New Life for Dry Bones –– 5th Sunday in Lent, Year A –– 2 April 2017

Jesus has power over death. Jesus restores Lazarus to life just as YHWH promises through Ezekiel’s prophecy that the exiled, despairing people of Israel will once again be renewed as a nation.

So it is with those who feel dead to themselves and others when the Spirit of God breathes life into their withered lives. Where there is no animating spirit, even as a person is “alive,” there is no joy or shared energy, no creative giving to the needs of family and friends.

We might see Paul’s letter to the Romans as a summons to see the images of movement from death to life revolving around how we focus attention and intention. Do we live with hopelessness because we do not have everything we want? Or do we fail to see what we have been given?

With credit to Quaker insights, Jennifer Copeland recommends Parker Palmer’s fine book, Let Your Life Speak (Jossey-Bass, 2000) because he asserts that when Way ends, “Way will open.”

To live with hope does not mean I always get my way. It means that the way I get becomes my way. The way that is given to me becomes my way. –– Jennifer Copeland

John 11:1-45

The center of the account is Jesus' exchange with Martha. Martha identifies Jesus with significant titles that were already introduced in this gospel (11:27). While her identification is the strongest Christological profession on the part of any disciple in John's gospel, Jesus' claims that he is the resurrection and that belief in him insures that one will never die (11:25–26) constitute the message of this text.

However, other points can be noted. It is possible that Jesus' delay in going to Bethany after first hearing of Lazarus' illness is a way to acknowledge that early Christian expectations of imminent Parousia were unfounded; the Lord determines the time of his coming and is in fact already and always present among his followers. However, it is also true that the author of the fourth gospel uses delays elsewhere to enhance meaning.

. . . At first Jesus states that Lazarus was asleep. This was the way early Christians spoke of death—as sleep—to express their anticipation of resurrection. When Jesus then states that Lazarus was dead, he also recognizes that Christian life is not devoid of real suffering and death. Just as her sister, Mary's first word to Jesus states that had he been present their brother would not have died (v 11:33). It is after Jesus sees Mary weeping that he also weeps. It is here that the human Jesus affirms that the death of loved ones is a painful human experience. Thus, the story unfolds to indicate a Jesus angry at the reality of death.

Jesus' call to Lazarus is illustrative of the call to eternal life he indicated to Mary, that those who recognize that he is resurrection will live even should they die. At the same time, Lazarus's emergence from the tomb also speaks of the transformation of sinners in light of faith in Christ. –– Regina Boisclair

Ezekiel 37:1-14

The prophet Ezekiel is witness to the dry bones coming alive which serves as an image for Ezekiel that his prophetic word to Israel must assure them that even what seems dead and gone through exile and desiccation can, yet, be restored.

. . . God's restoration is imaged as being raised out of the grave and reanimated by the Spirit. It is a word of assurance: the people will be given God's spirit, resettled in their land, and enabled to know that their God is indeed God. . . . For Christians this story from the history of Israel becomes a metaphor for baptism and a paradigm for Christian life. –– Regina Boisclair

Romans 8:6-11

Paul claims those in the flesh are concerned with things that effect death while those who live according to the Spirit are concerned with things that effect life and peace. Those of the flesh are hostile to God and fail to please God. The Spirit dwells within those “in Christ” since they submit to God's law and are alive and righteous. –– Regina Boisclair

Jennifer Copeland, a United Methodist ordained minister, served for 16 years as chaplain at Duke University and as director of the Duke Wesley Fellowship. She is currently executive director at North Carolina Council of Churches in Raleigh-Durham.

Regina Boisclair, a Roman Catholic biblical scholar, teaches at Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, Alaska.

Homily Service 41, no. 2 (2008): 63-75.

The Great Chasm – 25 September 2016 – 19th Sunday after Pentecost/ Lectionary 26/ Proper 21

Those of us who live in the First World hear a hard and challenging word today. For some of us, Lazarus is at our door, next door, down the street, across the ocean, living without enough food while those of us whose cupboards are full fix our eyes on other matters. Some of us are Lazarus.

It is commonplace to say that preaching aims to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” and indeed that is the gist of Amos (“alas for those who are at ease in Zion” – 6:1) and of the Lukan Gospel’s story of poor Lazarus and that awful rich man.

The rich man thought only of his immediate family. His imagination did not wander outside of his own property lines, his own line of descent. In this world, he served himself and his own, never looking beyond his privacy fence for someone else who might be in need. And he continued to focus on the family in the next world. He wanted to spare them from a similar fate—that of the powerful Israelites, as described by Amos. Those Israelites feasted like the rich man: in oblivion, without thought of their judgment to come. Unawares, they celebrated their own funeral.

Next to our immediate families, however, stands the family of Abraham. This is how the parable pictures family in the next world. Lazarus was by Abraham's side. The rich man called Abraham “Father” and Abraham called the rich man “Child.” [But the rich man] also wanted something out of him.

. . . Adherents to three religions in the world regard themselves as children of Abraham: Jews, Muslims and Christians. We three, like Lazarus and the rich man, call Abraham “our father.” But do we treat one another as family?

Luke 16:19-31

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus uses narrative reversal to challenge the inclination of the comfortable to overlook the poor. This turn-around is implied even in the characters' naming. Like Nemo (Latin for “no one”) in Charles Dickens' Bleak House . . . the disenfranchised and dispossessed are frequently nameless. Loss of identity follows closely upon lack of wealth.

It is then striking that in this parable Jesus names the poor man (Lazar is the rabbinical abbreviation for Eleazar, “God has helped”) but not the rich. As this goes against our social inclination, tradition has found a name for the rich man: Dives (Latin for “rich”). But the sharp challenge of this parable is not so easily blunted. – Fritz West

Amos 6:1a, 4-7

[T]he comfortable and the wealthy in the “first of all nations”. . . fancied themselves secure because of their military prowess. But Judah. . . and Israel. . . were no more secure than cities around them. . .  which, though once powerful, yet had fallen (1 Kings 14:25).

