They walk really slowly. They communicate by grunting and they don't look too good, but they are riding a tidal wave of popularity. They are zombies and they want to eat your brains. They are all over your TV and your bookstore. There you will find several volumes detailing how to survive the coming zombie apocalypse.
The most popular tip being buy a pair of running shoes. There's a reason why the show is called The Walking Dead. There's even a collection of novels based on classic works of literature, but now updated to include the undead, for example, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I've gotta tell you that if I have the choice of going to Tea and Crumpets at the Vicarage with a zombie or Jane Austen, I'm picking the dead guy.
Much more entertaining. So it's no surprise that the people who decide what we're going to read in the Bible each week have said that it's somewhere there has to be. John chapter 11, Lazarus the Undead. Here he comes, stumbling and staggering out of the tomb grave clothes falling off him. He has entered this strange form of existence.
He had become sick, he had died, but now he's back to the shock and awe of his family and friends. But there the similarity between Lazarus of Bethany and zombies ends because it is not evil that has won this day. But goodness, it is not fear that grips his family, but wonder, it is not carnage that ensues.
But life, this is not the day of the dead, but the kingdom of God. It's breaking out. Can you see it? It's coming bit by bit, day by day. Can you feel it today? A man who has been dead for four days is alive. One day he'll die again. In two weeks, a man will be raised and transformed to a new dimension of life, never to die again.
Today, death is temporarily delayed. In two weeks, death will be eternally defeated. Its grip over people will be loosened. It's victory shattered. It's sting drawn. Today we have the clue, the hint, the obscured hazy vision. In two weeks, we'll have the real thing. The dominion of death will be swallowed up by the kingdom of life.
The mask will be ripped off our final enemy, and we will see it. For the imposter it is as it bows before the one who has opened the kingdom to all but liturgically, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Uh, the hangings are still purple. The hallelujah box is still tightly sealed. We're in Lent and it hurts.
It hurts to have a glimpse of the kingdom, but to know it's not yet it hurts because like Ezekiel, we live in a valley of dry bones like Martha and Mary. Our brothers and sisters become ill and die and our hearts yearn for that day when death will be no more. And we're sorrow and sighing will flee, but it's not.
Today
our mission is to live in this. In-between time, we can doubt become disillusioned, question whether the kingdom is coming at all. We can even be disappointed with God. Disappointed with God. There's a shocking thought. Do you know that feeling? You expected God to do something and he didn't. He promised never to forsake you, but it feels like he has done just that.
You prayed sincerely and earnestly, but for whatever reason, God did not grant you what you needed. You believed that God was love and that he would keep you from all harm, and yet that terrible phone call still came. That disastrous fight still blazed that sickness struck. That test came back positive.
That accident happened, that venture failed. Mary and Martha knew that feeling. They too were disappointed with God. One week earlier, their brother Lazarus, grew so sick that his sisters became worried. Perhaps they should call everyone together and prepare for the worst. Better still, they should send for their friend Jesus.
He is just 30 miles away. If he leaves this morning, he can be here by tomorrow night, and when he comes, he will heal our brother. So they send a message to Jesus to come quickly. Lazarus is dying, but Jesus does something terribly unexpected and unexpectedly terrible. Instead of hurrying to visit his friend, Jesus intentionally delays his journey.
John says, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer. In the place where he was. Imagine that you call someone and say, get over here. Your friend is dying, and they say, well, thanks for the news, but I'm just gonna hang around here for a couple more days. I'll leave on Tuesday. So it's 48 hours later, Jesus and the disciples finally begin their 30 mile journey to Bethany, but it's too late.
Lazarus has died. Martha has been watching for them, and she runs out and gives them the awful news, but she also gives Jesus something else, a piece of her mind. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. If you had been here, my brother would not have died. If God had been watching the virus wouldn't have happened.
