"Lord, There Will Be A Stink" April 6, 2014

Ezekiel 37: 1-14 John 11:1-45 This morning is not about the resurrection of the dead. Eternal life overcoming the power of death, the Resurrection, those are themes of Easter, and we are not there yet. Ezekiel led by God to the Valley of Bones, Lazarus buried behind a rock, are less about death, being brought back to life, Zombies or the Undead, than about stripping away the bindings of death, restoration of our humanity, Jesus weeping and all of us needing to mourn for our cutting one another off, sealing one another away, our burial of what disturbs us, the desiccation of God-given Creation to Life! We seem to have developed a taste for Zombies, Vampires, bodies brought back from the grave, the theme of death is all around us. But this is more than an Elephant graveyard, different from standing in the middle of Arlington Cemetery seeing grave-markers as far as the eye can see. In the Dark, after the sounds of warfare's killing stopped, there is no weeping, no sound of agony, no telltale heart-beat. Ezekiel is not on a mountaintop, but down in the lowest of places, the most desolate, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, there where there were trenches and rifts ripped open in the earth's surface where the bodies of the unknown dead were pushed and abandoned. Painfully, for Ezekiel, this was not Flounder's Field, or a graveyard, a place with the stench of death, not a place of decay, but a wound in creation where forgotten lives were left and lost. So much time has passed, sun-baked, wind whipped, dried out of all moisture by ice and snow and sun, the bodies are no longer whole, but scattered, not one bone left beside another, no longer appearing as human, as skeleton, as bone, but only as fossilized artifacts, windswept, dried out, dust beyond rock. This is a forgotten place, without sound, without scent, where in the dark Ezekiel cannot tell the rock he trips over from a somebody's bone. Years after, there is no memory, no recollection of who these persons were, whose daughter, whose son, was this the hand of a blacksmith, or a surgeon, or a gardener, was this even a hand? Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah, Jacob and Essau, and the twelve sons of Israel, had survived for 400 years as slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, where this remnant had been led out by Moses across the Red Sea into a Wilderness of Dependence upon God, and after generations, 40 years in the wilderness they were led into the Promised Land, where they became a Monarchy, not just any nation but the Kingdom of David, the Empire of Solomon. The people of God forgot who they were, what they believed, they no longer sang their songs or told stories, they worshiped death. And the Barbarians, the Assyrians and the Babylonians each invaded, not just one battle, one war, but year after year they were beaten down and carried off to a different world, where they were taught to forget who they had been, what they believed, what mattered, how we live, who Abraham and Sarah even were. Then in far away Babylon, there were the invasions of the Persians, the Medes, the Greeks, the Egyptians. After all this time. After all these successive empires, does hope still exist? Can faith live? Is there a place in our lives for faith? Ezekiel, like an Old Testament Prophet, a human figure representing all humanity, is led through the dark to this depression, where all that once represented life is gone beyond decay, where God asks: Is hope possible? Can these bones live? In what could be a statement of faith in the Almighty, but could as easily be a desperate reply in absolute desolation, Ezekiel says: “You alone know God!” We are fascinated by the Science of Forensics. Through meticulous examination of wear and decay, even millennial after a body has died, we have advanced to point of determining not only how they died, but how they lived, and age and sex and diet, whether they were a parent, a herdsman or hunter, in short who they were. In a recent edition of National Geographic, an article titled the “The Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara” details the find of 200 graves near a vanished lake in what once was a fertile valley, and now is the Sahara Desert. One people, named as The Kiffians ate coarse grain, drank local water, and never traveled more than a radius of 20 miles. Another, generations later, in the same place, are identified as The Ternarians who were hunters, fishermen and herdsmen. All this, can be known from bones and skeletons in burial places. But Ezekiel stands in a place where lives were scattered, there is nothing whole left, no remains of life. And as commanded Ezekiel prophesies to the bones to come together into skeletons, for organs to grow inside, for sinew and muscle to knit upon, and the flesh of skin to cover. But still, this is a people of death, a people without breath, without spirit, in short without life or humanity. And God calls upon Ezekiel, to pray for the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Life, of Creation to come from the Four Corners of the earth, as if Four Winds, to empower the people to breathe, breathing to have life, living to believe again as a people in their own humanity and in God. John's story of Lazarus is odd. No where else is this story told. Far more, the translators and scholars are divided what this means. Why, when in other places, Mary and Martha are named was Lazarus not? Why, if Jesus loved Lazarus, did he delay? It is unclear from the text, when Jesus arrives, whether he trembles, or is in rage, or frustrated, or snorts like a horse... What is the Raising of Lazarus about? Years ago in College, I had roommate and close friend. We had known each other several years, his younger sisters each went to the same school with us. When traveling in England, we had run into his family and shared supper and the evening with them. One day, his sister named they had another brother, whom the family did not acknowledge, did not talk about. His legitimacy was in question, and he had always been in trouble. I was gullible enough to believe anything she said, and cared about what had happened to this estranged one and why, only to learn there was no brother after all. But many of us have family stories like that. A mother who was too young, conceived out of incest, whose own child was raised like a sibling. A miscarriage that never was spoken about. A child traumatized by an accident. Those who never really returned from War. The College Senior who is about to graduate with honors, prestigious firms have made offers, everyone is so proud of her, but she has this ache in her of no longer knowing who she is or where she is going or why. The doctor, the counselor, the pastor, the teacher, who have seen the world change and no longer are their lives about the Calling to lead and to minister, but about administering the survival of the institution. According to Judaism, there were anecdotes of people being resuscitated 36 even 48 hours after death, so a person's death was not considered hopeless until they had been buried 3 days. They had no means of refrigeration, or embalming,preservation, sickness and decay do have an odor, a stink of death. When a person died, they were not mummified, but rather with the washing of the body and anointing with oils for burial, the arms and legs and mouth were tied with bandages to prevent rigor-mortise constricting the muscles again. The face was wrapped in bandages to cover the person from others looking upon them, staring into their eyes. It was 100 degrees in a town outside Jerusalem, and Lazarus had been dead 4 days when Jesus arrived. Even Martha and Mary, who were as close to Jesus as Disciples, whom he loved like the family we claim, believed in Jesus as a Rabbi, a Teacher, that the resurrection was a philosophical concept, or prophecy of something to come. Jesus said to them: I AM. Jesus stood outside the tomb, seeing how people had shoved a rock in the opening of the earth, sealing away all smell and remembrance of the man buried. The paid mourners had scapegoated Lazarus, that if they could scream the loudest, if they could wail, they could give all the hate of death, all the anger at God, to this one buried. To which in frustration and remorse, and anger, Jesus shuddered and snorted. When a Stallion snorts, it is not simple breath but an all consuming ripple of life that consumes the horses being. I think that is what Jesus did in reaction to the stone, then to cry out COME OUT!