Open your graves
A grave is a place of loss and finality. We’ve stood at
grave sides and mourned the “passing” of someone. They have gone. We will not
see them again. For those close to the deceased person there is a terrible
emptiness. For those with no sense of life after death the loss is a
meaningless enigma. John, in his gospel, gives us a dramatic story of the death
and mourning for Lazarus. The tomb is sealed with a large stone. The body is
decaying inside.
We know what happens next. The sisters of Lazarus know Jesus
and call him. He delays but eventually comes and orders the grave opened and
raises Lazarus to life. Other gospels tell us of other people raised from the
dead but this one is sensational. The body has been in the tomb for four days. But
it doesn’t make a dent in the Jewish leaders’ firm resolve to get rid of Jesus
and they “decided to kill Lazarus as well.” (John 12:10)
We are not talking here about physical graves. John, in his
gospel, is much more interested in the grave where the Jews buried their hopes
for a new Israel. They could not bring themselves to welcome the promised
Messiah. His coming was not to their liking. He was going to disturb
everything. They did not want an Israel fashioned according to the reign of
God. They buried that and sealed the grave not with the hardness of cement but with
the hardness of their hearts. It is a terrifying and sad image of finality
solemnly confirmed some days later when Jesus stands before Caiphas.
The weight of the Passion and the entry “into darkness”
(Lam. 3:2) during these final days of Jesus’ life on earth push us to feel in
our bones the crushing power of evil. This week, the one million mark was
reached for people driven out of Syria by war and living in Lebanon. In a
recent film, Twelve Years a Slave, a
professional man with a young family is captured and sent into slavery where he
is utterly powerless and treated abominably. In our own country we keep meeting
people who are utterly desperate and wondering how they can survive.
“The evil that men do” is everywhere but it is not the final
story. There is a short passage from Ezekiel (Chap. 37) we read this Sunday
which mentions graves four times in a couple of verses. It is a firm promise:
“I am now going to open your graves, my people…. And I shall put my spirit in
you and you will live.” The message we will celebrate at Easter is that God can
prise open the graves we bury ourselves in. “Lazarus, come out!” It is a call
also to us.
6 April 2014 Sunday
5A in Lent
Ezek. 37:12-14 Rom.
8:8-11 John
11:1-45
