Wherever you may find yourself and no matter the time that you find yourself watching this worship service, I would say to you; “May the Lord be with you,” And also with you.
I wanted to begin by saying that when I accepted the position of Pastoral Care Minister at Comox UC, I had no idea that my first opportunity to preach would be in the midst of a pandemic and that we would be filming a YouTube service that we could watch from the safety of our own homes. But these are extraordinary times and we are blessed that this community is discovering new ways for us to connect with one another, the church, and that Holy Mystery we name as God. And so it is an honour to share this reflection with you.
Lent is traditionally a time to contemplate our relationship with God and Christ and this week we consider two stories of life and death – the death of community in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones and the resurrection of the individual in the story of Lazarus – and I am reminded of these words from the Gospel of Luke when the lawyer is speaking to Jesus: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And he(Jesus) said to him, "You have answered right; do this, and you will live."
The Gospel story of Lazarus is a metaphor for new life, it is not a story to be taken literally – we find it in the Gospel of John – the most mystical of all the Gospels, written in the context of one who has experienced the Risen Christ rather than the historical Jesus. The phrases that we hear in John speak to the quality of the relationship with Jesus rather than the words that Jesus actually spoke:
· I am the bread of life 6:35
· I am the light of the world 8:12
· I am the way, the truth and the life 14:6
· I am the true vine 15:1
The writer of John defines who Jesus is for him in the first chapter – The word made flesh. Jesus is fully divine and fully human. And the raising of Lazarus is a foreshadowing of Jesus own death and resurrection.
It is after performing this miracle that Jesus turns his face toward Jerusalem and begins the journey to the cross. It’s not really just a story about Lazarus. He is the passive by-stander in this story. It is about Jesus and his followers and more specifically the two sisters, Martha and Mary who sent word to Jesus that Lazarus is sick.
When Jesus arrives in Bethany, Lazarus is not only dead; he is very dead. Jewish belief holds that the spirit leaves the body on the third day after death. We are told that Lazarus has been dead for four days. He is not in a coma or merely sleeping, he is truly dead. If we haven’t got the message yet, when they arrive at the tomb, Martha tells him, don’t be crazy, Lazarus is already starting to decompose; can’t you smell him?
The conversation between Martha and Jesus on the way to the tomb is one we must consider if we are going to have a meaningful discussion about eschatology – that is end times. Martha is chastising Jesus, -- if you had only been here, my brother wouldn’t have died and even now, you could ask God to change this.
Jesus tells her, “Your brother will rise again.” And Martha replies, “That is all fine and good. I know he will be resurrected on the last day but what I am talking about is; I want my brother back now, I want him alive in this world, not the next!”
Jesus replies with a question and this is the crux of Martha’s faith. This is when the rubber hits the pavement for all of us. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those that believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
And she replies, “Yes LORD.”
Jesus brings new life to the living. This is a crucial piece of my faith. We are not talking about a God who promises that all will be well after we are dead. We are talking about a God who promises new life to the living – even though they die, they will live. Sadly there is a great chunk of humanity walking around who look alive on the outside but in reality, they are dead on the inside. Jesus is saying, through me, you can be alive now.
Then Mary arrives on the scene. No sooner does Jesus see her weeping, then he begins to weep. This is the human side of Jesus that John portrays to us. God does not promise that bad things will not happen to us in this lifetime; only that we will not be alone when they do.
Kate Moorehead, tells us in her book, Organic God, “that souls within us grow with pain, with suffering and hardship. We were meant to struggle. It is part of the growth process.” She uses the analogy of wheat and how the best wheat is grown in areas where there is some stress put on the crop. When Carol and I visited France we learnt that the best wine is produced from grapes that are grown on dry, rocky soil.
I don’t think that God created humans so they might suffer, but suffering is none the less, part of the human condition. For many of us, when we have experienced the most growth in our faith is in times of stress, discomfort, and tragedy.
What makes suffering bearable is that we do not have to do it alone. When we weep, Christ weeps with us. Whether we consider Christ to be the spiritual, energetic Christ that is known in all things or the incarnate Christ known to us in the gathered community or the body of Christ; when we are hurting, God is hurting.
Just as the miracle of Lazarus speaks to rebirth of the individual, Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones speaks to rebirth of the community. The valley in Ezekiel’s vision is where the Babylonians and the people of Israel fought their battle. The Israelis went to bury their dead and the Babylonians said, “No, leave the skeletons here as a reminder to those left behind.”
The community is in exile, they are separated from the land of their forefathers and Ezekiel asks the question – how can we put life, how can we put flesh and sinews back into this community?
The Jewish faith underwent radical changes in exile so that they would not be assimilated by the culture. Central to that experience was the remembering and the dream that one day they would return to the Promised Land and rebuild the temple, which we know, they eventually did.
