The Narrow Gate

Welcome to the continuation of my blog, post-seminary. Ministry and evangelism have brought me back home to Chattanooga. I welcome your company on my journey.

The original blog, Down In Mississippi, shared stories from 2008 and 2009 of the hope and determination of people in the face of disaster wrought by the hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005, of work done primarily by volunteers from churches across America and with financial support of many aid agencies and private donations and the Church. My Mississippi posts really ended with the post of August 16, 2009. Much work, especially for the neediest, remained undone after the denominational church pulled out. Such is the nature of institutions. The world still needs your hands for a hand up. I commend to you my seven stories, Down in Mississippi I -VII, at the bottom of this page and the blog posts. They describe an experience of grace.



Thursday, April 6, 2017

Day 1578 – Don’t Weep for Me

A sermon shared with First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN, April 2, 2017


Certainly no generation in the United States born since World War II, if not since the revolutionary era, can understand the pathos of the Hebrews evoked by Ezekiel’s fantastic vision in the desert. Our generations have never seen true, total loss of freedom, national and religious identity, whether we use these words in a governmental or national sense, or in the sense of losing one’s life for clinging to religious liberty. Certainly, soldiers have died in Viet Nam and in the conflicts in the Middle East - and we have victims of terrorism - but none of these have ever approached any real threat to freedom and nation. We have yet to see the armed forces of a foreign power stationed in our land.
This makes it difficult to have any appreciation for the national and religious loss of freedom and life of Israel and Judah that Ezekiel describes. We have at best only an imaginary taste of the predicament, perhaps partially communicated by the hymn By the Babylonian Waters a rendering of Psalm 137. We have little appreciation of the predicament in which faith is the only hope for restoration.
Ezekiel and John come together on this very subject of restoration and new life. It is what caused Jesus to weep, but do we have even a sense of the restoration that Jesus brings to life?
Imagine this vision, one of many brought by God to Ezekiel as a message to Judah languishing in Babylonian captivity. Standing in the shimmering dry heat of the desert he sees an entire valley of bones, desiccated and dry. Every piece of flesh has been stripped by desert carrion eaters and flies, even the sinews that hold joints together are gone and the bones lie loosely in piles. Perhaps a solitary fly buzzes about. It would be the only life among this valley of dead, dry bones. The heart of Israel lies in these bones; the life of Abraham and Isaac, the oppression in Egypt, Moses leading the Hebrews to the promised land, Elijah riding the chariot to heaven, and all the lament and joyful songs in the Psalms. They are all dry, dead memories among these bleached white, dry bones. This is the image in the Judeans minds living in Babylon, the devastating loss of every part of life that questions the heart of the covenant of steadfast love between God and Israel.
This is the despair that confronts us in the face of death, knowing by all logic that nothing returns after passing that wall separating life and death, existence and nothingness. Do you remember the lament of Job, “Would that we were like the tree that is cut down. Even though its stump dies, from its roots it sprouts again when the rain comes.” Surely this is the nadir of despair.
 “Can these bones live?” Unless the answer is “yes” the covenant between Israel and God now invalid, yet the separation from that covenant must have seemed insurmountable. The promise of the steadfast love of God for Israel and these dry bones returning to dust is gone forever.
In a fantastic scene no one can possibly believe, the Lord commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, “Here the Word of the Lord,” and they begin to reassemble and take on flesh. Then, the Lord breathes the breath of life into them and they take on new life, standing “as a vast multitude of Israel, lamenting their fate.” Then the magnitude of the desolation is evident, an entire nations hearing the Lord say, …”O my people; … I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act.”
The reliability of God’s covenant is the heart of this dream. It is a promise, as Israel should clearly know even in despair, that exceeds everything in the realm of human possibility. In the same unbelievable way, the entry of Jesus into the world extends, or consummates this covenant of restoration to Abraham and World.
Although I said we have little or no appreciation for the spiritual and physical devastation that Israel and Judah experienced, we do face death. Ezekiel’s message becomes a foretaste of the glory Jesus reveals in this story of Lazarus to the world.
In the gospel of John, the writer sees the acts of Jesus revealing his divine character as signs that instill faith in those who believe. They are akin to Ezekiel’s divine visions. Raising Lazarus before entering Jerusalem for the last time is the final sign of Jesus.
