Tomb Stones and Grave Clothes

Do we see resurrection in this life? We sure do! The story of the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John is a model for what that looks like. You might be surprised at who is involved with it!

What does resurrection look like? That’s a hard question to answer, isn’t it? We can see the results of resurrection: freedom, joy, and peace. But resurrection itself… that’s more difficult to nail down. Most of us look for an answer to that question in the story of Easter morning. When the women went to Jesus’ tomb, they found that the stone that closed the tomb had been rolled away, and that the grave clothes that had once wrapped Jesus’ body were lying empty. Those grave clothes looked like an old cocoon from which a butterfly had been released. Jesus had been resurrected right through them! And all this had happened without help from anyone except God. So… does God’s resurrection power work the very same way now – without any human help? Is it like the magic in the Harry Potter stories? When Harry wants to open a closed door, for example, all he has to do is point his wand at that door and say, “alohomora,” and the door opens all by itself. Is God’s resurrection power like that? Are we are freed from everything that holds us back from living free, fulfilled lives when God speaks the word? Well, yes… and no. Resurrection is certainly a miracle, one that only God can bring about! Jesus’ resurrection was; and ours are, too. But resurrections in this world are a little bit more complicated than Jesus’ resurrection was on Easter morning. I think that John has written the story of the raising of Lazarus to tell us just that.

This morning’s scripture reading was the end of that story (John 11:38-44). Here’s the beginning of the story in a nutshell. Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died when Jesus was absent; and when Jesus showed up in his hometown, Lazarus’ sisters Mary and Martha were grieving his death. Jesus assured them that Lazarus would live again, but they thought that he was talking about the resurrection of the dead at the end of time. Oh, they believed that Jesus was the Messiah; but they didn’t see how he could help Lazarus right then. Lazarus was as dead as a doornail; and their hope was as dead as he was. That’s when John gives us a glimpse of the resurrection power that will raise Jesus on Easter morning. It’s power that still works in our own lives; and this story is a model for what happens when it does. First, Jesus asked the friends of Lazarus who were gathered at his tomb to move the stone that was closing the entrance to the tomb. Then, Jesus called to Lazarus: “Lazarus, come out!” Finally, Lazarus stumbled out of the darkness of his tomb into the light of day – from the realm of the dead back to the living – and Jesus told the crowd of astonished onlookers, “Take off his grave clothes and let him go.” Now, right in the middle of that scene we can see Jesus unleashing God’s resurrection power. When Jesus called, “Lazarus, come out!” he did something that none of us can possibly do: he summoned the dead back to life. But the friends of Lazarus helped with that resurrection, too. Jesus could have called to Lazarus all he wanted, but if the stone had not been rolled away from his tomb, Lazarus would have been trapped in there forever. Even after Lazarus was recalled to life, he was still restrained by the grave clothes that were wrapped around him. Somebody else had to get rid of the stone and help to unwrap the grave clothes. Jesus didn’t do that; he tells us to do those things. Now, we’re not physically sealed up in caves behind half-ton stones; and most of us aren’t wrapped up in straitjackets as we go through our lives. But in real, practical ways, we are as trapped by tomb stones and as tied up in grave clothes as Lazarus ever was! For resurrections to happen to us and to those around us, we have to help one another.

Let’s take a look at the stones that seal us in the dark. Tombstones in cemeteries display the name of the one who is buried there. But the stones that trap us while we’re still alive have other names on them. One of the biggest stones is labelled “Ignorance.” If someone doesn’t have any idea that a life other than the one they are living is possible, they’ll never even try to walk out of their tomb! Many inner city children, for example, have never experienced a life without violence. They live with drive-by shootings and drug deals on every corner. They don’t know what it’s like to live in safety and security. And even if they did, the stone labelled “Poverty” would keep them trapped where they are. It’s not only inner city children who are trapped by the stones of Ignorance and Poverty. Battered women, drug addicts, and the victims of human trafficking usually have no way to escape their situation and no resources to use if they did. Yes, the stones of ignorance and poverty that trap people in their tombs are very large and heavy.

