Mean Time
Mean-Time Lent 5, Year A. Ezekiel 37.1-14, Romans 8.6-11, John 11.1-45 In the past weeks, life and the absence of life have become a matter of such sharp urgency that they dominate the considerations governing our daily lives, our hourly choices. An entire world economy has been all but suspended, we adopt new language and practice (such as “social distancing”) as normal and necessary, and we begin to understand that this meantime may be longer – and meaner – than we had thought. It is as a people whose sense of life and the absence of life has become focused and could easily become anxious that Ezekiel introduces us to the bonescape in the midst of which the hand of God has set him down. “It was full of bones… and they were very dry.” It is as a people whose sense of life and the absence of life has become focused and could easily become anxious that Paul opens the question of the relationship (or not) between flesh and spirit. It is as a people whose sense of lif