Sunday March 26 - De Profundis
Lectionary A – Fifth Sunday in Lent
Psalm 130 - Out of the depths
Ezekial 37:1-14 – Shall these dry bones
live
Romans 8:61-11 – with the spirit there is
peace
John 11:1-45 – Jesus wept
Out of the depths I call. This is
not mere skeletons in the closet or the attic. It is a valley of dry bones. As
if Gettysburg left the dead uncovered and unburied and became a desert. Hard
grass and wind and bones. The wound of our nation stitched up wrong or not at
all. What Wendell Berry named as our hidden wound.
Why go back this far? Well, it is
the only war fought on U.S. soil. It spawned US terrorism which continues
today. With the compromise of 1876, the efforts for what some historians call
the second revolution were suspended and unfulfilled. They call it that because
it culminated in efforts to make true in law what was the aspirations of the
declaration of independence. The north had what Robert Penn Warren calls the “treasury
of virtue” and with the northern armies leading the reconstruction in the south,
the north was never reconstructed at all.
Shall these dry bones live?
Son of man, these bones are like the people of the United
States. For “our bones have dried up and our hope is gone.” Among the ruin, among
the dry husks of conversation and dialogue. Public discourse that is loud and
outrageous, but also newspaper words, quickly turning into dry leaves rustling
in the grass, into paper for boxing the china for storage or wrapping fish.
Lord, can these words live? Can
they bring life? Build a bridge to life? Or only a series of detonations, destroying
all sense of connection. Until our history is lost or flattened to the embossed
letters of a meme. Replaced by streaming service.
Oh Mary, must you weep twice?
Your brother is dead. He is tomb rolled. We know you cry for him. Cry so much
or so genuine that Jesus will join you in weeping. And then later, the angels
will catch you weeping again about another who is tomb rolled. Weeping is the
text sometimes. It is weeping that leads to dreaming and new mornings. Please
God.
Dare we believe? Dare we have faith
like Martha? She who in her faith mines us another “I AM” gems? “I am the
resurrection and the life.” But who can believe it? And if we don’t, where is
our hope among the dry bones? Among the din of paper wasp leader?
“If our thinking is with the
spirit then there is life and peace.”
Out of the depths. Have mercy. Redeem
the united states from all of our sins.
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