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

The names and fresh young faces of RCMP Constables Brock Myrol, Leo Johnston, Peter Schiemann and Anthony Gordon have been etched into our memories. Thursday afternoon the eyes of the country were turned to a memorial service to honour and remember these four officers killed in the line of duty. Scriptures were read, wise words spoken by those who hold the highest offices in the land and eulogies delivered as relatives, friends and even complete strangers shed tears for those who had barely just begun their careers of service to their fellow Canadians. We wonder what would have been accomplished by these four junior officers had things turned out differently on that Alberta farm.

We saw a father proclaim his Christian faith, a faith shared by his son, even amidst his most profound grief, that they would see each other again some day. We saw a twin brother remember a young man’s determination to recover from devastating motorcycle accident, and join his twin brother in wearing the Red Serge of the RCMP.

We heard that one had been on the job less than three months and had become engaged at Christmas and the other was a young dad and that he and his wife were expecting a second child. Such hope and promise cut down and turned into such despair.

Yet, underlying all these words of sorrow and loss were words of hope; and not just a hope of being united again in heaven, but a hope that life here and now can once again have meaning and purpose, beauty and joy. The words were a challenge to their families and friends and to all Canadians to live into the future in the light of their legacy of service, dedication to duty and the setting and reaching of high goals. The words spoken on Thursday called us to live out the best of what Canada is, service and self-giving. As a country we acknowledged that even while their earthly lives were over, their sacrifices would make a difference to ours and that we would never be the same again.

While biblical faith does speak of hope in terms of individuals and ‘life after death’, it also speaks of the hope that lives within communities for liberation and renewal in the here and now. The hope connected with this tragedy is that officers responding to similar situations will not be in as much peril as these four were. The hope in the deaths of these four is that in future officer will be safer as they protect Canadians. The hope is that we will not take any of these women and men for granted as they go about their duties.

In the midst of this situation we turn to the passages offered to us for the fifth Sunday of Lent. The words of the prophet Ezekiel speak of life in the midst of death and hope in the face of despair.

The people of Israel were in exile. They were living and breathing, to be sure, but they felt as if they had been ‘cut off’ from everything that was important to them. It wasn’t that life was not worth living, so much as it was that ‘the life of faith was not possible’. They had lost their purpose, their soul. You see, their connection with the land of promise, was so strong that they felt that somehow they had been cut off from God and from all that was vital and life giving.

As our passage opens the prophet Ezekiel has a vision; and Ezekiel is known for his visions. Ezekiel sees a valley of dry bones, symbolic of the whole house of Israel and he is called to speak God’s word to them. When he does they come to life and God’s Spirit comes upon them and they become living beings. They are truly alive and capable of being God’s people once again. Their God is not confined to the temple or even to the land of Israel, but is with the people, even in exile. This God was willing to give them life and hope even in the midst of what seemed like total hopelessness, even when they had abandoned God by their faithlessness.

This prophecy does not speak of a a God who will turn back the clock and restore things to the way they were before. History cannot be rewritten, but they can be enabled to make new history as God’s people.

As I read this passage in the year 2005 I cannot help but be reminded of the news footage of various massacres and tragedies around the world. I see the rows and rows of skulls connected from the killing fields of Cambodian, the Congo and Rwanda, the bodies hastily buried after the tsunamis that struck over Christmas and the pictures of the not so long ago Nazi death camps. It brings to mind those who have died from the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, orphaning a large percentage of an entire generation. When each of these things are discovered we wish that we had known, and that the clock could be turned back, but that does not happen, indeed it cannot. We must hear God’s word of hope in such a way that it speaks to the current situation of despair and gives hope for the new future. The message of Ezekiel is that despite what it may seem like, God’s people are not abandoned, but God continues to offer hope and new life to the people.

To Ezekiel these bones were not so much a symbol of individual lives lost, but they were symbolic of a nation that had lost its soul, its purpose and its feelings both of God.

What was needed though, in order for them to be able to hear and embrace these words of new life and hope. I believe they had to give things up to be able to hear these words and to incorporate them into their lives as a community. They had to lay to rest their old assumptions that God was limited to the land of Israel. They had to broaden what the definition of what ‘chosen’ really meant. They had to lose their complacency and to rely more on God’s power and grace.

What about us though. We are not, for the most part, in exile, are we? Most of us have lived here for generations. We are in our own land, a land many are willing to risk their lives to come to.

Yet we are in a kind of exile. Our province continues to be the kind of place children leave, and our region of the province does not seem to offer prosperity to very many.

As a church we seem to have lost our influence in community and society; and church attendance has declined dramatically across the board all the while the number of people who continue to claim affiliation with the church remains constant.

