Year A

John 11:1-45

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Blessing of Death

If I had to guess what subject is the most dreaded and feared by many of us, it would be death. No one welcomes death in any form, whether it is our own inevitable death or experiencing the death of a loved one. The death of someone close to us is a painful, sometimes devastating loss making it hard not to see death as anything other than an evil force lurking and ready to devour us. Yet, all our texts today speak of death as being a blessing. In each one we encounter a different form of death, and hidden in the experience of death, is the blessing; the blessing of life in the presence and glory of God.

Two weeks ago, in John’s gospel we read that thirst is a blessing when it leads us to quench the thirst of our souls with the living water that Jesus gives us. Last week, we heard that blindness can be a blessing when we recognize that we all suffer from various kinds of blindness and once we are able to identify our blindness, we can take corrective action to have our eyes opened to God’s grace and forgiveness. Today, as our journey through Lent draws us nearer to Easter, we see how death paradoxically leads to hope, resurrection, and the blessing of new life. We see this paradox in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones which reminds us that God not only gives life but restores life. Death will not have the last word, even when all signs of life have been taken away.

Ezekiel was a Jewish priest who prophesied from 593 BC until 571 BC while he was exiled in Babylon. Like the prophets before him, he brought the Word of God to bear upon the situation of the people. His message was a simple one: Repent and return to God’s ways, or face the consequences. The vision begins when he was brought by the hand and the spirit of God to a valley full of dry human bones. The dryness of the bones seems to be a metaphor for the sense of hopelessness that the exile Israelites felt as they despaired if they would ever find their way home. God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” challenging the prophet and all who have ever looked into the face of death, calling for a response. Ezekiel answers, “O Lord God, you know.

God then commanded Ezekiel to “prophesy to these bones” saying, “Thus says the Lord God: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.” This hopeful vision is of a nation reunited, restored, and infused with the life-giving breath or power of God’s Spirit. God had promised help, and Israel would live again. They would eventually return to their home land. The blessing of this same breath many generations later moves forth in the most dramatic story in all the bible; the raising of Lazarus from death. For John, this story was a drama of the tragedy of illness and death and the triumph of new life, of resurrection. It is a story of three followers of Jesus whom he loved. Martha who lived with her sister Mary, and their brother Lazarus, in the village of Bethany, just a few miles outside of Jerusalem.

Having received the news of Lazarus’s illness and subsequent death, the disciples struggle to come to terms with Jesus’ decision to make the treacherous unsafe journey to Judea after a two-day delay. Jesus insists, and as they approach Mary and Martha’s home, the tension between life and death intensifies with weeping and grief filling the air as family and friends gather to mourn Lazarus’s death. Mary and Martha are disappointed that Jesus had not arrived until after their brother’s death. They believed God would have honored Jesus’ request – if he had arrived sooner. They trust him as a teacher, healer, miracle worker, and believe him to be the Messiah come from God.

They believe in resurrection of the dead on the last day and that they will be reunited with their brother. However, the grief of his death was overwhelming and Jesus moved by Mary’s weeping, weeps. Then he prays to God and commands Lazarus to come out of the tomb. The people could hardly believe their eyes-Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead! Lazarus’ death was a blessing because it provided Jesus the opportunity to reveal the power and glory of God. At the end of this story, we learn that many who had accompanied Martha and Mary to the tomb also believed in Jesus. Not only can new life come out of death, so can the faith that leads to eternal life.

Lazarus’ resurrection is a flash forward to Jesus’ own resurrection but it also serves as the nail in Jesus’ coffin. For some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. From that day on the religious leaders planned to put Jesus to death. This begins the plot against Jesus that its perpetrators think will find its conclusion on Good Friday. Yet, Easter will prove to have the final word. Death may appear to be something utterly different from the life of God, but both are rooted within God. Thus God can bring eternal life even out of death. For this reason, Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans that when “the Spirit of God dwells in us” we do not live by the flesh that denies God’s sustaining grace.

We live by the Spirit who is also the source of eternal life. We enjoy “the new life of the Spirit” only because of our belief in and union with the crucified and risen Christ. Because we are in Christ, we have been transferred from the fleshly domain of death and sin to the Spirit’s domain of “eternal life and peace.” This Lenten season is a good time to reflect upon the things on which our minds are set. It is a good time to affirm that our life of living to the flesh is dead, and that new life and peace are available to us when we set our minds on the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. When we are connected with God’s Spirit, hope wells up within us.

It is as if God breathes new life into us as God did with those dried up bones and we live with purpose, passion and energy. We live knowing that death is not the end that we have eternal life after death with the hope that we will be reunited with those we love. We live knowing that even as we live with these mortal bodies we walk in the Spirit of a new and better place as those who know they are headed for glory, not because of what we do but because the Spirit has bound us up with the risen Christ. With the Spirit’s help our focus is to encourage others to live a Spirit-guided life. To help others see how death paradoxically leads to hope, resurrection and new life because God desires more for our life than a life of death, God calls us out of the death and breaths into us new life.

Yet, we still grieve to be reunited with our loved ones and our aversion to death may at times bind us, we may even have moments of doubt but Jesus our Messiah knows, he understands. He cares. He loves. He weeps. And he cries with a loud voice; ‘Come out!” There, at the tomb, death is overcome for good. What a blessing that is!