But even if the stones are rolled away – and praise God, they sometimes are – we are still wrapped up in grave clothes that other people have put on us. Those grave clothes have to be peeled off very carefully, because we have been wearing some of them for a very long time. They have labels on them, too. As we peel off the cloth strips one by one, we can see some of those labels. Here’s one that says, “I don’t deserve any better.” That keeps a lot of people trapped in a tomb, doesn’t it? The next one says, “I don’t know any other way of doing things.” That one is wrapped around a lot of people. If you don’t have the skills to live a resurrected life, you’ll crawl back into your tomb. A cloth underneath it says, “I’m afraid.” Fear keeps many people stuck in the dark. And here’s one that we’re all familiar with: “I just can’t do this.” I’ll bet that you’ve said that at one time or another. I know that I have. But all of these grave clothes are lies! Other people have wrapped us in them. They’ve told us “You don’t deserve any better… You’ll never be anything but a coward… You can’t do anything right.” Those kinds of beliefs are the grave clothes that keep us from living a resurrected life after God calls us out of our tombs!

Maybe the best way to understand what resurrection in this world looks like is through a story. This story is about a man named Bill. Bill was a drunk. He had battled alcoholism his whole life. It ruined his career, his family, and his health. He finished law school, but he didn’t graduate because he was too drunk to pick up his diploma. He became a stock speculator, evaluating companies for potential investors; but his drinking ruined his reputation. His doctor finally told him that if he didn’t lay off the booze, it would kill him. Bill resolved to quit cold turkey; and for a short time, he was successful. But one evening, temptation was getting the better of him; so he phoned his friend, Bob, who was also an alcoholic, for support. And it worked! Bill was able to resist the temptation to take a drink. That event was his inspiration to begin a group for alcoholics who stay sober by supporting one another. I’m sure that by now, you know who I’m talking about. The name of that drunk was Bill Wilson; and the group that he founded was Alcoholics Anonymous.

Addicts like alcoholics are some of the people who are most in need of God’s resurrection power. But even when God calls them out of their tombs, they still face many obstacles. Bill rolled away the stone for many of them by offering AA as a source of help. And the participants in AA meetings help one another to unwind the grave clothes that are keeping them trapped. When someone says, “I don’t deserve any better,” they answer, “Yes, you do! We love you, and you’re worth it!” When someone says, “I don’t know any other way of doing things,” they offer ways to resist temptation that have worked for them. They answer “I’m afraid” by saying, “I am too, every single day.” And when someone says, “I just can’t do this,” they reply confidently, “Yes, you can; because I did!” Bill Wilson once commented, “No one can help a drunk except another drunk.” I’m not sure if that’s true; but I do know that AA has helped millions of people in this country and around the world to get sober, to stay sober, and to change their lives for the better! Resurrection power comes in many forms; and we, as Christians, are called to help with it.

Is there someone that you can help after God’s resurrection power calls them out of their tomb? Even helping to push away the stone or unwinding one little piece of their grave clothes is important. And if you are struggling to free yourself from some old grave clothes, let others help you. Our tombs don’t have to be endings; they can be beginnings! God wants to free us for joy, and love, and peace; and God asks us to help with that process! We are called to be part of a miracle! What a blessing! Thanks be to God!

Dry Bones

Can God really resurrect whole communities? That's what God promises Ezekiel in his famous vision of the dry bones. This sermon considers the question of how powerful resurrection power really is.

This vision of Ezekiel’s (Ezekiel 37:1-14) seems to be more appropriate for Halloween than for the Sunday after Easter. The scene is ghastly: a landscape that is covered with human bones, the results of bodies that have lain unburied for years. All that remains are their skeletons – their very, very dry skeletons. What once made them human – their thoughts, their motivations, and their intentions – are long gone, along with the flesh that once covered those bones. Now, my guess is that these bones are the result of a great battle that was once fought right here. Ezekiel doesn’t tell us that outright, but he gives us a clue when he tells us that they are located in a valley. Valleys were common battle sites. The armies would take positions on the surrounding hills and then swoop down to engage in battle. If that battle was a big one, the casualties would lie unburied, and the result would look much like the valley of bones in Ezekiel’s vision.

Is there life despite the carnage of war? Can these dry bones live? God assures us that they can. In Ezekiel’s vision, God raises up this entire community of the dead and breathes life back into them. He even tells us what the vision means. “These bones are the people of Israel,” God tells Ezekiel. “They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone. We are cut off.’” But God promises that he will bring them out of their graves, lift them up, and fill them with his Spirit. God promises hope even when everything seems to be hopeless. Maybe this isn’t such a bad vision for the week after Easter, after all.

