TEARS

A Sermon for All Saints Day
November 1, 2015

John 11:1-45

Today, on All Saint’s Day, we have lit candles in these luminaries to remember those loved ones who have gone before us. And while it is beautiful to have the sanctuary bathed in such soft light, it is also a sad reminder that they are gone from this world.

It’s hard to remember the dead—at least the ones closest to us—with dry eyes. My mom’s been gone over six years now and it’s still difficult for me to talk about her without crying (unless it is just a superficial reference). When I talk about what she means to me and how difficult life is without her, I weep.

The death of a loved one is too devastating to describe. Just because we’ve lit these candles doesn’t sentimentalize our grief. It doesn’t mean we’re okay with our losses. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Sorrow makes us all children again—destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.”

So before we dive into the Gospel story of Lazarus and Mary and Martha, let’s just admit how much our grief is with us. There are very real voids in our lives.

I think this helps us understand where Mary and Martha are coming from. Their brother has died. Grief has swallowed them up just as we become swallowed up in our grief. Why didn’t Jesus come right away and save their dear brother from death? Now, he shows up after Lazarus is four days dead and doesn’t even apologize. Keep in mind this is no ordinary friend. They knew Jesus could have done something to prevent this death. But he didn’t. He didn’t.

At funerals and visitations, the bereaved are usually very polite. They say things like: “Thank you for coming. I appreciate your condolences. Please sign the guest book.” 

Not Mary. No. She goes right for the juggler:  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not be dead!” 

Seriously? She says this to her Lord? Where does she get such audacity,  especially in a patriarchal culture where women did not question men? But haven’t we cried out to God in our own pain? Haven’t we said basically the same thing? “God, we prayed so much, we are such faithful people, and yet you didn’t spare us from this loss! How you could have let my loved one die?” I’ve known many people who stop coming to church after the death of a family member. They allege that God has forsaken them. It certainly feels that way.

After receiving this harsh criticism from Mary, Jesus sees the grief of Mary and Martha and all those gathered for the funeral. There are tears and wails as they all grieve for their dear Lazarus. 

In the NRSV translation of verse 33, it says: “Jesus was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” And while this communicates intense emotion, the original Greek verbs has even more intensity. The first verb is associated with anger. Jesus doesn’t just have a disturbed feeling, he’s angry. Passionately angry. And the second verb is about being stirred up on the inside. It is the same word used to describe stirring of water to disturb its stillness. So this word expresses the internal, emotional disturbance that stirs a person up, sometimes even causing physical sickness. This is an apt description of grief, is it not? Many people can’t even eat for a few days after a loved one dies.

Then in the shortest verse of the Bible, verse 35, Jesus weeps. Jesus has the very same reaction that the mourners do—he weeps real tears. He’s angry and he’s disturbed—so stirred up in his heart that he cries aloud.

This is curious, isn’t it? If Jesus is the Son of God, then he knows that his friend will be resurrected. It is like knowing the end of the movie. So what’s going on? Why is he moved to tears? Probably for the same reason we are when we grieve. Despite our ardent theological convictions that there is life after life, death still stings. When we love someone deeply and we lose them, it cuts deeply.

Of course the incarnate God felt pain upon the death of his friend Lazarus. This seems to demonstrate that death even grieves God. Because Jesus cannot stand this death one moment longer, he calls upon Lazarus. He shouts: “Come out!” And just like that death is dead for Lazarus. He comes back to life despite the fact that his sister objects because he’s been dead so long he stinks (or as it says in the King James Version: “He stinketh!”). Indeed, that smelly corpse became alive again.

The first visitation I ever went to was for Mrs. Zurcher, a family friend. I was probably six. I had never seen a body in a casket before and I remember studying her chest from my chair at the visitation. I was absolutely certain I could see it rise and fall like the chest of a living person. I concocted an elaborate fantasy that she was going suddenly sit up and ask us to dry our tears, assuring us that she wasn’t really dead. It sure would have been nice for Jesus to have shown up and told Mrs. Zurcher to “Come out!” But he didn’t. She stayed dead, as have all the other bodies I’ve seen in caskets since.

Yet despite the brutal stench of death, which we know all too well, Jesus comes to us through faith and proclaims to this day: 

“I am the resurrection and the life. 

Those who believe in me, 

even though they die, 

will live.”

