Read the Lectionary Texts

As Lent deepens, we are now almost in sight of the cross. As we draw closer to Holy Week, perhaps it seems as if we are standing at a crossroads – the crossroads between life and death.

Or is it between death and life?

Even before Easter comes, God is setting us up to confront the struggle between these two. You can see it way back in Ezekiel 37 when God brings Ezekiel out to the valley of dry bones. Picture it as a sort of killing fields – like the killing fields of Cambodia – strewn with skulls and ribs and shards of human bone. Picture it as a place where there is no sound but for the mournful breeze.

“Can these bones live?” God asks Ezekiel. Ezekiel says he doesn’t know. Only God knows. So God tells Ezekiel to shout to the bones that God is going to make them come to life. And Ezekiel shouts.

And there is rattling sound.

Bones begin to move, attaching themselves one to the other. Ligaments, tendons, muscles appear, giving shape to the skeletons who now stand up and walk about. Flesh begins to form, and skin starts to grow, and human beings appear! Life has been raised up from death!

And God speaks: “These are the whole house of Israel whose bones are dried up, whose hope is gone, who are cut off. O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up…!”

What a joyful word to a nation that had been destroyed by Babylon and dragged off into captivity! There could be no better news than this good news – God would resuscitate their hopes and dreams, and give them their life back! As the old song declares, “Dese bones gona rise again!”

And yet, if you know the story, there were many in the household of Israel in those days who preferred the death of captivity to the new life of freedom.

Sometimes we human beings choose death over life.

Before Easter even gets here, God has to confront us with this disturbing truth. And as it came to Ezekiel, the question comes to us – about our broken world, our crumbling nation, our threatened families, our troubled lives, our lonely souls. “Can these bones live?”

Will Willimon tells the story of taking an introductory Old Testament course in college. They were studying the part in Exodus where the Hebrew slaves were finally free from Egypt and wandering in the desert wilderness. They ran out of food. There was no Wal-Mart Supercenter nearby. They would starve.

But Moses prayed to the Lord and – wonder of wonders – a white, flaky substance appeared on the ground the next morning. They tasted it. It was sweet, and filling. It could be made into bread! They called it “Manna”. And they survived as a result of this amazing miracle.

Well, Will’s professor told the class not to get too excited about this event, and to not think of it as a true miracle – a work of God. He told them of some professor somewhere who had found the explanation – a species of beetle in the Near East that secreted a substance that – when dry – had a milky white appearance and, when tasted, was very sweet.

Will Willimon writes, “Though the thought of those Hebrews sustaining themselves on bug droppings took some of the fun out of the story, there was something oddly comforting about knowing the scientific explanation for what we poor dummies (and those primitive Jews) had taken at first to be a miracle.”

And the point Will is trying to make is that – even when faced with a miraculous gift of life from God – we human beings will often choose to put it to death by explaining it away. Sometimes, we feel more comfortable in a world where God is dead, rather than in a world where God is alive and at work and defying convention and understanding and our intellectual take on reality.

We see this so clearly in another life and death story in the Gospel of John – the raising of Lazarus. You know the story: Lazarus – a friend of Jesus and the brother of Martha and Mary – has died. Jesus shows up and gets smacked in the face with all the grief and anger of the family who think Jesus should have shown up earlier. Had he done so, perhaps Lazarus would not have died.

But die he did – four days ago.

Jesus says something to the sisters about being the resurrection and the life. They say, “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard all that before.” Then he goes to the chamber where Lazarus has been entombed for four days. Picture it as Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones if you will, for this is the place of utter hopelessness. This is the place that stinks of death.

And just as Ezekiel had done with the dry bones, Jesus shouts into death.

“Lazarus, come out!”

And you know what happens, how the dead man limps forth, out of the tomb, all wrapped up in linen strips like a mummy. Jesus tells the stunned spectators to unbind him and set him free, and they do.

And do you remember the reaction of the crowd to this amazing event?

Well, some came to believe in Jesus as the very source of life that overcomes death. What an awesome display of love and power! They have witnessed a miracle!

But here’s the surprise.

Others decided to put Jesus to death

Oh, the family is thrilled to have their brother back, but the theologians are less than thrilled! This doesn’t make any religious sense. This is not in accordance with what we believe. There must be some explanation for this other than the fact that a miracle has happened. And surely we can’t have some nut going around claiming to have the power to raise people from the dead!!

So the Scribes and Pharisees call a meeting to plot Jesus’ death. In fact, John implies that it was this raising of Lazarus that led directly to the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus.

Why would people choose death over life?

Perhaps it is because death already holds us – all of us – and we cannot even imagine the possibility of life outside its icy grip.

So we look at the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and we conclude, “They’ll NEVER stop fighting. It will always be that way.”

Dese bones NEVER gona rise again!”

And we face the poverty and the crime in our cities and decide, “The poor you’ll always have among you.”

“Dese bones NEVER gona rise agin!”

And we experience the limitations of our own lives, marriages, families, and circumstances and say, “I can never be happy again,” or “I can never forgive that person,” or  “God can never use me,” or “My life really doesn’t matter.”

“Dese bones NEVER gona rise again!”

Every one of us here today – in some way, in some relationship, in some circumstance – chooses death over life.

And even as Christians, few of us believe that God will ever really save the world, and bring us together as one family, and establish justice for everyone, and manifest the Kingdom of God.

We believe in death.

Not life.

So here, before we even get to Easter, the Lord brings us to a crossroads. One road out leads to death. The other leads to life.

And God asks us to choose.

The question God puts to you and me is simply this:

“Can these bones live?”

The bones of your marriage – the bones of your family – the bones of your happiness – the bones of our cities – the bones of our society – the bones of our friends – the bones of our enemies – the bones of our broken and dried up world.

CAN THESE BONES LIVE?

Some people are content to have a faith whose miracles turn out only to be the work of beetles dropping secretions in the morning dew. How sad and pointless is such a faith in the midst of life as it really is.

On the other hand, Jesus Christ invites us into a new kind of faith – a faith that has room for mystery and miracles – a faith that has room for a living God at work among us – a faith that believes God loves us personally and invites us from death into life – a faith that believes “dese bones GONA rise again!”

And today, as we stand almost in sight of the cross, God comes to us in God’s Word.

“Today I set before you the ways of life and death.

Choose life!”

 Amen.