But I’m not sure that we really believe that God’s promise ever comes true – at least, not for whole communities. Oh, we’re good with individual resurrection. We believe that God’s resurrection power can restore relationships, break the chains of fear, anger, and resentment, and allow us to live fully and freely as children of God who are loved and forgiven. We’re good with that. But resurrection of a whole community – especially one that has suffered the anguishes of war? Communities at war have seen their young men killed in battle, their women molested, and their children starving to death! How can a resurrection take place after experiencing such atrocities? And we see those things all the time these days. We may not see a valley of bones like Ezekiel saw, but we see images of bombed out homes, videos of women carrying coffins to graveyards, and pictures of civilians who have been executed by ISIS. Can there possibly be any resurrection for communities that have suffered such terrible atrocities?

Don’t be too hasty to answer “no.” In fact, I’ve seen that kind of resurrection during my own lifetime. Some of you may remember the situation that used to exist in Northern Ireland. In the 1980s, Belfast, Northern Ireland looked very similar to some bombed-out cities in today’s Middle East. The Irish call the conflict “The Troubles.” It began as a campaign in mostly Protestant Northern Ireland to end discrimination against the minority Roman Catholics. Although it began as a non-violent civil rights movement, violent methods of resistance quickly appeared. Riots, firebombs, and murders became commonplace. British army members, sent to Northern Ireland to protect Roman Catholics, were attacked again and again. The impact on the people of Northern Ireland has been compared to the impact by the German blitz attacks on London during the Second World War. Alcoholism increased, the unemployment rate rose, vandalism became commonplace, and families were left homeless. Is community resurrection possible in a situation like this?

You will know the answer when you look at a picture of Belfast today. It is now a beautiful, thriving city! Resurrection power raised up the dry bones of its people and breathed new life into them. That resurrection began with the Good Friday Agreement that was signed in 1998. One of the people who was responsible for that agreement was a man named Martin McGuinness. You may have heard about his recent death, when he was honored as a peace-maker. But he was not always such a man. In the early years of the Troubles, McGuinness was a member of the Irish Republican Army whose purpose was to force the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland. Their methods were violent: bombings, assassinations, and executing informers. But at some point during his time with the IRA, this gunman changed into a statesman. In 1994, McGuinness commented to the New York Times: “Before [Nelson] Mandela came out of prison, he stretched out his hand in friendship to a people who had been arrogant, who had neglected the blacks, and who had been very narrow-minded. We have got to do the same.” Working as lead negotiator for the political arm of the IRA, he helped to establish the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought lasting peace to Northern Ireland. “Dialogue has replaced conflict,” he said. “Respect has replaced mistrust. What I want to see develop now and in the time ahead is a relationship based on equality and respect.” Dare we say that resurrection power had anything to do with this remarkable change? Certainly through the peace agreement that he helped to forge, resurrection power was let loose in Northern Ireland!

It is true that the wounds inflicted by the Troubles are still relatively fresh; and it will take time for them to heal. But just as God is the one who can raise a community from the dead, God is also the great healer; and I am confident that those wounds will one day heal completely. One of my good friends recently traveled to Ireland; and she tells me that Protestant and Roman Catholic children are now intentionally brought together to work and to play so that they learn to understand, instead of to hate, one another. Belfast is now a peaceful city where, I was told, police officers do not even carry firearms. At the height of the Troubles in the 1980s, no one even imagined that such an outcome could be possible!

That, my friends, is resurrection power. As God showed Ezekiel in his vision, it can even raise up a whole community of dry bones and breathe the breath of life back into them. We need not despair! The resurrection power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is still working to raise up not only individuals, but whole communities! I pray that our children and our grand-children will one day see the whole world as peaceful and as beautiful as Northern Ireland is now. After all, that’s what God has promised us. On this Sunday after Easter, God has the same message for us that he had for Ezekiel: “You will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it!”

Where Have You Been?

Not many of us think about what happened to Jesus between Good Friday and Easter morning. But the early church thought about it a lot! My Easter sermon for this year considers why it might be an important thing for us to think about.

“Where have you been?” That’s a simple question, isn’t it? We’ve all asked it from time to time. We ask it of a teenager who has come home 3 hours past curfew, and of an old friend with whom we are reunited. But this morning, I’m asking this question of the risen Christ. “Where have you been, Jesus? After all, you died on Friday afternoon and were raised from the dead until early on Sunday morning. Where were you during all that time?”

