The Church of the Ascension
March 9, 2008

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

Weaving throughout the dreariness of Lent is an insistent message, never more apparent than in today’s lessons: in the end death and darkness do not win.  Two different stories with the same message confront us: a bunch of dry bones, rattling in the arid desert of Palestine get reinvigorated by none other than the breath of God and rise up to live again and a man, a close friend of Jesus, dead long enough to be really dead with all that that means, is called forth from the tomb and walks into life again.  If we are brave enough to look for truth beyond historical literalism, these two accounts, limited only by our imagination, paint a vivid and fanciful picture of God’s commitment to vitality, life, goodness, purpose.  Ours is a living God, a God who again and again calls us to life.

And, yet…..death is no stranger to us.  The dead live all around us; sometimes we are even they.  A man lost in addiction, a woman dulled and dimmed by an abusive relationship, a businessman overwhelmed by greed and ambition, a young person dead to the truth about himself and too afraid to be who he is – each one of them robbed of everything that is associated with life, sometimes victims at the hand of another, sometimes the victim of their own demons.  With no hope and no way out, some of the dead look as dead as the valley of dry bones – the smelly street person, the boisterous and bullish drunk, the wacked out crack addict whose need for the next hit robs her of conscience or fear.  Others, though, who are just as dead, look wonderfully alive: 

• the young executive who has everything - great looks, large bonuses, a beautiful, smart, and successful man at her side – everything, except that she is terrified that at any moment she will be found out, that she will be exposed for the fearful overachiever she secretly knows herself to be;
• the father, who for all the world looks like the perfect family man, but whose inner life is consumed by a secret life of sexual addiction and pornography;
• the minister whose faith is all show, shattered by life’s ups and downs and untended by a life of religious busyness and too little prayer. 

In our culture of too much of everything, the dead often walk about, pretending to be alive and looking for ways to feel alive even when they know they are not.  The pretense and insidiousness of this kind of walking dead define a use portion of our cultural consciousness. 

But the Good News of the prophet Ezekiel and of the narrator of the gospel of John is that the dead do not have to remain dead.  Resurrection is not just a nice idea, not just a winsome wish to be realized at some nebulous point in the future; it is the life to which we are called now.   I have seen people who were dead come back to life; in fact, on occasion I too have been dead and have by the grace of God become alive again.  And so have you.

“Lazarus, come out,” Jesus cried in a loud voice.  The call to life is never timid; it is issued in a loud voice, an insistent demand that life is better than death. The task I think for us is to determine as honestly and courageously as we can what our tomb of choice is.  What is the tomb from which we are being called and what is it that makes us choose to remain bound and gagged with life defying strips of cloth?  To identify our tomb and to emerge from it is the work of a life time.  It is a daunting process that is offered to each of us but about which each has choice.  Lazarus could have remained in the tomb. Jesus did not haul him out; he called to him.  Lazarus got up and came out.  We can speculate that Lazarus was fine; he was chilling in the grave, resting, bothering no one and unbothered himself.  But he was not finished with life; and though it required stumbling in the darkness of a shrouded face, he walked out of the tomb into the uncertainness that life always is. 

What are the tombs from which we are being called?  Sometimes the tomb is the tomb of religiosity. We substitute a relationship with God with the practice of religion.  Tradition becomes a way of holding us back, a special binding that blinds us to the movement of God’s spirit in our lives now.  It is at such moments as this that religion seems to be and is accused of being dead.  When we act as though the action of God is finished and must be preserved rather than engaged and petitioned in our lives right now, we then become people who worship from the tomb instead of the empowered, dynamic people our faith calls us to be.  The real church is less historical than it is organic - moving, breathing, coming forth again and again, constantly being recreated in the ongoing movement of God.  But like Lazarus we – the church - have to be willing to remove the blinders and come out from the safety of our cherished tomb.

Sometimes the tomb is the tomb of cynicism, which is not terribly dissimilar from the first.  It is a particularly dead tomb, a tomb in which life survives so barely that even hearing the call to come forth is difficult.  Cynicism assumes that all that is to be already is, that all that can be known about ourselves and others is known, that the world really can only get worse.  In this tomb the claims are that people are no good, that every person is for him/herself (you got to watch out for yourself because nobody else will), that it is “just one thing after another.”  Good Lord, deliver us from that!  And, yet, we know that it is often the world, the tomb we “live” in.  We choose to stay there because we are afraid – afraid of being disappointed, of being let down again, of losing.  And make no mistake: these are legitimate fears - we may be disappointed or let down, we may lose.  But if we are too afraid to take these risks, we will remain in that tomb forever.  No matter how we adorn this domain with intellectualism or sophistication, it is still a place of death - dark, dank, and malodorous death.

In both of these stories from scripture there is a subtle point, probably many, that should not be missed.  The coming to life again from the tomb is not something that is done alone.  The bones in Ezekiel’s image are endowed with sinews and flesh; they are bound together and become in the story the “whole house of Israel” not just one religious journeyer but the whole people of God.  Coming to life again is a process that is made possible by others.  In the story of Lazarus, Jesus says to those standing around, “Unbind him, let him go.”  Lazarus was not the prototype of the Incredible Hulk, who ripped his bindings away; he was untied by those around him.  Isn’t that wonderful?  The miracle of life is something that allows and even depends upon our participation. 

When the bones came to life again, they might have said, “We have been down this road before; we know where it is going.  Just let us disintegrate in peace.”  Silly, right? Who would frown at the chance for new life?  And, yet….how different is that from the weariness we sometimes feel when we hear that peace talks are beginning again?  How different is that from using a passing comment of Jesus that there will be wars and rumors of war as a prescription rather than a sad observation?  When Lazarus came out from the tomb, those around him could have said, “We don’t deal with the dead even when they become alive again; he has been in a place of death and is thus contaminated.”  Again a silly notion, right?  Who would reject the chance for new life?  And, yet…..people who have known the death of addiction report that for some their becoming alive again is somehow not acceptable to others.  They are known as dead; and when they become alive again, the stench of their former lives cannot be replaced with the breath of life.  When a deeply spiritual moment begins to transform the life of someone close to us, sometimes it is a threat.  Are they becoming a fanatic?  What if they try to push it on us?  What if they become preachy?  Amazing the power we have to facilitate life and to squelch it!

Paul claims that nothing can separate us from God, not even death.  That is true even for death of our own making.  Even in our choice to live as the dead, God is there but never complacently.  Using all that God is and each of us, the God of our faith with unending patience, hope, and persistence urges us to come out, to live again.  What on earth is holding us back?

In the name of God:  AMEN.