Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken, and I have done it, says the LORD."
Today's Song of Praise is taken from Psalm 130 (De Profundis):
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
LORD, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
LORD, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the LORD.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
For with the LORD is kindness
and with him is plenteous redemption;
And he will redeem Israel
from all their iniquities.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Today's Epistle is from the Letter of Paul to the Romans, beginning at the 8th Chapter, and the 11th Verse (Romans 8:8-11):
And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.
+ A Reading from the Gospel of John, beginning at the 11th Chapter, and the 1st Verse (John 11:1-45):
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it."
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go into Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?" Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him."
The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover." Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world." When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying quietly, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.
Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."
Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?"
So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him;
Now, Lazarus had had
a REALLY bad day -- things were definitely looking
down. You can't get much downer than dead.
But the Lord -- Our Lord, Jesus Christ -- raised him up. Didn't matter that he'd been down for 4 days or so, or that things were getting a tad smelly around the tomb. Didn't matter that everyone, including his sisters, had given up on him. God didn't.
When Jesus did his thing -- saying: "Lazarus, you quit lolly-gagging, and come on out of there!" -- everybody started running around,waving their hands, and crying "Miracle, miracle!", just like it had never happened before, and they'd never heard of such a thing. Pretty much like a bunch of National Enquirer subscribers, really.
Shouldn't have been surprised -- in 1 Kings 17, Elijah raises a child from the dead and returns him to his mother. Being Jewish, all those people rushing around and halooing were supposed to know and love the Word of the Lord, and the Books of Kings had been around for almost 1,000 years by then. Other people had gotten raised from the dead by the power of the Lord, too -- which they'd have know if they paid attention to Scripture, like they were supposed to.
In today's first reading, Ezekiel, speaking from Exile in Babylon, delivers the Lord's prophecy that he will open his people's graves, raise them from their graves, put His spirit (literally, "breath") within them, and make them live. Can't get much clearer or more specific than that.
That's the literal interpretation, of course -- we read the Bible first for what the words actually say, and then for the allegorical and prophetic meanings below the surface. Ezekiel here is using figurative language -- the "graves" and the "death" that the Lord was going to raise his people Israel from in his time were the Babylonian Captivity -- they had been a generation and more in bondage, cut off from their own, Promised, land -- cut off from their history, deprived of the Temple in Jerusalem, dead to their ancestors who rest in the soil of Israel.
They cry with the Psalmist: "Out of the depths..." (In Latin, "De Profundis...") They cry for their lost homeland, their lost glory, their lost Temple. Ezekiel speaks with the voice of the Lord, and gives them hope -- "...I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken, and I have done it..."
Sin, also, is a death and an exile -- a spiritual one -- a choosing of the grave and hopelessness over our true homeland, which is with God. St. Paul talks about this in the Epistle today -- again using figurative language.
He says: "...those who are in the flesh cannot please God." What is this "flesh"?
It is not the literal flesh -- bone and blood and nerves -- but that which is corruptible. All physical flesh corrupts and dies and returns to the dust from which it sprang up. There is moral and spiritual corruption and death, too -- as well as the physical.
He also says: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies..." What is this "spirit"?
It is both the individual soul, which inhabits the physical body, and the Mystery of the Eternal -- God himself, His life-giving breath -- which exists outside of our merely 3-1/2 dimensional world. It is at once the center of our life, and the Power of His -- come together.
What Paul is saying is that those who dwell in the flesh -- make impermanent, corruptible things the center of their lives, the meaning of them -- will surely die, succumb to corruption, and disintegrate into unremembered dust. But that those who make their dwelling in the Spirit will have the everlasting life of the Spirit with God.
Let us pray, therefore, that we will each have the wisdom -- and the Grace -- to seek the dwelling place of the Spirit, and not molder in the tomb of the corruptible . . .
In the Name of the Father + And of the Son + And of the Holy Spirit + Amen.