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 this event, God's act in this world, that has changed our human situation: good news for all people.
The long reading we've just heard from John's Gospel is one of the great death and resurrection passages of the New Testament. But before we turn to the story of Jesus and Lazarus, let's first look at today's reading from the prophet Ezekiel. The death and resurrection of Jesus is something radically new and unexpected, unimaginable, but at the same time it is in deep continuity with what God had been doing before, God's dealings with the people of Israel, God's promises to them. The death and resurrection of Jesus are 'in accordance with the Scriptures', as we say in the Creed. Today's reading from Ezekiel is a great example of this prefiguring in the Old Testament of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Ezekiel is with his people in exile, far from home, like millions of refugees 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 have sinned, broken the covenant, and God has handed them over to the consequences of their rebellion in the bitterness of exile. Their life had been swallowed up in death.
Now 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. God asks Ezekiel: 'Can these bones live?' God overwhelms Ezekiel with this vision of the deadness of his people. Surely, 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 how, 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's going on in the story of Lazarus. There are two levels here. First, the story of Lazarus himself, a particular person, who gets sick, 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; 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.
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. 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 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, a powerful sign of the presence of God 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, sooner or later. 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 excitement about who Jesus is and what he's going to do that it hardens his enemies in their resolve to have him killed (John 11:46-53). The dark, distorted logic of our human hearts demands that 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 bringing his own death nearer. But just as with Lazarus, the death of Jesus is not the final word, because God raised Jesus from the dead. However, unlike Lazarus, Jesus was not just granted thirty or forty years more of this mortal life: Jesus 'will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.' (Romans 6)
Ezekiel proclaims to the people of Israel that God is with them in the midst of death, in the valley of dry bones, and will raise them up to life again. When God comes to his people in the flesh, in Jesus Christ, the message is the same. In Jesus, 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. What happens to Lazarus is a sign, wonderful but limited, pointing ahead to something greater, the death and resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus, crucified and risen, never to die again, the powerful love of God is made available universally, to all people, forever.
As well as celebrating Passion Sunday, today we hold our Annual General Meeting. I don't think we can quite say that we celebrate our AGM! But it is an important moment at which we take stock, reviewing all the activities of our church over the last year, and look ahead to the year to come. The fact that we are holding our church AGM on Passion Sunday holds before us some important truths. Ultimately, the Church only exists because of the death and resurrection of Jesus; if Jesus had remained dead, the Church would never have come into being. And ultimately the Church exists to point to the death and resurrection of Jesus, to make known what God has done for the world in Jesus, crucified and risen. That means that the Church has words to speak, a message to share about the death and resurrection of Jesus, but those words must be spoken out of a community of people whose lives are deeply shaped by the crucified and risen Jesus.
So on this Passion Sunday, on which we also hold the Annual General Meeting of our beloved church, St Ursula's, we might ask ourselves:
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.' Then he asks: 'Do you believe this?'
David Marshall