When I was in Madagascar a little over three years ago, our group was told about a strange custom of the Malagasy people known as “famadihana” (fa-ma-dee-an), a word that is translated as the “turning of the bones.” Famadihana is a pagan religious ritual done every five to seven years, when people take the bodies of their ancestors out from the family crypts, rewrap the remains in fresh cloths, and then dance with the corpses around the tomb, accompanied by live music.
Famadihana is seen as a time to convey the latest family news to the deceased, asking them for blessings and for guidance. It can be a very expensive event, for each branch of the family typically invites dozens or even hundreds of people. Since this is a celebration, tears are discouraged – this is supposed to be a time of great joy. Tradition calls for guests to be fed fine meals and often served large amounts of alcohol. Musicians are hired. New clothes are needed for both the living and the dead. Sometimes a new crypt will be built, often at great expense for the reburial of the bones following the ceremonies. And in five to seven years, the whole process will be repeated again. And again. And again.
Needless to say, most Christians in Madagascar – including the more than three million members of the Malagasy Lutheran Church – condemn famadihana as nothing more than a disgusting pagan ritual, dating back to the days before the first Christian missionaries began spreading the Gospel to the Malagasy people. And I should say that even though we didn’t actually witness any famadihana events, we did see numerous tombs that had recently been decorated for the festivities.
Most cultures, ancient and modern, treat the dead far differently than the pagan worshippers of Madagascar. Although on rare occasions a body may be exhumed to move it to a different final resting place or possibly due to some criminal investigation, we honor the dead by giving them a proper burial – a proper Christian burial, in our case – and there the body remains.
Today’s Gospel lesson begins by telling us that Lazarus – a dear friend of Jesus and the brother of Jesus’ dear friends Mary and Martha – had died and had been placed in a tomb just as there Jewish faith proscribed. The sisters had sent messages to Jesus asking Him to come when Lazarus first fell ill, but Jesus purposefully delayed making his journey. When he finally did arrive, Lazarus was dead and had been in his tomb for four days. The sisters firmly believed that if Jesus had gotten there in time, He would have healed their brother. But now it was too late. Nothing could be done.
When Jesus finally arrived, Mary and Martha were mourning the death of their brother – they were wracked with grief. Remember that the body of Lazarus had been placed in the tomb, and there – they assumed – it would remain. And Jesus shared their grief. As verse 35 so simply states: “Jesus wept.”
The late synodical president Dr. A.L. Barry once wrote: “It is popular to think of death as something that is ‘natural.’ Some people even are heard to say, ‘Death is a friend.’ Nothing could be further from the truth! Death is a horrible reality. It is the enemy we each face at the end of our lives. God did not create humans to die, but to live – to live forever and to enjoy Him forever. Death was not part of our created nature, but only something that came about as a result of the sinful disobedience of our first parents – a sinful disobedience that has been passed down to every human being since that time.”
When God created the heavens and the earth, everything was perfect – perfect and holy and sinless. But when Adam and Eve sinned, they turned God’s perfect creation into nothing but a cemetery. Rich or poor, powerful or meek, old or young, male or female, parent, spouse, child – every last one of us is headed for the grave. The words spoken by God to Adam are spoken to us as well: “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” There’s no avoiding it, no getting around it, no putting it off. Death is our destination. And not just physical death – but even worse, the never-ending death and suffering of eternal separation from God in the terrors of hell. In the book of Revelation, St. John writes of the “second death” following the physical death of unbelievers, when their souls are immediately in the presence of Satan and immediately begin to suffer the torment of eternal punishment from which there is no possibility of escape. On the Day of Judgment, their bodies will join their souls in hell. And the torment will never end.
It’s one thing to talk in general terms about other people going to hell, but we must always realize that we were headed there, too. We, too, are sinners. There’s no way in heaven or on earth that we could every make things right with God and earn His forgiveness.
But God sent His Son to change all of that. That’s what today’s Gospel lesson is all about. That’s what the Bible – all 66 books – is all about.
In today’s Old Testament lesson we heard the admittedly strange-sounding account of a dream in which God carries the prophet Ezekiel to a valley filled with dry bones. God asks Ezekiel: “Son of man, can these bones live?” The answer under any normal circumstance would be “no.” But Ezekiel responded: “O Lord God, you know.” And then God displayed His power over death by bringing those dry bones back to life.
When Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, Jesus Christ – true God and true man – displayed His power over death by restoring life to a man who had been dead for four days – whose body had already begun the process of decay that would lead to nothing more than another pile of dry bones.
Not long after that day, another day would come when another man would die and be placed in a tomb. By our understanding of death, his brutalized, beaten, crucified body should have immediately begun to decay. But on the third day his glorified body burst from the tomb, giving proof to His statement to Martha, when He said: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
During Lent we often hear the words of Isaiah 53, where the prophet reminds us that Jesus was “wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” We must understand that this healing includes much, much more than forgiveness alone. It also includes resurrected life to celebrate now in our mortal lives and hereafter for eternity in our resurrected bodies. Jesus truly is the resurrection and the life.
This undeniably dramatic event of Jesus conquering death for Lazarus by giving him life foreshadows not only the death and resurrection of Jesus, but also foreshadows the work that He has done and is doing still in each and every one of us. In Holy Baptism, Jesus calls us from the tomb of our sins to raise us to a new life of faith. In Absolution, Jesus frees us from the death grip of sin and Satan that so desperately threatens to drag us to the eternal grave of hell and suffering. In the Lord’s Supper, he graciously and lovingly gives us His own body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus gives – to us. He truly is the resurrection and the life.
When the pagan worshippers of Madagascar remove the bones of family members from their tombs for famadihana, those bones are still rotting and still decaying and still very much dead. At some unknown point in the future they, too, will be resurrected. But their resurrection, instead of a time for joy and partying, will truly be for an eternity of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Their bodies will join their souls that are already suffering in hell. And that is unfortunately true of so many people. People we know. Perhaps our friends. Perhaps even our own family members. People who do not have faith in Jesus Christ, who truly is our resurrection and our life.
Scripture never mentions Lazarus again after these verses of John’s Gospel, so we can only speculate what happened after his resurrection. We don’t know how long he lived or what he did, but it is certain that at some future time Lazarus died a second time. The body of Lazarus was placed in a tomb for a second time. And there his bones remain – or the dust of those bones remains – until this day.
But they won’t remain there forever. At the second coming of Christ on judgment day, Lazarus will burst from his tomb and will be resurrected for a second time, just as all who have died in Christ will burst from their tombs and be resurrected. But this resurrection will be different. Lazarus and all believers will wear glorified, perfect, immortal bodies that can never again grow old or grow sick or die. The graveyard that has been our home will be replaced with a new, heavenly home where sickness and suffering and death can never attack us again. Heaven truly is more wonderful than we can ever possibly imagine. Because there we will again be with our loved ones who have died in Christ. And we will be with our Savior who died – and lives – for us.
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