5th Sunday in Lent 2026

Sermon: 5th Sunday in Lent 2026

Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14, Romans 8:6-11, John 11:1-45

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

As you all know probably know, I was away on vacation last week in Rome and Assisi, truly a church history nerd’s paradise. I spent my time in Rome and Assisi visiting many churches that had crypts and tombs dedicated or holding the remains of many saints of the church’s past. Sometimes, some of the chapels dedicated to hold the earthly remains of the saints were accompanied by relics which could be particular bones or body parts of the saint. To mention a few examples, I got to see the hand of St. Francis Xavier, one of the original Jesuits and early missionary to Asia, in the Chiesa del Gesù. I saw the full bodily remains of both St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi; I saw the tomb of Monica, the mother of the Saint Agustine, in the Basilica of Sant’Agostino, (where our brother Martin Luther probably walked around when he visited Rome in his time!) I did not get to see the actual remains, but I was probably close to the earthly remains of Peter, disciple of Jesus, below St. Peter’s Basilica. I know that from a Protestant perspective, our tradition moved away from the veneration of relics and the remains of those that came before us, but bones have a lot to say in Christian history and tradition. Bones are often the perfect symbol for death, they are the last material vestige of our earthly life, and often bones are not empty of a story, they are not undescriptive matter; they carry the unique history of that individual life, they preserve the signs of how they lived and died, even what they probably ate! They are a biological record of human life. So when early Christians, and also Christians today mostly in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, when they kept and revered the resting places and the remains of the saints, it was not morbid curiosity,

the ancients actually had less scruples about the body sometimes than our current modern society, but done rightly, how could they not protect and revere the earthly remnants of those whom they loved, and even more so, those who showed them The Way, meaning the Gospel life of Jesus Christ the Savior? Alongside the tomb of Peter, you could actually see in the walls of the tombs etched graffities that contained the names of visitors to the tomb, as if saying “I was here”, linking their name forever to the memorial site of Jesus’ disciple. From those remains, God raised forth much life and fruit in the world. It was my experience that when I saw that small frame of the bones of Francis of Assisi, I could not help but think, that yes, Francis rests in the Lord, but from these bones, God brought forth the devotion of all these pilgrims lined up; from those bones, God inspired that first love poem in the Italian language for all of God’s creatures, the Canticle of Creation; from those bones, God brought forth a movement that sought to return Christians into a faithful and radical following of Jesus in His humility and poverty. So the bones themselves tell to us a story of those who precede us, they are also, alongside us living people, in yearning expectation for the fulfilment of God’s promises and signposts of the life of God’s Kingdom.

But bones are also a reminder. There was a particular sculpture in St. Peter’s Basilica of Pope Alexander VII: it was almost like a flying human skeleton under a veil, holding prominently an hourglass in its hand: a symbol of MEMENTO MORI, a Latin idiom which means “be mindful of death”. Time is fleeting, and thus the imperative to hold close what matters most, to not waste time in what is unessential. In Christian thought, it might be the indication to put our sights on God and His Kingdom, and the rest shall fall into place; which is precisely what we are called to do in Lent to prepare

the ground for the events of Holy Week and Easter. Not only these Roman sculptures, but also in the Christian East, you can go to many monasteries like in Mount Athos in Greece, and see the collections of human skulls from monks who have died, called ossuaries, stretching from hundreds of years probably. These skulls often have inscriptions on them saying: “What I am, you shall become”, reminding the younger monks to focus on repentance, to focus on God’s eternity. This is not morbidity. It is reality. It is also a hope veiled within. For the Christian, death is the beginning of something else, it is God’s eternal reality piercing through our mortality. It is an ancient message that tells us, yes you are a mortal human beings, yes you are flesh and bone, but the God who loves His Creation will raise you up: in a sense, God loves us whole, body and spirit. The wisdom of the bones tell us to focus on this being raised while you live, so that eternity might peak through while you are yet living. So Bones were people, Bones share a story, Bones are a reminder to the living.

