“O Israel wait for the Lord,” the Psalmist calls out, “for with the Lord there is mercy;” . . . indeed, . . . “[the Lord] shall redeem Israel from all their sins.”  . . . The Psalmist exhorts us to be faithful to God; . . . to put our trust in Him, and He will show us mercy.  . . . Holy Scripture promises that, when we are penitent and faithful, God will redeem us from all our sins.

    Now, many, many people hear that assurance and think, “forgiveness.”  But Holy Scripture does not say “forgive”; . . . it says “redeem”.  And at this moment, as we are poised to begin, next Sunday, the holiest week of the year, . . . you must understand that while forgiveness is a consequence of redemption, . . . it is not the object of redemption.  Forgiveness is not the point of Palm Sunday; . . . neither is forgiveness the object of Passiontide.  . . . If it’s forgiveness you want, come up to the Altar Rail, and I’ll lay hands on you and pronounce absolution in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  I can do that.  You don’t need Jesus, specifically.  . . . At least you certainly don’t need Him to suffer humiliation, degradation, torture, and the exquisite agony of crucifixion simply so you can be forgiven!  . . . Read the Gospels.  . . . Jesus forgave innumerable souls and made them well without cost to Himself.

    No, Holy Week is about something quite different from mere forgiveness.  It is about the thing which God revealed to the prophet Ezekiel in a vision:

The hand of the LORD was upon me, [the prophet says] and he brought me out by the Spirit . . . and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones.  . . . and lo, they were very dry.  And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”  . . . He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.  Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.  And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”  . . . 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 clean 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 put my Spirit within you, and you shall live . . .”

Ezekiel is a prophet of the Exile.  Ezekiel is living in Babylon around 580 B.C., far to the north of Jerusalem, with all the children of Israel who had been brought there with him some five years before.  All the people of Israel are in Exile in Babylon . . . and will remain there for another forty years; . . . they are in Exile as a consequence of their spiritual tomfoolery.  They are in Exile as a consequence of their apostasy; as a consequence of their arrogance and pride; as a consequence of their ingratitude; . . . All the people of Israel are in Exile in Babylon as a consequence of their sin.  … As a consequence of their sin, all the people of Israel have lost their wealth, . . . they have lost their Temple; . . . they have lost their land; . . . they have lost their life.  All the people of Israel are like dead people; for, they have no place among the nations; their prayers have no purpose; . . . they have no life.  . . . But suddenly . . . after five years of silence, suddenly the Lord God Almighty speaks!  . . . The Lord God Almighty speaks to Ezekiel, and He says, “As the consequence of your sin . . . your bones are dried up, your hope is lost, and you are dead.  . . . But I, the Lord your God, will redeem Israel; . . . I will undo the consequence of your sin!  . . . I will bring you up out of your graves . . . and you shall live.”  . . . Redemption is about Life!

    And so, Saint Paul says, “the wages of sin is death, . . . but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  And this is the meaning of Holy Week!  Jesus declares to Martha,

“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

Jesus comes to Bethany, to the grieving household of Mary and Martha, in order to give us all a sign that this is so.  Jesus comes to Bethany to show us the meaning of what He shall do for us all in Jerusalem on Holy Week.  Jesus comes to Bethany to undo the death of Lazarus; . . . to redeem him from the consequence of humanity’s penchant to resist God.

    Because, you see, . . . the trouble with us is that, if we believe at all, we can believe in God’s forgiveness; . . . but somehow we cannot believe in our redemption.  I guess we reason (wrongly) that if I can regard with generosity the peccadilloes of my neighbor and accommodate myself to be tolerant of their “needs,” . . . then God must be able to do that as well; . . . we reason that if I can forgive, then God should be able to forgive also.  . . . But if I am powerless over death, . . . then death must be greater than God as well.  And so, Martha, the worrier, runs to Jesus in her grief and says, “Ah, Jesus, if only you’d been here when my brother took sick; . . . but now he’s dead; there’s nothing to be done.  It’s too late.”  . . . And then Mary, the contemplative, rushes to Jesus and says, “Ah, Jesus, if only you’d been here when my brother took sick; . . . but now he’s dead; there’s nothing to be done.  It’s too late.”  Here are two entirely different sisters who view Jesus in entirely different ways, . . . but in the matter of death they agree that Christ is helpless.  In the matter of death both sisters believe the same thing:  God can help you when you’re sick, . . . but when you’re dead, . . . it’s too late.

