The mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters was asked whether or not she’d have children if she had to do over again.

“Sure,” she replied, “but not the same ones.”

On their way to a justice of the peace to get married, a couple has a fatal car accident. The couple is sitting outside Heaven?s gate waiting on St. Peter to do an intake. While waiting, they wonder if they could possibly get married in Heaven. St. Peter finally shows up and they ask him. St. Peter says, “I don?t know, this is the first time anyone has ever asked. Let me go find out,” and he leaves.

The couple sits for a couple of months and begins to wonder if they really should get married in Heaven, what with the eternal aspect of it all. ?What if it doesn?t work out?? they wonder. ?Are we stuck together forever??

St. Peter returns after yet another month, looking somewhat bedraggled. “Yes,” he informs the couple. “You can get married in Heaven.” “Great,” says the couple, “but what if things don?t work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?” St. Peter, red-faced, slams his clipboard onto the ground! “What?s wrong?” exclaims the frightened couple. “Come on!” St. Peter exclaims. “It took me three months to find a priest up here! Do you have any idea how long it?s going to take me to find a lawyer!?”

Ezekiel 37:1-14

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, ?Mortal, can these bones live?? I answered, ?O Lord God, you know.? 4Then he said to me, ?Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.? 7So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9Then he said to me, ?Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.? 10I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. 11Then he said to me, ?Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ?Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.? 12Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,? says the Lord.

John 11:1-45

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ?Lord, he whom you love is ill.? 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ?This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God?s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.? 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7Then after this he said to the disciples, ?Let us go to Judea again.? 8The disciples said to him, ?Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?? 9Jesus answered, ?Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.? 11After saying this, he told them, ?Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.? 12The disciples said to him, ?Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.? 13Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14Then Jesus told them plainly, ?Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.? 16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ?Let us also go, that we may die with him.?

??????????????????????? 17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, ?Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.? 23Jesus said to her, ?Your brother will rise again.? 24Martha said to him, ?I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.? 25Jesus said to her, ?I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?? 27She said to him, ?Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.? 28When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ?The Teacher is here and is calling for you.? 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ?Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.?

??????????????????????? 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, ?Where have you laid him?? They said to him, ?Lord, come and see.? 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, ?See how he loved him!? 37But some of them said, ?Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?? 38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, ?Take away the stone.? Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ?Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.? 40Jesus said to her, ?Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?? 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, ?Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.? 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ?Lazarus, come out!? 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ?Unbind him, and let him go.?

??????????????????????? 45Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Adapted from a comic series, the hit television show called ?The Walking Dead,? has kept audiences engaged for over 6 years. The show is based in Atlanta, Georgia where the sheriff?s deputy Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma to discover that the world is overrun with zombies. Zombies are referred to as ?walkers.? Grimes reunites with his family and becomes the leader of a group he forms with other survivors. Together they struggle to survive and adapt in a post-apocalyptic world with walkers and opposing groups of survivors, who are often more dangerous than the walkers themselves. These zombies, or walkers, shamble towards living humans and other creatures to eat them. Humans they bite or scratch become infected and slowly turn into walkers as well. It is revealed early in the series that all living humans carry this pathogen, so that if they die from any other cause, they will also turn into walkers. The only way to permanently kill a walker is to damage its brain or otherwise fully destroy the body, such as by cremating it. As the leader of the group, Rick Grimes, helps other survivors attempt to sustain themselves and protect themselves not only against attacks by walkers but by other groups of survivors willing to assure their longevity by any means necessary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_(TV_series).

Now, I have not watched this show at all. But I have had many different friends who have enjoyed it. I am not a huge fan of zombie shows or post-apocalyptic world thinking. But I do think this idea of ?the walking dead? is very intriguing. You see, I think many people in our community and our lives are ?walking dead.? That is the imagery we are given from Ezekiel and insight from the gospel of John.

Today?s stories challenge everything we know about life and death, literally and metaphorically. It is not a healing or feeding, not sustaining water from a rock. No. Every possibility for living has ended. Life is over; only the stench and decay remain. There is no reason to be emotionally invested or newly concerned. Wondering what could have been or what had been promised would be like being mired to a long-ago past. Hope is dead, appropriately, and into this valley of death God drags the prophet Ezekiel, and Jesus drags his disciples. The prophet and the family and friends of Lazarus know that life is no more. Before their eyes, however, that reality is defied. Life returns to the lifeless. Beautiful, right?

