Lenten Landmarks - The Rev. Gigi Miller
When my family drives up to Disneyland, we look for landmarks that tell us we’re getting close to the park. Invariably someone (OK, it’s me) mistakes the Irvine Spectrum for the Matterhorn, but by the time we catch sight of California Adventures’ Grizzly Peak, we know we can see Disney from where we are.
For the past four weeks, we’ve been on a Lenten journey of discovery, reflecting on the nature of God and God’s vision for us. We’re following Jesus through his earthly ministry, meeting a cast of characters who tell us about Jesus’ humanity and divinity as we travel toward his fateful, final visit to Jerusalem. All the passages from the previous Sundays build on one another and not just because each week’s Gospel reading is longer than the one before. We can’t quite see Holy Week from here, but we’re getting close.
Today, we join the prophet Ezekiel in a desolate valley filled with bones, dried up, and bleached white. Ezekiel is already despondent; he and his fellow Judeans were conquered by the Babylonian empire and exiled far from their promised land and God’s dwelling place, the temple. They feel lost and deserted, separated from the comfort of God’s presence.
As we confront upheavals in our lives and in those we love, we’ve all felt excluded and adrift. Job loss, divorce, illness, injury, abuse, addiction leave us feeling isolated and alone. Our polarized society, driven by an economy of scarcity, public corruption, wars and rumors of wars, banishes people who look differently, speak differently, think differently, identify differently, love differently, and worship differently to the forgotten outskirts. We wonder, with Ezekiel and the rest of the displaced Judeans, where God is in this chaotic landscape of shattered dreams.
God listens to Ezekiel’s lament without judgement or platitudes. Enlisting Ezekiel in a miraculous process of transformation, God comforts Ezekiel by asking him to speak healing words to the scattered skeletons and remind them of God’s rejuvenating force. Now it’s safe to say God didn’t need Ezekiel’s help, presumably God could have knit all those bones together in a cosmic game of Operation. God reminds Ezekiel of humanity’s Divine purpose as the caretaker of God’s creation; Israel’s hope is not lost.
We can learn a few things about God and ourselves here. God knows our suffering; with the psalmist, we cry to God “out of the depths” of the distress in our own lives and those of others. We can be transparent with a God who doesn’t just “meet us where we are.” God stays with us through all our brokenness and holds us so close we can almost feel God’s steady breath slowing our anxious gaspings. With sighs to deep for words, the Spirit’s cherishes us and urge us to turn away from suffocating self-absorption and despair.
The Greek term for an intentional change of heart and mind is metanoia, and it’s what Lent is all about. Turning toward God, we can put on our own healing oxygen mask and take in God’s vital Spirit. Then, we can breathe renewal into others and co-create the Beloved Community.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us that God is present even in death’s bleak valley. My mother died when I was seventeen, and I didn’t believe that the world could continue if the person most important to me was no longer in it. People were laughing, playing games, going to parties; I wanted to scream “Stop!”
Martha and Mary are feeling this acute sense of betrayal, anger, and pain as they confront Jesus. Jesus connects with them in their trauma and listens to their anguished cries. He doesn’t tell them time heals all wounds or that God wanted their brother to join him in heaven. Jesus meets and stays with the sisters in their grief. John’s Gospel says Jesus is greatly disturbed and visibly weeping. Was Jesus angry at the consequences of death? Bereft in the loss of a beloved friend? Upset at his disciples’ and the crowd’s initial misunderstanding of God’s promise of resurrection? Anxious about his own imminent demise in Jerusalem? Jesus, earlier so confident in God’s life-giving power and his own ability to raise Lazarus, is shaken to his core when confronted by the finality of his friend’s death. In his full humanity, Jesus is devastated.
But Jesus, in his full divinity, knows the valley of the shadow of death is not where Lazarus’ story—or ours—ends. Jesus doesn’t just confirm Mary and Martha’s belief in the eternal life at the end of the age; Jesus tells them, “I am the resurrection and the life.” God, Jesus, and the Spirit are with them right now in this world and the one to come; time collapses into a liminal space, and Martha proclaims Jesus as the Messiah. Before commanding Lazarus to leave the cave, Jesus looks upward, humbly directing the attention of all those gathered to the miracle’s source, God. Finally, Jesus directs the crowd to unbind the risen Lazarus and usher him into his new life.
Author Rachel Held Evans wrote that miracles like the revival of Israel’s dry bones and the raising of Lazarus “show us what it looks like for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and they invite us to buy into that future now, with every act of compassion and inclusion, every step toward healing and reconciliation and love. The miracles of Jesus aren’t magic tricks designed to awe prospective converts, nor are they tests from the past, meant to sort true believers from doubters. They are instructions, challenges. They show us what to do and how to hope.”
God asks us to replace the world’s death-dealing notions of inadequacy in favor of God’s assurance that the Spirit lives in and sustains us. Mother Hannah Wilder put it this way: “You can’t become who God wants you to be if you stay who you are.” But we’re missing part of God’s dream for us if that renovation project stops with us as individuals.
In our weekly Deep Dive Book Group, we just finished reading Cherished Belonging, the latest volume from Father Gregory Boyle, founder of L.A.’s Homeboy Industries. Homeboy is the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Fr G, as the homies call him, speaks of kinship born of acatamiento, Spanish for affectionate awe.
Affectionate awe begins with deep listening to those whom society has forsaken and silenced, including those with whom we disagree. Sometimes we think we know all about an issue of the day and the people involved, scrolling through news feeds and media posts that confirm our opinions. And our privilege can blind us to the resilience and self-reliance of our struggling neighbors. We propose solutions to problems without hearing directly from the groups affected by them. When we meet and stay with all God’s children, Paul says “we set the mind on the Spirit which is life and peace.”
As we walk through the final milestones of our Lenten passage, we take with us lessons from Ezekiel and Lazarus. God treasures us in all the messiness of this life. In a community grounded in vulnerability and humility, we gather our voices to stand in solidarity with the exiled and bring them into our embrace. Together, we unbind the wounds that banish us to dark caves of desperation and accompany each other into the light of God’s holy country, trusting in Jesus’ promise of everlasting life right now and in the time to come.
