<html><body><div>Here's the first part of my draft for Sunday.</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>THE
EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
a</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>EZEKIEL
37:1-14 <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>2<sup>nd</sup>
APRIL, 2017</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>ROMANS
8:6-11 <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM 130</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>JOHN11:1-45</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Out of the depths have I called to
you, O Lord;”</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I remember when I first heard the
opening line of that Psalm. I was in the University Chapel Choir at St Andrews,
in Scotland, and these were the words of an anthem we were preparing for a
concert.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I was knocked back by the words.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It’s strange to think that I’d
reached that age and not come across Psalm 130, but it had never been used in
any liturgy in the Presbyterian Church in which I grew up. I don’t know why,
but I can take a wild guess that it was thought too gloomy. Somehow, it may
have been thought that it wasn’t right to suggest that one would talk about
being in such a state that people would confess to God the intense feelings of
hopelessness, of despair, of a desire to give up. Perhaps this shows how
problems can arise when one doesn’t use a lectionary, but simply picks and
chooses which Bible passages one hears in the Sunday liturgy. It doesn’t seem
to matter how careful one is, consciously or not, one’s prejudices come
through.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>So here we are, once again facing
the psalmist’s anguish. And this is exactly as it should be. This Psalm, along
with the other readings, is absolutely right for this Sunday in the Church
Kalendar. We’re peering over towards the beginning of Holy Week, and all that
strange mixture of emotions. Perhaps we’re wishing that, somehow, we, never
mind Jesus, could be spared the anguish and pain. Yet we know that this isn’t
how things work. Choices made without a clear view of the consequences;
uncertainly and fear because we don’t know where certain actions, certain talk
will lead; all sorts of unnamed or unrecognised difficulties; all of it is part
of life. Jesus knew it. We know it. There’s no question about that.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Perhaps the reason why I’d never
heard the psalm used in a liturgy until I was college age was, first, because
people don’t like to admit that some parts of life <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>ARE</u></b> terrible. And, second, we don’t want to share in the
abyss, far less experience it. But sometimes it takes being in such a place;
sometimes it takes acknowledging the pain, the loneliness, the darkness, before
we can even begin to imagine wanting to look for healing. Sometimes it takes
hitting rock bottom and admitting that we really <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>DON’T</u></b> have the power and ability to get out of such a place,
before we become silent, listening for a voice outside of ourselves, to see the
hands outstretched towards us, waiting for us to grab a hold and to ascend out
of everything that is devoid of hope, and trust, and love. And I think that
we’d find that far more people that we might imagine have been in that terrible
place where they’ve felt so lost.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I don’t know what images come to
mind whenever you hear the verses of our first reading – the famous Valley of
Dry Bones. Somehow, what has been in my thoughts in the past has been a
collection of bones, all separated from one another, no sinews or ligaments
there, just bleached bones lying haphazardly across a valley floor. That’s bad
enough, certainly. The bones, unconnected from one another, have lost all sense
of identity. We don’t have any idea whose they were and how they came to be
there. Somehow, this anonymity seems to add to the bleakness, the
purposelessness of it all.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But what if what the prophet saw was
different – like Benno Elkin’s carving, for instance. You have that in your
bulletin. <sup>1</sup></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What if, instead of isolated piles
of bones, even if they stretched as far as the eye could see; what if the
countryside was covered with countless skeletons? What if the skeletons, whole
bodies, minus the organs, the sinews, the muscles, and ligaments, and skin were
all there, hundreds upon hundreds, thousands upon thousands? To me, what the
sculpture depicts is far more bleak, far more hopeless, far more horrifying. These
were whole people. These were families and communities. Now they’re all gone.
You can hear the wind blowing and the remains of garbage are sailing through
the streets and the countryside.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Somehow, isolated bones, no matter
how many, don’t tell the whole story as do bleached, but whole skeletons strewn
all around.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>No one wants to see that. It
suggests warfare. It suggests massacres or some other incredible catastrophe.
And it’s far too close to home.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Think of the photos we see on the TV
news, or in the papers and magazines. Think of the living men and women, and
children, whose skin is stretched tight across skeletal frames, their eyes
staring at you and me, wondering if there is a drop of water, a crumb of grain,
an ounce of compassion and sympathy left which you and I might offer.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Of course, we can barely stand to
look at such images. Think of the armies which liberated the Nazi concentration
camps. Think of all the countries in which genocide was and is still practised.
We steel ourselves to look, because we need to know of the evil, but we look at
such scenes as often as we recite the opening verses of this psalm – as little
as we can possibly get away with.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>To look, for however short a time,
today or any other day, is just too disturbing. It represents failure – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>OUR</u></b> failure of resolve to pay
attention to those threatened by famine and drought. It represents our failure
to reach out to try to counteract disease. It represents our failure to do
something, to do <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ANY</u></b>thing, to
press, and press, and press again our various representatives and leaders to
stop the immoral concentration on amassing power and money by selling arms and
allowing their sale to people whose sole interests are to create Ezekielian
graveyards.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b>
is what the prophet saw. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b>
is why his blood ran cold. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b>
is why he felt so hopeless, this man of God.</span></p>
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