You will never die

Ezekiel 37:1-14

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded, and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath:Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

    11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”

John 11:1-45

1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” 11 After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” 12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.”13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

     17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

    28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

     38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

45 Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him. 

In the other Gospels, after Jesus has celebrated the Passover with his disciples, he retreats to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, and there he pleads, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want.”  There is perhaps no other moment in Scripture where Jesus is so relatable.  He sees the path before him, and he’d like there to be another way.  He asks the Father if there’s a plan B even as he commits to plan A.  This is the tension inherent to the Christian life, where faithfulness calls us in directions we’d rather not go.  

In the Gospel of John, however, in the very next chapter, Jesus prays, “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”  Yes, Jesus is troubled, but there is no sense that he’s looking for a way out.  Instead, he stands up to the challenge.  Throughout John, Jesus seems unusually composed and in control.  Even here, when Jesus receives the news about his friend’s death, he appears unmoved, even nonchalant.  He’ll get there when he gets there; in fact, he apparently deliberately delays arriving to create a teachable moment.  And yet, when Jesus does arrive he sees his friends weeping, and he is deeply moved.  Jesus began to weep. 

This seems so out of character that its sometimes claimed that Jesus is here weeping because of their lack of faith, not the loss of his friend.  But it’s pretty obvious that Jesus weeps when he saw others weeping because that’s what humans do.  Those standing by said, “See how he loved him!”.  

That Jesus weeps is a remarkable thing.  The Gospel was not written in a time and place where people were given to celebrating men’s tears.  That Jesus cries is a bit embarrassing, following the lead of a possibly hysterical woman, showing such weakness.  If you think masculinity is toxic now, you wouldn’t have enjoyed the first century.  And yet, this little detail is included.  It’s a detail consistent with Christ’s pouring himself out on the cross, and one that we might say give us a glimpse into the very character of God.  

Perhaps it’s not even worth mentioning, but there’s this bizarre fad in a segment of Christianity warning against the dangers of empathy.  There’s even a book titled, “The Sin of Empathy”.  The short version, as I understand it, is that if we try to understand, to relate to people’s situation, then we end up justifying what we ought to condemn it.  You can’t speak hard truths if you care to much about people’s feelings.  You can be too compassionate.  

Even before he arrived in Bethany, Jesus knew what he was going to do.  He knew how this would play out, that Lazarus would emerge from the tomb, that everyone would be beside themselves with joy.  And, of course, he offers just that reassurance to Martha, who laments that Jesus could have saved Lazarus if only he’d been there.  He is the resurrection and the life, Lazarus will rise again - not just on the last day - but here and now.   And yet, when arrives in Bethany, he doesn’t tell them to dry their tears, he sheds his own.  

People cry when their friends die, but Christians often feel like they need to apologize for it.  Many times I’ve been with people after a death of loved one, when they’re still in shock, and the pain of the loss so raw, and they the feel the need to say something like, “I really shouldn’t be crying because I know s/he’s in a better place now”.  But tears do not betray a lack of faith; they demonstrate our humanity.  If Jesus can cry, surely so can we.   

The story of Lazarus captures the essential tension of Christian life.  Jesus clearly doesn’t lack confidence in resurrection, in the reality of eternal life, that even though we die yet shall we live.  None of this is in question.  And yet such certitude does not preclude weeping for and with his friends.  In fact, it is perhaps precisely his hope in the life to come that causes him to weep for the life of now.  

We take for granted that death is a normal part of life, that everything that lives eventually dies, that death is even necessary for new life to flourish.  Death is “natural”, it’s everywhere in nature.  We can’t give an account of life apart from death.  

And yet, strange as it may sound, as Christians we are obliged to regard death as unnatural, a prolonged but ultimately - from the perspective of eternity - a temporary state of affairs.  Death and decay evidence the corruption of God’s purposes for creation.  The salvation to which Scripture consistently points is that this age is passing away, that death itself will be defeated, a new age is coming and now is when all shall be abundant life, when the kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.  

In the meantime, death is our enemy.  At best we make a kind of truce, but we should never quite make peace with this situation. During Lent we declare, “From dust we have come and to dust we shall return.”  This is a truth we must soberly confront precisely because we cannot deliver ourselves from the human condition.  We will die.  THE question is, will we live on beyond death?  

In Ezekiel, God asks the prophet, as he surveys the valley of dry bones, “can these bones live?”  Rather than an emphatic, “Yes!”, he defers the answer to God: “O Lord, you know”.  Even for the prophet who speaks to God, it can be hard to believe that the dead will live again.  In the Gospels, the sadducees - whom we can safely assume were not unfamiliar with Ezekiel and the rest of Scripture - nevertheless denied the possibility of resurrection.  And we too might easily find ourselves wondering if it really is true that we live again.  

Pretty much every human culture has concerned itself with this question.  It’s not merely that we fear death; rather, there is in each of us - unless we deliberately stifle it - a sense of the eternal, a longing for the infinite.  Those who confidently declare that death is the end tend to congratulate themselves for their steely-eyed bravery as they stare into the abyss.  But to deny eternal life is to deny a rather “natural” longing of the human condition.  That we so clearly want it to be so is actually a pretty good indication that it must be so, because this desire is the desire for the very God who created us in God’s own image.  

Our belief in the resurrection is not merely a means of relieving our existential angst, of delivering us from the fear of death.  It’s also not merely a show of God’s power - “look what God can do if God wants to”.   That Jesus can raise the dead - and, of course, that Jesus himself rose from the dead - reveals the true nature of our lives and the God who gives us life.  It not just that God can raise the dead; it’s that raising the dead is the essence of who God is.  

The eternal God made us for eternity; we were never meant to die.  And Jesus here makes the stunning claim, not only that through him we will rise from the dead, but that, “everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  Of course, he does not mean by this that we will not suffer “natural” death, that there won’t come a day when we all draw our final breath.  It’d be hard to argue that.  

In last week’s passage Jesus told the woman at the well that, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The truest, must fundamental reality, is not material but spirit.  We are not bodies infused with spirit; we are spirits who take on flesh.  We are eternal, made in the image of the eternal God, the nature our humanity revealed in Christ’s incarnation, and through him, though our bodies fail, we can never die.  The question Jesus posed to Martha is the same posed to us: “Do you believe this?”