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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
Excuse me. By show of hands, how many of you are longtime Episcopalians like me? Only a few? Okay. So, longtime Episcopalians, I need you to turn to your neighbor and say neighbor. And say neighbor. I'm sorry. I am so sorry that for the third week in a row we have heard the absolute longest Gospels we are alloyed to hear throughout the lectionary. My goodness. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love some scripture, but stand up there and try to read the whole thing. All right. As I reflect on the Gospel readings, though, for this Lent, if I had to pick a theme, I would say they offer hope. It is what is supposed to be this Lenten season, the season of repent, the season where we try to draw near to God. The readings this Lent, especially the Gospel readings, have been all about hope. Now, let's recap. On the first Sunday in Lent, we heard Matthew's telling of Jesus going into the wilderness to be tempted. He resists the accuser's temptations, and the reading ends with the angels coming to wait on Jesus. Then we move to the Gospel of John, and we start in Chapter 15. Jesus telling the disciples how much He loves them, and how He chose them, saying, quote, you did not choose me, but I chose you, and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so the Father will give you whatever you ask Him in my name. We then jump to the first of our very long Gospel readings, John, Chapter 4, Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. After a long conversation in which Jesus tells her everything that she ever did, she becomes an evangelist for Jesus. She runs and tells everyone in her town about Jesus calling Him the Messiah, and Jesus and the disciples spend two days there preaching and teaching, telling them the good news, and offering the Samaritans offering them hope. Next, we get Jesus and the blind man, Jesus restoring His sight, the blind man trying to convince the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders of the day, that Jesus is a man of God offering hope to us because only a man of God could have healed Him. That brings us to today, John, Chapter 11. Jesus and Lazarus, a story I am sure you are all familiar with, but I want to start, however, with our Ezekiel reading, perhaps one of the most well-known prophecies from the Old Testament. Now, let me give you a little bit of background on Ezekiel. Ezekiel takes place during the First Babylonian Exile. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has conquered the Jewish Kingdom and forced many of the Jewish leaders, including King Jehoiachin, easy for me to say, and the prophet Ezekiel into exile in Babylon. Exile implores the Jewish people to keep their faith, to not worship the gods of Babylon or other idols, but his prophecies go ignored. God shows Ezekiel the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, where the Israelites at the time believed God lived. God dwelled in the temple, so many found it hard to worship God in a foreign land. Ezekiel continues to remind the Israelites, however, of the covenant God made with them and warns of the pain that will come if they turn away from God. But his prophecies go ignored. God even shows Ezekiel the destruction of the temple of God's house. When Ezekiel tells the people of this prophecy, again, he is ignored. And then it happens. King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians destroy the temple, and the people lose what little hope they had. How can we worship the one true God whose house is destroyed? How can we worship a God who falls to an earthly king again and again, although Ezekiel causes people to turn back to God, that God has not left them. He goes so far as to cut off all his hair, which I don't know why the people think it's odd. I mean, I think bald is sexy. So, you know. The people, the Israelites, they've lost all hope. They wallow in despair. They turn to idols and foreign gods. They hit their low point. And that brings us to today's passage where God shows Ezekiel a vision. God reveals to him a valley full of dry bones meant to represent the current state of Israel. The land is desolate. The scene is pretty grim. But God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones to bring them back to life, to offer them hope that God will indeed restore them. The passage is meant to evoke the creation story from Genesis 2, where God forms us from dust and breathes the life-giving spirit in us. As Bible scholar Colin Cornell puts it, quote, the prophet Ezekiel accesses this creation memory in order to declare the sheer divine source of Israel's hope. The Lord alone can replace one heart with another and put flesh on dry bones. The Lord alone can gift breath or spirit. The Lord alone makes the earth livable. The Lord alone can take a scattered, demoralized creation and bring them home. What we see here is God meeting Israel in its despair, at its lowest point, and offering the hope that can only come from the divine. And this is where Jesus meets Mary and Martha. They send word to him that his friend, the one whom he loves, is ill. And yet Jesus does not rush to Bethany. Instead, he stays where he is for a couple of days. And as we know, Lazarus dies. When Jesus sees the grief of Mary and Martha, he also weeps. Jesus wept. For me, this is one of the most powerful lines in scripture. Even our Lord, our Messiah, our Savior was so human that he wept at the loss of his friend. But that despair does not last. Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb. He restores his friend and reminds Mary and Martha that he is the resurrection. He is the life. So where does that leave us today? It's easy for me to stand up here and remind you that God's hope is all around us and in us. And y'all, I get it. The world plain sucks right now. Useless wars, genocide, the ignoring of God's command to treat the immigrant as our neighbor, gas approaching $4 a gallon, houses of worship under attack, school shootings, food insecurities. I can go on all morning. But we are called to stand in God's hope. We are called to be the hope for one another. Because, Rez, when I lose hope, when I feel the despair, it is your hope, actually, that reminds me God is with me in my pain, in my struggle. The love and kindness that I see you show one another and your neighbor, the fellowship and faithfulness you show to each other, the hope you shine, even in this dark world, Rez, that is what gives me hope. It is my prayer that we all remember that God is with us and in us, that Jesus redeems us, and I pray, I pray that you never, ever forget that. To paraphrase our psalm for today, I wait for the Lord. My soul waits for him. In his word is my hope. With him, there is plenteous redemption. He shall redeem us from all our sins. And may it be so. Amen.