He has just left Jerusalem and disbelieving Jews asked how long was he going to wait to tell them he is the Messiah. His reply, “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one,” so enraged the questioners that they tried to stone Jesus. Now after Lazarus they will seek to do worse, but it is not his time, yet. So, Jesus left Jerusalem crossing the Jordan River into Galilee.
Now that Jesus is back in the desert again, I hope you recall that Jesus was a sojourner in every sense of the word. His true home is with God, not this earth. He lamented that there is no place for the son of man to rest his head. Jesus relied greatly on the hospitality of friends in his journey on earth, magnifying the second great commandment.
Jesus receives a desperate message from the one family that has sheltered him with hospitality on his sojourn, . Lazarus, “he whom you love is ill,Lazarus, is on the verge of death.
It is easy to understand that he loved them for their care. Mary is the woman who anointed his head with the expensive perfume. Why else would he leave the relative safety of the desert to return to Bethany, 2 mi from Jerusalem to risk stoning?  But why wait so long that he ensures Lazarus dies?
Although Martha and Mary chastise Jesus for coming so late that Lazarus dies, Jesus makes the reason clear to his disciples that this is his final sign. He tells Martha, “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Do you believe this?
Do you recall the valley of the dry bones?
Recall from last week, we heard about that man who was blind from birth so that God’s works might be revealed in him. He was given sight as a sign that Jesus is the Light of the world. John has linked the blind man and Lazarus to the message Jesus is light and life.
By now in 2017 after, what, 17 years of seeing all the news on TV about Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere, you may begin to understand Semitic grief. People wail loudly, they cry profusely, tear their clothes, shake ashes on themselves and beat their breasts. Grief is not hidden as is usual in the West. And among all this wailing, even by the visitors, Jesus is struck by anger (he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.) and weeps at the face of the tomb.
Now we come to the question. Why was he angry, why did he weep? Was it compassion for Martha and Mary, the loss of his beloved friend Lazarus, or that he could have come before Lazarus died? Could it be that he weeps knowing this sign of resurrection to new life will seal his own death since he knows the religious leaders will decide to kill Jesus because so many believed after this healing?
Perhaps he wept for the family of all humanity that he loves as dearly as Lazarus, as Ezekiel may have wept over that valley of dry bones of Israel? After all, the people of Israel as is all humanity were broken by sin. Sin is a sickness beyond the Law that can be healed only by what is revealed on the cross. Death has no victory. The resurrection seals this covenant for all history and all humanity.
Or is Jesus angry at death itself for another reason? I think we underestimate Jesus sometimes. On the one hand we cannot appreciate the true magnitude of his acts without understanding him as a man, but we have the tendency to see him in too human terms, here weeping with Mary over the death of Lazarus, or over Mary and Martha. There is something bigger going on here than human compassion.
Even here among the mourners, people mock Jesus, “If he healed the blind man why couldn’t he keep Lazarus alive?” This is the key and an omen for his coming time in Jerusalem.
Remember resurrection represents something quite different than just being brought back to life. Jesus makes it very clear in his teaching that faith in Jesus causes us to embrace a new life instantly. It is a life of repentance. Repentance means “to turn away, or in a new direction away from old ways.” Jesus makes it very clear that the instance of repentance requires faith and is an immediate transformation into a new life.
There will be that final day when Jesus returns, but don’t wait for that day for a new life. A new life in the present is the reality of a repenting soul.
Something bigger is going on. What did Jesus ask Mary?  Do you believe your brother will rise again?” Mary replied, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” She states the common understanding that at the end of time we are all raised up. She is thinking in terms of the end of time and misses what Jesus means.
Jesus is weeping and angry because everyone is lamenting death as the end of life regardless that all along he has been saying, “I am the light and life and … everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus is angry at death itself because death seduces us, or more accurately, strikes overpowering fear in our hearts of our human end - even for the faithful who hear him proclaim the end of death, “we will never die.”
Do you believe this?...
That’s the question Jesus asked.

Jesus proclaims the message that everlasting life is the same thing on both sides of the grave. That is the whole meaning of repentance in John. Repentance is the joy of embracing a new life. When you say, “I believe,” are you setting out on a new adventure living a life where death has no sting, there are no dry bones? Make the best of this blessing of life with the goal to live it the way Jesus lived it ,now and forevermore.

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