The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
March 25, 2007

5 Lent – C
Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:8-14
Luke 20: 9-19

Several years ago, sometime in the 1980’s or early 1990’s, a Vietnamese logger, walking through the woods, came upon the bones of an American soldier. Time had long since removed any traces of flesh or personal identification. The logger buried the American’s body with the respect and dignity his Buddhist faith affords to all life, and the Vietnamese poet Tran Thi My Nhung captured the moment with these words:

Was your plane on fire,
or did you die of bullet wounds,
or fall down exhausted?
Just so, you died in the forest alone.

Only the two of us,
a woodcutter and his wife,
dug this grave for you,
burned joss sticks,
prayed for you to rest in peace.

How could we know
there’d be such a meeting, you and I,
once separated by an ocean,
by the color of our skin,
by language?

But destiny bound our lives together.
And today, by destiny’s grace,
you are finally going home.

I believe your American sky is as blue
as the sky above this country
where you’ve rested for twenty years.
Is it too late now to love each other?

Between us now,
the ocean seems so small.
How close are our two continents!

I wish a tranquil heaven for your soul,
gemmed with twinkling stars and shining moon.
May you rest forever in the soil of your home.

No one escapes death. Death is as catholic as the Church. Death, like time, crosses all boundaries. Death is a fact. Death is the fact Jesus faces as he moves steadfastly toward the Cross in Jerusalem. And again this Lent we follow along on the road as Jesus, knowing that they will crucify him for his trouble, reminds the priests and the scribes and pharisees, one final time, that God has a claim on his people that is larger than their stale faith can imagine.

Some years on this Fifth Sunday in Lent we join Jesus at table with Mary and Martha ...as Mary lovingly prepares Jesus for death with her anointing. Other years we follow Jesus to Lazarus’s grave and join Ezekiel in that valley of dry bones to hear God’s eternal question: “O man, can these bones live? Or is it too late now to love each other?”

How could we know there’d be such a meeting this morning, we and Jesus, once so separated by oceans and centuries, by the color of our skins, by culture, by language? But destiny has bound our lives together, and here we are once again on the road with the prophets, and with Jesus, on the road to Jerusalem and to death.
Death is gaining on us.

Death is gaining on us here this morning, just as it once gained on Martha and Mary and Lazarus, and on Peter and Judas and Paul, and on Jesus. It is a fact of life. Death is a consequence of flesh and bone. But God’s question is eternal: Can these bones live? Or is it too late now to love each other?

This is the question of the Fifth Sunday in Lent, and the question of Holy Week, the question of death, and of life: Can these bones live? Or is it too late now to love each other?

“We think of Eternal Life, if we think of it at all,” says Frederick Buechner, “as what happens when life ends. We would do better to think of it as what happens when life begins.” If so, then maybe the question of death is really the question of life, and maybe what the question, ”Can these bones live?” really asks is, “Are we bound by death?” Does death define and limit us? Or is it life that marks and shapes our being? Death is gaining on us. Death is a consequence of flesh and bone. But what is there to fear if we are not bound by death? What do we have to fear from death if, in the meantime, we have courage enough to live?

“No,” the Lord said to Ezekiel, ”No, you are not bound by death. I will give these bones breath and life again, and they will live.” “Unbind him, and let him go free” is the way Jesus put it at the grave of Lazarus. “Forgive them; let them go” is the way he expressed it later from the Cross.

Can these bones live? This is not the question of what happens when life ends; it’s the question of what happens when life begins. Is it too late now to love each other?

And it’s not just a question of physical death and life. It’s the question of spiritual life and death as well. As Bishop O’Neill’s pastoral letter makes clear, it’s the question of the Church. It’s the question the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion and every Anglican congregation are asking as we struggle with those important matters that can either destroy or quicken our life together. It’s the question all people of faith and hope ask at the office and at school and out on the streets and at home: Are we prisoners of the past, bound by the former ways, bound by death and time? Or can these bones live? And how shall we live? Can God really do a new thing, even with us, even with his Church, as the prophet has promised? Or is it too late now for us to love each other?

The Good news of Lent, the Good News of Holy Week and Easter, is that God is the Lord of death as well as the Lord of life. And God gives us what we need for both – the gift of faith, that confidence that we are not bound by the reality we can see all around us, by death, because we are more than we can see. We are loved, and therefore we can love. We are loved, and therefore these bones can live even though they see death.

Like Ezekiel, and like Jesus, we cannot see beyond death, either as individuals or as a Church, but we do know the promise of God: “‘I am going to put my breath into you,’ the Lord God says to these bones, ‘and you will live.’”

When Jesus raised Lazarus, he gave him a few more months or years to live in flesh and in bone. But is that really so astonishing? God gives you and me the same gift this very moment, because we are. We are here this morning, because it is God who has placed us here. How, by our own wits, could we know there’d be such a meeting this morning, Jesus and we, once so separated by oceans and centuries, by the color of our skins, by culture, by language? But destiny has bound our lives together, and by destiny’s grace here we are on this Fifth Sunday in Lent on the road with Jesus, on the road to Jerusalem. And on this road we find that the question of Lent, the question of Holy Week, has become the question of Easter: Will we accept the gift and live?