In both the story of Lazarus and the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, God breathes life into a situation where new life just does not seem possible. Lazarus is not just dead, he is truly dead. The Israeli community is defeated, dispersed, occupied and enslaved – surely beyond resuscitation.
In neither case can they come back to life of their own doing. It is only possible through God. We experience many little deaths in our lifetime. Most of them are the result of an end of a relationship although sometimes it can be the end of a home, a job, a dream or even a stage of life.
Some we expect and accept as a natural part of the life cycle. Our children grow up and go to school, they become independent teenagers and eventually they leave home, our parents pass away, we move into different housing and communities as we age. Sometimes people come into our lives for a short time, some for a life time. We treasure all of those different relationships but we also accept moving onto new experiences and new friendships.
But most of us eventually suffer from one of those tragedies that we think we will never recover from. Like Lazarus we are not just dead, we are truly dead. These tragedies are of a magnitude such as losing a spouse to death or divorce, or losing a child to death or broken relationship.
I often hear the expression; God won’t give you more than you can bear. I don’t believe that. Left to our own devices, I think there are events in our life that are more than we can bear by ourselves. I often meet people who have been crushed by life’s experience.
Jesus calls out to us from the story of Lazarus that we are not alone. Christ is with us. There is no human so broken that they cannot experience new life through Christ. That is the good news in this story and this is the foreshadowing of the good news in the Easter Story.
We are focusing on our personal faith journey and relationship with Christ this Lenten Season. And I think we often make the mistake, when exploring these two stories of jumping to the good news – that new life is possible.
Which is fine and good, except that where the growth happens; the deepening of the relationship with the holy, is in the suffering and in those dry bones. If you try to jump from crisis to new life without going into the valley to experience those dry bones or without fully experiencing the suffering we miss the point.
In the contemplative tradition we sometimes refer to it as entering the dark night of the soul. Whether we are mourning the end of a relationship or the death of a community, grief is hard work.
But the alternative is worse. The only other option we have is to suppress and repress our emotions. And that is where death occurs – that is why the world is filled with the walking dead.
When we feel our emotions fully, no matter how painful that might be is when we are able to let them go, to turn them over to God. When we repress grief, we hang on to it, we own it and it occupies our life and our energy. When we feel it, when we experience the pain is when we can turn it over to God and that is when we are freed to live.
These last few weeks has felt a little like the Valley of Bones. Whether it is defeat and exile, or self-isolation and physically distancing; the disconnect from faith and community can have a similar feeling. Just as the Jewish community in exile had to discover new ways to live out their faith – so do we in these times where we can no longer attend worship, go to Bible Study or attend one of the many small groups that Comox United Offers.
So we are finding new ways – such as this worship by YouTube, Council meeting by Skype, a phone out to stay connected to our members, Coffee and Conversation by Zoom – we are finding new ways to be church. Somewhere between 2 and 3 hundred people checked out our YouTube service last week, so it is working.
But as individuals, I believe that many of us are suffering from social isolation – not just because we are staying at home but because we are separated from our friends, our family and our support networks like the church.
I was planning to be in Edmonton this week to visit my 101 year old mom but I’m here because her facility is in lock down. Carol and I miss our coffee groups and the friends we socialize with. We haven’t seen our son in Toronto for a year but had to cancel our planned trip after Easter because of COVID 19. We have two children who work in essential services and so we worry about them going out into the world every day to ensure that we have food to eat and medication available. And yes we are connecting by phone but a phone is not a hug. So like many of you we are anxious about our friends and family and we too are suffering.
I would invite you to enter into the emotions you are feeling about this pandemic – whether they are fear, grief, sadness or anger – enter into them, feel them, experience them and share them with God so that they may become part of who you are without diminishing your capacity to also experience joy. When we weep, Christ weeps with us; just as when we laugh, Christ laughs with us.
This is an opportunity to grow in faith. Like many Christians, Carol and I light a candle in our window every night at 8 as a sign of hope to the world. We take a moment to pray for those who are most affected by the virus and for the healing of the world. We are reminded that in the midst of darkness, Christ brings light and love to a suffering world.
We take advantage of being at home to walk in the forest and marvel at creation. We use our time of extended quiet time to read, to meditate. And we are intentional about reaching out by phone and social media to those who feel most acutely isolated.
In the midst of all that is – social isolation, thinning grocery shelves and fear of an expanding pandemic – we experience life and the presence of God in the now. For God does not promise a life without challenges – God simply promises that through Christ we are not alone.
What spiritual practices will sustain you through these times? We can use this time to grow our faith in ways not yet envisioned. We can experience life and love in the now. We do not know what the future holds. But we are not alone.
Praise be to God! Amen.