It\u2019s hard getting God to obey us. After all we\u2019re the ones on the scene. We know what we need, or our parish needs, or what we need as individuals. God should listen to us and take our advice. If God would only be here when needed, there would be no tragedy in our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A popular doctor is told that his best friend is dying. The doctor has a wonderful reputation for his healing skills. He delays going to see his friend, and the friend dies. When the doctor arrives to console the relatives, his friend\u2019s practical and blunt sister says, \u201cWhere on earth were you when we needed you? You could have saved his life but you had better things to do!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Gospel today gives us a glimpse into our Lord\u2019s private life. Jesus made friends with Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. Word came that Lazarus had died. For reasons we can only guess, Jesus delayed going to see Mary and Martha. When he finally arrived, Lazarus has been dead for some while. Martha, the practical sister, said to Jesus, \u201cLord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.\u201d Martha was on the scene. She knew what could have been done. That simple statement contained both faith and reproach. \u201cLord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.\u201d The statement reminds us that Martha believed Jesus could and would have healed his friend Lazarus. Because she believed she could also complain about Jesus\u2019 tardiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moments of grief may well produce the same partnership between faith and reproach in us. Someone we love dies. Surely our Lord would have done something to stop this tragedy? Where was he? It\u2019s not that we doubt. Either we don\u2019t understand, or we try to understand by grasping at unsatisfactory answers. \u201cIt was her time,\u201d we say, as if God sits around leisurely selecting at random those to die. If God is really like that, one wouldn\u2019t really like to have God as a friend!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s always good to ask a simple question when we say that God does something or other: \u201cIf a human did that sort of thing could she or he be admired?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Living in a parish or mission area where only the faithful few attend worship can also be a grief experience. When a parishioner dies, or leaves the area, we try to make sense of our dilemma. \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t God do something about this situation?\u201d we pray as we attend the monthly vestry meeting at which we discuss the fact that fewer people have to manage all the jobs, and funds dwindle while prices rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the first lesson today we hear the familiar story of \u201cThem dry bones. O hear the word of the Lord,\u201d as the old folk song puts it. Just before the verses we heard read this morning, Ezekiel expresses confidence that Israel will come back into its own one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faced with the dichotomy between belief in God and confusion about why God didn\u2019t seem to do much to help the people, Ezekiel still believes. He is given a vision. He finds himself in a valley of dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy and to bid the wind blow life into the bones. God says, \u201cMortal, these bones are the whole House of Israel. They say, \u2018Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off for ever.’\u201d Then Ezekiel speaks for God and says: \u201cO my people, I will open your graves and bring you up from them, and restore you to the land of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now for the final thread to weave together what the lessons have to say to us on this fifth Sunday in Lent. St. Paul alludes to a dreadful institution: slavery. Slavery was widely practiced in the Roman Empire. We sometimes forget that it was practiced in this country not many years ago. While there are no slaves today, men and women of all ethnic backgrounds still find themselves tied to badly paying jobs, to hopeless relationships, to squalid living conditions because they lack the economic resources and the education, or \u201cknow-how,\u201d to break free. It is terrible to have no options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Slaves belonged to their owners and were to be obedient. As many slaves became Christians in Apostolic times, and some of them became deacons, priests, and bishops, slavery was a familiar institution to the early Christians. St. Paul points out that a slave must be obedient to something or other. Christians, like slaves, can be obedient to the things that bring life, or to the things that kill. Those people today who struggle with the power of addiction know the truth of this. It\u2019s not enough, for most, to walk away from addiction. Loving and supporting friends, groups like AA, and above all God\u2019s healing grace are constantly and always needed. It\u2019s so much easier to be enslaved even if we know that we may well kill ourselves in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We want to do something about those who are enslaved. We want to do something about churches and missions that seem to be dying. We want to stop our friends and loved ones from dying. We constantly say to God, \u201cIf you had been here on time, you could have stopped this happening.\u201d We want to give God the answers. We are full of wonderful suggestions and if we are lucky, we get another committee formed, another pressure group recognized, and even some more legislation adopted by General Convention!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The root problem is that we have not been let in on the whole story. Before Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb, he said, as an aside: \u201cFather, I thank you for having heard me. I know that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.\u201d Out of the tragedy and sorrow of a friend\u2019s death comes good. It was not good that Lazarus died. Lazarus didn\u2019t die so that people might believe in Jesus. Death and life, evil and good, darkness and light are not each separate things. Good is merely evil put back on its feet again. Life is the positive end of death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before we rush in to situations blaming God for not turning up on time, we have to realize that we don\u2019t ever quite get the whole story. Instead of blaming God or suggesting that God has been absent, we need to believe that God and God\u2019s purpose are always at work. God does not will evil or tragedy. Yet God\u2019s love works good even at moments of personal or institutional despair. Asking for a vision may seem counter-cultural to us, but it is when we accept that God is at work and then seek to become part of God\u2019s solution, rather than part of our own problem, that miracles occur. Despite the destruction of Israel, Ezekiel hands things over to God and is given a vision of a restored, renewed, and living Israel. For all her grumbling, Martha handed over to Jesus and Lazarus came out of the tomb. When we are \u201censlaved to God,\u201d that is when we hand ourselves over to God\u2019s love and forgiveness, we find holiness and life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in our collect today we ask God to give us the gift of loving God\u2019s purposes and promises, that our wills may be fixed on the essential and eternal Good which is always there, even when the world around us seems to be coming unglued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sermon was written by Anthony F.M. Clavier<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s hard getting God to obey us. After all we\u2019re the ones on the scene. We know what we need, or our parish needs, or what we need as individuals. God should listen to us and take our advice. If God would only be here when needed, there would be no tragedy in our lives….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":201212,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[51,43,52,3],"tags":[142],"class_list":["post-511327","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lent","category-sermons","category-sermons-that-work","category-worship-and-prayer-menu","tag-lent-5a"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":51,"label":"Lent"},{"value":43,"label":"Sermons"},{"value":52,"label":"Sermons That Work"},{"value":3,"label":"worship_and_prayer_menu"}],"post_tag":[{"value":142,"label":"Lent 5A"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":[],"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sermon"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3473502,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511327\/revisions\/3473502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}