When Things Fall Apart
There may be only one thing everyone can agree on: every day
it appears more and more that things are falling apart – both here and around
the world, and including the world itself. This experience of falling apart
generates fear, and some people and groups try to induce fear on purpose. Pema
Chodron, a Buddhist nun reminds us that fear is a natural part of life,
especially when we feel there is nothing to hold onto. Yet, she writes, “Fear
is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” [i]
Just ask Ezekiel. Nearly 600 years before the time of Jesus,
things had fallen apart. The people of Judea and Jerusalem had been exiled to
Babylon. The Temple had been razed, burned to the ground. All that had been the
life of Israel had fallen apart. They are no longer at home. They cannot
practice the appointed sacrifices. The prophet imagines the community of Israel
as a Valley of Dry Bones. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones! Hear the Word of
the Lord!
God calls upon Ezekiel to call for ruach, God’s
breath which is life. These dry bones will have new life. [ii]
For only God creates new life. We note that the animation and resurrection of
these dry bones is a retelling of the creation story in Genesis 2:4b-7: first
the body is formed, and then comes the breath of life. We note also that these
bones are “the whole House of Israel.” Cut off from home, without hope, they
are in a valley of fear and death. They have become a powerless community at
the mercy of a brutal Babylonian Empire. Psalm 137 records this moment of
hopelessness: “By the rivers of Babylon/Where we sat down/And there we
wept/When we remembered Zion/But the wicked carried us away captivity/Required
of us a song/How can we sing King Alpha song in a strange land?” [iii]
This prophecy asks whether or not powerless communities can
again participate in the power of public life. To which the answer is yes –
when the community leans into fear and hopelessness and accepts God’s power of
renewal and new life! The claim made for God’s power stands over against the
closed reality of any and all empires which intend that the dry bones should
never live again: “O my people,” God says, “I will put my spirit within you,
and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know
that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord. The concrete and
human voice of Ezekiel calls God to act. As a narrative for Lent, the invitation is to
reject the conclusions of the empire, and to trust in the stunning freedom and
power of the God who creates and gives life. God can and will bring new life.
The circumstances are much the same as depicted in all four
gospels. Now it is the Empire of Caesar’s Rome. No need to transport people to
another land: instead, a kind of martial law and brutal taxation and indentured
slavery is imposed on the homeland itself. They are no longer at home. And by
the time these texts are written down, the Second Temple in Jerusalem has been
razed, burned to the ground once and for all. For all intents and purposes, the
whole house of Israel is once again reduced to a valley of dry bones. They are
powerless once again
Into this fallen apart reality comes Jesus. He and his
companions get word that one of his dearest friends has fallen ill: Lazarus, the
brother of Martha and Mary of Bethany, a small village near Jerusalem – a home
where Jesus would often find refuge from those who opposed his mission to bring
new life to people who feel powerless against the new Empire. [iv]
Martha and Mary call for their friend to come to their ailing brother. Jesus
hesitates, and who could blame him. Once he decides to go to Bethany, his
companions warn him that there are people in and around Jerusalem who “were
just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” As we have seen
with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, and the Man Blind Since Birth,
Jesus asserts that a day of deep darkness lies ahead in Jerusalem and that he
needs to be about his Father’s work while it is still light – while he is still
free and able to bring new life to his powerless community. Despite the real fear
for his very life, Jesus moves forward and leans into the danger. He arrives
four days too late. As it was with Ezekiel 600 years before, Jesus appeals to
his Father to raise the dry bones once again. Once again, it will be the
concrete human voice of Jesus that will invite the power of God to bring new
life where there is death. He says in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” Out he
comes. “Unbind him and let him go,” says Jesus.
The story is not about Lazarus. Lazarus is a metaphor for
the whole house of Israel that needs to be given new life – unbound from the
fetters of the Empire, so that they can one day be at home again. The
Lectionary shields us from the full response. Not everyone is happy. There are
those who report this episode to the collaborators in Jerusalem, and they
conspire not only to kill Jesus, but to have poor Lazarus killed as well – for
it is his fault that he died and so that God in Christ would have the opportunity to grant him new
life. [v]
The Empire continues to propagate fear. Jesus will not let the fear stop him. He
continues to breathe new life into the whole House of Israel.
Here we are. The irony is that everyone knows things are
falling apart. It is scary. It is fearful. But instead of leaning into the fear
with peaceful hearts and love, all sides increase the fear by blaming one
another. We seem to be at war with ourselves, generating more fear every day.
And it is not only here at home, but around the world.
Make no mistake, these stories about Nicodemus, the Samaritan
Woman at the well, the man blind from birth, and Lazarus, are all about new
life for the whole community. A community which Jesus expands to include
everyone, everywhere, all the time! We know what it feels like to live in a
time when things are falling apart. We can choose to stay at war with one
another. Or, like Jesus, we can choose the way of peace, love, and respect for all
others. As Pema Chodron writes, “Every day we could think about aggression
in the world, in New York, Los Angeles, Waco, D.C., Syria, Ukraine, Paris, the
Korean peninsula…Iraq, everywhere. All over the world, everybody always strikes
out against the enemy, and the pain escalates forever. Every day, we could
reflect on this and ask ourselves, ‘Am I going to add to the aggression in the
world? Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask
ourselves, ‘Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?’” [vi]
The Good News in all of these stories is
that God will breathe new life into those who choose the Way of peace. Like Jesus,
we can move into the places of fear knowing that our Lord calls us to come out
from behind our petty differences and let him unbind us all from all our fears
so that together we can work on real problems that face us all. We need to take
time-out to breathe. As we remember we are all in this together, New Life will
be ours.
[i] Chodron,
Pema, When Things Fall Apart (Shambala, Boulder: 2016) p.2
[ii]
Ezekiel 37:1-14
[iii]
Bob Marley and the Wailers, By the rivers of Babylon, https://youtu.be/4tAb5rYRXvs
[iv]
John 11:1-45.
[v]
John 12:9-10
[vi] Ibid, Chodron, p.12
No comments:
Post a Comment