Still Alive
- St. Aidan's
- Mar 22
- 8 min read
Lent 5A: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45
The Rev'd Cameron Partridge
March 22, 2026
“They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’”
– Ezekiel 37:11
“The dead man came out.” – John 11:44
Good Morning, St. Aidan’s.
This past week I stood in Swing Pavillion at Bishop’s Ranch. It was several minutes before the start of the first full day of the retreat for trans, nonbinary and two-spirit Episcopalians. I was part of a small group who agreed to help lead music, and we had gathered to practice a song we would in turn teach to the larger group. Our leader Aaron Scott had learned it in his organizing work over the years, sung to slightly different lyrics. He had adapted it to say,
I am a living saint of God
I should have been dead and gone, but Pauli Murray said ‘Go on!’
I am a living saint of God
I’m still in the fight and I’m still alive!
The inserted saint on the first slide said “Pauli Murray,” the civil rights activist, lawyer, Episcopal priest and gender nonconforming person whom trans people have increasingly claimed as our own. To be urged on from the grave by Pauli Murray, who died in 1985, was deeply inspiring and not at all surprising. But then the slide shifted and the inserted saint was Iain Stanford. I just about lost it. As you know, Iain was my dear friend and fellow leader in TransEpiscopal who died of cancer three years ago this summer.[1] Then followed a slide with Gari Green, another founding member of TransEpiscopal who died in 2024.[2] And then a final slide with Vicki Gray, a third longtime member and DioCal colleague who died just this past year.[3] Imagine all of them singing with us, “go on!” “I’m still in the fight and I’m still alive!”
Still alive. I would like to dwell on these words.
First, “still.” In a sermon preached in 1979, Pauli Murray uses a term “ongoingness” that sings in a similar key. It conveys a sense of going on, as the song says, carrying forward through something. And doing that repeatedly in the face of headwinds, forces that tell you to go back, to give up. The scriptural passage that prompted Murray to use this term was Mark 6:11 where Jesus instructs his disciples to shake the dust off their feet when they weren’t welcomed. This moving forward after the shaking off the dust “suggested ongoingness,” Murray preached, then continuing, “We cannot let our failures overwhelm us, or quit when the going is rough.”[4] Refusing to quit was part of a faith that actively wrestles with doubt and, as Murray preached in a slightly earlier sermon, is suffused with “courage that carries us beyond the defeats, failures, conflicts, suffering, and death inherent in our finite condition.”[5] Notably, the ongoingness Murray evokes is not a kind of victory march, an expression of prowess. The recognition of finitude and even of failure along the way, of wrestling with and being real about struggle and suffering, is crucial to this project of ongoingness.[6]
Our reading from the prophet Ezekiel names this suffering specifically. Ezekiel himself sounds weary beyond measure. When God asks him, “mortal, can these bones live?” His response, “O Lord God, you know” (Ezekiel 37:3). As if to say, I’m not even going to try and answer that. I myself do not see it. But I’m watching. I’m listening. I’m here. As the vision continues, Ezekiel not only proclaims the word of God to the bones, prophesying to them, telling them to live. God also speaks to the prophet on behalf of the bones. God explains how the “whole House of Israel,” the people of God symbolized in this wilderness wasteland, cry out to Ezekiel, “‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely’” (37:11). The reality of suffering, of despair, is spoken by God, acknowledged by God. It is not denied. From out of that dryness, that lost-ness, that death, there is something more. “Still” suggests, and yet. It expresses a strength drawn from something larger than ourselves, a strength that always acknowledges our weakness, our contingency, our reliance on the “God who brought us to birth and in whose arms we die,”[7] to quote a prayer from Jannet Morely. Still-ness is a walk in and by faith.
But “still,” in the song, is followed by the word “alive.” Still alive. Why alive? Because the reality of those headwinds suggests you could be, or from the perspective of oppressors maybe even should be, otherwise. Alive in a way that acknowledges the reality of oppression, of death, and refuses to deny it. Can these bones live? Yes, indeed they can. Alive in the sense that Jesus says to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” (John 11:25-26). Even though they die. Resurrection life does not deny death. This is the Paschal Mystery, dear friends, the very heart of our faith that we walk toward on this fifth Sunday of Lent as we make our way towards Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and the threshold of Easter over these next two weeks. Still alive even though we die is the promise into which we are plunged in baptism, the Good News we are nourished by at this table each Sunday, the promise, the grounding that allows to walk by faith, not by sight. It is the hope we sing with all the saints in each Sanctus: with Pauli Murray, with Iain, Gari, and Vicki, with Liz Specht; Emily Hopkins; Thales, Vanessa and Augusto Ushizima; Harlean Donaldson, Paul Marcus; and all those who have died and ever been listed on our prayer list.
