(Twenty years ago)
A grieving widow was talking to her minister. “Where’s Eddie now?,” she asked. Her husband had died almost a year ago, and it was so hard for her to get used to him not being there anymore. He had been there, by her side, for 63 years, and then he was gone. “Where is he now?” she asked again, staring sadly at the big old recliner where he always used to sit. She went on, “I know what you believe, pastor, and you had a real nice funeral sermon about heaven and seeing each other again. And I know that is what the Bible says, and Eddie and I always believed that too. But how can that be? Eddie’s body was so old and worn out, and then so filled with cancer– and now he’s dead and buried. How can he live again?”
In Ezekiel 37 the prophet is given a vision of a valley filled with skeletons, the remains of thousands of dead people. And the Lord asked Ezekiel if those dry bones could live. ‘Can the dead really live again?’ was the question. “O Lord,” Ezekiel replied, “only you know that.”
In John 11 Jesus talks to a corpse. Lazarus, a good friend of Jesus, had died, and by the time Jesus got there he had already been in the tomb for four days. He was not yet a skeleton, but his body was definitely decomposing, and so Martha objected when Jesus said that the stone should be rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. “Lord,” she said, “by this time there will be a bad odor.” Jesus had told them, “Your brother will rise again,” but they were thinking he meant on the last day, so they did not know why he would want that stone rolled away. “He who believes in me,” said Jesus, “will live again. Do you believe this?” he had asked them. Yes, they had said, but perhaps they, like Eddie’s widow and Ezekiel were wondering: Can that happen? Can the dead live again?
Our worship today has been filled with contrasting images of life and death. We have gone from the baptism of Courtney, a new little life; to an image of death, hearing about a whole valley full of skeletons. And then, we heard about all those skeletons coming to life again. Then, a few moments later, we heard about a decomposing body; and then we heard of that body, risen to life and walking out of the tomb. Back and forth we have been going, from life to death and back again to life.
But think about that for a moment. That back and forth we have been experiencing in our worship service this morning is not the usual pattern that we see in the rest of the week. Think about it– the usual pattern that we see everywhere else does not go back and forth between life and death. The usual pattern, the pattern of all of nature, moves in just one direction– from birth to life to death; PERIOD. That’s it. There is no back and forth. Dead means dead and the end of the story. Where else do you see any hint of anything else, except in the Bible?
But there in the Bible we do see something else, something much more. The Bible opens our eyes to a whole new dimension; or, it would be better to say, a whole new Kingdom, God’s Kingdom. And there, in that realm, death is not the end of the story, but only one incident in an ongoing story. So, in that realm, skeletons can come together and flesh can come upon them and they can breathe and live again. In that realm, people can rise from the dead and come walking out of their tombs. In that realm, a grieving widow can take comfort in the promise that she will see her husband again. In this other, greater realm, there is a power that is stronger than death, and that power is God. And so, on a Sunday morning, when we come to worship that God, we will experience this back and forth, and we will hear that the dead will live again, and we will hear about life coming out of death.
Because you see your life, your soul, your spirit, is not just limited to this body you are sitting here with this morning; this fragile, temporary, aging, aching body. Your life is God’s creation, God’s gift, and God’s possession. And God can put your life and spirit in this body for a little while, and when the time comes for this body to die and be buried, God can just put the rest of you, your soul and your spirit, somewhere else. Is that so impossible to imagine? Think about it. God put your life and spirit into this body– why can’t he, when the time comes, take it back and put it somewhere else? Jesus said to Martha in John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, WILL LIVE, even though he dies.” (continued…)
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