Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45
March 17, 2002
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
In the back hallway at Temple Baptist Church on 19th Avenue, there’s a gallery of portraits of past pastors. Little captions give these persons names and the years they served this church. These portraits try in some small way to immortalize their subjects. I wonder how many people at this church even know these former pastors anymore.
I was told although I haven’t yet seen it for myself, that there’s a meeting room at the American Baptist Assembly at Green Lake, Wisconsin named “The Don Ng” room. I guess it’s a small way to “immortalize” the 20 years of my life when I directed conferences at Green Lake. I do wonder sometimes if there’s anyone who really cares about the name of the room or if it’s “just the room down the hallway on the left!”
Woody Allen once said, “It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Whether it’s well-painted portraits or rooms named after people, after a while, who cares? In the face of death, little endures. Death seems to be in command of our lives, forcing us to evade and to deny its reality.
Last Monday was the 6-month anniversary of the September 11th tragedy. Thirty-nine million tuned in to watch CBS’ two-hour documentary of “9-11.” When we relived the horror and death of terrorism, we were overwhelmed again by the suffering and pain of our brothers and sisters. At “ground zero” in Lower Manhattan, or at the ground zeroes in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in India, in the Philippines, in many different places around our small planet, these are valleys of dry and dead bones.
We ask, “What’s to be done with our dying?” Despite our best efforts, we are terminal. Our lives do not go on forever, nor do the lives of those whom we love. What should be done about death, O Christ?
Jesus Hates Death
On this Sunday deep into the season of Lent and before we get to Easter, we have this account of a man being raised from the dead. Not raised in the same way that Jesus will be raised, but still raised from death to life. Whenever Jesus shows up someplace, the dead begin to rise and life begins to break out. You see Jesus hates death!
Jesus is summoned to the bedside of his ailing friend Lazarus. He arrives too late. Lazarus has died. In fact, he has been entombed for four days by the time Jesus gets there. Jesus goes to the cemetery and in a loud voice, cries out, “Lazarus, come out!”
At once dead Lazarus comes forth, bound up in his grave clothes from head to toe. And Jesus commands, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Although in our life experiences, death seems to be in command of our lives, forcing us to evade and to deny its reality, Jesus is actually in command of death. When he gets to the cemetery, he takes charge, gives the orders, and defeated death. I know that it’s not Easter yet. But even before Easter, God is in charge and Jesus, the Lord of life defeats death.
There are many of us here who having grown up in America are true believers of what human beings can do. Sometimes we think that we can do almost anything we sent our minds to. We think that we can come up with a pill to create natural antibodies to fight off any biological attacks. We can send up astronauts to repair the 12 year-old Hubble Telescope. We think we can comprehend the mysteries of the universe and say that it’s all beige! As gifted and talented people, we end up believing that human life is grand and noble. And there’s no longer any place for religion.
Until we come to the question of death. When it comes to the question, “What’s to be done with our dying?” we are speechless. In the face of death, we as human beings have little explanation on what is to happen afterward. Perhaps that’s the reason why I do more funerals than weddings! When death happens, no human explanation seems to be able to satisfy our questions or to comfort our pain. When death happens, even the finest physicians turn to the priest or rabbi or the minister for answers to this difficult question.
Not only do we hate death Jesus hates death too. He grieves when he saw Lazarus’ sister, Mary and the others weeping. His spirit was disturbed and he was deeply moved. So Jesus began crying too. The people said, “See how he loved him!” Maybe Jesus thought about all the times when he and Lazarus had good conversations and fellowship together. Maybe he thought that Lazarus was too young to die and his life was still ahead of him.
Life with all of its possibilities and beauty ends in death. Everything that we have achieved in life and all the rooms that may have been named after you and me eventually come to an end. And people wonder, “Who’s Don Ng anyway?”
Bound in a Tomb
Like Lazarus is bound in a tomb, we are bound too. When unsuspected and heart-wrenching deaths occurred in my family many years ago, my mother became afraid of life. Being Toishanese, she observed the practice of not being present at her sons’ funerals. Without proper closure, she was “bound in the tomb” too. She stopped going out to be with friends. She allowed death to determine what she did and it filled her with fears. One of the things that I remembered her saying to me was to not use the word, “to go” anymore. I couldn’t say, “I’m going now.” She was so afraid that I might not come home. She was entombed in her own world.
Death was so debilitating to my mother that she started to build fragile bridges over this great abyss. But we cannot deny the abyss is there. We try to build up a high hedge to not see the cemetery. But we cannot deny the cemetery is there. We take out life insurance policies. But we cannot deny the fact that one day we will all cash in those policies.
Someone quoted Death saying, “It all ends up out at the cemetery, everything finally finishes with me. I am death, and I will have everything. It all belongs to me.”