“My one desire,” St. Paul tells us, ”is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and to share his sufferings in growing conformity with his death, in hope of somehow attaining the resurrection from the dead.” This is the faith and hope of the believer, says Paul, without which everything is in vain.

The Good News of the Gospel is that, in Christ, God offers us more than a few more years in flesh and bone. He offers us victory over death itself, new life, life that is more than three score years and ten of perishable flesh and bone. Is it too late now to love each other? No, says the Lord, it’s not too late. And he unbinds us and sets us free, free, if we are willing, to live and to love. Even now. Even at the end of the road.

The Bible, if it is anything, is the story of God’s people on the road with God’s promise in their pockets. And at this particular intersection of time and space where we find ourselves this morning we meet Jesus as he nears the end of his journey, as he nears the end of the road he began when he first assumed our flesh and bone in Mary’s womb. Along the way he learned the Scriptures as a child. Along the way he treasured the intimacy of life with his disciples. Along the way he enjoyed the hospitality of friends and cherished the companionship of saints and sinners. But now his hour has come, and the hour has intersected with the place. Now is the time when he is to lay it all down in Jerusalem. And there Jesus chooses to die as he chose to live. He chooses, that is, to live even as he dies, as a faithful son, confident of the promise he has heard from the prophets, the promise of life that he knows in his flesh and bone as well as in his heart and mind.

On the road to Jerusalem Jesus is seeing everything for the last time and saying his goodbyes. And those penultimate days of Jesus’ life, as I imagine them, are much like our own last days, much like the days described by Buechner, the days before the deaths of every mortal:

“You are seeing everything for the last time,” Buechner says, “and everything you see is gilded with goodbyes – the child’s hand like a starfish on the pillow, your hand on the doorknob, the dachshund’s lurching off the forbidden couch when you come through the door...

“You are seeing everything for the last time -- the room where for years Christmases have happened, snow falling so thick by the windows that sometimes it starts to snow in the room, Christmas brightness falling on tables, books, chairs...

“You are seeing everything for the last time – the gaudy [Christmas] tree in the corner, the family sitting there snowbound, snow-blind to the crazy passing of what they think will never pass...

“And now, today, everything will pass, because it is the last day. For the last time you are seeing the rain fall and, in your mind, that snow, the child asleep, the dog making sheepishly for his pillow by the radiator...

“For the last time you are hearing the house come alive, because you who are part of this life have come alive to it...

“All the unkept promises, if they are ever to be kept, have to be kept today. All the unspoken words, if you do not speak them today, will never be spoken.

“The people, the ones you love and the ones who bore you to death, all the life you have in you to live with them, if you do not live it with them today, will never be lived.

“It is the first day, because it has never been before, and it is the last day, because it will never be again. Be alive, if you can, through today, this day of your life. Follow your feet. Put on the coffee. Start the orange juice, the bacon, the toast. Then go wake your children and think about the work of your hands....” (The Alphabet of Grace (1970), pp. 39-40)

On the road to Jerusalem Jesus was seeing and enjoying everything, and everyone, for the last time – “the companionship of his friends Judas and Lazarus, whom he loved; the hospitality of Mary and Martha; the gate to the city; the old man with the toothless smile; the little boy with the black and white dog; the engagement of his friends the pharisees, to whom he tells a final parable; the intimacy of a meal with his disciples.”

He was seeing everything for the last time. And now, today, everything will pass, because it is the last day. It is the first day, really, because it has never been before, but it is the last day because it will never be again. “Be alive, if you can, through today, this day of your life. Follow your feet,” Jesus must have said to himself.

Imagine all this on the mind and heart of Jesus, even as he walks his final steps up the hill to Calvary: “All the unkept promises, if they are ever to be kept, have to be kept today,” Jesus must have thought in his mind and heart, but also in his flesh and bone. “All the unspoken words, if I do not speak them today, will never be spoken. The people, the ones I love and the ones who bore me to death, all the life I have in me to live with them, if I do not live it with them today, will never be lived.”

“Father,” Jesus asked in the garden, “if possible, take this cup from me. Can these bones do it, Father? Can these bones live?”

Then Jesus remembered the prophet and the promise: “Do not dwell on the past. Today, now, is the last day, because it will never be again. But it is the first day because it has never been before. Today, destiny binds all lives together, and you have today to live. It’s not too late to love. See, I am doing a new thing. Even now I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live.” And Jesus responds with life: “Father, forgive them. Into your hands, Father, I commit my spirit, my life and my self.” This, St. Paul reminds us, is the power of the resurrection the Christian covets, the power available through faith.

And here we are today at the Chapel of Our Saviour in Colorado Springs on this Fifth Sunday in Lent, 2007. How, by our own wits, could we know there’d be such a meeting, we and Jesus, once so separated by oceans and centuries, by the color of our skins, by culture, by language?

But destiny has bound our lives together. And today, by destiny’s grace, the oceans seem so small, the centuries but the blinking of an eye. How near we are to Calvary! And to Easter!

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.