There a couple of possible answers to that question. Maybe Jesus didn’t go anywhere at all. Maybe he just hung around in the dark of that borrowed tomb. Maybe he took a good, long nap after the agony of the crucifixion, and rested up for the resurrection that he knew would take place on Sunday morning. But that’s not very satisfying, is it? Let’s try again. Maybe he went back to heaven to be with his Father for a little while, like a college student coming home for the weekend. Jesus had certainly earned it, after all that he had been through on earth! Maybe he renewed his friendship with the angels who sang on Christmas, and assured everyone that he would be back for good in about 40 days.

But that’s not what the early church believed. From the very first, the Church believed that after Jesus was crucified, he went to preach to the dead. The Apostles’ Creed, an early 4^th century statement of faith, says this:

[I believe in] Jesus Christ, [God’s] only son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,

born of the virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried.

He descended into hell.

On the third day, he rose again from the dead…

There it is: “He descended into hell.” That statement is right next to the ones about the virgin birth, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. The early church obviously thought that it was very important to confess that Jesus descended into the realm of the dead after he was crucified.

An early Christian writing, in fact, is very clear about this. It’s called the Gospel of Peter; and it’s one of the writings that didn’t make it into the New Testament. We don’t have the whole gospel, only a few pages of it. Those few pages were found over a hundred years ago in the grave of a Christian priest in Egypt. It describes the crucifixion, just like the four canonical gospels do; but it also describes the resurrection. This is that portion of it:

Early, at first light on the Sabbath, a crowd came from Jerusalem… to see the sealed tomb. But during the night before the Lord’s Day dawned, while the soldiers were on guard… a loud noise came from the sky; and they saw the skies open up and two men come down from there in a burst of light and approach the tomb. The stone that had been pushed against the entrance began to roll by itself and moved away to one side. Then the tomb opened up and both young men went inside. Now when these soldiers saw this, they roused the centurion from his sleep, along with the elders. They saw three men leaving the tomb, two supporting the third, and a cross was following them. The heads of the two reached up to the sky, while the head of the third, whom they led by the hand, reached beyond the skies. They heard a voice from the skies that said, “Have you preached to those who sleep?” And an answer was heard from the cross: “Yes!”

“Have you preached to those who sleep?” That question is the reason we care about Jesus’ whereabouts during the time between the crucifixion and the resurrection. It’s not a question like “How may angels can dance on the head of a pin,” a question whose answer really doesn’t make much difference one way or the other. On the contrary, this question of what happened to Jesus’ spirit while his body was in the tomb makes all the difference in the world! Jesus’ descended into the realm of the dead to free all the people who were already held captive by death, to bring them out of their graves, and to open eternal life to them, too.

The Eastern Orthodox Church shows this beautifully in a famous icon of the Resurrection. (An icon is a picture that teaches through symbols. If you want to see it, Google “Resurrection Icon.”) Jesus in the center, raising up a man and a woman from their tombs, while he is surrounded by kings and prophets from the Old Testament. But it is what Jesus is standing on that I care about right now. He is standing on two doors that have been torn off their hinges. Those doors are the gates of hell; and they’re broken so that they can never close again. Underneath those gates are all kinds of shackles: leg irons, handcuffs, and neck irons – chains that meant to keep us imprisoned in the darkness. They’re broken, too, just like the gates. By going into the realm of the dead and preaching the gospel to them, too, Jesus has broken the power of death not only for those people who were alive then; not only for those of us who have lived during the 2,000 years since the resurrection; but also for all those who lived and died before Jesus was raised. Jesus lived, died, and was raised for all humanity, in all times and in all places! And because Jesus descended into the realm of death, he raises us up with him into the realm of life! Just as the Gospel of Peter shows angels leading Jesus out of his tomb, Jesus leads us out of our tombs, too. The shackles of death can’t hold us any longer, because they have no more power over us. The leg irons of hate and anger; the handcuffs of frustration and despair; the shackles of fear and anxiety – all of them have been broken by God’s power!

So when we ask Jesus, “Where have you been?” here is his answer; and it is breathtaking: “I have been preaching good news to the dead and breaking the shackles that held them captive. I have been shattering the power of despair, and offering hope to all people of all times and all places. I have been using the power of love to defeat the power of death in whatever form it may take. And now I am resurrected, and that power is unleashed into the world forever!” Believe the good news! That resurrection power is ours, too! We are no longer held by death, but alive in the risen Christ! Alleluia! Thanks be to God!

[Note: the quote from the Gospel of Peter was taken from The Complete Gospels edited by Robert J. Miller, published in 1994 by HarperSanFrancisco, page 405.]