Ezekiel?s vision is given for a people who have lost heart, who are suffering a death of the spirit, a living death in exile in a foreign land. Their temple has been destroyed, their holy city plundered, their leaders maimed and put in chains, their soldiers put to the sword, their young men and women either killed or dragged off into a foreign land. Ezekiel witnesses the soul of his people gradually wither or die, becoming as lifeless as a valley of dry bones. Can these bones live? That is what God asks.

Having received the news of Lazarus?s illness and subsequent death, the disciples again struggle to come to terms with Jesus? decision to make the treacherous journey to Judea after a two-day delay. They question the wisdom of returning to Judea at all, recalling their narrow escape from stoning just a few days earlier. What is more, by Jesus? own admission, Lazarus is already dead. Nonetheless, Jesus insists that they make the journey, emphasizing the revelatory possibility that Lazarus?s illness and subsequent death have occasioned and assuring the disciples that the journey will be stumble free. Although Thomas and the others are not completely convinced??Let us also go, that we may die with him??these friends and companions make the journey with him, intrigued by the possibility of resurrection.

As Jesus and the disciples approach Mary and Martha?s home, the tension between life and death intensifies and the immediacy of grief is overwhelming. Weeping and lament fill the air as family and friends gather to mourn Lazarus?s demise and final sleep. It has been four days since Lazarus?s death, marking the completion of the soul?s journey from life to death. His soul no longer lingers near the body, indicating that Lazarus is truly dead.

Today we hear a promise only God can give. God tells the prophet to speak to these bones, saying: ?Thus says the Lord God: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live (vs. 5).? God promises not only sinews and flesh and skin, but, most importantly, God calls the breath to come from the four winds and breathe upon the slain. So it happens. This breath is the spirit of God, the life-giving ruach God breathed into the first human creature in the garden.

This breath moves forth in the Lazarus story. As Christians, we believe in the power of resurrection. Resurrection and life are central to the meaning that we make for our lives, informing our sense of Christian vocation. In this respect, resurrection confronts us as an urgent call, beckoning us to consider the possibility that those whom our world deems socially, physically, spiritually, and emotionally dead might live into a new reality. We pray for the power of resurrection in the lives of persons and communities bound by the grave-clothes of war, genocide, poverty, disease, systematic abuse, and systematic oppression.

?Mortal, can these bones live?? to ?unbind him, and let him go,? I am in a place of wondering who in our community are the ?walking dead?? Who in our congregation, our community, our town, need to experience resurrection in their lives today? As I look around, I see a great deal of people walking around dead, or empty inside. For many different people who struggle with addiction, there is a desire to fill what is empty within them by other things-whether or not that is an addiction to alcohol or drugs, to relationships or sex, to pornography or food-addiction is a disease, and one that has a road to recovery and it is an ongoing battle. There are many people that are walking around today that need and desire to be involved in a caring and loving community. In this type of caring community, people are nurtured and strengthened to face each day because people are coming alongside of them on their journey to life. In caring communities, people are able to let go of the graveclothes of self-doubt, social isolation, marginalization, emptiness, self-hatred, addiction, and oppression; in communities of caring, people are able to tear away the wrappings of fear, anxiety, loss, and grief?in these communities, people are able to have new breath breathed into them and everything that has bonded them is able to be taken away?in caring communities people are able to learn about who they are, who God created them to be, and begin to live a life is truly worth living. It is a life that is focused in the belief that that God if life created them to live abundantly.

As a wrap up, I ask you today, are we a caring community where those who have been walking around dead are able to find new life? Are we sharing our lives in ways that show people that the breath of God is within us and we are able to live full lives because of that breath? As we continue to examine our lives and the lives God is calling us to live, pray about how the spirit of God is within you and how you are sharing that spirit with those you meet. Because if God asked us today, ?Mortal, can these bones live?,? it is my prayer that we would all be able to say, Yes, Lord, and the possibilities for all your people are endless because we truly believe in the resurrection of life. Amen.