Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A (3-22-26)

The valley is full of bones. Not a peaceful cemetery with carefully tended graves in neat rows. Rather, this valley chalked full of old, tired, dry, cracked, lifeless bones. When the prophet Ezekiel is led to this desolate place, God asks a question that is so honest it almost sounds cruel:
Can these bones live? (And kind of like getting asked a question in class you're not prepared to answer Ezekiel uses the oldest trick in the book. "Oh God, you know...") It's a desolate and distant image, this valley of dry bones. But somehow, we know this place. Some of us have been here before.

Then we move to John's Gospel, where death is not distant and abstract, but personal. Lazarus - a friend of Jesus - has died, and his sisters Mary and Martha are grieving. “Lord, if you had been here…” Martha says. Jesus was too late. Death could not be stopped. Lord, if you had been here... It's the kind of question many of us have whispered in one form or another. "God, where were you?" "Jesus, what's taking so long?" And the non-answer we often get is similar to the one Martha receives.

Both of stories remind us of something central to the faith that we profess: that there is no resurrection without death.

I once walked alongside someone in a congregation who was struggling with addiction. For years, it had quietly taken root—first as a way to cope, and eventually as something that began to unravel the very fabric of their life. Thread by thread, each one a relationship, a job, a dream. Until there was little left but dependency and so much shame. I remember them saying to me, “I don’t think there’s anything left of me that isn’t broken.” In some way it felt like standing in Ezekiel's valley—dry, and scattered, and beyond repair.

There was no single moment where everything changed. Instead, it began with something small and fragile: a willingness to be honest. To say out loud the pain that had been hidden. And to admit that they needed help to see a way toward new life. And even that didn’t fix everything.

There were relapses and missed meetings. There were days of progress followed by days that felt like collapse. There were moments of hope, and then long stretches where it seemed like nothing was changing at all. If you looked at it from the outside, you might have said, “This isn’t resurrection. This is just ...struggle.”

But if you looked closer, something was happening. It was like bones beginning to clank together—just slightly. Sinews creeping back to the bones they once clung to. And over time—slowly and unevenly—something like life began to emerge. Not perfection. And definitely not perfect freedom from addiction. But life.

Longer stretches of sobriety and more frequent moments of clarity and fresh perspective. There were opportunities to slowly rebuild trust with those who had been hurt. And most importantly - there was a shift in how they saw themselves. Less defined by failure, and more open to the possibility that they were still someone God was not yet finished with.

But it was messy.

There were still days when the old patterns hit hard. There were still consequences that didn’t just disappear. There was - to borrow Martha’s words at the tomb - a stench. Because resurrection requires us to face what we would rather keep sealed away. Because resurrection... is a messy business.

In Ezekiel, the bones don’t instantly become a living army. They rattle. They come together. Flesh forms. And still—they are not alive until the breath of God enters them. In Bethany, Lazarus walks out of the tomb—but still bound in grave clothes. Alive, yes. But not yet free. And Jesus turns to the community and says, “Unbind him.” That’s the part we often miss - the full scope of what resurrection entails.

As theologian Rowan Williams reflects, resurrection is not the erasure of what has happened, but the transformation of it—the bringing of life through death rather than around it. God does not bypass the grave; God works within it, redeeming even what seems beyond hope.[1]

Resurrection, then, is not just something God does to us. It is something God draws us into. We are called to participate—to roll away stones, to speak hope into dead places, to help unbind one another.

That person I mentioned earlier didn’t find life again because everything suddenly became easy. They found it because, somehow, in the middle of the mess, God’s Spirit was at work—and they kept showing up to it. And because there were people around them willing to walk with them, to sit in the discomfort, to hold them accountable, and to remind them who they were when they couldn’t remember themselves. That is what resurrection often looks like. Not clean. Not quick. Not easy. But real. And maybe that’s where this meets us today.

Maybe you’re carrying something that feels like a bag of dry bones—something long dead and beyond hope. Maybe you’re standing outside a tomb, grieving what feels irreversible. Or maybe you’re like Lazarus—alive, but still wrapped in something that binds you.

Hear this: God is not waiting for things to become neat before bringing your spirit back to life. God is not afraid of the mess. God steps into it—into the struggle, the relapse, the shame, the slow rebuilding—and God begins the holy work of resurrection. So, if all you can do right now is show up and give yourself over to that work, that is enough. Because the God who asks, “Can these bones live?” is also the God who breathes life into them. The God who calls Lazarus from the tomb is also the God who surrounds him with a community to help set him free.

The same is true for us. Resurrection is happening—even now - in ways that are incomplete, and uncomfortable, and so very messy. But also—in ways that are full of life-giving grace. And that is the very best news.



Amen

[1] Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (1982)