5 Lent, Yr A (2023) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

5 Lent, Yr A (2023)                                                                The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

Ezekiel 37:1-14                                                                St. Andrew’s on-the-Hill

John 11:1-45

In the name of the one, holy, and living God:

            Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifying Spirit.  Amen.

Jesus wept.

I remember seeing a photo of the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Standing in front of the wall was Pope Francis.

The upper part of his body was bent forward;    

his right hand was outstretched, touching the wall…

      perhaps placing a folded piece of paper with a prayer written on it

       in one of the cracks between the massive blocks of limestone.

The Western Wall is sometimes called “The Wailing Wall,” or

the “Place of Weeping.”

Standing behind the Pope some 10 or 15 feet was a Jewish man,

patiently waiting,

watching… as the Pope prayed.

These blocks of stone are packed tightly together,

            yet somehow in the tiny crevices between the stones

                        emerged a few shrubby plants,

      reaching for sun and rain and life.

There was a stillness about this photo…

            and a deep, deep pain…

      a mourning for brokenness…

                   a simultaneous calling forth for weeping along with a ray of hope.

This wall has seen destruction, exile, bloodshed, fighting, bickering, and exclusion

as well as rebuilding, prayer, and hope.

Piles of dead men’s bones have lain heaped at the foot of this wall at various points during its history.

Many have wept at this wall.

Thousands of years ago the people of Judah wept in exile in Babylon after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple…the wall standing today was a piece of Solomon’s Temple.

Ezekiel wrote of these times of exile.

“The 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.

“He led me all around them;

            there were very many lying in the valley,

                        and they were very dry.

“He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’”  (Ezekiel 37:1-3a)

Can these bones live?

That was the question.

The exiles were living with a sense of hopelessness that they would ever find their way home again.

Had God abandoned Jerusalem and the Temple and even God’s own people?

            Did all this suffering have any purpose?

      How should this people understand their tragic history?

Is it possible for God to lead God’s people into new life?

“Then [the Lord] said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them:

            O dry bones,

                        hear the word of the Lord…

    I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.

I 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.”  (Ezekiel 37:4-7)

You shall live…words that quench a thirst like a spring bubbling up in a desert…

            or offer hope like shrubs popping out through massive blocks of limestone!

I will cause breath to enter you,

and you shall live!

You shall live…

            regardless of what suffering we may endure,

     God’s word to us throughout Scripture is that God offers us life!

The Episcopal liturgy for the Burial of the Dead begins with words from today’s gospel:

“I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.

Whoever has faith in me shall have life,

even though he die.

And everyone who has life,

and has committed himself to me in faith,

shall not die for ever.”

If we have been born, it is a certainty that we will die.

            There is no escaping that fact.

And between our birth and our death, we will face many sources of weeping in our lives.

Jesus wept.

            Mary and Martha wept.

      Many of the Jews came to them and joined them in their weeping.

I appreciate hearing that Jesus began to weep

as a reminder that Jesus indeed was a human who suffered with the rest of us.

I have always thought that Jesus wept over the death of his friend, Lazarus,

and at seeing the sorrow of his friends, Mary and Martha,

     and perhaps he even wept because he realizes that if he had come earlier,

                        he could have prevented such pain in his friends by not letting Lazarus die. 

He might have wept for any or all of these reasons.

The story tells us that when he saw Mary and the Jews with her weeping,

he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.

But it was not until he asked where Lazarus had been laid

and they issued to Jesus the invitation, “Come and see”

       that Jesus wept.

In the Gospel of John, the phrase “come and see” was an invitation to faith.

Perhaps Jesus heard in this an invitation to his own suffering and death

and the placement of his own body in a tomb.

I wonder if Jesus wept for his own suffering that was to come…an inevitable suffering.

It is difficult to see the possibility of new life when in the midst of suffering…

            to see the possibility of joy when in the midst of darkness.

Henri Nouwen tells a story of finding life in the midst of pain:

“A few years ago Bob, the husband of a friend of mine, died suddenly from a heart attack.

“My friend decided to keep her two young children away from the funeral.  She thought: ‘It will be too hard for them to see their father put into the ground.’

“For years after Bob’s death, the cemetery remained a fearful and dangerous place for them.

“Then, one day,

      my friend asked me to visit the grave with her and invited the children to come along.

“The elder was too afraid to go, but the younger decided to come with us.

“When we came to the place where Bob was buried,

the three of us sat down on the grass around the stone engraved with the words:  

        ‘A kind and gentle man.’

“As we sat, we reminisced about Bob.

“I said: ‘Maybe one day we should have a picnic here….

This is not only a place to think about death,

        but also a place to rejoice in our life. 

“I think Bob will be most honored when we find new strength, here, to live.’

“At first it seemed a strange idea:

having a meal on top of a tombstone. 

“But isn’t that what Jesus told his disciples to do when he asked them to share bread and wine in his memory? …

“The tears of grief and the tears of joy shouldn’t be too far apart.

“As we befriend our pain – or, in the words of Jesus, ‘take up our cross’ –

we discover that the resurrection is, indeed, close at hand.”

(Nouwen, “A Meal on a Tombstone” in Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, pp. 39-40).

When Jesus came to the tomb and the stone had been rolled away, he called,

            “Lazarus, come out!”

Lazarus emerged with his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth, and Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

The Jesus of the Gospel of John already knew his future…

he knew that one day not far off he, too, would be placed in a tomb into which God would call, “Come out!” after experiencing his own time of suffering and pain.

Jesus wept,

but he knew the life that was to follow,

      even if no one else yet understood.

In the midst of such tremendous suffering,

a vision of new life can remain obscure.

And yet God says,

“I will cause breath to enter you,

and you shall live.”

At times we ourselves need to hear this prophecy,

            and during these times in our lives we need to be tended to by others,

      letting others unwrap our own death cloths.

At other times we are called to prophesy to others,

unbinding them and walking with them into places of wholeness and strength.

As a community we are called to do this for one another and for all those with whom we come into contact in the world.

Jesus wept,

            but he also calls us forth from places of darkness into places of light and life.

As we go forth from here,

 may the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing

       through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Amen.