5 Lent

 

March 22, 2026

 

Ezekiel 37.1-14; John 11.1-45

 

+ This past Tuesday, my good friend Brother Benet Tvedten died.

 

It wasn’t a surprise.

 

He had been on Hospice since January.

 

And I had heard a few days before that he was nearing the end of his life.

 

But it still struck me hard.

 

I had known Brother Benet since I was 14.

 

For those of you who follow me on social media, you probably saw my post on his death on my Facebook page.

 

But for those of you who did, here it is:

 

I first got to know Benet when I was 14 years old and was curious about the Catholic Church.

 

My Lutheran parents are very wary about nuns and monks and priests and so when they came with me to visit Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, SD in 1984 they had no idea what to expect (neither did I for that matter).

 

Benet was the perfect monk for the occasion.

 

With his dry wit and his genuine kindness and friendliness he put my parents at ease.

 

However when it was discovered that Benet was from Casselton, ND my mother’s interest was piqued.

 

She asked if he knew her first husband Roger Gould.

 

Benet said Roger was a year ahead of him in high school.

 

My mother then said that she attended Roger’s senior prom in 1953 and stated it was “Blue Moon” themed.

 

Benet said, “I decorated that prom.”

 

They immediately became fast friends.

We soon learned that Brother Benet was born on the same day my mother was baptized.

 

Later on, in the 1990s, Benet and the community hosted the Blue Cloud Literary Festival.

 

Although I was in my 20s, the author of maybe two books of poems at the time,  I was invited to read alongside such heavy literary hitters at Bill Holm, Mark Vinz, Thom Tammaro, Al Davis, Sharon Chmielarz, Gail Rixen, Jay Meek, Jon Hassler and many others, most of whom became dear friend.

 

Benet himself was a prolific and popular writer. In addition to a wonderful novel and several published short stories, he wrote a series of popular commentaries on monastic life, including A View From the Monastery and How to Be a Monastic and Never Leave Your Day Job.

 

 

After I was ordained I went to Blue Cloud twice a year on retreat which usually entailed spending time talking with Benet about books and films and obscure church stuff.

 

After Blue Cloud closed in 2012, Benet moved to Assumption Abbey in Richardton, ND.

 

I last visited him at the nursing home in Richardton in April 2024. Although he recognized me he was often confused. He kept asking how my mother was even though I reminded every time he asked that she had died in 2018.

 

I knew when I said goodbye to him that day I would not see him again on this side of the veil.

 

On Tuesday night, Benet slipped through that veil. It was appropriate that this faithful Irish monk with a Norwegian last name died on St. Patrick’s Day. May he rest in God’s Peace

 

 

Benet was a kind of parent figure for me---someone I knew in my formative years who was always just “there.”

 

And so his absence, although expected, has been strangely difficult for me.

 

It seems strange to be in a world in which Brother Benet is not.

 

Also on Tuesday, a classmate of mine from high school died.

 

I didn’t know him well in high school, but back in 2017, though Facebook, he reached out to me.

 

He knew I had had cancer in my 30s and he had been recently diagnosed.

 

He was in Fargo for his mother’s funeral and he came over to St. Stephen’s and we had a great conversation.

 

I assumed he had been doing well, so his death came also as a kind of surprise to me.

 

I guess Lent does not help when we are walking through a season of grief.

 

And grief is certainly no stranger to me.

 

Though, I will admit, I am consistently surprised by how deeply is affects me in unexpected moments.

 

Let’s face it.

 

I do talk a lot about death.

 

How can I not?

 

It’s a big part of my job.

 

I do a lot of funerals in a year.

 

And burying people who don’t have anyone else to do their funerals or anywhere else to be buried is an important ministry we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 

So, yeah, I am going to talk about it.

 

And yeah, I am going to think about it.

 

Probably more than a living, breathing person even should.

 

But doing so doesn’t make any of this any easier.

 

And it doesn’t protect me or any of us from feeling the effects of loss.

 

But, it is important to do.

 

And especially during Lent we are all called to take our mortality into account.

 

Certainly, two of our readings for today may seem a bit morbid.

 

Theere is no doubt that they are sobering experiences just to hear.

 

They jar us and make us sit up and take notice.

 

The first, of course, is Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones.

