Readings:
Sermon:
Passiontide begins. We stand with Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones and we see Jesus kneel at the tomb of his friend Lazarus and weep. We see Jesus turn his face towards Jerusalem.
Acknowledging death can be uncomfortable. Facing our own mortality, the mortality of someone we love can cause deep disturbance. Many today find it difficult to even use the word death. We speak of people passing away, as though to use the word died is too final. Too harsh. Almost impolite.
It’s no surprise that Jesus’s disciples tried to dissuade him from going to Bethany, so close to Jerusalem as it was, with the volatile atmosphere that had been stirred up there and rumours that the authorities were plotting to kill him. Their instinct was to protect him. Only later did Thomas say, if we cannot stop him then let us go with him, even if we are to die too. He spoke a great theological truth there, did Thomas. The journey of faith is not that life will be rosy but that we may enter into Christ’s sufferings. We die with Christ that Christ may raise us to new life.
When death is no longer something far off, but an imminent event for us we look upon it as through an intensive magnified lens. Today, Passion Sunday, is that point where the magnification gets stronger. For at the beginning of Lent we were remembering the beginning of Jesus ministry and his days in the wilderness with three years ahead of him. Now time is slowing down and we will mark the days almost in real time with Jesus as we approach Palm Sunday and Holy Week. We travel the way to the cross with Jesus in minute detail so that we approach the glimpse of resurrection by looking first full in the face of death. That takes away the power of death but not the reality of death.
At the beginning of the month we heard the news that the Bishop of Guilford, Andrew Watson, had died at the age of 64. I knew him very briefly when I worshipped in the parish where he was coming to the end of his first curacy in this Diocese.
When he was told that he had an inoperable cancer and would likely die within a few weeks he wrote to his diocese - I don't fear the prospect of dying and find to my relief that my faith in the 'resurrection of the body and the life everlasting' has only grown stronger over the past few weeks"
We trust that he is now experiencing the fulfilment of that resurrection promise.
Before the harrowing of holy week and all that was going to happen to Jesus, shows those closest to him, and shows us a glimpse of God’s plan and longing for us. He awakens us to the knowledge and understanding that death will not have the final word, the final power. Real and devastating as it is. There is something beyond.
And that means that here in this life too, when everything might seem to be over, lost, beyond transforming, the grief and devastation will not have the final say in God’s plan for us. Can these bones live? You know Lord.
Jesus wakes us up to that realisation. Jesus opens our eyes to the full cycle of our existence. Birth, death and resurrection. And that is the pattern of the world created by the one in whom we live and breath and have our being. We need not be afraid. Even of death. For it is part of the pattern of the universe. And there is more beyond, an experience that is difficult for us to imagine which is why Jesus travelled even that journey before us.
What is also wonderful in this deep story of relationship and hope and transformation of the way we think and live and look at the world, is that Jesus invites us to be a part of the story. Jesus tells his disciples – we are going to wake Lazarus who is dead. He speaks to Mary and Martha and asks them to recognise who he is.
Roll the stone away, Jesus says to them, despite their protests. It’s all too late, Jesus. Don’t you understand. There will be a stench. This is too much for us to contemplate. Roll the stone away, Jesus says, nonetheless. Then “Lazarus, come forth.” And finally, “Unbind him and set him free.”
Somewhere in all of us is the hidden place where we would rather not go. The things we have hidden away, the dreams that have died, the hopes that have been buried, the darkness that we have allowed to gather and fester in a shut away place. We have become bound up with things that do not give life. We have rolled a stone against it and hoped that no one would ask us to disturb it.
But Jesus calls us by name, out of the place where we have buried ourselves with our shame and our anger and our bitterness and our despair.
As individuals and as a community, as the body of Christ, Jesus asks us to roll away the stone, calls us out by name, beloved ones, and invites us to shake off the grave clothes and the things that bind us, and to live again.
And we are invited to read this story as we prepare to accompany Jesus to the cross. So that we will not be tempted to think that Easter is trivial, fluffy, spring like, just lambs and chicks and chocolate. So we won’t be tempted to pass euphemistically from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday concentrating on the joyful and miss out the sad bits. So that we will recognise death is part of the whole journey to resurrection and to enable us to look bravely into the very depths of love and suffering and betrayal that took him to the cross, to see him buried and therefore fully realise the power of the empty tomb and the resurrection morning. The grave clothes laid aside and the light dawn in our hearts and lives because of love.
I wonder what you have hidden away that needs to be called forth? I wonder what you have buried that needs to be brought to life? I wonder what you need to unbind so that it might no longer be imprisoned? And I wonder what you need to fully see and grieve over and let go because it is finished – that you might experience life in all its fullness that God invites you to share and participate in?
As Paul wrote to the early church in Rome – “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you"
Amen.