5th Sunday in Lent, Year A

    Life for Liveliness

The breath of God enlivens the body, and the spirit of God dwells in the body. The body is called to life and liveliness. The body is affirmed. We dare to reject rejection of the body and accept God’s acceptance.

This week's lectionary Bible passages:

Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11;
John 11:1-45

“We often miss the celebration of the bodily and bodied-self in these passages.  It’s not that the references are not in the text.  Rather we are taught to be ashamed of our bodies and so we ignore the call to celebration of our bodies as signs of God’s action in our lives."

Randall Bailey

“Life is to liveliness as righteousness is to wholeness and holiness.”

Ronald Hopson

    What's Out in the Conversation
    A conversation about this week's lectionary Bible passages

The well loved “dry bones” passage of Ezekiel 37: 1-14 dramatically illustrates the theme of the texts for this week: God’s desire that we enjoy not just life, but liveliness. It is ironic that this is a Lenten passage as Lent is traditionally understood as a time of disciplined suppression of joy and liveliness. We are to enter into deep reflection upon the way of God, most clearly seen in the great sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross. Therefore we are expected to discipline and indeed deny the body in the service of spiritual growth and development.

	How do you typically understand Lent?  Why do you think Lent is usually tied to such body-oriented practices as dieting, fasting and abstaining?  How might you draw closer to God during these remaining days of Lent by celebrating the body, rather than denying the body?

Ezekiel and John 11:1-45 offer a different view. Indeed the sign of God’s presence and power is precisely in the body coming back to life. Homophobic culture insists that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people crucify their liveliness (live celibate lives) in order to be deemed righteous by the church. Yet, we must prophesy resurrection to all such persons. Just as Ezekiel summons Israel out of the grave of exile into its cultural life and liveliness, so LGBT people are invited by God out of denial and self-hatred, guilt and thwarted attempts at forced celibacy.  We are called into life (authenticity) and liveliness (passion).

In the gospel of John, life comes as we come out from the grave (closet?) and liveliness comes as we shed our grave clothes (unfetter the body).  It is interesting that at the end of Ezekiel 37:7-9 the disembodied bones end up with sinew, flesh, skin and ruah (spirit), but no clothes.  Similarly, Lazarus ends up in the same state with Jesus calling for the cloth to be taken off him (John 11:44). Nakedness is celebrated here as God calling forth new life.  Just as when we were born, are bodies are exposed without shame. 

	How has the view of the body and sexuality in our Christian traditions affected LGBT people’s search for rich, full, satisfying lives within the Christian community?

In this message of life and liveliness, there is a sense of urgency. John unambiguously shows us Jesus’ error – he thought Lazarus would not die, thus he waited before going to attend to him. Yet Lazarus did die, and understandably Mary and Martha were disappointed that Lazarus’ special friend had not come when summoned. 

Do we also disappoint when we passively wait in the face of the death-dealing attitudes of condemnation, ostracism and scapegoating sometimes heaped upon LGBT people?  Who suffers when we have waited for an opportune time to speak? Or, when we wait for a better time to assert our rights to life and liveliness.  We invoke Psalm 130 to justify our waiting. Yet the waiting (qwh in the Hebrew) of the psalmist is instead an active preparatory waiting – as a runner in a relay begins running her leg of the race before the baton is passed. We must not wait for God to arrive, we must begin running before God hands us the baton.

Some use Romans 8:6-11 to argue the necessity of suppressing the body for the sake of spiritual growth. They point to how Paul embraces the dualism of his stoic opponents – flesh versus the Spirit. Yet despite Paul’s tortured insistence on the death of the body, in the final analysis, even Paul has to relent: “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (verse 11).  Indeed it is for liveliness that God has called us from death to life.  It is our reasonable service to God, to embrace this gift of liveliness.

What questions or discoveries linger in you after reading this conversation about God and the body?  What is your prayer?