The accident wouldn't have occurred. The tumor would've been healed, the market wouldn't have crashed. The relationship wouldn't have turned sour. The job wouldn't have been cut, the marriage wouldn't have ended. Lord, if you had been here,
I remember punching my pillow repeatedly. I wasn't counting how many times, but I only stopped when all the energy was Dr. Drained from my arm and I could no longer make a fist. Then I squeezed the pillow into my face and screamed two words. God, why? I then quoted scripture at God. Because if you are going to argue with someone, it helps if you can use their own words against them.
So I held up my Bible and I screamed at God. Genesis 1825 Shall not the judge of the Earth do right? You see, God had let me down. The judge of all the Earth was not doing right. He was doing me wrong. I wish I could tell you that shouting at God changed my circumstances, that I shamed God into changing his mind, and I was vindicated.
I wish I could say that God gave in and relented, but my arguing didn't work. My circumstances remained exactly the same. So I told him what a lousy job he was doing running my life. Lord, if you had been here,
things turned out fine for Mary and Martha. Their circumstances did change. Christ raised their brother. Did their anger force God to change his mind? Surely not. Their anger did not change God, but maybe it changed them. Maybe when they let Christ into the depths of their emotions, they were opening a door to God performing a miracle.
My own shouting at God and accusing him of not caring did not change God, but it did change me. It allowed me to mourn and grieve for one chapter of my life that had come to a natural end and to move on in time to a new and better one. You see, Jesus doesn't rebuke the sisters for getting angry with him.
He feels their pain and honors their anger. In fact, he too is angry. Our version of the Bible says that when Jesus reached the grave of Lazarus, he was quote, greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. Now the words translated greatly disturbed is actually better translated angry. Jesus is grieving the death of his friend, but he's also furious at the sheer meaningless, futile injustice of it all.
For Jesus death is just not right. It should not be. It had no part in God's original plan for creation, and it has no place in the new creation that Jesus himself will bring in. One day. Death is a gate crasher, and Jesus is mad at it. So even today, Jesus sits at the bedside in intensive care units and on the streets and all around this broken suffering world.
And he gets mad because lives have been cut short and light has been snuffed out.
So where does that leave us? When we feel let down by God, when you do everything right but still end up losing. When with Ezekiel, you are standing in the valley of dry bones. Those bones are the hopes. You once had a relationship that has gone sour, A marriage that slowly drifted a career that couldn't adapt to changes, opportunities you never took actions you regret a life that gradually lost its vision or its passion or its faith.
But today we hear God ask the same question. He asked Ezekiel, can these dry bones live and we can respond like him? Lord, I don't know you are God, all I know is it feels so dry, so joyless, so sick, so dead. But Lord, give me hope and let them live. And the God who called Lazarus out of his tomb and commanded dry bones to live can speak into our hearts.
Reviving the hope that life has strangled, resurrecting the vision that failure has smothered rebirthing, the faith that circumstance has stifled. Well, Martha and Mary's story tell us this. It's a okay to be angry. It's even okay to feel let down by God for a time. He will listen even to our angry, bitter prayers.
The prayers of accusation and frustration. But God, God will not punish us or reject us or turn his back on us if we scream at him. But I want to say that there's a difference between feeling anger towards God for a spell and nursing it as a constant feature of your life. We all visit the place of anger and blame.
But it is not a good place to buy land, build a house and settle down Anger, whether it's anger with God or with other human beings is a harsh roommate. And if our normal, regular state is to be angry with God, then maybe we need healing. It's not easy living in the age of zombies. The kingdom has come, but not completely.
We are alive, but not fully. We see, but we still grope around in search of sustenance. It's Lent, not Easter. We receive a measure of healing, a portion of resurrection, but we must wait before we can live free of injustice and frustration. And our search brings us here to the God of resurrection. And so we come just as we are and are received just as we are, angry or peaceful, happy, or mournful.
But God will not just leave us here. He wipes our eyes, mends our hearts, and raises us to new life. Amen. Amen.