Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

March 9, 2008

Ezekiel 37:1–14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6–11
John 11:1–45
Year A
I.N.I. (In the name of Jesus)

People in the U.S. are living longer than ever. I’ll be fifty in two and half years, which to me seems really old, but you know what they say, fifty is the new forty!

I read a comic strip last week where a man was standing in front of a tombstone, and spoke to it. His remark was morose and funny, as he said presumably to the corpse in the ground: Dead is the new 80.

It’s pretty well-established that we live in a time where people do everything they can to defer, deny, and defy death.

For example, I know of a cosmetics’ line that’s called age-defying.

Through surgery and weight-loss programs, you can look ten years’ younger, or take years off your life.

Mid-life crises are storied with men applying Grecian Formula to take the grey out of their hair, buying a Mazda Miata, or having a fling with a woman half their age.

When I was in sixth grade, I remember puzzling about the inevitability of death with my friend Kenny Sayward. I probably spoke about heaven. Kenny, on the other hand, held out hope that our own mortality could be avoided through some kind of medical miracle within our lifetimes.

Here, in church, with all those from every time and every place that give witness to Jesus Christ, we speak freely about death, his death. We celebrate it, even. We proclaim Christ crucified and risen. We pledge our allegiance to a dead guy. Are we nuts, or what?

In the weeks leading up to today, we have heard of the great signs chronicled in John that flare up like pop-ups on your computer screen: changing water into wine, restoring sight to the man born blind, and today a story about a dead man named Lazarus, F.O.J., friend of Jesus.

By now, Jesus is pretty well set up for Jerusalem. Right after Jesus raises Lazarus, those around plot to kill Jesus. In the very next chapter, he is anointed by Mary in Bethany. And after that makes his entry into Jerusalem with the crowds shouting Hosanna to the Son of David. His way to the cross gets ramped up pretty quickly, even as we will follow that way next Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, with our own symbolic entrance into Jerusalem, our own contemplation of God’s mighty acts through Jesus.

So in the gospel, while Jesus is all for bringing Lazarus back from the dead, Jesus himself is heading to die, his last and ultimate sign.

While Jesus was moved to release Lazarus from his tomb, he might as well have said. “Hey, Lazarus, move over! I’m coming in!”

Jesus’ own great act, his last sign, is a life or death matter. Rather, it’s a life and death matter.

It is as if that by removing the burial cloths from Lazarus, Jesus is inviting us who are hearing the story to think differently about death. Like with the woman at the well we are asked to think differently about living water. Like with the man born blind are asked to think differently about seeing.

If Luther is right, as he says in his catechism, that in Baptism we have enough to study and practice our entire life, then we are taking on a study and a practice of dying.

We all have to face our own death and dying, just as Lazarus also had to do. In our baptism, though, we are invited to a second death. This second death is like Jesus’ own on the cross, in that it brings resurrection to the life that lasts. In baptism, we are given new breath through the Holy Spirit that Jesus gives out on the cross, and after his resurrection.

While many defer, deny, and defy death, we who share company with the baptized include Jesus’ death into our own biographies, and our own epitaphs: “died with Christ, and raised with Christ.”

What does it mean to you, then to have Christ in you? What does it mean to you, then to be led to a new way of seeing death, and life?

For Ezekiel, he was given the vision of the Spirit bring a dead, or exiled Israel back to life. For Lazarus, and his sisters Mary and Martha, they were given a glimpse into the eternity brought near by Christ.

For us, the baptismal life may simply mean living with the gift of this day, and the gift of community with those who receive the cross as mystery and life-giving.

For us, the baptismal life may mean getting off the track of fleeing or denying death, and if not exactly embracing death, allowing it to provide meaning and a sense of God.

Poet Jane Kenyon died in April 1995 of cancer diagnosed in 1994. Earlier than that, she wrote a poem that offers attention to a day, a good day, while acknowledging that one day such days will no longer exist. Do you think that this poem enables you to give thanks for life, to acknowledge baptisms’ plunge in death, which brings us to life with God?

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

(quoted in Receiving the Day, by Dorothy Bass. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., © 2000, pp 42-43)

Dear friends: I invite you with me to become unbound by all the deaths that hinder our really living, and enter into the fullness of the baptismal life, with the cross of Christ as our salvation, and the resurrection of Christ as our hope.

As Luther said, we have plenty to study and practice.


I.N.I.

The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
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