“Invitation to Change: From Despair to Hope”
Ezekiel 37:1-14
John 11:1-6, 17-45
We have talked a lot during this Lenten season about change—how the essence of the gospel is Jesus calling us to grow and change and be made new. We have talked about our willingness to change, whether we are ready to change, whether we can trust that there is new and better life on the other side of what is known and comfortable, if not ideal, and whether we are willing to step out in faith and risk making a change.
We have spoken of Christ’s invitation, Spirit’s empowerment, and that it is up to us to decide whether to accept the grace, hope, and newness God offers us. The choice—whether to change or not, whether to learn or not, whether to heal or not, whether to grow or not—is always ours.
Almost as soon as we make that decision—a deep, heartfelt, committed decision—change begins. It is as if we are seeing with new eyes. We begin to see possibilities where there were none before. We begin to feel more deeply, and perhaps differently. We may experience a new sense of personal agency.
We might also encounter resistance to our efforts to change—from people who want us to stay the same for their sake, from people who don’t believe in us, from powerful systems that benefit from the status quo. In our best efforts to change ourselves and the world, it’s entirely possible that things will get worse before they get better.
With almost every significant change in one part of a relationship, dynamic, or system, there is sure to be a “change-back” reaction.
Maybe you, like me, have been in a situation where you concluded that the only way to salvage a relationship, disrupt an unhealthy dynamic, put an end to an injustice, break a soul-sucking cycle, or create the potential for newness was to change your own behavior. And so you stopped believing the gaslighting and started speaking your truth. You stopped playing the victim and started naming the abuse.
And the next thing you knew you were being thrown out.
Sometimes, as in the valley of dry bones, Spirit-driven change is restorative, empowering, and inspiring. Where once there was despair, hope breathes again. Where was there was neither life nor future, a vast multitude lives and stands and begins the journey home. The earth is filled with the power of the God who brings the dead up from their graves.
Other times, as in the story of Lazarus, Love’s rebuke of death and death-dealing systems is downright dangerous for the human ones who call the dead from their tombs.
The same change that is liberating and hopeful for us may be threatening and terrifying to others.
In Jesus’ time, the powers that be knew well the story of dry bones brought to life. They knew that when the dead, despairing, poor, oppressed, and marginalized are brought up from their graves and restored to life and community, God was involved. Furthermore, you could be sure that God was not finished yet. That more trouble, more justice, more equality, more hope and repair were on the way.
And so it was that Jesus’ raising of the four-days-dead Lazarus was the last straw for the religious and political leaders of first-century Palestine. In calling Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus all but signed the order for his own execution.
And so it was when the Civil Rights Movement began changing things, began ever so slowly rolling the stone away from the tomb of racist oppression and segregation, and called Black people to live into the fullness of their humanity as beloved children of God.
The powers that be are still striking back.
So it was when the movement for equal rights and equal pay for women began changing things, drawing women out of their homes and away from political control over their bodies and into the workplace and the boardrooms and professional sports, into the House and the Senate, and even into the race for the White House.
The powers that be are still striking back.
So it was when LGBTQ folks began coming out of the closet-tomb in great numbers, when same-gender marriage was legalized, when affirmative action programs were instituted, when schools and colleges created initiatives to bring diversity and equity into their programs, when schools began letting children use the bathroom that matched their gender identity, and when books, medical treatments, advanced-placement courses, and language began reflecting reality and honoring individuals in all their glorious identity. These changes and more restored life, literally, to countless individuals, breathed hope into entire communities of people, and brought possibility and joy to vast multitudes.
And the backlash that is happening even now—in state legislatures, on school campuses, and in hospitals all across the country—is both devastating and deadly.
We like to say that the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice, and I believe this is true. But I also know that the forces of hatred and division keep trying to bend the arc back the other direction. We love to preach restoration and resurrection, and we must and we will, because sometimes we look around at the already-but-not-yet and see what looks like nothing but dry bones.
The truth is that there are plenty of reasons for discouragement and despair—the climate crisis, the challenges of illness and declining health, institutional racism, loneliness, ongoing wars and gun violence, relationship struggles, mental illness, and financial challenges, to name just a few.
To paraphrase an old bumper sticker:
Despair happens. Illness happens. Loss happens. Grief happens. Depression happens. Oppression happens. Racism happens. Violence happens. Unfair treatment happens. Unemployment happens. Trouble happens. Dry bones happen.
Even endings happen, but none of these things is meant to be the end. None of these things is what God wants for us. And denial is never the answer.
Despair and other difficulties are not so much things we need to change from as they are opportunities for Love to go to work, tombs where something we cannot see is happening, invitations to let God bring us up from our graves and out of our tombs, a summons to put our hope in the God of life and new life and to trust in things unseen.
Where do you find yourself in these stories this morning?
Are you a prophet, overwhelmed with the state of the world but committed to working with God to bring dry bones to life and power?
Are you Jesus, grief-stricken and heartbroken over so much suffering and pain, calling the dead out of their tombs by loving the lonely and working for justice and peace?
Or are you the dry bones, too exhausted and despairing to go on?
Or are you beloved Lazarus, so long dead that you’re starting to stink?
“Whoever you are,” says the poet, “no matter how lonely,” no matter how discouraged, no matter how afraid, “the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
Whoever you are, wherever you find yourself, says the Spirit, there is for you yet more life to be lived, more love to be found, more beloved community to take you in. The God who is love will never stop calling you up from your grave, out of your tomb, into life and hope and wholeness.
Are you listening?
“You hold the memory of what it was to be whole,” says the artist. “It lives deep in your heart that has been torn and mended a hundred times. It persists in your lungs that know the mystery of what it means to be full, to be empty, [and] to be full again.”
Your soul remembers what it was to live with God, in God, says Jesus. That union, that oneness, that all-encompassing love, is meant for this world. That peace, that groundedness can be yours, here and now. Your life is sacred. body is holy. You have still yet more living and loving to do.
I imagine Lazarus, comfortable in his tomb, getting used to being dead. I imagine him hearing something like a voice coming from what sounds like very far away. I imagine him hearing his name and, then, feeling a catch in his throat and movement in his body.
I imagine him walking out of the tomb, squinting in the sunlight, seeing his life and his people as if for the very first time.
Mortal, can these bones live?
O yes! O yes, they can.
