Lent 5 Sermon - Passion Sunday - BMT - March 22, 2026

Scripture Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14;Psalm 130; Romans 6:15-23;John 11:18-44

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Central to the claim of the gospel at the heart of it is it's a claim about the power of God, the power of the resurrection. It is to say that the power of redemption is the power of creation. It is a creative power. What this means that when we speak of redemption, God's power to heal us, God's power to make us whole, God's power to make us righteous, God's power to make us pure and blameless, sanctified, joyous. That power, the power of redemption, is a creative power. When we speak about the creative power of God in the history of the church, what we're talking about is that God creates out of nothing. That is, creation, everything we see, this isn't the product of raw material that God was fashioning and working with. But creation is just the product of the sheer power of God. God can bring into existence things that do not exist. And this is the claim of the resurrection that God can bring life out of death. And Paul in Romans says that the Abrahamic covenant, the promise to Abraham, actually portends and foreshadows precisely this. That is, that the blessings of the covenant of Abraham are the blessings of the revelation of this creative power of redemption. That in the same way as Christ is raised from the dead, the barren and dead womb of Sarah, her body of death, right, she bears these promises, her and Abraham. Out of you, right, this seed is going to come forth and bring blessing to all the world. And it's out of the barren and dead womb of Sarah, right, that the seed of promise comes. Life is brought out of death. This foreshadowing the power of redemption as the power of creation, or as Paul will simply say, new creation. Those who are in Christ's new creation. There's been a new creative work where God has brought something into existence that didn't exist priorly. And this is the power that's on display in our scripture readings. In Ezekiel, right, who's standing before a valley of dry bones, and Jesus and all of Lazarus's family and friends standing before a smelly tomb? What is more final, right, than a valley of dry bones? What seems more permanent than that? What seems more final than the smell of a rotting corpse days after Lazarus has died? And yet what we find in these scriptures is that what seems to be very powerful, namely the reality of death in these stories, is totally eclipsed by the power of God. It's totally uh it totally pales in comparison to the power of this God. This is to say that uh if you imagine in your life, can God work with the raw material that is your life? You say you look at your life, there's nothing but ashes here, there's nothing but pain here, there's nothing but tragedy, grief, absurdity, wounds, sin, guilt, failure, whatever it might be, is it at all possible that salvation, the power of God, can do something that would totally blow your mind? Maybe you, like Ezekiel, you're looking inside and you say, Can these bones live? Can this heart rejoice? Can this mind be at peace? Can this soul know joy? The answer we see is absolutely. Why? It's because the power of redemption is the power of creation. That is, God can uh in the same way that uh God can out of nothing create a supernova or the Sierra Mountains range or the Pacific Ocean and everything therein. In the same way that God can create that out of nothing. God can create joy. God can create righteousness, peace, wholeness, sanctity out of nothing at all. God, we can give God dry bones and get back in return human persons. We can give God ashes, and God gives us back beautiful things that we could scarcely imagine. We can hand God sin and guilt, and he hands right back righteousness. We can hand God our tears and our wounds, and he hands us back joy. How can God do this? It's because the power, the tenacious power of redemption is the power of creation. God can uh simply do what God wants to do with you. This is what God does in salvation. This means that in our life, nothing is wasted. All the raw material of our life is taken up by this tenacious power. It's healed, restored, redeemed. That everything in our life can belong, not because it has been good, but simply because this is the power of God. Whatever is in us good is strengthened by this power. Whatever in us is dead is resurrected by this power. Whatever is in us that is broken is healed by this power. This power can simply bring sinews and muscle and bones and flesh together where earlier it just was non-existent. This is the power of the good news of Jesus. That the mingling of redemption and creation, that God's power to save us, God's power to heal us, but God's power to claim us is a creative power. And it brings into existence things that did not exist. And so we are disabused of the illusion if we hear this gospel, we hear the story of this power of God revealed in Jesus. Well, that would be nice, uh, but that's certainly not for me. Too much sin here, too much failure, too much disappointment, too much shame, too far gone, too far down. Allow me to disabuse you of the illusion that anything is more determinative than the power of God in redemption. This is simply how God works, this is how God saves, God raises the dead. And all other things, though they seem so final and permanent and durable and powerful, things like sin and death, we see in Ezekiel and John. The reality of death is a power that gets revealed, as Paul will say, right? Death, where's your victory? Where's your sting? It's gone. It's absolutely gone. That the seed of promise born to Sarah and Abraham, his name is Isaac. And if you'll remember, that is Hebrew for laughter, laughing. It is to say that before this power, all other seeming forms of power, the power of sin, guilt, death, shame, evil, all those powers are in comparison to the power of God laughable. Thomas Merton said that when we see the power of the mercy of God, the very categories that we so often use of worthy and unworthy, that these categories themselves become laughable in the face of this power. This is the power that we will see on display in just a few moments as we baptize precious Jude. Waters of baptism. This is a watery grave. And out of this watery grave, new life, resurrection life is possible. Life begins. Out of crucifixion comes resurrection. May we see and hear, and may you know the power of God. May you know that there's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing that we can do to occasion the gifts of God. May you recognize that the power with which God redeems you, saves you, forgives you, gives you mercy, gives you joy, gives you peace, gives you patience, gives you hope, that this is a creative power. If you're sitting there and you think, well, it's not here. Yeah, God can work with that. This is the hope that we have. This is the power of the gospel for salvation that God brings into existence in us and around us the things that do not exist. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.