Our readings today reminds us of this dynamic. As Lent comes to a close, the readings build a bridge from the austerity of Lent to the Passion story, and ultimately, it prefigures the fulfilment of Easter. Like in the Ezekiel prophecy, God is putting new flesh and a new spirit to these old dusty bones. And thus is the promise of Christ with the raising of Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” These bones are not meant to remain dusty. In Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, we have a very dear passage within both Christian and Jewish traditions, it is God’s re-creation of His people. Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones, belonging to ages past, bones sitting in the silence of death. Only

God could make them sing. And thus God poses the question to the prophet: “Mortal, can these bones live?” In other words, can the dead rise? Can the sinner redeem him or herself? Commentators have noticed that this image probably shows us the bones of a wayward Israel. This was the consequence of being far from God, far from His torah, His commandments. It was a valley of death. But it seems God is not done with the wayward dead. “O Lord God, You know” responds Ezekiel. The prophet does not know, for dead is dead. How can a mere mortal conceive of being raised from death, that undiscovered country, as Shakespeare would call it. If the bones would live, clearly this is possible in the vision of God. So God commands Ezekiel, go and prophesy to the bones, tell them of God’s vision. God says: “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on 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.” And thus the bones began to rattle and shake and come together, and they began to be re-enfleshed, and the breath of life came into them. It has been noticed that this action, from dust to breath of life, mirrors Genesis, the creation of Adam and Eve. This is a new creation that God wants to bring about. And then God wants Ezekiel to listen closely to these re-created beings: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” The experience of the previous life was hopelessness, alienation, lostness. But God is opening up the graves of despair. God is giving a new breath, a new spirit to His people, to live again in concordance to His own Spirit. To belong again in the embrace of God. Ezekiel’s vision is one of supernatural hope. Where human eye could only see the dry bones, a history book closed, no longer a new page to be written, God is the kind of God that provides a new blank page to

write in. Not to forget what has happened, but rather to give God’s Beloved a new life in Himself. God is the God of the new page, with a ready pen to write the new word of life.

And in Jesus Christ, God gives us that Word to us. It is the Word of a new spirit that has come that will rise us from our deadness into the new life of God’s love. We are made, as Lazarus prefigured for us all, for the glory of God. Every one of us carries within us the word of God’s glory, let no one tell you the contrary. We have within us the Resurrection and the Life, God calling us out from our sins, from our dusty tombs, and unbinds us from the grip of death and all its powers. In today’s Gospel, we heard that Jesus wept. Indeed, Jesus weeps with us in our suffering, when our afflictions feel insurmountable. But yet, we are not marked for suffering forever. We are marked for life abundant. We are marked to be re-created, for our bones to take up flesh again. And we can expand this metaphor. How many things within us and our wider world need to be re-created and resurrected with the breath of Christ’s life? Perhaps it is our spiritual dryness or hardness, perhaps it is our relationships which have been deadened, perhaps it is our way of thinking which has strayed away from God’s love and mercy, perhaps it is the feeling of being stuck in old patterns that make us rattle like the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision. And to all that God in Jesus Christ breathes His life into us. This is why we are gathered. Perhaps out there in the world we are tried and tempted, and we might walk in here feeling like a bunch of dusty bones. But here you are fed again, here you are blessed again, here you are forgiven again so that you might walk out of here alive in the spirit. And in turn, your renewed aliveness can

bring others to the same Spirit that re-creates us in reflection to the image of the Beloved.

So with God as the focus of our attention, how much is our imagination re-created to see as God sees? Embracing Christ close to our hearts, we can begin to see the bones in our lives and community in a new way. We can see in them the promise of the resurrection, not as a continuation of the old waywardness, but as the beginning of something new built on the spirit of love. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans: “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” To see only with our human eyes, then of course, we set ourselves for the fruit of such visions. I know for myself that if I only saw the world today according to my human vision, then indeed, I would despair. But because there is this Jesus spirit within me, He isn’t letting me fix my gaze on the bones for long. Let the bones of this world lead you to fix your gaze on the God who has raised you up in Christ. This Jesus spirit within me wants me to look at the valley of shadow and death and to speak God’s word that defies them. God defies the powers of this world, God defies our hatred and penchant for destruction. God defies us with love, with compassion, with mercy. In these things, a new breath is instilled in your lungs. So God brings us to defy this world with a love it cannot comprehend, with a mercy it cannot comprehend, and with a compassion it cannot comprehend, for indeed, it is the glory of God and His Kingdom. This is new creation awaiting for us, Beloved. It is the reason why the bones of the saints buried in their tombs, speak to us almost as if they are coming alive in us. Their story, weaved with ours, is another page that is still being written through us by the Holy Spirit. So set your mind on the re-creating Spirit of God, which is life and peace. And in these

things, to be signs for this complicated world of ours and prophesy to it: there is life, there is belonging, there is hope.

Let us pray: