. Death is no respecter of persons. Death cares not whether you be white or black, Muslim or Christian, a Hillary-voter or Trump-supporter. Only this, that here we sit, a congregation of dry bones, in need of life. In need of salvation. In need of a burden-bearer, an escape, a refuge. Life in the place where we fear it is not.

Now before you leave thinking, “This pastor is an ass.” Before you run away in fear thinking that this is all there is to offer today, let me preach to you one more sermon. You did not think you would get two, did you?

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

Can these bones live? Only you know Lord. Only you know. So do it preacher, and so I will. Preaching to you I say to you - Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to you: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

And so I do as the Lord commands. As he gave to Ezekiel before, I give you all I can now as your pastor – Live! No more fear of death. No more burdens of shame and guilt drying up your bones. No more hatred of your enemies, or looking only at the flesh of others. Live, as dry bones brought back from the dead, be alive in Christ. Baptized in the water, slain by word which killed your sinful-self, and be made new.
​
I say that because, like Ezekiel, I hope to hear a rattling at some point. Even though the bones had no ears to hear a sermon, they listened. Bones coming together with tendons and tissue, muscle and skin, eyes and ears. Bodies reborn. Brought back from the deadest of the dead. Dried, weathered, brittle old bones, made flesh again. Stoney hearts made new again. Eventually calling forth the Spirit to enter you, to be breathed into you as it was in the garden and you will live.

You want resurrection in the Old Testament? You want more than the resurrection of the Easter story? Here it is. The whole nameless, virtueless throng of the people of God ripped from the grave to laugh at death.

Imagine Martha’s surprise. Asked if she might believe that resurrection is true. That her brother will live again.

Oh yes Lord, in the day of resurrection.

How about now Martha. I am the resurrection and life. I am standing right in front of you. The one who trusts this to be true, though they die, yet shall they live.

Well, go ahead Lord. Do your best.

Lazarus, come forth. And he did.

Loose him of his bonds. So I do.

That is all the sermon that must be given to you. Each Sunday it should be what I offer to you, because it doesn’t take six days for you to enter back into that valley to be shriveled and dry again. To hear the diagnosis of a possible tumor, to lose a loved one to addiction. To be destroyed by a spouse you gave your heart to and left you. Burdens, so many burdens we feel we must bear that leave us dead and alone to the point that we feel, without saying it, that we are the stench of death among all whom we come in contact with.

Burdens. Dried Bones. I hear of them from you every day. Arise. Live. Be made new in Christ that the judgement that brings shame, the arrogance that brings sin, and the sin that brings death be killed by the cross of Christ that you might live. Thanks be to God. Amen.
​TW