Year A
 Ezekiel 37:1-14
 Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
 John 11:1-45

May the words of my mouth…  O God…  speak your truth…

Place me as a seal over your heart…  for love is as strong as death…  many waters cannot extinguish its fire…  and many rivers cannot wash it away…  that’s from the Song of Solomon 8:6-7… and in this passage we understand that water of any kind…  is unable to extinguish love…  that love can never die…  but while water cannot extinguish the fire of love…  water can also bring life… 

On Ash Wednesday… the church went into its room to pray… on February 26 we heard about the temptations of pride… power… and possessions… those qualities and things we are called to resist… as Jesus did… on March 5 we were reminded about Nicodemus and the womb… being born of water and the Spirit…  being born again from above into the Kingdom of God…  on March 12 we heard about the Samaritan woman and the well… baptismal waters gushing up to eternal life…  last Sunday we read about the man born blind washing God’s mud out of his eyes so he can see… and today we hear about a tomb… about death and stench… which have been overcome by Jesus’ love…  and today… Romans reminds us that we are not in the flesh… that we dwell in the Spirit… and the Spirit dwells in us…

Mortal… can these bones live… O Lord God… you know… these are bones that have laid out in the scorching sun…  bones that are ready to be put into an ossuary… which frees up space in tombs for other bodies…  but God can bring life from death… God can restore Israel from its corporate sin… God says… I am going to open your graves… bring you up out of them…  bring you back to Israel… and put my Spirit within you… and you shall live… and have real life… and you shall again be My people…

Now a certain man was ill…  Lazarus of Bethany…  but Lazarus wasn’t just a certain man…  he is one who is ill…  this means that his story is not his alone…  but is the story of all who become ill…  and Lazarus’ name means God helps…  and Bethany means the house of the afflicted…  but even further…  the message that Martha and Mary urgently convey…  is that the one whom the Lord loves is ill…  and Fr. John Shea raises the question…  how will the love of God in Jesus…  respond to the illness and death of one whom God loves… 

We cannot know all that Martha and Mary knew…  perhaps they knew about the man born blind… and how Jesus healed him… that may be why the two sisters sent word to Jesus that their brother was ill…  so Jesus would hurry and heal…  but Martha and Mary were thinking too small… they each said to him… Lord… if you had been here… my brother would not have died… they had hoped that Jesus would heal their brother BEFORE he died…

And Jesus wept…  for the death of his friend…  in empathy for Martha and Mary who grieved…  for the fragility of life…  and maybe even for his own impending death…

Pastor Christine Chakoian wrote…  one of the most vivid…  realistic aspects of this passage in John…  is that sorrow and grief are allowed to emerge full bore… Martha is resentful of Jesus’ delay… yet in the same breath she trusts in the power of his compassion… there is also an undercurrent of blame in Mary’s words…  but at the same time…  she kneels at his feet…

But like in last week’s story…  where Jesus said that the man was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him…  Jesus is increasingly interested in demonstrating God’s glory… that’s why… in spite of how conflicted he must have felt… he didn’t arrive until the fourth day…  of course…  if he had made a bee-line for Bethany…  he could have prevented Lazarus’ death…  but that would not have helped those gathered gain the spiritual understanding of how love conquers death…  it would not have facilitated a change human consciousness about God…  and God’s Son…  and elicit human worship…  because the fullness of God’s glory is for God to give God’s own life…  for us…  because today’s Gospel ends with… many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did… believed in him…  but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done… so from that day on… they planned to put him to death…

Resuscitating Lazarus became the motive to put Jesus to death…  but here’s a question worth pondering… since all of creation… the galaxies… the stars… the gaseous nebulae… the comets and meteors…  the planets… the moon… and particularly our human lives… arose first and foremost… out of God’s love… then why is it so hard for us to get our heads around the idea that resurrected life could arise out of that same love…  and since Jesus could raise Lazarus from the dead…  then how could the authorities possibly think…  how could they possibly think that killing him…  would be the best and most permanent way…  to stop him…

In today’s story… Jesus says to the crowd… unbind him…  and let him go… so I wonder… what it must have been like for Lazarus… to be resuscitated… to come back to awareness… to realize where he was… of being bound in death’s clothing… what was he thinking for those four days…  if was he thinking at all…  did it take a moment for him to realize who was calling him… called by God to come out of the place of death… and to be unbound… to be freed of both literal and symbolic death-clothes… and maybe to feel as though he’d been given another chance… at being truly and really alive…

The promises of the Gospel are not so we can live the American Dream…  or assert our own agency…  the promises of the Gospel are so much bigger than that…  Lazarus wasn’t raised so he could expand his market share…  improve his golf game…  buy up more property…  invest in new startups…  protect his hedge funds…  or even spend more time with his sisters…  he was raised so that the spiritual strength of love could be made manifest in the physical world…  so he could participate in God’s abundant life…  of course he would die again…  because everything that’s incarnate must die…  but death does not have the final word…  in the Eucharistic prayer at funerals…  we affirm that…  life is only changed…  not ended…

In today’s story… Jesus says to the crowd… unbind him…  and let him go…  Jesus asks the community to pitch in in unbinding Lazarus…  physically unbinding him…  but today’s story is also an Exodus story…  it’s about the unbinding of political and religious oppression… it’s about the unbinding of our own fears… the unbinding of our limitations… and about our re-binding… about being born again from above in water and in Spirit…

So what does it mean to voluntarily enter our own tombs… and see what death is… to smell the dead things that no longer serve us well… what are the things in our world…  our country…  our communities… churches… families… and ourselves… that need to die… how can we move into the increasing boundlessness that God has prepared for us… unless the boundaries which have kept us from boundlessness… also die… Jesus said to Martha… I AM the resurrection.. and the life… those who trust in me… even though they die… will live… do we really believe it… do we really trust that once we leave this place… we will be re-united with God… even if we can only imagine what that will be like…  death is not the end… so how do we live now…  unbinding each other and our world…