Dwight Zscheile
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45
March 9, 2008

Can these bones live? Who has not wondered this question, when faced with death in its various forms? We witness lives that become arid when hope, energy, and purpose drain away. We see human communities and institutions succumb to the paralysis of division, fear, and anxiety. We see the church lose its imagination and creativity, disengage from its surroundings, and shrink. We see violence and war rend human lives asunder. And, of course, we see people die—the passing of loved ones and strangers into the great beyond, leaving us bereft and wondering: Can these bones live?

What happens when we die? Will our bones live, and if so, how? What does life beyond the grave look like? This Lent, we have been exploring the theme of living a holy life and dying a holy death. The two are not unrelated, as we have heard. One cannot truly live a holy life if one is unable to embrace the reality of death. And those who do not live full and abundant lives have a much harder time dying well.

We say in the Apostles’ Creed that we believe in “the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” Here lies a hope that allows us to face death without fear—amidst a culture that deeply denies and fears death.

When I was a high school student growing up in a secular home in California, I encountered some words from the passage we just heard from John’s Gospel. They were at the turning point of two novels I was reading for my English class: Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. In both novels, the main characters stand at a crossroads where they have to choose between different life paths. One of these paths will involve personal sacrifice but will ultimately lead to transformation, to greater good. The other paths, though attractive, are ultimately dead ends.

These are the words: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” I remember reading these words over and over, wondering what they meant, recognizing that here was something bigger than anything I had found in my life to that point, bigger than my ambitions and plans, bigger than my fears and worries, something in which I was being invited to participate. Here was something that demanded everything from me but promised life beyond what I could dream. To my surprise, I found myself answering Jesus’ question with Martha, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

The Christian story hinges on resurrection—the resurrection of Jesus, and our resurrection with and in him. Can these bones live? For Christians, the answer is definitively: yes. The resurrection of Jesus is where we see God’s promise to Ezekiel extended to the world. Jesus is resurrected as the first fruit of God’s vision for a new creation.

The New Testament gives us two primary images of heaven—a banquet or wedding feast, and a city. Heaven is not just where we meet God individually; it is a great gathering, from every tribe and nation, a vast community, the party beyond all parties. At that feast, or in that city, our whole persons are transformed, transfigured, restored and reconciled. Our particularity and uniqueness are not erased, but retained. We become more fully who we are, while at the same time losing ourselves in a larger movement of love and communion. Heaven is a dance of unity and harmony, not uniformity. Good dancing requires all partners bring their full selves to the movement.

It is hard to imagine dancing without bodies, isn’t it? We believe in the resurrection of the body. This is one piece of Christian teaching that I fear is often misunderstood. We might think it applies only to Jesus’ body, and not to ours too. Heaven is not a disembodied existence. Humans are a unity of body, mind, and soul, and all of us—every part—is redeemed and healed in the resurrection.

When Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared to the disciples, it is clear that he was not merely resuscitated. He looked different; people had a hard time recognizing him. Yet he was clearly physically present, eating, inviting his friends to touch the wounds in his body. The resurrection body is a new kind of body.

It would be easy to misinterpret our reading from Romans, where Paul talks about “setting the mind on the flesh” and being “in the flesh” as a kind of death. He does not mean the body, which is a different Greek word, but rather the matrix of sinfulness, rebellion, mistrust, and estrangement that characterizes our life apart from God.

In contrast, being “in the Spirit” in Christ means participating in a new pattern of life, in which our particularity and distinctiveness are not cause for division. Rather, we share in the communion of God. In that communion, we are restored to right relationship with God and one another. The Spirit of God is the breath that comes upon the dry bones and raises them up to new life. It is the Spirit who animates and renews human life when all hope seems lost.

We also believe in the communion of saints. The communion which we celebrate at this table today is a foretaste, in the power of the Spirit, of the communion with God and all the beloved that is heaven. Our sharing in Christ is a sharing not only in him, but in all those redeemed and reconciled by him. And so it is fitting that we remember in our prayers each week the names of those who have gone before us, for they are present here too, together with those not named. Heaven is not so distant as we might think, not so much a place as a relational reality that is eternally present.

Your bones may be feeling weary; they may be creaky with age, or broken, or frail. You may have almost given up hope—for yourself, and for our world. But these bones can live, they will live. Amen.