Sunday 29th March 2020 - Fifth Sunday of Lent

9.00am Eucharist from The Deanery, Old Portsmouth

Just before the bookshops closed, I was able to buy a copy of Hilary Mantel’s novel The Mirror and the Light.  Over nine hundred pages, it completes her award winning trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII.  Part of her achievement is tell a well-known historical story in a way that makes you feel in the midst of it, without knowing how it’s going to turn out.   Part of her method is to write in the present tense: ‘He says; he does’, not ‘he said; he did.’

We are in the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis, and we don’t how it’s going to turn out.   This adds to the sense of fear and anxiety.   Every year, a number of people die from winter flu, but, sad as this is, because we know it’s going to happen it doesn’t have the same impact.  Another novelist, the American Philip Roth, wrote that when events are written down in history books, we are shielded from the ‘terror of the unforeseen’; what it felt like to not know how things were going to go, to be unsure about the right course of action, to not know how long it is all going to last.  Which is pretty much where we are now, for all the graphs and possible timescales laid out for us by the government and their advisors.  We are living with the terror of the unforeseen.

Today’s biblical readings speak to this situation, each painting a picture of profound human need in which the protagonists don’t know what to do, nor what will happen next.  The prophet Ezekiel surveys a valley of dry bones, symbolizing the unrepentant nation of Israel, languishing in exile.  He wonders if these bones signify the end, and when God asks him, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’, he doesn’t know what to say beyond, ‘O Lord God, you know.’   We today, exiled from our churches and cathedrals, from our cinemas, hairdressers, restaurants and holidays abroad, might well wonder if this is the death of something, and what will survive and live when things get back to some kind of normality.

Then there is our reading from John’s Gospel, the fourth Sunday in a row in which Jesus encounters intriguing characters trying to work out who he is: the Pharisee Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, a man born blind, and now the grieving family of Lazarus.  Desolated by grief, Lazarus’s sisters Mary and Martha lament Jesus’s absence.  We today, self-isolating and staying at home as a death dealing virus sweeps our nation, might feel similarly alone and unsupported.

In our readings today, we find out what happens next.  Ezekiel is told to prophesy to the dry bones, and sinew and flesh are restored, before the breath of God – the word is the same as for wind, or spirit – brings life, new life.   And then Jesus (despite those trying to put him off) does come to Mary and Martha.  What then occurs is extraordinary, as Lazarus is raised from the dead.   In both cases, the ending of the story speaks of God’s new creation, as the old order of sin and death is overturned.  

In both cases, and this is why we hear these readings today, what happens foreshadows Jesus’ own passion and death; his exile and separation from family and friends, his experience of abandonment and suffering; before, after the silence of Holy Saturday, he is wonderfully raised to new life.   The restored Israel will go astray again, and Lazarus will have to taste death a second time, but in the resurrection of Christ there truly is a new creation that endures. One of the fruits of that new creation is life of the church; another is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So while we are in the middle of our current situation, experiencing the ‘terror of the unforeseen’, we too can know, like Ezekiel and Mary and Martha, that we are not abandoned.  Out of this situation of death, the breath of God will bring something new and hopeful; there will be a new creation, even if cannot yet know exactly how it will look or come to pass.

There are clues and signs all around us, however; a whole panoply of hope seen in a variety of ways; in collective applause for the dedication of National Health staff, and thousands of volunteers to help them, in fish returning to the canals of Venice, in the generosity and thoughtfulness of neighbours, in people telephoning friends they haven’t spoken to for years, in music shared from balcony to balcony in Italy and even across the rooftops from Cathedral House in Portsmouth, in cleaner air and a better view of the stars at night, in the church and other organisations finding new and imaginative ways to foster prayer and community.

So far I’ve read 160 pages of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light.   I would love to think that by the time I get to page 900, we will have returned from exile, and be rejoicing together in our churches and Cathedral.  But whether or not, I know that not only is God with us in these strange times, but God’s breath, God’s spirit, is working in us and through us to bring something new into being.  And I know that the same Christ who was moved to tears at the death of Lazarus, not only weeps with us now, but is also working to bring new life and hope to the world.  As we shall find over the next fortnight, in him death is never the last word, and in him is found the healing of all our frailties and hurts.  AMEN