Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 26, 2023: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45; Psalm 130
The Lord instructs Ezekiel to tell the bones, “I will cause the breath to enter you, and you shall live”. Today’s passage from Ezekiel makes the process of bringing bones to life very graphic. There’s nothing abstract: first the bones get sinews and flesh: “There was a noise, a rattling”. But after this first stage, Ezekiel realizes there is no breath in the bodies. So the wind comes and they live.
The story of Lazarus that we hear in today’s gospel is graphic in other ways. It is also more troubling. While Ezekiel is bringing a whole valley of anonymous bones to life, Lazarus is a specific person: he has sisters who love him, and it turns out that Jesus loves him too. Jesus hears he is ill, but waits two days before going to his home. As he did in last week’s gospel, John presents Jesus as describing the purpose of problems for others as opportunities to demonstrate God’s power, to glorify God.
By the time Jesus arrived at Bethany, we are told, Lazarus had been in the tomb four days. Both Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters, tell Jesus that had he arrived earlier, their brother would be alive. They are both still weeping, and when brought to the tomb, Jesus weeps too. But when Jesus asks them to move the stone from the front of the tomb, they resist: four days after death, the body with have a terrible smell. No one wants to smell it.
Jesus insists, and after a long prayer delivered “for the sake of the crowd”, Jesus calls, “Lazarus, come out!” Lazarus does, and the wrappings are unwound from his body. For John, the end of the story is that as a result of this, “many of the Jews who. . .had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.”
For the writers of Ezekiel and John, the bringing of life to the bodies of the dead is the story. What happens next? What do the revived bodies do? The playwright Eugene O’Neill imagined Lazarus responding to his new life by laughing: in his play Lazarus Laughed, Lazarus tells people that they have a “high duty to live as a son of God–generously!–with love!–with pride!–with laughter!” He travels all over the Roman empire, filling stadia with crowds, laughing and proclaiming that there is no death. Ultimately he is killed by the Roman emperor, but even when being killed he offers laughter, his joy in life and conviction that there is no death.
We have been promised new life with Jesus’ resurrection. What do we do with our new life? Do we, like Lazarus, embrace that life? Do we live generously and with love? What do we do with with the life we have been given?