    But Jesus assures the sisters:  “Take me to where you have laid your brother, and remove the stone that seals him in.”  . . . And still they resist:  “Lord, by this time there will be a smell, . . . and the odor will break our hearts.  Because he’s dead, and there’s nothing to be done.  It’s too late.”  . . . But the Lord God Almighty, in His Incarnate Word, Jesus; . . . The Lord God Almighty shows us that there’s something to be done, . . . and Jesus does it.  Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb, and He commands us to unbind our dead; . . . for,

“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

    Now, . . . some people hear these words and reason with themselves like Eve:  wrongly.  . . . They reason, “Well, people still die.  They’ve been dying for two thousand years.  . . . So maybe Jesus doesn’t really mean we won’t die; . . . maybe He only means we won’t die spiritually.  . . . Our bodies die, but a little invisible replica of ourselves, consisting of our awareness, memories, and emotions, goes to live happily in an invisible place inhabited by the invisible God.”  . . . Some people hear the words of Jesus, and because they mistrust them, concoct the ancient and invincible heresy of the duality of life; . . . a duality in which there is a physical life which operates according to certain corporeal rules that harmonize with a spiritual set of rules that govern an entirely separate spiritual life.  Your physical life is meant to end (the heresy goes); . . . your spiritual life is not.  But that is not what the Word of God teaches us.  The Word of God to His people says, instead,

O Israel, wait for the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy; With him there is plenteous redemption

And so, the Incarnate Word physically raises Lazarus from death, saying to us,

“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

Human life is not a duality.  Human life is a unity and a mystery that we do not fully comprehend, nor will we until the day on which the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise incorruptible, as Jesus has done.  Because, while the raising of Lazarus was a stupendous event.  While it was even more stupendous than Ezekiel’s vision, because Ezekiel only saw a vision of dry bones coming to life and rising up off the valley floor, . . . but Lazarus actually returned to life and physically walked out of the tomb; . . . while the raising of Lazarus was a stupendous event, . . . it was simply a sign which God has given to us.  By which I mean that the raising of Lazarus was not a resurrection. It was a reanimation.  Lazarus lived a number of years afterward, . . . and then he died.  The raising of Lazarus was a sign.  . . . It was a sign of the tremendous truth about ourselves, not as we are, but as we shall be.  It is a sign of the thing which Christ shall accomplish this Holy Week, when He shall suffer humiliation, degradation, and the unrelenting pain of torture; . . . when Jesus shall suffer the exquisite agony of crucifixion.  . . . Christ Jesus will permit arrogant men to do these things to Him, to God’s Incarnate Son; . . . He will suffer all these things for our redemption.

    . . . If God were a just God, we should suffer everlasting humiliation for our sins; . . . if God were a just God our sins would merit eternal torture; . . . if God were a just God each of our sins must win us . . . not simply death, but obliteration.  . . . But the Lord God Almighty is not a just God.  He is a loving Father; . . . and He has sent us Jesus to redeem us from the just consequences of our sin . . . and to bring us . . . bring our entire being, body and soul, . . . into Life.  . . . The raising of Lazarus is a sign of this hope that we have in Jesus:  . . . that though the wages of sin may be death, . . . in the free gift of His Son, the Lord God Almighty has undone the consequence of sin . . . so that, believing in Jesus, we shall not die . . . but live.  Because, you see, Jesus is

the resurrection and the life; he who believes in [Him], though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in [Jesus] shall never die.