Today is Passion Sunday, the start of the two weeks leading to Good Friday and Easter, when we tell again the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We proclaim and celebrate these events, God's acts in this world, that have changed our human situation: good news for all people. Death and life in the story of Jesus at this time when in the world around us death and life are constantly in the news: the threat of death coming closer to us, the hope that life can be preserved.
Death and life, life and death. We are probably experiencing this crisis in quite different ways. Some of us may be very worried for the health of loved ones or ourselves; we may be working in the frontline of medical care, overwhelmed by responsibility and pressure; we may be anxious about our job, our business; perhaps we dread the upheaval and disorder that the crisis will bring upon the world; or we may just be feeling isolated, cut off from friends, and really quite bored. Whatever this crisis feels like for you, I invite you to step back from it for a moment and remember this is Passion Sunday, when we start to focus on Good Friday and Easter and all they mean for us. Because for the final word on life and death we need to listen not to the news, the latest cutting-edge analysis of data and projections for the coming weeks, the instructions of state authorities or medical services (however important all these are), and certainly not to the churning of our anxious hearts and minds. We need to listen to the God who speaks to us through Jesus Christ, speaks to us about life and death.
Before we turn to the story of Jesus and Lazarus, let's look first at today's reading from the prophet Ezekiel. The people of Israel are in exile, far from home, like millions of refugees in our world today. They have lost everything that matters. They say: 'Our bones are dried up; our hope is lost; we are cut off.' They feel dead. God may still be a thought in their minds, from time to time, but not much more. The people of Israel had sinned, had broken the covenant, and God handed them over to the consequences of their rebellion, their sin, in the bitterness of exile. Their life had been swallowed up in death.
But God takes Ezekiel to a valley full of dry human bones, as if a vast army had died there long ago. It's a vision of his people, dead, hopeless; the bones are very dry. And God asks Ezekiel: 'Can these bones live?' God overwhelms Ezekiel with this vision of the deadness of his people. Clearly, these bones cannot live again; there is no future.
But God tells Ezekiel: prophesy to the dry bones, tell them that God will bring them to life, God will breathe on them and restore them to life, with sinews, flesh, skin and breath. God says to the people without hope: I will open your graves; I will enter the realm of your death, gather you up, and bring you back to the land. I will put my Spirit within you, and you will know that I am the Lord. So Ezekiel sees the bones re-clothed in flesh, re-animated with breath, and they become a vast, living multitude. From death to life.
The vision of Ezekiel points ahead to Jesus, because in Jesus, in a deeper and fuller way, the God of Israel again comes to his people, stands with them in the valley of dry bones, the realm of death, and calls them out of their graves to new life. This is what is going on in the story of Lazarus. There are two levels here. First, the story of Lazarus himself, a particular person, who gets sick, and dies, is buried, but is brought back to life again by Jesus. But second, this story is a sign, pointing ahead to something bigger than what happens to this one man; it points ahead to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and what this means for all people.
The story of Lazarus is a sign, but Lazarus is not just a sign. He's a real person, with a name and a story, just like each of us, and in fact he's a friend of Jesus, together with his sisters Martha and Mary. So when Jesus sees the grave of Lazarus, and his sisters and friends weeping, he is 'greatly disturbed in spirit', and he weeps with them. In Jesus, God has come among his people, is with them in the midst of death, and weeps. The Son of God weeps. In Jesus, God has become brother to all people, to each one of us, and shares our sorrows. That is always true, but in these present circumstances it is a precious truth to remember every day.
However, Jesus doesn't just weep. That might offer some consolation, but would still leave death as the last word on Lazarus and on each of us. But Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. He makes the dead man alive again. Ignoring warnings about the terrible smell, Jesus has the stone rolled away, and he cries into the tomb with a loud voice: 'Lazarus, come out!' '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."'
Lazarus was brought back to life again, and this was a wonderful sign of the power and love of God present in Jesus Christ, restoring the goodness of God's creation, restoring joy, wiping away every tear. But Lazarus had to die again one day. Maybe thirty or forty years later, at a good old age, but he had to die, just as we all do. We all have a death to die. So what happens with Lazarus is powerful, but incomplete, not the final word. It's a sign pointing to something greater. The death and raising to life of Lazarus point ahead to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
This is in fact true simply at the level of the plot, the story-line, because Jesus' raising of Lazarus to life causes so much talk and excitement about who Jesus is and what he's going to do that it's the final straw for his enemies, and it hardens them in their resolve to have him killed. The one who has raised the dead to life must be put to death. So even as he is restoring Lazarus to life, Jesus is only days away from his own death, which casts its shadow over this story. And just as with Lazarus, the death of Jesus is not the final word, because God raised Jesus from the dead. But, unlike Lazarus, Jesus was not just granted thirty or forty years more of this mortal life, the ultimate lottery prize. No: Jesus was raised to a quite different life: 'being raised from the dead, [he] will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.' (Romans 6)
Ezekiel spoke to the people of Israel, telling them that God was with them in the midst of death, in the valley of dry bones, and would raise them up to life again. When God comes to his people in the flesh, in Jesus Christ, the message is the same. God enters the realm of our death, our sin, our despair and restores us to life. In the story of Lazarus, one particular man, that truth is dramatically acted out. But what happens to Lazarus is a sign, wonderful but limited, pointing ahead to something greater, the death and resurrection of Jesus himself. In him, crucified and risen, never to die again, the power and the love of God are made available universally, to all people, forever.
Speaking to Martha, one of the sisters of Lazarus, Jesus says: 'I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?' These words are said at the start of most funerals. They will be said, I imagine, as, one day, my coffin is carried into a church. So also, for all of us. These words are not Christian self-help. They are not pious whistling in the dark. They are God's word to us through Jesus Christ. They are true, and they are good news, every day. Particularly so in these difficult days.
Jesus says: 'I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?'
Revd David Marshall