23 March 2023 Lent 5

Lent 5 Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11 ;1-45

Our psalm this morning speaks into both the reading from Ezekiel and our gospel.  Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord:

Lord, hear my voice;

Now, when we look at the psalms in general, we may notice that many psalms begin with, or contain, similar sentiments, cries of deep desperation, cries of hopelessness, cries from the depths of grief.  And, although our gospel story speaks of the miraculous resuscitation of Lazarus, and Ezekiel speaks of the reanimation of dry bones into living flesh, that is not all that these passages tell us.  They both speak of the grief and despair that comes before the new life, and unless we have entered into this grief and despair, we will not, we cannot appreciate the promise of new life that is also contained.

For Ezekiel, his vision is of the ‘whole house of Israel’ saying ‘our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are cut off completely’.  And as we continue on our Lenten journey, this feeling may be becoming stronger and stronger.  And for many people, these feelings are common at various times in their lives, and for some they occupy most of their life.  Benjamin Franklin is recorded as saying “Many young men die at age 25, but are not buried until they’re 75.”.   Many people live as if death has already taken them, and they are just marking time for it to finish its job.  That is not to say they are depressed and glum, many of them lead extremely ‘loud’ and ‘frivolous’ superficial lives, but underneath their loud and frivolous outward persona there is an emptiness and pointlessness that eats them up from the inside.

As the song says; Dem bones Dem bones Dem dry bones

Our gospel may be 45 verses long, but the punchline does not come till we have walked through 43 verses of pain, despair, longing, and anger.  And it is important to note that even though Jesus knows what he is going to do, he too is caught up in the grief.  Jesus wept.  This short phase speaks of more than sadness.  It asks the same question most of us ask in times of grief.  Why?   Why?  How can death be allowed to wreak such havoc in a world created for life?  And there are no easy answers.

But this brief glimpse into Jesus’ experience of grief in the face of the death of a loved one points in a very important direction.  Even though God is the God of life, God is not a stranger to deep grief and sorrow.  As John tells us many times in his gospel, when we see the Son, we are also seeing the Father.  And what we see in the Son, is also true for the Father.  When we see Jesus deeply moved and disturbed, and maybe even angry, at suffering and death; we are also seeing into the heart of the God who is Father and Mother of us all.  We see into the mothering and fathering heart of the God who knows, only too well, what it feels like to lose a child to death.  At the cross, not only does Jesus enter into the experience of being hated and thrown into the jaws of death, but the Father also enters into the experience of being a heartbroken parent who helplessly watches a child being snatched away be the powers of death.  And there is no depth of grief that is unfamiliar to this God.  When we collapse into sorrow and tears, we fall into the everlasting arms of God whose sorrow is fathomless and whose love is undiminished.  It may not feel like it at the time, and often we can only recognise it in hindsight.

As our Psalmist said

 “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him:

and in his word is my hope.

My soul looks for the Lord:

more than watchmen for the morning,

more, I say, than watchmen for the morning.”  The Psalmist describes waiting through a long night of darkness for a morning which seems to take for ever to arrive.  But this place of waiting is a deeply sacred place.  Not an enjoyable place, but still a deeply sacred place.  A place almost inseparable from the heart of God.  A place, not just of divine grief in the heart of God, but also a place where God is active, where God is doing new things.  Our deep pain and grief leave us open and vulnerable, but it is there that the Holy Spirit can readily reach us.  If we have the courage not to run away from our pain, the sacred connections between our hearts and the heart of God can be renewed; new seeds can be sown to bring new life and hope and meaning.  We cannot have resurrection without the horror of death and being plunged into the depths of grief, because it is there that new life begins.

Soon, we will gather around this table, a place where the risen Lord holds out his wounded hands to embrace the suffering of all who cry out from the depths.  Here, Jesus offers us his own brokenness and calls us to journey into wholeness with him.  Over the next few weeks we will journey from the joy of a palm procession, through the passion story as the darkness engulfs us, and into the final journey to the cross and the deep sorrow of Friday.  And then we will ‘sit and wait’ through Saturday in that sacred and awkward place, till we arrive at the joy of resurrection.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him:

and in his word is my hope.

My soul looks for the Lord:

more than watchmen for the morning,

more, I say, than watchmen for the morning.