Even though they die, will live. The heart of our gospel story dramatizes this phrase. Lazarus is well and truly dead. Jesus has made sure of that—vexingly, to Mary and Martha. If only he had been there earlier, their brother would not have died. But he delays; getting there before Lazarus dies was not his actual point. The glory of God was revealed not in the prevention of all suffering or a refusal of death but in the drawing of new life from out of it. In accordance with first century Jewish burial practice, the body of the deceased was placed on a slab in a stone tomb, a cave sealed by a stone. Over the course of a year, the body would decay. Then the bones would be gathered and placed in an ossuary, a small box.[8] Could these bones live? Yes, at the resurrection at the last day, Martha had said to Jesus after he had said, “your brother will rise again” (11:23). But the glory of God was to be revealed even in this life, disordering mortality’s neat borders. Jesus stood before the tomb of his dear friend, weeping with them in solidarity, in acknowledgment of the struggles that accompany us, the loss and grief. And from out of those depths, he cried out. He cried out.
As may be familiar to you, there is a longstanding affection in the community of LGBTQIA+ Christians for this story. Why so? Let us say, there is a certain resonance with the content of Jesus’ cry: “Lazarus, come out!” I had been aware of this connection for some time, but in reading further in recent days, I was struck that ministries of and with the queer community had been named after Lazarus. One in the Los Angeles area was specifically named after Lazarus and is described by Chris Glaser.[9] Chris is someone who struggled for years to be ordained as an openly gay man in the Presbyterian Church, and worked for years to support other LGBTQ people who also faced headwinds in the church. Lazarus come out. More than the humor of the ‘coming out’ language, in these words there is an acknowledgement of the barriers that exist in our lives that prevent us from fully embracing who we are, whoever we may be. What is it that we need to remove in order to hear the call of God, to be fully present and alive. Still alive. Here on this earth, making our way, answering God’s unique call to each and every one of us, whatever our circumstances may be. In this reading tradition of the Lazarus story there is a call to claim our spiritual authenticity in and through the struggle.
A further, connected reading tradition surrounding this story with which I am familiar has to do with the emergency of Lazarus from the tomb and the grave clothes. It centers on the role of the community. Because after Jesus’s declaration, Lazarus is described as “the dead man,” not the now-living man, even though he is clearly alive. The death Lazarus had experienced is still with him, signified by the graveclothes. Again, traditionally the body would be wrapped with a linen cloth, with a separate one for the head. In our story there is a specific mention of the hands and feet also being bound (11:44). He was presumably hopping out of that cave – it would have been difficult to walk normally given the graveclothes. For that reason, he needed helped. He is not simply released into a perfectly individuated agency, never to need assistance ever again. And this is why Jesus called upon the community to step in, saying “unbind him and let him go.”[10] The community is integrally connected to the call issued to the individual human. Each of us is meant to be in community as we make our way, assisting one another in living out the humanity that God has uniquely given us.
Still alive reflects the reality of struggle, the need to remove the barriers that we face together, to move forward, still alive, shouting out the names of those who have gone before us. Calling one another’s names as well, recognizing who each of us is as we make our way. As we name and call upon one another, we do so in recognition of our continued vulnerability. Stillness recognizes that we are fragile, that we continue to face headwinds. And so on this Fifth Sunday of Lent, as Palm Sunday and Holy Week approach, may the Paschal Mystery of life emerging out of death anchor us in God and in one another. May we sing together of the fight that we are still in, to make of this world more of the dream that God has created it to be, with hope, perseverance, with ongoingness, with living faith.[11]
I am a living saint of God
I should have been dead and gone, but Pauli Murray said ‘Go on!’
I am a living saint of God
I’m still in the fight and I’m still alive!
[4] Pauli Murray, “Ministry” in ed. Anthony Pinn, Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 37
[5] Pauli Murray, “Sermon, June 24, 1979” in Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings, 45
[6] Kori Pacyniak and I write about Murray’s concept of ongoingness in “Queer and Trans Rituals of Mourning and Celebration: Liminality as Remaining” in ed. Melissa Wilcox, The Palgrave Handbook of Queer and Trans Studies in Religion (Palgrave MacMillan, 2025), 201-218.
[7] Janet Morley, All Desires Known: Inclusive Prayers for Worship and Meditation (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publications, 1988, 1992), 87.
[8] Amy-Jill Levine and Marc vi Brettler, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (New York, London: Oxford University Press, 2011, 2017), 202.
[9] The Lazarus Project, founded by Chris Glaser and described in his book Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press,1988), 207-218. Also Coming Out as Sacrament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press,1998), 10-11. Nancy Wilson references the Lazarus Project and Glaser’s ministry in Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 143. For more on Chris Glaser’s life and ministry: https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/chris-glaser
[10] My emphasis on the role of the community in unbinding Lazarus is influenced by conversation with the Reverend Pam Werntz, Rector of Emmanuel Church, Boston.
[11] As always, the language of God’s dream is from Verna Doier, The Dream of God: A Call to Return (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1991).
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