Now before I turn this worship service into a funeral, let me bring you some good news!
Our Lord God Knows
When God’s people were exiled in Babylon, hopelessness and degradation were prevalent in the land. God took Ezekiel by the hand and led him to this valley full of dry bones. Everywhere he looked, Ezekiel saw many dead dry bones. God asked Ezekiel if he thought these dry bones would live again. Ezekiel answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
Ezekiel knew all along that God was in charge of everything—even death! When Ezekiel called out to these dead, dry bones, they came to life. Then God told Ezekiel to prophesy for the breath of the four winds to come and breathe into these dead dry bones. And when he did this, they stood on their feet, a vast multitude of them.
When we live in fear of death, we are like dead dry bones. Our lives lay scattered and disconnected. We have no reason to get up in the morning. We no longer have hope for what’s to come. But when the breath of God comes, we live.
Jesus goes out to the cemetery and in a loud thunderous voice, he shouts, “Lazarus, come out!” This mummy-like form emerges from the tomb. Then Jesus commands, “Unbind him, and let him go!”
Jesus loudly shouted to Lazarus to come out. He shouted at him to wake him up from his premature death. Jesus shouted so Mary and Martha, and all of their grieving friends and family can hear that he hated death. Jesus shouted so loud that he was breathing fresh air into that stench smelling tomb. Jesus’ breath gave new life to those dead bones of Lazarus to come out and live again.
If God were to ask us, “Do you think that these dry bones of our lives can live again?” we need to say what Ezekiel said, “O Lord God, you know.” Ezekiel believed in God’s power to even raise up dead dry bones. God knows! Next Sunday, we can say that we will be attending the funerals of two candidates who will be baptized at our 9:30 Joint Worship Service. These friends can see dryness in their lives. God knows that their lives are not worthless and want them to dedicate them to Jesus. And in their baptism, they will die in Christ to rise again in new life.
We think we know so much or know enough that we think we don’t need God. When things are going well, we take credit for the achievements and accomplishments that we did. We hang up self-portraits and name rooms after ourselves. But when death happens, we ask, ”What’s to be done with our dying, O Christ?” Then we see that death jerks us around. Everything fades, withers, decay, and dies. And the “Marthas” in us cry out, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
We come to the point in our lives after searching far and near, high and low under our own human efforts to finally say, “We don’t have much to say about dying.” Rather, like Ezekiel, we say, “O Lord God, you know.” Only God knows the answers to our questions about death. We find the answer in Jesus.
In a recent issue of the Oakland First Baptist Church’s newsletter, there was this description about Jesus.
“Jesus, in infancy, startled a king. In childhood he puzzled doctors.
He lived in poverty. He possessed neither wealth nor influence. He
never wrote a book, yet all the libraries could not hold the books that
have been written about him. He never wrote a song, and yet he has
furnished the theme for more songs than all songwriters combined.
He never practiced medicine, yet he has healed more broken hearts
than all the doctors far and near.”
Jesus didn’t need self-portraits or rooms named after him to feel that he was important. He didn’t need those things to be immortalized. We remember Jesus because he was obedient to his Father’s plan for the world. In his death of becoming our sin even though he was sinless, he did away with death forever. Like us, Jesus hates death too. The answer to our question, “What’s to be done with our dying?” is Jesus Christ.
Walk with Jesus in the Shadow of Death
Next week on Palm Sunday, we will follow Jesus as he goes toward that reality called death. When he prays at Gethsemane, we will hear that he does not want to die. We’ll see how Jesus loves life. And he loves this life—the everyday living that you and I do. The living that my mother did and I wished she did more of. Yet he knows that this life doesn’t last forever.
Let us watch how Jesus walks down that path in the shadow of the valley of death and dry bones. Let’s see how Jesus walks with a kind of serenity, a kind of obedience to God. He walks confidently in God’s power, the giver of life even in the face of death. And Jesus does not walk alone. God is walking with him.
God is walking with us today. On the path of life that’s covered with piles of dry and dead bones, we don’t walk alone either. While we move toward death one way or another, today, or another day, God is here with us. Because Jesus has walked on this path already, we will not be afraid of living. God is walking with us as he walked with Jesus. And we will not be afraid of dying.
Whenever Jesus shows up, even if he shows up late, the dead begins to rise and life begins to break out. And when we ask our question, “What’s to be done with our dying?” God will answer, “Come out! Be unbound! Let’s go and live!”
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, despite our best efforts, our lives do not live forever, nor do the lives of those whom we love. Whatever we might want to do with our lives, it must be done by you and not by us. And your breath of hope and life comes to us from outside of ourselves; something beyond our thinking and our acting. Come to us, Lord of life, raise us from our dead dry bones and call us to new life. In the name of Jesus who defeated death, we pray. Amen.