April 10, 2011

There are many dramatic stories in the scriptures; many stories that grab our imagination and won’t let go. There are stories that are far-fetched and unbelievable. There are stories of people who, quite literally, wrestle with God. But for sheer dramatic power and shocking imagery, there may be no story quite like the story of the dry bones in Ezekiel.

It has come down to us as a spiritual that became something of a children’s song: “Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.” But however familiar we might be with the song, the biblical story in itself presents an even eerier picture, like something out of a horror flick. Ezekiel is brought by God to a valley that is filled with bones. God asks him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel’s response might be a statement of faith but it could also be a sign of his futility, that he thinks the question is unanswerable. In any case, the bones begin to come back together, bone on bone, sinew on sinew. But they do not live. It is only when God’s breath or spirit comes upon them that they come to life.

As vivid is this imagery is, it is also somewhat repellent. However many Hollywood movies we’ve seen, in which the special effects are meant to both frighten and thrill us, however many zombie walks we may have seen, on the capitol or elsewhere, when it comes right down to it, most of us are really uncomfortable with the ideas conveyed in this story. We have an aversion to dead bodies and our scientific minds recoil from the simplistic idea that a body once dead, indeed a pile of bones, could come back to life.

To make sense of this story, we need to understand just a little bit of the historical and religious context. Ezekiel occupies a unique place among the Hebrew prophets. We know that he was a young man, preparing to become a priest in the temple of Jerusalem in the years leading up to the Babylonian conquest of the Kingdom of Judah. He survived the two years of siege, famine, and misery that preceded the Babylonian victory. Ezekiel was among the exiles who were taken back to Babylon by the victors. The career for which he prepared was closed to him with the end of the temple, and while in Babylon, his wife died. We can imagine that when the text says, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel,” we are supposed to think of all of those who lost their lives in that war and whose remains lay strewn about the battlefields.

We can imagine Ezekiel’s personal despair at his own situation and the plight of his people. We might also take pity on him for the way he was treated by God—repeatedly carried off, as he was in this case, from his residence to a far off place, where he was taught some object lesson. We can also imagine the tone with which he responded to God’s question, “Mortal, can these bones live?” The answer is obvious. No, they can’t. But instead of replying that way, and being rebuked by God, Ezekiel responded perhaps with exasperation or resignation, “God, you know.”

Instructed to prophesy, Ezekiel did so, and the bones came back together to make whole bodies. But the bodies did not live. Told to prophesy a second time, from the four winds, the breath of God came, and breathed into them. As happened with the creation of Adam in Genesis 2, when filled with the divine breath, these bones became living beings. He prophesied a third time, and with that prophecy what was despair turned to hope. God promised a new future for the people of Israel, new hope and new life, brought about by the spirit, the breath the wind, that God would breathe into them.

This passage from Ezekiel is one of the early biblical images of resurrection. By the time of the New Testament, Jewish belief in a general resurrection of the dead was widespread, though by no means universal. In today’s gospel, we are given another image of resurrection. It shares something with Ezekiel’s vision, but it also diverges considerably. One common thread is the sheer physicality of the body in both. However we might respond to the image of dry bones being reconnected to tissue and eventually coming to life, the care with which the gospel writer describes the resurrection of Lazarus is probably more offensive.

Like the other stories in John we’ve heard this Lent, we could spend a great deal of time picking it apart, exploring the context and the significance of each element, for each fragment of the story is loaded with meaning. But I want to focus on just a couple of things. First of all, the geography. Bethany is close to Jerusalem; in fact, in the synoptic gospels, it serves as something of a base from which Jesus travels each day to Jerusalem during the last week of his life. Here, however, Jesus had just been to Jerusalem and had aroused the ire of his opponents, so he and his disciples had fled to the Jordan. While there, he hears of the illness of his friend Lazarus, and as was the case with the blind man, he said, Lazarus’ sickness would be a means by which God would be glorified. Then he seems deliberately to have remained where he was for two more days.

Finally, he decides to head to Bethany, against the advice of his disciples, who remembered the threats of Jesus’ opponents the last time they were in Jerusalem. Along the way, Jesus tells them that Lazarus has died, and when they arrive in Bethany, they learn that he has been dead for four days. The gospel writer emphasizes the timing of Lazarus’ death to stress that he was really dead, and in case the reader didn’t get the point, later in the story, Martha will stress that decomposition has progressed and there would be a stench when the tomb was opened.

Now, there’s something quite interesting in the way John has constructed this story. The earlier “signs” stories, for that’s what John called Jesus’ healings, not miracles, all followed the same pattern. Jesus performed a sign, he healed someone, a blind man, a paralytic, and after the event, the healed person came to faith. More importantly, the sign became the occasion for a lengthy explanation or discourse in which Jesus revealed something about himself.

In this case, the sequence is reversed. Jesus explains the sign first in his conversation with Martha, and only after that, does he call Lazarus out from the tomb. The reason for this significant change is no doubt because of the sheer magnitude of the sign that Jesus performs. To raise someone from the dead is, especially after four days lying in the tomb is a demonstration of great power. It is also a challenge to the understanding of resurrection current among first-century Jews. When Jesus told her that Lazarus would rise from the dead, Martha replied, “I know that he will be raised on the last day.”

Jesus had something different in mind, and it wasn’t simply that he would raise Lazarus. His statement, “I am resurrection and I am life” is among the most familiar sayings but we usually focus only on the first part of it. It may be that the second part is the more important—“I am life.” Jesus says throughout the gospel of John that those who believe in him are already sharing in the new life of resurrection. Lazarus will return to his home and his life, where we see him, in the next chapter dining with his sisters and with Jesus.

Whatever the physical reality of resurrection, and we will have occasion to talk about that in coming weeks, when we focus on the science or medicine of it, we miss one of the themes that is important in both Ezekiel and in John. “Can these bones live?” That question faces us in all of its starkness and finality, not just as we cast our eyes, as Ezekiel did, across a desert strewn with dry bones. Nor is it only when we, like Jesus approach Lazarus’ tomb and hear Martha’s doubts return, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.”

The times in which we live, with all of the uncertainty, suffering, and problems that face us as a human community, invite us to look with despair at our future, whether it’s our personal future, that of the church, our city, state or nation. Even the future of the world often seems in doubt. It’s easy to get downtrodden or depressed by all of the insurmountable problems that seem to surround us. It’s easy to look out at the world and see a valley of dry bones. But God asks us, “Can these bones live?”

Our Lenten journey has brought us to this point, to this question. Next week, we will ask it even more urgently. We may be as uncertain as Ezekiel, we may be so uncertain that we dare not utter a response. Yet in the midst of all of that, as we struggle with a world lurching into chaos, and a season when we experience again the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, our faith proclaims that God is stronger than death and despair, and in our life with the risen Christ, we do more than hope for a bright future. We experience already, though incompletely, the new life promised in resurrection. Perhaps more important, like Ezekiel, who prophesied and helped bring the bones to life, like those who Jesus commanded to unbind Lazarus from his grave clothes, we do more than experience the new life of resurrection; we help God in bringing it forth. As we walk with Jesus to Golgotha may our lives shine brightly, witnessing to the new life of resurrection.