Amos captures their self-absorbed oblivion with the image of a marzeath, a ceremonial meal known for centuries throughout the Mediterranean basin. These meals often accompanied funerals and, ironically, this is one: the funeral for the very world they had thought to be secure, for “the ruin of Joseph” (v 6). Instead of feasting in oblivion (like the rich man of the parable), the powerful of Israel would have done better to anticipate the coming exile, when they were the first to suffer. – Fritz West

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Although the focus of this passage is false teaching, it. . . touches upon wealth: the temptation of teachers to acquire wealth and reputation by seeking to please their hearers (6–10). Ironically. . . the unsound teacher sacrifices the true gain that does: peace and contentment with what one has.

. . . Not wishing to imply that a Christian cannot be both pious and rich, the author closes with basic instructions for wealthy Christians (17–19). – Fritz West

We might cheer for Lazarus at last receiving help, and we might smugly note the rich man’s hopeless plight in Hades. But the great majority of us in Zion are caught in the awful truth of our riches. By many measures, we ought to be grieving “over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:6): We contribute more per capita toward global climate change than any other nation. We compete only with the Seychelles (holding many Somali pirates) in having the highest rates of incarceration per capita.

The gospel of God’s love for all creation must strive this day not only to show us our failing as a people but inspire us to live with greater love toward God and for our neighbors. That was Augustine’s goal for preaching. The remedy for our great fortune is the admonition in the letter to Timothy: “take hold of the life that really is life” (1 Tim.6:19).

Fritz West, a liturgical author and retired pastor of the United Church of Christ living in Minnesota, serves as the Presiding Member of the Association for Reformed & Liturgical Worship Steering Committee.

Homily Service 40, no. 10 (2007): 50-58.

A New Thing – 13 March 2016 – Fifth Sunday in Lent

The LORD “makes a way in the sea…” Impossible. Mary lavishes Jesus’ feet with anointment one cannot imagine being able to afford. Incredible. And in the Epistle to Philippians, Paul claims that everything in his life, in this whole world, is “rubbish” compared to “the righteousness from God based on faith” in Christ. Too strong?

The impossible, incredible, unthinkable is exactly what God is about. It’s a new thing. Preachers have to imagine our way into this promising prospect so that those who have come to worship on this Sunday will leave with an inkling of the goodness that comes through the cross. This day is full of hinting paradoxes that will arrive with increasing force as Good Friday approaches.

John 12:1-8

The story of Jesus’ dinner with his good friends – when Mary anoints his feet and wipes them with her hair (surely one of the most exotic and evocative events in the Gospels) – could appear at first glance to be sort of normal. Friends for dinner. And yet…

The scene marks a key transition and link from Jesus' teaching and healing ministry (the gospel of signs) to his paschal ministry (the gospel of glory). The author drops many clues and prepares the reader for any number of elements of the story to come: the death of Jesus at Passover, the anointing oils of burial, the resurrection story of Lazarus, now extended into the “prequel” to the resurrection story of Jesus, and the betrayal of Judas...

The reading concludes. . . “You always have the poor with you. . .” The saying is unfortunately used to . . . excuse indifference toward the ministry of care for the poor.

An effective homily will challenge these hidden assumptions and equip the listener to challenge it appropriately whenever it emerges in conversation. . . The poor we will always have; they are not helped by theft from the common purse. And, they are not hurt (but will be helped) when Jesus completes his earthly mission and unleashes the power of God's Spirit through his risen body. – Jeffrey VanderWilt

Isaiah 43:16-21

This new thing is a liberation on all fronts.

The forty years of wandering in the Sinai wilderness is no different than the forty years of exile in Babylon. Indeed, it could be argued that the stories of Moses and the Israelites were solidified in the time of Exile precisely in such a way as to make sense of the captivity in Babylon and the difficulties faced by the returning Israelites. . . God will “make a way in the wilderness” for the returning exiles. – Jeffrey VanderWilt

Philippians 3:4b-14

Paul urges freedom from cultural patterns and cultic practices in order to see beyond temporal gain. In other words, the passages calling for the vision of the new thing come, at last, to reside in our very bodies.

Some Philippian Christians were apparently being pressed to accept circumcision, if for no other reason than to avoid persecution under Roman law; if circumcised. . . they could claim to be Jews and so be exempted from the requirement to worship the emperor. Paul's argument, in a word: do not put your trust in a sign of the flesh or even in righteousness under the law. Rather, share in the sufferings of Christ and become like him in his death, prepared to lose all things, so as to gain all things in the power of his resurrection. – Jeffrey VanderWilt

How does this focus on the “new thing” lead us to the ending of Lent when we contemplate the enter point of our faith?

Each year the readings for the last Sunday in Lent confront us with the claim that God's new thing, the new life we have together in Christ, our hope in Christ for the resurrection of the dead, for God's future, is grounded in the suffering and death of Jesus. Our own agendas are nothing next to this. Any pain we may suffer in keeping or breaking our Lenten discipline is as rubbish next to this: that the suffering and death of Jesus are essential to God's plan of salvation. Mary “got it.” Judas never did “get it.” And it is in our own “straining forward” to “get it” for ourselves that we “press on” to Holy Week and the Great Three Days. – Paul G. Bieber

Paul Bieber is pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church, San Diego, California.  

Jeffery VanderWilt, author of Communion with Non-Catholic Christians (Collegville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003) teaches at Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Southern California.

Homily Service 40, no. 4 (2007): 33-44.