The Resurrection and the Life:

In our Old Testament passage for this week, God gives Ezekiel a vision of the restoration of Israel from its captivity in Babylon.  By God’s command and the words of Ezekiel, the people (depicted as a valley full of dry bones) will be raised up and restored to their own land, they will be “risen from the dead”. This resurrection will be brought about by God’s life-giving Spirit. He promises to raise them from their graves and put his Spirit within them.

Chapter 11 of the Gospel of John is the familiar story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  Jesus arrives four days after he has been told of Lazarus’s death, when there would be no hope of restoration and a resurrection would seem impossible.  But, by His compassion and in order to reveal the glory of God, Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”  He then calls Lazarus from the grave, and many believed.

God’s word has the power to give new life and to raise the dead.  Paul says in Romans “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”  Our faith, and all of Christianity, is ultimately grounded in the truth of the resurrection. 

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.” Psalm 130:5 PN