Here’s a thumbnail sketch of the situation into which Jesus was born, as I understand it: A country/province ruled by an occupying force. Faith overseen by a legalistic, often self-serving, hierarchy.
His three-year ministry took place in this context: Roman officials keeping order in Judea, exacting taxes for a remote emperor, and trying not to attract the wrong kind of attention (such as followers of another religion, non-worshippers of the Divine Emperor rebelling or even making trouble of any kind)—economic political, or religious.
He was also surrounded by others of his own faith divided over issues such as anti-Roman sentiment and purity laws of his own religion.
Some people were hunkered down (“don’t cause any problem with the Emperor or the Pharisees”), others were restless wannabe rebels, pitting themselves against one or the other of those bodies—Romans or Pharisees—or both.
Ezekiel was prophesying 600 years before all this, but he, too, lived and prophesied during a period of political unrest and upheaval, the Babylonian exile.
Neither Ezekiel nor Jesus proposed a political or military solution to the problems in which he operated. Both used imagery or the reality of death to present the message they held in common—reconciliation and redemption.
Ezekiel was visited by a vision of long-dead bodies reduced to scattered bone, symbolizing the Israelites who turned away from their true religion and been reduced to slavery in Babylon. Their hearts had dried up.
In Matthew’s Gospel We are privy to a much more intimate story—the death of a single man, Jesus’ own friend Lazarus.
Ezekiel’s vision culminated in a symbolic, miraculous knitting together of sinew, flesh, skin, and breath to bring those who were dead to life.
The story in the Gospel shows Jesus deliberately waiting for the death of his dear friend in order to deliver the message—that same message—in a much more deeply felt and truly miraculous way, calling Lazarus out of his tomb, from death to life.
And this, of course foreshadowed Jesus’ own death and resurrection which was to take place shortly afterward.
There’s no mention of politics finances, even religion, as a solution to all that I have mentioned. The message, beyond the shocking matter of life and death, is that God can do all that is impossible for us to accomplish.
That might sound simplistic. It doesn’t mean that we’re meant to be passive, to sit back, do nothing, and say, “God will provide” or Jesus will handle this.” It means that we pray for insight, do our best on all these fronts—economy, politics, and social interaction—and, after all that, know that we are powerless despite our best plans and execution of those plans to control the outcome.
God brings the dead to life. Nations. Peoples. Individual humans. Every one of us, our own spirit within us. The whole world, every spring.
May we always remember, as the Collect reminds us, that God alone can set in order the unruly wills and affections of us, God’s children. And also everything else in God’s creation.
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His three-year ministry took place in this context: Roman officials keeping order in Judea, exacting taxes for a remote emperor, and trying not to attract the wrong kind of attention (such as followers of another religion, non-worshippers of the Divine Emperor rebelling or even making trouble of any kind)—economic political, or religious.
He was also surrounded by others of his own faith divided over issues such as anti-Roman sentiment and purity laws of his own religion.
Some people were hunkered down (“don’t cause any problem with the Emperor or the Pharisees”), others were restless wannabe rebels, pitting themselves against one or the other of those bodies—Romans or Pharisees—or both.
Ezekiel was prophesying 600 years before all this, but he, too, lived and prophesied during a period of political unrest and upheaval, the Babylonian exile.
Neither Ezekiel nor Jesus proposed a political or military solution to the problems in which he operated. Both used imagery or the reality of death to present the message they held in common—reconciliation and redemption.
Ezekiel was visited by a vision of long-dead bodies reduced to scattered bone, symbolizing the Israelites who turned away from their true religion and been reduced to slavery in Babylon. Their hearts had dried up.
In Matthew’s Gospel We are privy to a much more intimate story—the death of a single man, Jesus’ own friend Lazarus.
Ezekiel’s vision culminated in a symbolic, miraculous knitting together of sinew, flesh, skin, and breath to bring those who were dead to life.
The story in the Gospel shows Jesus deliberately waiting for the death of his dear friend in order to deliver the message—that same message—in a much more deeply felt and truly miraculous way, calling Lazarus out of his tomb, from death to life.
And this, of course foreshadowed Jesus’ own death and resurrection which was to take place shortly afterward.
There’s no mention of politics finances, even religion, as a solution to all that I have mentioned. The message, beyond the shocking matter of life and death, is that God can do all that is impossible for us to accomplish.
That might sound simplistic. It doesn’t mean that we’re meant to be passive, to sit back, do nothing, and say, “God will provide” or Jesus will handle this.” It means that we pray for insight, do our best on all these fronts—economy, politics, and social interaction—and, after all that, know that we are powerless despite our best plans and execution of those plans to control the outcome.
God brings the dead to life. Nations. Peoples. Individual humans. Every one of us, our own spirit within us. The whole world, every spring.
May we always remember, as the Collect reminds us, that God alone can set in order the unruly wills and affections of us, God’s children. And also everything else in God’s creation.
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