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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
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From March 09, 2008
Death's Door
Ezekiel 37: 1-14
In the Navajo world, anything related to
death is taboo. So organ transplants are off limits. So are
open caskets. The taboo against death reaches further than
you might expect. When Navajos shop in thrift stores, for
instance, they are reluctant to buy for anyone other than
babies and children; adult clothing may have belonged to
someone no longer living.
As different as our culture may be from the Navajo, we too
have our difficulties with death. I am reminded of this
every month when those touched by a loved one's suicide
gather in the Parlor for mutual support and healing. Group
members choose their words carefully, as if to spare the
rest from looking death squarely in the eye. Even though
death has everyone's full attention.
Each week during Lent, we inch closer to Jerusalem and
Jesus' impending death. Unlike those who accompanied Jesus
so long ago, you and I make this trek already knowing that
death will not have the last word. No, the last word is
God's. And God's word is always life.
Several years ago when Mel Gibson's film, The Passion, was
released promotional posters featured this tagline: Dying
was his reason for living. In other words, Jesus was born in
order that he might die.
Well-respected scholar John Dominic Crossan quickly flipped
the poster's phrase backwards on itself: Jesus' living was
his reason for dying. Jesus' commitment to life and to the
God of life was so complete, so unwavering, so fierce that
he became a threat, one that the powerful quickly conspired
to extinguish. Humans, not God, wanted Jesus dead.
In spite of the cross, in spite of its cruel finality, the
life in Jesus, the God of life in him, could not and would
not die. Which is why we call ourselves Easter people and
not Good Fridayans. In the face of death, we are a people of
confident hope, not a community of hopeless resignation or
anxious avoidance.
This is why, even during the reflective season of Lent,
Sundays are to be bright celebrations of resurrection and
not rituals centered on doom and gloom. Even before Holy
Week has come and gone, even before the stone have been
rolled away from Jesus' tomb, we can claim and proclaim
God's ultimate power over the grave.
Jesus' dying and rising imparts hope for life beyond this
life. It drives away our fear and assures us we, too, will
rise in Christ. But it should do more. It should also give
us hope for life within this life.
The power that brought forth Jesus' resurrection is ours any
time we encounter one of life's endless endings--the big
deaths as well as the small. Whether death visits us in the
form of a failed relationship or a lost opportunity, God can
be counted on to birth a new beginning. Out of each and
every death, God is there with us calling forth life.
Long before Jesus lived, died, and rose again, the God of
resurrection and renewal longed for us to understand that
God's energies and interests lean perpetually in the
direction of life.
Even when death seems to have gotten the upper and ever-so
permanent hand.
We see this in today's lesson. By way of a vision, God's
spirit calls the prophet Ezekiel out into a valley of dry
bones. Dry bones. Bones left to bake in the sun for such a
long time that even those who cried over them are now long
gone.
God shows Ezekiel a valley scattered with bleached-out bones
and asks the prophet if they can live. Reason says no. But
Ezekiel is more than a man of reason; he is also one of
God's own. "O Lord, you know," the prophet responds.
In turn, God proceeds to educate Ezekiel (and us) in the
ways of a God for whom there is no expiration date on
resurrection power.
"Prophecy to these bones," God tells his prophet, "and say
to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says
the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter
you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews upon you, and
will cause flesh to come upon you, and will cover you with
skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; you shall
know that I am the Lord."
Surely these words alone raised Ezekiel up. Surely they
brought him back to life, he who was a prophet of the Lord
while his own people, the nation of Israel, were living in
exile.
Ezekiel was, in many ways, a man called to serve the living
dead; defeated years earlier by Babylon and forced out of
the promised land, his were a people for whom all had been
lost. Including hope.
God shows Ezekiel a vision of a long-abandoned battlefield,
a metaphor for his people's spiritual state, and God insists
that all is not lost.
God's people can be every bit as alive as they were years
ago. Their bones can come back together again; they can take
on flesh and blood and dance again. If Ezekiel will but
prophecy, will but boldly proclaim God's life-giving power
to them.
And Ezekiel does. He stands in the midst of death and speaks
persistent and powerful words of life. "I prophecied as he
commanded me," Ezekiel says, "and the breath came into them,
and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude."
And yet this enlivening is not quite complete.
Alive again, flesh supple, bodies agile once more, God's
resurrected have no idea they are alive! "Our bones are
dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely."
Huh? As vibrant as their bodies are, as vital and whole now,
the minds and memories of the multitude have not yet been
renewed.
Is this not also the case with us so often? God delivers us
into new life and yet something within stays dead, still
trapped in the past.
I once had a parishioner who, rather than let God's fresh,
life-giving air enter her spiritual lungs seemed to prefer
breathing into herself the stale, familiar breath of a
painful past. In this way, she kept herself perpetually at
death's door--not quite living and yet not quite
gone--rather than dancing into the new life Christ was
offering her.
The God of life means for God's people to experience life in
full, not only in part. So God says to Ezekiel, "Say to
them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your
graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I
will put my spirit within you, and you shall livethen you
shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act."
You may be familiar with Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who
devoted her life to study and service related to death and
dying. But you may not know about Stephen Levine, who worked
alongside Kubler-Ross early on. A life-long Buddhist, Levine
adapted practices from his spiritual tradition to enable
those with terminal illness (and their loved ones) to
befriend death.
Later on, Stephen Levine took what he had been teaching and
adapted it for the rest of us, since, when it comes to being
in bodies, we are all given a terminal diagnosis.
"Practice dying," was one of Levine's favorite litanies.
What sounds at first like a creepy command is really wisdom
cut from the same cloth as Jesus'. By acquainting ourselves
with and becoming intimate with life's metaphoric deaths,
life's many dead-ends and losses, we are helped beyond
measure when we face our own bodily deaths.
I've never been at death's door in any real, literal sense.
But I have been at death's door in other ways and, inspired
by Levine, have used those occasions to practice dying.
When my job at the university was eliminated, for instance,
I used that season in my life to explore what it meant to
die to a life I could not prolong or bargain back. When a
once-satisfying relationship came to an abrupt and complete
end, that death offered yet one more opportunity to
practice.
Even seemingly small things, life's daily disappointments
and dead-ends can, Levine insists, help us trust death
rather than fear it.
Levine's suggestion has been liberating. And delightfully
paradoxical. By helping me learn to walk toward death rather
than away from it, Stephen Levine the Buddhist helped me
become more of a Christian.
By inviting me to look out over the valley, to turn toward
death and look out over what seems utterly final, I have
been helped to see God's hand at work even in times of
complete loss.
God does not and indeed cannot leave us at death's door.
Our God is the God of life. Just as God did not leave Jesus
in death but drew Jesus into new life, resurrected life, so
God will not leave any of us without hope or help. Not just
hope of life beyond this life. But hope for life within this
earthly life.
We are an Easter people. And for that reason, we don't just
practice dying. We also practice being resurrected.
"I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your
graves, O my people." The grave of exile. The grave of lost
opportunity. The grave of failed expectations and abandoned
dreams.
Ours is a God who refuses to leave us dead in body or
spirit. This is God's life-long promise. One that never,
ever dies. Amen.
© Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC) |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
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