Out of Death Comes New Life

A Sermon preached Sunday, March 9, 2008

by Pastor Terry Davis

First Presbyterian Church, Hartford, CT

Yesterday morning I thought I knew where this sermon was going based on the passages for the morning.  Then I went to the revitalization work session yesterday and that has sent things off in quite a different and hopefully more helpful direction.  About 20 of us, along with a similar number of people from each of two other Churches spent a day with our revitalization consultant looking at different ways of looking at the life of a particular congregation.  One was to look at the history of a Church as part of a life cycle that begins with the birth, the start of a congregation, continues through growth, she called this incline, stability or recline, and then inevitably decline and the cycle ends with death.  In other words if a Church lives out this natural life cycle then like each of us over the span of our lives inevitably we reach a high point, a plateau, the prime time of our lives, the peak period of a Church which is followed inevitably by decline and eventually death.  These two passages suggest that there is another possibility, and that is the possibility of resurrection, of new life, of a new beginning, a fresh start.  What revitalization is about is resurrection, new life.  Some people call it transformation, others redevelopment, we have talked about a process of revitalization, we could talk about resurrection.

The problem the people encountered during the period of exile in Babylon which is when Ezekiel was writing was not a matter of physical death, but of spiritual death.  When the nation was conquered by the various powers from the east there was not genocide, it was not a holocaust that God’s people experienced, but it was a spiritual death.  In exile they no longer had a national identity, they no longer had inspiring worship, they no longer had any spiritual vitality in their community, they felt hopeless, they said, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’  

What really resonated with me about this passage was the report that we received based on a survey of over 30 members of this congregation that we took at an after Church dinner back in November.  The survey measured 8 characteristics of growing and vital Churches, and our results showed that we were weakest in two areas – passionate spirituality and inspiring worship.  We are good at mission and ministry to our community and beyond, we are abundantly generous in our financial support of ministries to feed the poor and uplift the needy, and we excel in hospitality and welcome, extending our hospitality to people of different races, classes, ethnic groups and sexual orientations, but we are weak in our own spirituality, at least in traditional ways of being spiritual such as Bible reading and study prayer and worship. Too many people leave worship uninspired.   

This says to me that we have some real similarity with the people to whom Ezekiel wrote and for whom God gave him this vision.  The vision as we read it is one of new life, new flesh and new spirit entering into the dried up dead bones.  Can these bones live? Can this people recover its spiritual vitality?  Clearly the vision that Ezekiel had said YES, out of dead bones can come life.  Ezekiel called on the wind, the breath, on the spirit of God to blow upon the bones and they took on flesh and life.  We do not need to be dead or dying spiritually, when the spirit of God blows on us we can change and become open to the spirit and life. 

The second story we read, the one about the resurrection of Lazarus, is just as clearly about resurrection, about the possibility of life after death.  After spiritual death and after physical death there is the possibility of resurrection, new life, rebirth a new beginning.  Even after four days in the grave, when in the warm climate of Israel in springtime the body has begun to decay and stink, life is still possible, Jesus is not only Lord of all of life, but Jesus has power over death itself.  If we are Jesus people then resurrection is always a possibility, for ourselves and for those we love, and even for a Church that seemingly has been declining and moving toward death for 50 years.  If we resonate with this passage at all it has to be saying to our Church decline and death is not inevitable, we can do more than just survive, we can experience new life and enter a new period of growth and development. 

There is, however something wrong with this passage.  When Lazarus comes out of the grave where is the joy, where is the celebration, where is the gratitude?  When the sheep was found people partied, the widow called her friends to celebrate when she found her lost coin, the father threw a great banquet with music and dancing and feasting when the dead son returns home, but where is the party when Lazarus comes out of the grave? John is very in touch with the emotions that were going on.  We see Jesus twice overcome by grief and weeping, we see the women and their friends weeping while Lazarus is still dead in the tomb, their grief, their tears, and their anger at Jesus for failing to come quickly enough to prevent the death of their brother.  Each of them says the same thing when they see Jesus, if you had been here my brother would not have died, but where is the emotion when he comes out of the grave?  They are so much stuck in their shock and grief that it takes days for them to come out of their grief and begin to rejoice and by that time Jesus has left to go into hiding in Ephraim since the priests and Pharisees were seeking to kill him.  Jesus was determined to die at the appointed time and in the appointed place, in Jerusalem at the Passover and he keeps talking about this, and this also casts a pall of sadness over the whole story.   

There is a party, gratitude and celebration when he returns to Bethany on his way to Jerusalem, and this is when Mary anoints Jesus with the fragrant oil.  Even this touching act is overshadowed by the pall of death, for Jesus said that she has done it beforehand to prepare my body for burial. 

What does this story have to say to us?  I think that we are much like the women who are stuck in their grief even when their brother has been raised up from the dead.  We are sometimes stuck in our own grief.  Too often we focus on the past; personally we focus on what we were once able to do but can’t do now we have become older.  We think of the people who were once a vital part of this Church, but who have moved away, or who have drifted away, or who have passed away.  We have lost 75 people in the past 10 years, and of course we are sad about this, but we have also gained 75 people in the past 10 years.  Are we like the women, stuck in our grief because of our loss so that we have trouble celebrating our gains.  We can get overwhelmed by loss and death that we fail to celebrate gains and resurrection. 

That is what I believe that these passages challenge us to do – to deal with our losses, but also to see what God is doing and what God will be doing in our midst and to celebrate the hope and the already present reality of resurrection and new life, in our personal lives, and in our life as a Church.

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Ezekiel 37:1 - 14 ¹The 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.  ²He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.  ³He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.”  ⁴Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.  ⁵Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.  ⁶I 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.” ⁷So 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.  ⁸I 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.  ⁹Then 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.”  ¹⁰I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. ¹¹Then 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.’  ¹²Therefore 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.  ¹³And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  ¹⁴I 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 ¹Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  ²Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.  ³So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”  ⁴But 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.”  ⁵Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,  ⁶after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. ⁷Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”  ⁸The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”  ⁹Jesus 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.  ¹⁰But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.”  ¹¹After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”  ¹²The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.”  ¹³Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.  ¹⁴Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.  ¹⁵For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”  ¹⁶Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” ¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.  ¹⁸Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away,  ¹⁹and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.  ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.  ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  ²²But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”  ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”  ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”  ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,  ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”  ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” ²⁸When 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.”  ²⁹And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.  ³⁰Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.  ³¹The 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.  ³²When 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.”  ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”  ³⁵Jesus began to weep.  ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”  ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” ³⁸Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.  ³⁹Jesus 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.”  ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”  ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me.  ⁴²I 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.”  ⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”  ⁴⁴The 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.” ⁴⁵Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. 

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