Hope in death: 5 Lent

5 Lent A 2008 (RCL)
(Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Ps 130; Rom 8: 6-11; John 11: 1-45)


A memorable graveyard moment:

My Aunt Alice, my mother’s sister and the last fabulous survivor of my family’s “old folks”, died five years ago this May. I flew back to New York for the funeral. Like any good Irish funeral, there are lots of stories to tell. But my favorite moment came when the six of us and my cousin Paul were gathered around her open grave. The profound silence was broken by my brother Hank, who has no sense of the volume of his voice after a lifetime spent in sheet metal shops. Hank’s voice boomed, “Well, that the last of them!”

We put our heads back and laughed. But as we gazed down into Aunt Alice’s grave the laughs turned uneasy. Someone spoke in a softer tone, “Yeah, we’re the old folks now.”

Last week we heard about the joy of blindness, that if we think we can see we’d better turn blind so Jesus can open our eyes to what is true and real. Today we hear of the hope in death.

I try to be generous and kind when I attend funerals. But the older I get, the more critical I’ve become. I’ve smelled too many flower petals, heard too much sticky sentiment, read too many re-prints of that poem that says “I’m not really dead.” Tell that to the people living in the now empty-feeling house. We walk away numb from many funerals, never having discussed the silent elephant in the room. In a series of fantasy novels by Terry Pratchett, Death is a main character. He’s not a bad guy, he’s not mean, sometimes he is unintentionally funny. But he’s Death, and when he comes to call there’s no argument.

“Mortal, can these bones live?”

I think of the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the sites of genocide the world over when I hear today’s Valley of Dry Bones. Silent bones, absolutely still—as a young priest it took me a long time to get used to the stillness of death. But there in that stillness of death the living God asks the question and awaits our answer. Do we believe that the Breath of God, the living Word of God, can make the dead live?

What is dead and still within us and among us that cries out to God for Breath and life?

“I am Resurrection and I am Life…Do you believe this?”

Again the question—in the face of the stillness of death, can God bring life from death? Martha answers like most of us would, like decent religious people often do: “Yes, I know that my brother will rise again, will live again on the last day, by and by.” Jesus’ next words are outrageous—here before you, I am Resurrection, I am life. Now we have two choices. Either Jesus is a fool and cruel as well, using Martha’s grief as a chance to play theology and ego-games. Or Jesus is somebody new and outrageous and unexpected, that he is Life and that only those who are dead or have faced death can know the super-abundant Life that stands before us.

Even though Death and I are old acquaintances, colleagues even, I still shudder when I feel the faint touch of the icy finger or gaze down into yet another grave. “Yeah, we’re the old folks now.” But the question that the living One asks us today os more powerful still, and the answer isn’t an idea or a sentiment, something to make us feel good enough to get through another day. The answer is a Who, and he is here, among us and within us. In all our dying he is present for he drank fully of the cup of death. And if the Spirit which raised the Beloved from the dead dwells in us, the Holy One will give life to our mortal bodies too.