Sermon for 5th Lent 2014

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on April 6, 2014
Scripture text: Ezekiel 37:1-14, John 11:1-14

Brennan Manning, whose book The Ragamuffin Gospel has been the topic of our Bible study sessions these many weeks, has a wonderful allegory of the church today. He says there are two kinds of Christians. There are settlers and there are pioneers.

The settlers all live in town where everything is nice, cozy, safe, and secure. The church is the courthouse, where order and stability are maintained. God is the mayor who lives in the courthouse. Jesus is the sheriff, who maintains law and order. The Holy Spirit is the saloon girl, who is there to mend the settlers’ sorrows. The pastor is the banker, whose job is to protect the settlers’ valuables, which are the traditions, institutions, and other sacred cows that matter most to the settlers.

The pioneers on the other hand are out on the trail. The church is the covered wagon and God is the trail boss. Jesus is the scout, out looking ahead to where things are going. The Holy Spirit is the hunter, the wild crazy untamed character who provides the wagon train with all its food and supplies. The pastor is the cook, who prepares the food the Holy Spirit provides. There is little security, little safety on the trail, but what there is instead is a sense of mission, movement, and high adventure.

Manning points out that Jesus came into this world to make of us pioneers and somewhere along the way we became settlers. We surrendered the wild, passionate, powerful evangelistic journey for the staid, tame, comfortable life of institution and tradition. When people are more concerned with what’s going to happen to “the building” than the mission, when people question the future of “their” church over God’s church, when folks only care about the doors being open long enough for their funeral to be in that building, you know you are dealing with Christians who are settled into their comfortable rut and have lost all sense of what faith is supposed to be about.

And we also know that a vast majority of so-called Christians have done exactly that.

The sermon of Manning’s from which I drew this illustration was likely preached sometime in the 1990s. Long before the current crisis of our times had emerged. So I’m going to adapt his metaphor to say that what is happening in our world over the last few years, all the cultural changes, all the technological changes, the economic realities, all that, is a fault line. And there are tremors. When the 1906 San Francisco quake hits our quaint little Old West town, it will flatten every building. Not one stone will be left upon another. Not one piece of wood that will not be splintered. The decision all Christians face, I believe, is whether we are going to hit the trail again (become pioneers) or stay put and take our chances with the earthquake.

“Mortal, can these bones live?” Well, can they?

That is the question we face. In many ways, we don’t have a choice anymore. It’s the pioneer trail or it’s extinction. Ezekiel saw the choice of his people, but he also saw something else. He saw the one thing that the settlers always forget; God’s plan is still in motion. God is still at work. Their failure to see that is the reason they became settlers in the first place.

Settling is an act of fear, it is an act of despair, it is an act of faithlessness. We are afraid because the world is a scary place, full of dangers both real and imagined. And yet what is every fear but a manifestation of the power of death? Death is ultimately the only thing we fear and look at what God does with death. “Lazarus, come out!” John calls (or at least implies that) Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead is the greatest of his signs and with good reason. There is no vision of God’s kingdom greater and more important than the conquest of death, an act Jesus himself accomplishes on Easter and then promises the same to each and every one of us.

The apostles packed up and headed off to the four corners of the world. The martyrs stood bravely before tribunals and trails. Disciples have willingly and openly defied the injustice of tyranny and exploitation. They have all done this willingly and eagerly because they knew that the worst thing their enemies could do to them was kill them and what was that compared to the promise of resurrection secured for them through Christ? They lived in that hope and they trusted in that promise, even in the face of terrifying and even lethal opposition. God did not call them to be safe, he called them to change the world.

Do we truly believe that Christ has been raised from the dead? Do we truly believe his word that this miracle is not a one time thing but the prelude of a gift he will grant to each and every one of us? If so, why then have we let ourselves wither and dry up, placing our trust in institutions and traditions crafted by human hands when our salvation is in God and God alone?

I am increasingly convinced that we have come into a time of trial. Not one like those our ancestors faced. There are no lions in the arena across from us, but it may be just as important. It seems to me that God has put a question to us. I am tearing down your traditions and institutions, your edifices and your idols. I’m knocking your crutches out from under you. Are you now going to let me breathe my spirit into you again and be the church I have called you to be? Are you going to stand again and live or remain dry bones?

God confronts each of us with that question. The old ways are gone. The earthquake has flattened the town. The settlers have been unsettled. But the trail remains and the wagon train is ready to set out. Who’s on board? Who wants to leave this valley of dry bones and head out to wherever and to whatever God will lead us? Amen.

Pastor's note: I've taken the liberty of embedding the sermon by Manning from which I drew the central illustration of my own sermon. It's about an hour long, but well worth it to watch.