Ezekiel, Lazarus and the Paper ShredderPPT
“Ezekiel, Jesus, and the Paper Shredder” Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:17-45
SLIDE: (Show people in office shredding, copying etc.) A CEO was in the office late one evening, looking very nervous as he stood beside the paper shredder. “This is a very important, very sensitive document,” he told an employee. “Do you know how to work this thing?”
“Sure,” the employee responded, as he turned the shredder on.
And as he was putting the paper through the shredder, the CEO said, “Oh yes, just 3 copies please…”
THAT is a preacher’s nightmare – it makes me really nervous just to think about it. I can see my sermon being cut in shreds right before standing up to preach… How scary! Obviously, that important document didn’t belong in the paper shredder—it belonged in the copier!
(SLIDE: (pix of the following - Easter Egg Hunts, Easter baskets, candy etc… Palm Sunday parades…etc.) So here we are two Sundays before Easter. Some of us are beginning to anticipate the Easter egg hunts for the children and the nice clothes we might choose to wear on March 23, the candy and the baskets. Some of us are looking forward to the Palm Sunday Parade next week Some of us feel great relief now that the primaries in OH hare finally OVER… regardless of whether they went “our way” or not… And so we come into church this morning, in spite of the ice storm and snow this past week, feeling a little lighter … And what does the lectionary do? It starts us right off into a deep decent… SLIDE: (pix representing Holy Week events in Jesus’ life) right into the deep dark bowels of the Lenten journey – complete with all the lows of Holy Week – Maundy Thursday’s betrayal, Good Friday’s crucifixion, etc. All our upbeat feelings, if we have them, are abruptly replaced this morning with shock. The Scripture lessons, in a sense, put us through the shredder. We’re brought to difficult, painful places through these Scriptures, but it’s where we belong at this stage of Lent.
SLIDE: Both Jesus and the prophet Ezekiel take us to the Valley of dry bones.
SLIDE: (funny? toy skeleton picture) Now -- whenever I think of dry bones, whenever I hear this passage of Ezekiel two things come to mind. First off I remember that when I was child my brother tinkered around with doing magic tricks. And as part of his “show” he has a skeleton. I know now that it wasn’t a real skeleton. But as a little girl I didn’t. I remember being deathly afraid of going into a certain area of our attic because I just KNEW that skeleton was in there… And I really didn’t want that death rattling bunch of dried up bones to jump about at me. I can still see myself tiptoeing around that cubby hole where he stored his magic so as not to arouse to life that skeleton. SLIDE: (picture from Disney Halloween of the skeletons dancing) The 2nd thing that I think of is Disney’s Halloween with all those dancing skeletons. I’d bet our children watched that video a million times and could probably dance that dance of new life right along with them.
SLIDE: (Misc. slides of Ezekiel passage) In today’s OT lesson, Ezekiel is surrounded by many, many bones, and they are very, very dry. His presence there, so near to human remains, defiles him -- makes him unclean. God asks, “Son of Man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel looks out at this abundance of scattered bones, so dry because they’ve been lifeless for so long, baked by the desert sun. And in a pious evasion he says, “O Lord God, you know.” Some translators think he’s really thinking, “No way, Lord—this is long past hopeless.”
SLIDE: (Slides of the NT passage, Lazarus etc.) Next the Gospel reading takes us to a tomb. Jesus, we’re told, is late for the funeral—4 days late! One of his best friends, Lazarus, is dead and buried, and two more of his best friends, Mary and Martha, are doing what you and I sometimes do after someone we love dies: they’re torturing themselves over what could have been done differently. “If only we had done this…”, “If only he hadn’t gone there…” Jesus -- “If only you could have come sooner, Lord!”
But now, Jesus has finally made it – He’s there -- standing right in front of them. He’s not celebrating at a wedding; he’s not welcoming laughing children, He’s right there with his loved ones, in the presence of death so real and so strong that the despair was palpable – for all of them. And what does he do? He weeps right along with them. And that’s the shortest verse in the Bible… SLIDE: Jesus weeps. (either just put the words on the slide or a tasteful picture of him weeping, if findable)
Now notice something here, because it’s an important detail! The funeral was 4 days ago. You see, Jewish tradition believed that the spirit would hover around the tomb for 4 days, seeking an entrance again into the body. But after 4 days the spirit would leave—it was too late; the case was hopeless. So it was reasonable that Mary and Martha might have thought that had Jesus been there earlier, Lazarus might not be gone. In other words, if Jesus had come two days earlier, Lazarus’ body might not have been totally dry... might have really been in such early stages of going, that he wasn’t REALLY gone.
I took an anthropology class my freshman year in college. I loved it. I loved thinking about the possibilities of how humanity might have evolved. I loved thinking about taboos and traditions humans have held regarding death. And so I find the ancient Jewish traditions surrounding funerals fascinating and important. One of the interesting funeral customs of Jesus’ time was that after the funeral, 2 long lines were formed, and the family of the one who had died was asked to pass between the lines. The people in the lines weren’t allowed to speak—they were not to intrude on the family’s sorrow with uninvited chatter. But the lines were there to say, in a sense, “Know that you are not alone,” which is all that anyone really ought to say to a grieving person…
SLIDE: So why, this morning, do you think God’s Word bring us to these tragic scenes?? I think it’s deliberate – it’s meant as part of our Lenten descent into the hell of Holy Week. I think we’re supposed to be starting to think about death. After all, what’s new life and resurrection without death first?
