The Rev. Sam Hook
St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School
Ezekiel 37:1-3 | Psalm 130 | Romans 16-23 | John 11:17-44
In today's scripture lessons from Ezekiel and John, we come face to face with the power of God. In Ezekiel we see a God who can create living humans from dry bones and in John we see God in Christ raise Lazarus from the dead. We can see the Glory of God.
After I was offered the job at the college, I said that I would only take it if Gerda liked the area. I had tried to describe what the desert looked like, but it was very difficult for me to explain. The pictures I had taken only looked like big mounds of dirt and rocks. Gerda said the pictures looked like Mars. And where are the trees? Once she came to visit she still thought it looked like Mars but we saw the beauty of the people and came. From December 2001 until now we have wondered about what a blooming desert would look like. Each Spring I would ask folks at the school what should I be looking for? How will I know? Well we know now. Had we been able to look at the "Mars" landscape as God can, we would have seen a desert full of life and beauty. This spring we are able to see what God can see and what a spectacular sight it is.
Ezekiel could only see dry bones. Mary and Martha could only see a dead Lazarus. Yet as the scriptures witness, God could see much more.
As we go about our lives we are often just looking through human eyes. We look around us at church and see a variety of folks and we pass judgment on them. We find faults with what they look like, or what they wear, or what they say. We even find faults with ourselves for not being prettier, thinner or richer.
But God sees his children each struggling with their own issues, each as unique as a snowflake, each with their own gifts, each loved by God.
God sees us sometimes standing by the grave of our hope. Who has not faced a time when all hope seemed lost? Who has not had life turn so upside down that their own existence seemed worthless?
At age 56, George Frederick Handel knew that feeling. He was a pathetic shadow of his former self. He was almost broke and not yet recovered from a stroke. The opera going crowd no longer liked his Italian operas but instead were choosing French stage plays. He had become a solitary shadow as he went home in the London fog. At home he contemplated his future as he opened his mail. There was a manuscript from a man named Jennings who though that maybe Handel could make an oratorio out of it. As he thumbed through the piece some of the words came alive, "comfort ye, comfort ye, my people." Suddenly the gloom disappeared and for seventeen days and nights he feverishly penned music. The Messiah lifted Handel out of his depression.
I would like to suggest that God's Spirit came to Handel through the words, even in the deepest grave the Spirit of God comes to us. We do not know when it will come or how it will come. God's Spirit has no pattern, but for all who have witnessed that Spirit during the darkness knows that it exists.
During those times when the Spirit fills our heart, as the Spirit did during those seventeen days Handel was writing, we have a glimpse of what God sees. Our hearts are filled with warmth and joy, our senses are acute, our awareness never sharper. We get a glimpse of the Glory of God.
But how do we get there from where we are now? Jesus gives us the answer in "John." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the Glory of God?" The word to us is to believe that we will see the Glory of God. To have faith in God will keep us open to the Spirit. For us to see the Glory of God in our own lives, we must have the faith that if God can make a nation out of dry bones and can raise a dead man to life, then God can raise us up to be the people he created.
I think the reason we have such a hard time with this is not because we don't have faith, but because we think so small. Probably Ezekiel would have been impressed with one man from the dried bones, not a nation. Mary and Martha would have been happy if Jesus had gotten there before Lazarus died because they believed Jesus could have done something then, but certainly not now, not after four days.
Our humanness limits our vision of the Spirit in our own lives. We think too small, we see with our eyes, not God's. The challenge for us is to have the faith to believe big. To believe that entire mountains of rock and dirt can turn to such a spectacular glory. To believe that as a child of God's you can be a spectacular creation of God's. Come to believe that as a church we can become the bright beacon to the hurting community.
An Episcopal priest in a small community brought the church's lawn mower in for service. Next to the lawn mower store was a motorcycle shop. As the afternoon sun hit the metallic paint of the motorcycle the Episcopal priest coveted that beautiful machine and pictured himself racing down the highway with the wind in his hair and the warm sun on his face and true joy in his heart. But that was just a dream as he was fresh out of seminary, in his first parish and being paid accordingly. But he thought, what was his life and life of his church more like? A lawn mower _ slow, predictable and joyless or like a motorcycle _ fast, exciting and exhilarating.
What is our life like? What is the life of this Parish like? Motorcycle or lawn mower? What is the Glory of God like in our lives? What would we like it to be?
Jesus said to them, "Unbind him and let him go."
My prayer for us is that our lives will be unbound and we will let them go and serve a God who wants to do great things with us and through us.