Ezekiel stands in a valley of dry bones. Jesus stands at a tomb that smells of death. Neither turns away. This sermon explores a quieter, deeper meaning of passion—not as feeling, but as staying. And what might happen when we remain present in the places where hope seems lost.
Perhaps I should not ask what comes to mind when we hear the word passion.
We often hear the word passion and think of strong feelings.
Intensity. Emotion.
But the scriptures speak of something deeper.
Our scriptures give meaning to the word.
Passion is engagement.
Passion makes you stay with something,
with someone,
refusing to walk away.
It is remaining present
even where everything feels lost.
Our scriptures are not lifeless words on a page.
They are not dry bones,
or dead leaves,
pages in a book.
They have a life of their own.
It is passion that brings them to life,
and it is their life that inspires passion.
These scriptures have been carried through the generations:
people who have known defeat, exile, grief, and despair.
They belong to such people.
They cling passionately
to our experiences of devastation and annihilation.
They will not let us go.
Such is the character of our scripture,
such is the passion of scripture
for those who feel abandoned, lost.
They cling to them,
and they belong
to the people
in those places
at those times
when hope seems lost.
They’re not nice reading.
They’re not polite texts.
They are full of grit,
full of determination,
full of passion,
because they come from the valley—
the metaphorical valley
that stands in the shadow of death.
They belong to those who have stood in the valley
and wondered if anything could live again.
The vision Ezekiel shares with us this morning
comes straight from that valley,
a bleak valley
of bleached bone,
dried and scattered,
in a scene so devastating
that we’ve hardly been able to contemplate it
without making light of it—
turning it to comedy:
dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
From the devastation
comes the question:
Can these bones live?
It’s a question Ezekiel hears from heaven.
How else could he have heard it?
It’s a question none of us would ever think to ask,
because the evidence of an ending
is so overwhelming.
We can almost feel him hesitate.
“What a question…”
“I don’t know.”
“Can these bones live?”
“I don’t know.”
And yet—he stays with it.
He does not turn away.
He remains.
“O Lord God, you know.”
And the wind begins to stir.
From all directions,
through all times,
the breath moves—
clinging to dry bones,
wrapping them in a love that will not let go,
stirring hope
where everything seemed lost.
We stay in the valley in the gospel reading.
The valley in the shadow of death.
As John tells us about Lazarus,
and the passion of Jesus for his friend,
and the passionate mourning of his sisters.
Lazarus has been dead four days.
John does not soften it.
The grief is real.
The loss is final.
This is a passage that stinks.
“Lord, already there is a stench.”
And again, there is no hurry to escape.
Jesus stands there—
overwhelmed in all his senses by loss,
in the midst of wailing,
with the stench of death.
And he weeps.
That is passion.
Before anything is changed,
before anything is restored,
passion is remaining—
particularly at the point
when all seems lost.
And it is there—
in that place—
that something happens.
Not an explanation.
Not an answer.
A call.
“Lazarus, come out.”
No one expects this.
No one is ready for this.
Because nothing in that place
suggests that life is possible.
And yet—
life does not wait
for another time,
or another place.
It comes here.
Into the tomb.
Into what has already been given up for lost.
And then—almost quietly—
“Unbind him, and let him go.”
The life is given.
But the unbinding—
the restoring, the freeing—
is given to others.
To those who stayed.
That call of Jesus—
“Lazarus, come out”…
and, “Unbind him, let him go”—
has echoed far beyond that tomb,
into every place
where people feel bound:
by grief,
by fear,
by the weight
of what others have said about them.
That voice still calls.
Jesus calls—
but leaves the unbinding
to others.
And perhaps we recognise this.
On a Radio 5 phone in,
I heard a cancer survivor—
speaking about what brought her through.
She spoke about treatment.
But more than that, she spoke about people.
The doctors who cared for her.
The nurses who stayed with her.
Those who sat alongside her.
Those who did the small, unnoticed things—
even making tea.
And she spoke about someone
whose vision and determination
had built that place of care over time.
They weren’t speaking about religion.
They simply spoke about people
who did not walk away.
People who remained
in a place most of us would rather avoid.
People through whom, slowly, patiently,
life was given back.
And perhaps this is what begins to happen
when we stay.
When we do not turn away.
When we remain present
in the places that feel like the end.
Something of that same passion
begins to take hold of us.
Not a loud passion.
Not a dramatic one.
But a steady, quiet refusal
to let go of life.
It becomes a passion for people—
for their dignity, their healing, their wellbeing.
A passion for the fragile life of this world—
for all that can so easily be lost.
A passion for justice—
that what is broken might be made right.
A passion to take our place
in the work of restoring life.
And perhaps we do not need
to name it too quickly.
Perhaps it is enough
to recognise it—
in the valley,
at the tomb,
in those who stay,
in those who serve,
in those who help unbind
what has been bound.
Because this is where the scriptures live.
Not far from us.
Not above us.
But here.
In the places where hope feels thin,
where loss is real,
where the ending seems certain.
And here—
not somewhere else, not later, but here—
breath begins to stir.
A voice is heard.
And where people will not walk away,
where they stay, and serve, and love,
even now,
the dead begin to live.
Grits and Grains 