Life
It would
be easy this week to again be like Nicodemus and get stuck on the details of
the stories, and miss the truth being offered through the stories. It is easy
to just see Ezekiel and his prophecy around the valley of dead bones and
Lazarus being raised from the dead as great miracles and precursors to Christ’s
resurrection. But more than this is on offer.
We
are invited this week to join the Samaritan woman who with Mary and Martha found
the deeper truth on the offer here, the offer of eternal life. This is not
living forever in the clouds with God but is about the quality of life in the
here and now. For the Samaritan woman it was offered as living water, as
opposed to the ordinary water of her life. For Mary and Martha it was
represented as living life rather than the ordinary lives they lived. For all
three the way to this life was totally trusting and being loyal to Jesus (belief).
Howard
Wallace offers us these thoughts.
“Today’s gospel reading, the
story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45), has obvious and clear parallels
to the Ezekiel passage. But while there are parallels there are also
differences. The Ezekiel story is symbolic of the way God can restore a
disheartened and oppressed people from hopelessness (from the ‘grave’) to a new
and better existence. Ezekiel’s story stands as a forerunner of later passages
in the Old Testament (e.g. Daniel 12) which do speak about resurrection, but
Ezekiel’s thinking is not there yet. On the other hand John’s Gospel wants to
make it clear that resurrection comes through Jesus Christ, ‘the resurrection
and the life’ (John 11:25). Together, they challenge our thinking about the
full significance of resurrection in Jesus Christ. Resurrection is not simply a
matter of being raised from the dead, and in Lazarus’ case it is a unique case
for presumably Lazarus would have died again at some later time. Resurrection
is not simply concerned with the ‘after life’ but with the raising of broken
spirits, of bodies as good as dead, of hearts that lack strength and courage,
of communities that are fractured, of relationships that have waned or become
fractious, of peoples who have lost hope etc. While Ezekiel’s vision may not
have direct connection to resurrection in the way we might normally see it, it
does remind us that the resurrection that is in Jesus Christ and the risen life
in him reaches to this side of the grave too giving new life and hope where
there has been only ‘dry bones’ in the past.”[1]
Where
our gospel reading finishes today, and all the stories it misses out getting to
this point leaves us feeling that this life is all about happiness. But if we
were to read on from our gospel reading or read the stories between this weeks
and last week’s reading we would find a growing tension between the Judean authorities
(called the Jews in our translation, and referring mainly to the Priests and
scribes) and Jesus. The raising of Lazarus is the last straw for them. This act
is the launching point for the relentless movement towards Jesus’ arrest, trial,
torture, brutal execution and burial in a tomb. Eternal life is not all milk
and honey. Trust and loyalty can be very hard.
Paul
in his letter to the Romans talks about the temptation to try and gain this
life, to live this life in our own strength and our own uprightness and obedience.
If we are just good enough then it will happen. Paul says it will not happen. This
life is only available when we are willing to receive the divine intervention
of love in our lives. He suggests that with this love we are able to begin to
face who we truly are, both the good and the bad. As we face our shadows in
this love we are invited to know that we do not need to be good or worthy
enough. God receives us as we are, and invites us into this life. Then our dry
bones can receive life.
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