Jesus’ promises of life, powerfully demonstrated by signs, have for me made for a thrilling and challenging journey through John\’s Gospel during Lent. Now, however, we are confronted by dry bones in Ezekiel 37 and by illness, death and grief in John 11. The sisters at Bethany had believed wholeheartedly in Jesus and his healing power and the Martha’s “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11.21) is heartfelt. In contrast, her reply when told that Lazarus will rise again sounds less so and more like a lesson obediently learnt from the rabbis (“I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day”). With death comes corruption. Who does not “wobble” sometimes?

Those wonderful promises to Nicodemus (in John 3.16) and to the Samaritan woman (in John 4.13-14) include the two word “eternal life.” In the end we either trust Jesus or we don’t.

We live in time and in eternity

The promises mentioned in John 3 and 4 were both linked to teaching about the Spirit, the “Breath of God,” taking us right back to the first sentences in the Bible. The bottom line is that the Creator can also recreate. The breath came into them [the bones] and they lived (Ezekiel 37.10). We are not asked to understand how. After all how can the mortal understand the immortal? When asked “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel answered “O Lord God, you know.” (Ezekiel 37.3).

Faith – not in a proposition, but in a person

Let us go with Jesus to the tomb as the sisters did. Jesus’ tears showed, as the onlookers remarked, his love for his friend, but also, surely, his love for the whole human race facing death. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3.16). Martha’s fear at the prospect of the removal of the stone acknowledges physical fear at the horror of death. Illness is real, shock is real, loss is real, grief is real and, yes, death is real. Yet the sign of the unbinding of Lazarus is one of release from the fear of death: Unbind him and let him go. Furthermore, in death we go, trusting,  where Jesus himself has gone before: “O Lord God, you know.” And we know that death was conquered and a new kind of life opened up.

And eternal life …?

Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”

“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” […] “There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands- dead […] The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

[…] the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. […] now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read…

(C. S. Lewis The Last Battle)

Words and knowledge fail, of course. But the signs given in John’s gospel during Lent prepare us to contemplate the death of the Lord and His victory over death itself.

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”