We are, in many ways, a culture at a crossroads, a country at a crossroads, a church at a crossroads, communities at a crossroads.

Our world has faced much change in the last 100 years, and in some ways, much more than ever before. In some of your lifetimes our communities have gone from oil lamps, horse and buggies and one room schools to high speed internet, jet travel, and multi-faceted educational opportunities and to almost instant everything. No longer are the white and English residents of our region the ones with the automatic power and the need to be bilingual has caused resentment for many. We are only beginning to address the issues of native rights and land claims.

Many of us yearn for a simpler past, yet yearning will not bring back the era of our hopes and dreams.

We yearn for a time when our churches were full, when our schools were places of learning, not violence and disrespect for authority.

We yearn for the good old days when kids didn’t talk back to parents.

We yearn for the good old days when we didn’t have to worry about environmental laws; when we could ship our beef to anyone who would buy it and you don’t much care where a piece of beef, pork or chicken came from as long as it looked and tasted good.

Yet part of Ezekiel’s prophetic message was that it was the people’s actions and attitudes during the so-called ‘gold old days’ that had brought them to that place. They had to turn around and go in a new direction; they had to live as God’s people in the new reality, they had to live as God’s people as they never had before.

One of the primary things necessary for the people to hear the words of hope was to realize that there was going to be no return to the good old days and that, in fact, they weren’t all that oood anyway. They had to realize that they were called to live in God’s way in the new situations in which they had found themselves. They could not live in the past, they had to live in the future.

There is a story told of a young couple who lived in a very small apartment but because they had no children they rented a room to an unknown painter, a friend, who eventually became famous. When the painter moved our he painted a mural on the wall of the livingroom. The painting was worth a fortune and it reminded them of happy days and deep and lasting friendship. Eventually though the couple had so many children that they could no longer live in that apartment. They had to leave the painting, a symbol of much that was good and joyful and life giving in their past, behind them so that they would live into the future that lay ahead of them.

There are changes happening all around us. As faith communities we are called to engage the change that is taking place in such a way that we are able to live as God’s people into the future that God has laid out for us.

For some churches that has meant a completely different kind of ministry, leaving old and obsolete buildings and forms of ministry behind. For other churches it has meant expanding their ministry to include drop in centres for street people and inner-city youth. For all it means an intentional engagement with the issues of what has changed, what has died and what old bones are calling our for a prophetic word of life and the breath of the Spirit of Life.

God’s people have had a long and remarkable history, but we are always called to live in the present, into the future, not to relive the past. Let us go forward as God’s people sure that we are enlivened by the Spirit as we seek life and health and peace in the future that God is giving to us.

Amen.

Isaiah 50: 4-9
Psalm 31
Philippians 2: 5-11
Matthew 21: 1-11

Oh how life can change. Especially when you never saw it coming. Especially when millions of people never saw it coming. The year was 1988, the place was Seoul, South Korea and the event was the “100 metres”. From start to finish it tok the popular Canadian athlete only 9.79 seconds to cross the finish line. We were so happy. A Canadian had set a world record. The world would hear O Canada played at an Olympic event. Then, the next day it was announced that this same Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, had tested positive for the use of an anabolic steroid, a banned substance. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and fall he did! Not only was he stripped of his world record and the title “The Fastest Man in the World”, he lost the respect of his adopted country. You see, what we had conveniently forgotten to remember in all the hype leading up to the race, was that Johnson was born in Jamaica. After the drug results were announced, the one thing all the newscasters and newspapers always remembered to mention, could not forget to mention was that he was a “Jamaican-born Canadian”. We didn’t really want him associated with us anymore and we had a convenient was to distance ourselves from his disgrace. We decided almost instantly that he was not ‘one of us’. He was banned from amateur competition for two years and the scandal sparked the “Dubin Inquiry” costing the Canadian tax payers four million dollars. Almost five years later he tested positive yet again, but this time he was banned for life. While he has faded into obscurity we all remember his name and when we see a new Olympic record set we tend to wonder whether the winner was on performance enhancing drugs or not.

The kind of raise to prominence and fall from grace experienced by Ben Johnson is nothing new. Whenever anyone in the public eye who is expected to do great things, does not fulfil those expectations, that person is in danger of inviting great dislike from those same people who had previously praised them.

An internet colleague from Ontario recalled for us what he called “the bandwagon” phase in Edmonton. It was back when the Oilers were practically running the NHL with the skating and scoring prowess of ‘the great one’ and the Eskimos had just broken a winning streak sealed by FIVE Grey Cup wins. However, the fever was not to last. It only took a losing streak of two or three games to get the complainers all fired up. My colleague said jokingly that some of the most fickle fans actually risked serious injury by jumping off and on the bandwagon so often! We all want to be on the winning side - even if that means changing sides - and often.

