In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Aren’t today’s Bible stories terrific?  They’re so vivid!  Ezekiel brought to a valley filled with dried up bones.  Can you picture it?  I see a valley surrounded by steep cliffs of rock, the ground as dry and bleached as the bones it contains.  For some reason, in my picture, the sun is relentlessly bright and hot . . . but despite the light, the scene’s a little creepy.  There’s Ezekiel in the middle of this mass of bones . . . and the Lord commands him to speak.  Ezekiel speaks as he is commanded . . . and with a great clattering racket, the bones begin to move about, coming together, shaping themselves into bodies.  Ezekiel speaks and the bones are covered with sinews and flesh and skin.  Ezekiel speaks again, and breath enters these bodies, the breath of life . . . and standing before Ezekiel is a great host of people.  Whew!

And then there’s Lazarus . . . the brother of Martha and Mary, whom we know so well . . . lying dead in his tomb.  His sisters are grieving . . . waiting for Jesus . . . filled with sorrow . . . and perhaps anger . . . perhaps despairing . . . perhaps feeling abandoned because Jesus is not there, although they are surrounded by others joining them in their grief.  Finally Jesus arrives.  Met, I suspect, by a mixture of relief and anger.  He is distressed.  He weeps.  He insists on going to the tomb and having it opened.  Can you imagine everyone’s horror at this suggestion?  Can you imagine having someone, I don’t care how much you care for this someone, insist on opening the grave of a loved one who has just died?  Finally the rock is rolled away . . . the tomb opened . . . and Jesus cries out.  Can you imagine those moments of silence as everyone waits to see what will happen?  Was there a wave of cool air from the tomb?  Could they hear the sounds of movement?  And then out comes Lazarus, the dead man, trailing his burial clothes behind him.  Can you picture it?

All these dead people coming back to life . . . if they weren’t in the Bible and all holy and everything, these stories would kinda be like some old horror movies . . . “The Night of the Living Dead” . . . or maybe some Boris Karloff movie with a mummy, whose crypt has been violated, stumbling around chasing people.  But, of course, these Bible stories are nothing like that, right?  Think about it for a minute, what’s the point . . . other than scaring people . . . in all those old horror movies?  The whole point is for the army of dead people, or the stumbling mummy to be defeated and destroyed.  And that’s NOT the point of these Bible stories . . . in fact, after these people come back to life in the Bible, we don’t hear anything more about them.  That army of people and Lazarus?  They all disappear after the stories we heard this morning.  That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?  But not when we realize that THEY are not the point of the stories.

So what IS the point?  I mean, that army of people and Lazarus the mummy are pretty interesting.  Well, in the story of Ezekiel, the real point is to reassure the Jews exiled in Babylon that their fortunes will be restored.  That may sound a little disappointing to us, today.  But remember, the Jewish people based their entire society on the belief that they were God’s chosen people . . . that God gave them their land . . . their laws . . . their liberty . . . everything . . . and that God would always be with them, supporting them, protecting them.  And now, in the time of Ezekiel, they have lost everything.  EVERYTHING.  Jerusalem and the temple have been captured and destroyed, and they have been taken as captives to Babylon.  Try to imagine such a thing.  And then remember . . . these people not only lost their possessions and their liberty . . . their whole understanding of how the world works was being threatened.  Their FAITH was being brought into question.  Try to imagine the DESPAIR of such a situation.

And then you’ll begin to understand how this vision of Ezekiel’s offers hope to the exiled Jews.  Their world seems as barren and bleak as that valley I described at the beginning of this sermon.  Their old lives, and their old UNDERSTANDING of their lives, seem as dead and useless as those mounds of bleached, dried bones in the valley.  And then Ezekiel reminds these people of God’s infinite power . . . he reminds them that in the most seemingly hopeless situation, there is still hope.  He reminds them that God can create out of NOTHING, so God most certainly can bring some dead bones back to life . . . God most certainly can restore these exiled Jews to a life that they thought was gone forever.  Perhaps they have misunderstood God’s will and ways . . . but they most certainly have NOT misunderstood God’s steadfast care and love.

And the story of Lazarus?  Well, what is Jesus’ promise to his followers?  Eternal life.  Yet, by the time John was writing his Gospel . . . perhaps fifty or more years after Jesus’ death and resurrection . . . some of the early Christians, the first followers of Jesus, had died.  They were promised eternal life, yet they died.  Each death posed a potential crisis of faith for the believers left behind:  With each death the foundations of their common life were shaken.  Can’t you hear them asking:  Just what IS this eternal life he’s giving us?  You see, early followers of Jesus faced some challenges similar to those their exiled Jewish ancestors faced . . . similar to those faced by all faithful believers in difficult times . . . they faced questions about their understanding of life.  At some time, haven’t we all asked ourselves:  Is my life founded on truth? . . . or on a lie?  Have I misunderstood EVERYTHING?

Last week we heard the story of the man blind from birth to whom Jesus gave sight.  From this we’re meant to understand that Jesus is the light of the world.  This week, with the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead, we’re meant to understand that Jesus is the LIFE of the world.  Our storyteller leaves Lazarus in the tomb for four days to show us that he is thoroughly and completely dead.  You see, in Jesus’ time, people believed that, at death, the soul often hung around the body for a while before moving on . . . the ancient rabbis declared that four days was long enough to be certain that the soul had finally left and that decay had set in.  So Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead after four days shows us that Jesus truly does have power over life and death.  But it’s not Lazarus the individual who’s important . . . as we noticed earlier, Lazarus disappears from the Gospel after his amazing appearance at the door of his tomb  This is because, as the one whom Jesus loves, Lazarus is the representative of ALL those whom Jesus loves.  Just as those dried bones represent the exiled Jews, Lazarus represents the followers of Jesus.  And just as Jesus gives life to his beloved Lazarus, so he will give life to his beloved Christians.  This is the story that John gave his community to reassure them in their grief over the deaths of their fellow believers.

But nevertheless, we may still be left with the question:  What IS this eternal life Jesus promises us?  What IS resurrection?  We can’t ask Lazarus, because he’s gone from the picture.  But he’s gone not just because he’s served his purpose as a representative figure, he disappears from the story because resurrection does not mean the restoration to life of a corpse.  Resurrection means a transformation of life.  What John is teaching through the ENTIRE story of his Gospel, is that the eternal life that Jesus gives us does not abolish death; it transcends it.  What is this eternal life Jesus promises us?  It is more than a promise of resurrection on the last day.  We possess this eternal life NOW.  Jesus is ever-living, yes?  And through the Eucharist we participate in his life . . . we are the Body of Christ NOW . . . yes?  And so we possess eternal life now.  We can face physical death, firm in the confidence that we are already participating in eternity.  Those who believe in Jesus never truly die.

No matter how bleak things are . . . no matter how defeated we may feel . . . no matter how strongly the foundations of our life may be shaken . . . all things are possible in Jesus.  God can restore the well being of an entire nation.  In Jesus there is life.  We need not fear.  Maybe all those old horror movies I was talking about at the beginning of this sermon and the Bible stories we heard this morning DO share something in common.  Their real point is to show that good will triumph over evil.

It’s good to have a taste of Easter in the middle of Lent, isn’t it?

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