Lent puts us face to face with death.
On Ash Wednesday
at the beginning of Lent
we are told
“Remember you are dust
and to dust you shall return.”
Lent confronts us with death.
It reminds us that death is part of the reality of life.
We try and pretend that it's not.
It's not that we don't face death,
it's on our TVs,
it's always staring back at us from the pages of our newspapers,
but
in a sense
it's never really death,
or at least,
it's never death
in the way that Scripture describes it,
death that is
the denial of life
the denial of being human
the denial of God
and God-givenness ...
We know that death takes away life.
Most of us have experienced it,
felt the tear,
the ache,
when a life that we once knew,
when a person we once loved
and who loved us
is gone.
We know that ...
But perhaps what we don't know,
or don't get,
at least not so well,
is that death stalks our lives.
It is an ever-present shadow,
cast over life,
that its power of denial
is not just there when we physically
cease to breathe,
but is always there
sucking out the energy
the spirit of life,
denying all that is God-given
about us,
about others,
about life.
Death is not just post-mortem,
it is ante-mortem,
it is here and now
and we have felt it.
We have felt it
when our hopes have been dashed,
when our dreams have faded,
when life seems to have lost its
colour,
vitality,
possibility,
and day after day we don't live
we just
try and get through
but we wonder what for
who for.
When the Bible says that we were dead,
it means that we were alive,
and yet
life was denied,
there was a denial
of life,
of what it means to be human,
to be divine image-bearers;
a denial of God,
of God-givenness.
Lent confronts us with death
and nowhere does Scripture picture that
as vividly
as desperately
as hopelessly
as in Ezekiel's vision....
Our reading from Ezekiel
is a stark, unflinching, horrific
picture of death.
A graveyard of bones.
This is humanity’s fate.
This is a picture of a dead people.
A people without life and without hope for life.
This is Israel.
A nation conquered, its city and temple destroyed.
It’s people exiled. It’s faith nullified.
The exile looms large in the story, life and faith of Israel.
Israel had failed.
They took their freedom as God’s people for granted,
freedom to behave as they liked,
and the military power of Babylon beats them to the ground
and carts many of them off in a (new) set of chains
to a foreign land.
This story of Israel, this experience of Israel
is the story and experience of all of humanity
says the gospel.
Our story is one of failure.
one of freedom exchanged from chains,
one of life given over to death.
Paul says
the sinful mind is hostile to God,
unable to please God (Rom 8.7-8).
The message of Lent is not an easy one to hear.
It says the reality is death
and we are unable to do anything about it.
Stanley Hauerwas says of our culture, it is one
in denial about death and determined to develop
technologies, in the hope that
we can get out of live alive.*
For Christians, in the season of Lent,
that kind of illusion is well and truly shattered.
There is no possibility for denial,
we are confronted with dead, dry bones.
Dead.
God says to Ezekiel,
“Can these bones live?”
The answer is no.
No they cannot.
No medicine, no surgery, no drug,
no treatment can make these bones live.
We have no resources to reverse death.
We can do nothing.
But … oh yes, there is a but …
But God.
“Can these bones live?”
God can give an answer.
Lent if anything seeks to confront us with
our mortality,
our sinfulness,
our inability to free ourselves
in order that we might yet again
see, receive and embrace
the grace of God
the power of God
the gift of new life in God in Christ.
God resolves not leave us
in despair,
in chains,
in deadness.
Lent invites us to see God as life-giver
and saviour.
Just as God breathed life into humanity at creation (Gen 2.7),
so he breathes life into these dead bones.
The deadness of the bones
is countered by the repeated use of the term
‘ruach’ meaning breath, wind, spirit:
meaning life.
God says
I will make breath enter you
I will attach tendons
I will make flesh
I will cover you with skin
I will put breath in you (Ezek 37.5-6)
In our deadness,
God acts to rescue, free, save, resurrect,
to give the life-giving gift of his Spirit.
‘God demonstrates his own love for us
while we were still sinners’ (Rom 5.8)
Don’t underestimate sin,
sin is deadly,
but don’t underestimate grace,
grace is lively!
This rescue of God
the resurrection of a people declared dead
is not something that is otherworldly,
is not something that is beyond history,
God’s announcement to Ezekiel
is about homecoming,
the people being raised up and returning home.
It is about God working newness in history.
It is about ‘death being undone’ **
It is about the power of the Spirit
to connect us together with Christ.
It is to say that 'whilst we live in Lent,
God wills Easter'. ***
So where we see dry bones,
God wills that we see Spirit-created life …
Lent is the church’s reminder
of our mortality –
that we are dying,
this world is dying,
it is unavoidable, unescapable –
don’t get to thinking otherwise.
And yet Lent is always going somewhere,
it is not a permanent existence.
It is not always Lent, like it was always winter
in C.S. Lewis’ Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe.
Sin and Death to not have that kind of power,
there is a deeper magic, a deeper power at
work.
‘Can these bones live?’ Ezekiel is asked.
‘Who will rescue me from this body of death?’
asks the apostle Paul (Rom 7.24).
God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit
will see death undone, and resurrection begin,
will see that Lent is ended, and Easter begin,
will see that God wills not our end,
but our new creation.
* Stanley Hauerwas, The Cross-Shattered Church, p.87.
** ibid, p.87.
*** Nathan Rauh, ‘Double Vision’
(The first section of this sermon was helped by my friend Ashley Lovett)
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