The people expected a great deal from the Messiah. They had generations and generations to get their hopes up. They had generations to formulate those hopes. These were generations of oppression and disappointment. When you regard yourselves as the ‘chosen people’ it’s hard to be an oppressed an occupied nation. This long awaited Messiah was supposed to save the people from the power of their Roman oppressors. When he came, he would sit on the throne as a Davidic ruler. Finally his reign would return Israel to the good old ‘power and glory’ days. That’s a tall order, but remember they had had generations to perfect it.

Crowds are funny things. Mobs are scary things. The first can turn into the second very quickly. Sometimes in a crowd we get pushed along and dragged along and don’t get too much time to think for ourselves and especially find it much more difficult to stand up for a conflicting side or opinion. Often people in crowds and mobs will do and say things they would never do or say if they were alone or in a very small group. Crowds of people celebrating a victory can often turn into a destructive mob, as the police forces in many cities can testify. Many times extra officer are on duty to control the massive gangs of people celebrating their team’s victory.

On Palm Sunday we are called to reflect on what it was that brought the people from shouts of “Hosanna” to calls for Jesus’ blood. When we have figured that one out we are called to look at our own lives and at our own personal and spiritual journey and discover how it is that we too can support and praise and then turn on a dime and condemn and criticize and complain. We are called then to take seriously Jesus call to repent and go in a new direction, as people of a new millennium, far removed from the politics and life of first century Palestine.

However, lets begin at the beginning. Jesus asked his disciples to go and get a donkey. I suspect that he knew that some astute people would recall a verse from Isaiah that spoke of the expected One coming into town on a donkey. Yet if they knew the passage they had not really and truly grasped what it meant. As they shouted “hosanna” they were calling for Jesus to redeem and save them. They were welcoming him as their saviour, but their expectations and Jesus’s expectations were completely different. You see, the people expected a warrior king who would save the people, with power and force. He would have garnered a legion of soldiers who would do all the dirty work. They would not have to do anything, and certainly they would not have to change. When Jesus did not fulfil these expectations they quickly began to rethink their praise. They did not want someone who would make them take some personal responsibility. They wanted miracles, and not true Spiritual transformation. However that was what Jesus was about. He was about transformation and change, but not in that way. He was not all about magic and miracles; he was about the power of God working within and transforming the world from within.

A man went to his doctor one day with a certain medical problem, or a series of problems. The doctor ran extensive tests and when the tests were in she called her patient in for the results. She told her patient to make certain lifestyle changes, lose weight and get more exercise. The patient was upset because he didn’t want to change, he wanted the pain to go away without any of those things. He was angry with the doctor because he was expecting a new miracle drug or a surgery booking that would fix everything and take his life back to normal. The idea that he had to work at it and change his life was not among his expectations and he ended up rejecting the doctor’s advice and concluding that the doctor was mistaken.

Jesus came into town as a King with a difference. He did not come riding a horse, a big powerful stallion, as many kings would have done, but he came riding a bony-backed donkey. The cries of Hosanna completely missed the point of most of the prophetic literature which was that God called the people to change, to turn around, to repent.

So Jesus ended up on the cross. Of course it is much easier to look at history and see what happened and why. The true call is to apply these passages to our own lives. Jesus call during the season of lent is to repent. To repent is NOT to feel sorry for our sins. Repentance is not about crying and gnashing teeth. Repentance is the process of seeing what it is that is not life giving and according to God’s will for us and then resolving to go in a new direction. Repentance is about getting our priorities straight. Repentance is about deciding to cry “Jesus save us” and “Hosanna” and “Jesus is Lord” and then sticking to it, despite the cost. Repentance is about living out the gospel no matter what opposition we receive, or what sacred cows must fall by the wayside. Repentance is about struggle because not everything is crystal clear, either in our personal lives nor in our lives as communities of faith. The 80th Anniversary of the United Church is upon us and the theme of the Anniversary year is ‘dare to be’, an indication that the United Church has often chosen a path which it regarded as faithful but which was certainly a path of struggle and criticism.

We are not called to a life of leisure and ease with regard to our faith. Its not about getting it all right and sitting back assured of our place in heaven; its about being a faithful disciple who by God’s grace seeks to live in the world showing the great love of Jesus of Nazareth to everyone we meet. It’s about living out the gospel despite the cost. Its about running in the race of faith, as Paul the apostle described it, and knowing that victory does not come with the awarding of medals, but in the knowledge deep within that one has been faithful to the call we have heard and know deep within our hearts and souls.

We have shouted Hosanna today. What will our cry be as the week progresses?

Amen.