Lent 5 Hope in the darkest hour

EZEKIEL 37: 1-14 John 11: 1-45

I found a story that I liked only yesterday. It’s about a man who had just moved to a new city. Sat in a taxi, he was looking for somewhere that would be good for dinner. Leaning forward, he tapped the driver and said, “Hey mate!” - only for the driver to let out a blood curdling scream followed by his losing control of the vehicle which in the next few moment almost hit a bus, jumped the curb and stopped only inches from the window of a crowded restaurant. After a prolonged silence in which all that could be heard was two hearts beating like base drums, the driver turned around and said;

“Man you scared the living daylights out of me!”

The passenger who was still in a state of shock replied;

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise tapping you on the shoulder would scare you so badly.”

Quickly the driver explained;

“Well, it’s not your fault. This is my first day driving a taxi. For the past 25 years I’ve been driving a hearse.”


Today as approach Easter, we are reminded of the reality of the shadow side of life. Ant timely that is for our faith has to take seriously the dark realities of life if it is to be real. Sure we can rejoice as we shall do on Easter Day but many a time of rejoicing can only come after times of darkness and even despair.

Ezekiel certainly knew about the dark side of life. After all this priestly prophet was living through what many felt to be a time of calamity. Jerusalem had been destroyed and many of its more able people such as Ezekiel himself were living in distant exile in Babylon far from what they knew best and cherished most. All around him the temptation to give up was at its greatest. And yet this prophet sought to communicate a message that all was not lost. For God would never abandon his people and despite all that had happened could be trusted. Despite the past, and Ezekiel had plenty to say about that, there was still a future to look forward to.

Part of this vision of hope is to be found in the vision of the valley of dry bones. The valley envisaged may well have been an actual battle site from one of the battles that had reduces the people to such a sorry state. What matters from the vision is that these unburied bones are as dead as dead can possibly be. They are caput - finished! There is no reason to place any hope in them. And yet through the Spirit, these bones are enabled to rise up, find life and renewed purpose.

What is the vision all about? Quite simply Ezekiel is proclaiming the message that the shattered defeated people of Israel who are as finished as dry dead bones, may experience a new life - a new life not rooted in anything special about them but rooted in the purposes of God. The God who will raise Jesus from the dead, the God who will equip that motley group of Galilean followers of Jesus for mission, the God who today empowers the church of Christ - that God brings new hope and life to a people who have sunk into despair and who are to all intents and purposes dead. And perhaps we need to engage ourselves with that vision of Ezekiel when we are tempted to lose hope for our world.

And then from John’s Gospel we find that familiar story of the raising of Lazarus. Here we find a foretaste of the resurrection of Christ. Listen for a moment to those words of Jesus when Martha rebukes him for not coming quicker;

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

This, the sixth of John’s seven signs that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, shows Jesus possessing Divine power over the greatest of humankind’s enemies, death itself. Certainly John’s narrative points to Lazarus being very much dead. And one day he would be again. But Jesus is here revealed as the one who is able to bring new life from death in these sense here of bringing a man back to life just as in his hands as we die to what we have been he is able to make us into new creations that will reflect his love in a way that we could not have previously envisaged. For the time for being born from above is not at the moment of our physical death but here and now. As Lindy Black puts it so eloquently, it is a case of;

“From womb to tomb and vice versa!”

This morning we are reminded of the shadow side of life with all its pain. More of it we will see in the hatred and violence that leads to Good Friday. And if we are to be real, there is no way that we can ignore the darkness. And yet it cannot be the whole picture for in those moments of our greatest helplessness, God is weaving exciting possibilities of new beginnings. Today we see those new beginnings being dreamt of within a vanquished humiliated nation and in coming to fruition in a corpse that is especially mourned by two sisters. Why? It all boils down to the Divine love that wills only the best for us. We have seen it in Jesus of Nazareth bringing new life for all manner of people in Galilee through healings and the granting a new sense of their value. This is what the Kingdom of God is all about. As former Roman Catholic priest John Dominic Crossan puts it;

“Life out of death is how the people would have understood the Kingdom of God, in which Jesus helps them to take back control over their own bodies, hopes and their own destinies.”

Indeed! Life out of death! And that we shall see afresh as we enter into the Easter story and find once more of death being unable to hold back the new life embodied in Jesus - the new life that is the source of all our hope


GAMMATON METHODIST CHURCH Sunday March 9th 2008

Opening story comes from Billy Strayhorn