Today I added a bandaid to my Lenten Prayer Pot, to symbolise how God heals our hurts. That same God has power even over death itself!  In response, we ought to help other people when they are sad or hurt.   [To learn more about the Lenten Prayer Pot idea, and how you can include your kids in a visual journey through Lent, with a new item added to the pot on each Sunday of Lent, click here.]

Then he said to me, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.' Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD."

--Ezekiel 37:11-14

Commentary on Ezekiel 37:1-14:

As is the temptation in every Lenten season, we might look forward so fervently to the reanimation of the bones that we rush forward to the glory of resurrection Sunday without considering the trauma of the preceding week. While celebrating the victory over death, we refuse to evaluate the systems, patterns, and consequences of our walk through the valley of its shadow.

If we are to teach and preach this text responsibly, we must pay attention to the boundary between life and death. We must at once recognize and bear witness to the despair of the world around us while also inspiring hope for a seemingly impossible future. Our task, like Ezekiel's, is not an easy one. But if we are able to shed our cynicism and despair, if we are willing to discern and testify to the death that surrounds our communities, and if we are prepared to obey the charge to command the spirit of God to renew them, perhaps the Church can and will fulfill its role to inspire new life in the darkest valleys.

If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
   O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
    that you may be feared.

--Psalm 130:3-4

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

--Romans 8:10-11

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."

--John 11:1-4

Commentary on John 11:

Being in relationship with Jesus means facing death and grief with him and learning that still, in spite of the death and the dryness and the finality of the door at the entrance to the tomb of our hopes, he can still be said to be life.  Nothing is ever so dead that it keeps him from being that in himself and for us.  And in John that life is not only a future hope.  Abundant life is always ever now.

As we approach Holy Week, having Jesus at our tombs also means that we must follow him to his.  We must endure the silence of his Saturday even as we endure the silences of our own.  But we endure them knowing already that Sunday will surely come, that when we are walking in the garden of our grief, we will meet him again.

Scripture readings for the fifth Sunday of Lent:

Ezekiel 37:1-14 --God conquers death, every time

Romans 8:6-11 --The dichotomy between flesh and spirit

John 11 --Gospel in Lazarus' story

For commentary and instruction, go here.

*Note: I apologise for not posting the readings last week, on the fourth Sunday of Lent.  Doesn't seem like anyone missed my post, though.  If you would like to see the readings I did but failed to post, click here.