SLIDE: Morrie Schwartz, the late professor of (picture of Mitch Albom, and/or “Tuesdays With Morrie”) had some wonderful conversations with his student in the book, Tuesdays with Morrie. Many of you, I am sure, have read the book. Several years ago, Larkin and I had the privilege of attending a fund raiser for a children’s shelter in MI where Mitch Albom spoke about his book and his experiences with Morrie. It was quite moving.
Morrie, you might remember, was dying of ALS, and he invited Albom to visit him each Tuesday, to talk about life…and death. Morrie began in their initial their visit by observing that our culture does not encourage us to think about death—to ask the questions: Is this all? Is this all I want in life? Is something missing?
Morrie said (and I will quote:) “Everyone knows that they are going to die, but no one believes it. If we did, we would do things differently. We would be prepared to die—we would focus on the essentials.” And then he summed it all up this way: SLIDE: “Learn to die and you learn how to live.” It seems to me that Morrie had a great deal of wisdom—wisdom that Jesus also had and wants us to have as well.
As you may remember from the reading, Jesus was actually late for the funeral on purpose. It was as if he wanted Mary and Martha – and us, I suppose -- to face the reality of death—to look at it square in the face before we could move beyond it. And then, as I said earlier, when Jesus finally arrived at the house of mourning, he wept.
Interestingly, the Greek word used here actually implies much more than that. It’s more like “Jesus groaned.” His spirit trembled within him; it was torn with anguish. This would have been shocking—even staggering—to those who first heard this story. Because by then, they were seeing that SLIDE: Jesus was surely divine… and as divine, they would’ve thought of him more as impassive, too powerful to be affected by emotion, too distant to feel our pain.
But the creedal formula hadn’t been completed yet – Jesus, as we know, is SLIDE: also human. So in this display of his very human emotion, he showing that God cares, that God is indeed with us in our deepest sorrow. He’s also showing, I’m afraid, that sorrow and death are realities we humans just have to face.
Master author and preacher SLIDE: (picture of) Barbara Brown Taylor puts it beautifully, but she admits that it’s a message that can empty a church out fast. She writes: “Hello. It is so lovely to see you here this morning. My message today will be brief and to the point. God is not in the business of protecting us from harm, and no amount of behavior will keep us safe. (For evidence of this, see the cross.)
“Instead, God is in the business of restoring us to life, which may involve some painful procedures. If we are willing to go through it and the operation is successful, our lives will not belong to us anymore. SLIDE: The message of the cross, you see, is about how to stop trying to make it in this world, and how to fall in love with God instead. It is about God’s power, not ours.”
Last week we read the 23rd Psalm, the well-known and well-loved verses that include: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Personally I sometimes think to myself when I hear or read that part of the psalm, “But please, Lord, let your rod and your staff keep me OUT of that valley of the shadow of death!”
So today’s truth is…that with Ezekiel standing on those old, dry bones, led there by God, and Jesus standing before his friend’s tomb, we are there, in the presence of death. And it’s not really so scary -- because God is there with us…and because out of all that death comes life. It’s not easy, today’s message. But the Lenten journey isn’t meant to be easy. Preachers aren’t supposed to make their congregations feel good during Lent. It would be nice -- I wish I could give everyone a card that says, “Go directly to eternal life, do not pass through death and do not collect pain.” But I can’t. That’s not the way it works. But, even in the midst of it, I can remind you of what happens at the end of Ezekiel’s walk through the valley, and what happens after Jesus’ tears.
SLIDE: (the pictures of the real Lazarus’ tomb in Bethany and the one with Lazarus as he would be in it.) If you go to Lazarus’ tomb in Bethany today, you can buy a ticket and climb in. The only problem is that to get out you need to be a bit of a gymnast. There’s only one way to do it: head first, with your upper body out while your feet are still finding the three small steps—looking up as you straighten up, trying not to scrape your back.
So Lazarus DIDN’T come out of the tomb (as we probably imagine it) like a man walking out of prison. He came out like a baby being born again—first his poor wrapped face, and then his bandaged hands, and finally his feet.
And that’s the rest of the story: SLIDE: new life. Life that’s different because it has tasted of death… Life that knows death and so it knows what’s really important in life… Life that’s free of worrying about what other people think, free of sweating the small stuff, and full of purpose because we’re focused on bigger and better things. Morrie Schwartz said that kind of SLIDE: life is focused on offering others what we have to give, and that’s what makes for a satisfying life!
If you’ve ever talked to or read about someone who says they’ve medically died and been resuscitated, what they say is often this… That their lives have been changed -- turned around, and that their purpose for living is altogether new. And that’s what makes for satisfying life. Ezekiel and Lazarus teach us also about death and life… that they exist side by side, that both are realities, they are connected. They also teach us that God CARES.
SLIDE: (picture) Winston Churchill, when he was alive, prepared for his own funeral, as many people do. He wrote down some careful plans, so that when it happened, things were ready. The service was held in Westminster Abbey. At the top of the Abbey’s giant dome stood two buglers. As the service began one bugler played taps, in slow, mournful notes. Then, when he finished, the other played “Reveille”—“wake up.” It was a reminder of the truth of the resurrection.
Just as today, going through Ezekiel’s valley, and standing before the tomb, reminds us of that same truth -- the truth of the resurrection -- not by avoiding death, but by going right through it.
Jesus said, SLIDE: “I am the resurrection and the life.” Not: “I will give you the resurrection and the life,” but “I AM.”
In other words, Jesus is saying: “I AM the resurrection and the life, now, and so connected to me nothing can touch you, ultimately. Nothing can break that relationship or snatch that life” – nothing -- not even the SLIDE: (picture of a paper shredder! With a BIG RED “X” through it)