 

It’s a great story in this Lenten season and it speak loudly to the theme that I’ve used this Lent on our broken selves being made whole.

 

The second reading is the raising of Lazarus.

 

Both are filled with images of the dead being raised.

 

The story that probably speaks most deeply to us though is the story of Lazarus.

 

This is, weirdly, morbidly I suppose, one of my favorite scriptural stories.

 

 

Now, at first glance, both our reading from the Hebrew scriptures and our Gospel reading seem a bit morbid.

 

These are things we don’t want to think about.

 

But the fact is, we are rapidly heading toward Holy Week.

 

Next week at this time, on Palm Sunday, we will be celebrating the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.

 

We will be hearing the joyful cries of the crowd as he rides forth.

 

Within 11 days from now, we will hear those cries of joy turn into cries of jeering and accusation.

 

And, within no time, we will be hearing cries of despair and mourning.

 

We, as Christians who follow Jesus, will be hearing about betrayal, torture, murder and death as Jesus journeys away from us into the cold dark shadow of death.

 

These images of death we encounter in today’s readings simply help nudge us in the direction of the events toward which we are racing.

 

During Holy Week, we too will be faced with images we might find disturbing.

 

Jesus will be betrayed and abandoned by his friends and loved ones.

 

He will be tortured, mocked and whipped.

 

He will be forced to carry the very instrument of his death to the place of his execution.

 

And there he will be murdered in a very gruesome way.

 

We commemorate this every Friday evening during Lent in the Stations of the Cross we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 

Following that death, he will be buried in a tomb, much the same way his friend Lazarus was.

 

But unlike Lazarus, what happens to Jesus will take place within the three days at that time required for a soul to make a final break from the body.

 

And this brings us back to the story of Lazarus.

 

We often make the mistake, when think about the story of Lazarus, that Lazarus was resurrected.

 

The fact is, he was not resurrected.

 

In seminary, I had a professor who made very clear to us that Lazarus was not resurrected in our Gospel reading.

 

It was not resurrection because Lazarus would eventually die again.

 

He was simply brought back to life.

 

God, working through Jesus, brought Lazarus back to life.

 

He was resuscitated, shall we say.

 

So, Lazarus truly did rise from the tomb in Bethany, but he was not resurrected there.

 

He went on to live a life somewhat similar to the life he lived before.

 

(Probably a life no doubt deep affected by what happened)

 

And eventually, he died again.

 

But Resurrection is, as we no doubt know, different.

 

Resurrection is rising from death into a life that does not end.

 

Resurrection is rising from all the things we encounter in our readings for today—dry bones, tombs, decomposition and death.

 

Resurrection is rising from grief and sorrow and loss.

 

Resurrection is rising from our own broken selves into a wholeness that will never be taken away from us.

 

Resurrection is new bodies, a new understanding of everything, a new and unending life.

 

Resurrection, when it happens, cannot be undone.

 

It cannot be taken away.

 

Resurrection destroys the hold of death.

 

Resurrection destroys death.

 

And the first person to be resurrected was not Lazarus.

 

The first person to be resurrected was, of course, Jesus.

 

His resurrection is important not simply because he was the first.

 

His resurrection is important because it, in a real sense, destroys death once and for all.

 

Yes, we will all die.

 

Yes, we will go down into the grave, into that place of bones and ashes.

 

But, the resurrection of Jesus casts new light on the deaths we must die.

 

The resurrection of Jesus shows us that God will raise us from the destruction of our bodies—and our lives—into a life like the life of the resurrected Jesus.

 

We will be raised into a life that never ends, a life in which “sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life eternal,” as we celebrate in the Burial Office of the Book of Common Prayer.

 

Because Jesus died and then trampled death, God has taken away eternal death.

 

Our bodies may die, but we will rise again with Jesus into a new and awesome life.

 

So, as we move through these last days of Lent toward that long, painful week of Holy Week, we go forward knowing full well what await us on the other side of the Cross of Good Friday.

 

We go forward knowing that the glorious dawn of Easter awaits us.

 

And with it, the glory of resurrection and life everlasting awaits us as well.

 

So, let go forward.

 

Let us move toward Holy Week, rejoicing with the crowd.

 

And as the days darken and we grow weary with Jesus, let us keep focused on the Easter light that is just about to dawn on all of us.