This story from John’s Gospel is a more than a miracle. It is a sign that helps us see through our tears that Jesus is the Christ. He is the resurrection. And he comes to call us back to life—both now and at the time of our own deaths. 

And this is why we must rejoice today, no matter how deep our grief may be. Death stinketh, yes, but these saints we remember are not really gone. We miss them and Jesus weeps with us in our pain. But we believe they will be resurrected. Like Mary, we believe it. And so we can look forward to the glorious day when we shall be reunited with all the saints before the throne of God, a resplendent place where, at last, our tears will be wiped away.

Let me close with a poem called We Remember Them from The Gates of Prayer, a Judaism prayer book.

In the rising of the sun and its going down, 

we remember them.

In the blowing of the wind 

and in the chill of winter, 

we remember them.

In the opening buds and 

in the warmth of summer, 

we remember them.

In the rustling of leaves 

and in the beauty of autumn, 

we remember them.

In the beginning of the year and when it ends, we remember them.

When we are weary and in need of strength, we remember them.

When we are lost and sick at heart, 

we remember them.

When we have joys we yearn to share, 

we remember them.

For as long as we live, 

they too shall live

For they are now a part of us

as we remember them.

© 2015 Laura Gentry

A SERMON ABOUT DIVORCE

A Sermon for 19th Sunday after Pentecost

Preached on October 4 at Our Savior's Lutheran Church

 Mark 10:2-16

Divorce. Doesn’t that sound like the topic of a great sermon? I’ll admit it, I was tempted to avoid this Gospel reading and preach, instead, on Psalm 8 about God’s splendid creation and perhaps even talk about super-moon lunar eclipse we had last Sunday and how that show’s God’s handiwork.

I mean, why would I want to talk about divorce? I don’t think there is a person here whose life hasn’t been affected by divorce—whether it is your own divorce or that of your parents, children, siblings, or friends. The possibility that I could offend you with whatever I say about divorce is strong.

However, challenges are good and this text from Mark is, indeed, challenging. I think it is a good idea to wrestle with texts that are hard to understand or hard to accept or both.The hope is that perhaps we’ll find some new, helpful insight. It takes more more effort but then isn’t the possibility of enriching our faith worth it? 

In today’s text Jesus is responding to another trap laid by the religious authorities. As we struggle with Jesus' surprisingly hard words about divorce and remarriage, let's keep in mind the context. In the passage right before it (Mark 9:38-50) Jesus said we should be cutting off our hand or foot, or tearing out our eye, if it makes us "stumble." And in the passage right after it, the rich man asks Jesus if he’s done everything necessary to inherit the kingdom of God and Jesus shocks him by telling him to sell everything he’s got and give it to the poor. I mean, come on! Jesus is talking really tough in this section of Mark. Who can be saved?

Now the crowds have gathered and the religious leaders try to set Jesus up with a trick question. His answer, one way or the other, is going to offend someone.  That’s why it’s a set up. Although it seems that divorce itself was a given, there were teachers who allowed it under more conditions than others did. We have to go back to Deuteronomy 24:1-4 to understand where the Pharisees are coming from when they ask Jesus whether it's lawful for a man to divorce his wife. When he asks them what Moses said, he’s asking them to cite the law. They get this so they quote from Deuteronomy. But why would they ask Jesus if they already know what the law says and can quote it? It seems that they’re looking for Jesus’ interpretation of the Law and isn’t interpretation the whole thing? And the very thing that has people arguing about religion back then as we do today. How do we interpret scripture?

If we read the Deuteronomy text, we're immediately struck by the difference between the patriarchal culture of the ancient Middle East and the one we live in today, where women are no longer considered property and rarely if ever referred to as “defiled" and it's not acceptable for a man simply to get rid of a wife if he finds something objectionable about her (Deuteronomy 24:1-2). That seems pretty unfair, doesn’t it? The man could divorce his wife for any reason at all. “Honey, the dinner doesn’t taste good. Let’s divorce!” Can you imagine that kind of culture?

Jesus acknowledges that the Mosaic Law permitted divorce, but only because of the "hardness of heart" of the people. But he then puts Scripture in conversation with Scripture, holding up the ideal of God's intention for partnership as expressed in Genesis—two people in faithful, lifelong, intimate relationship that should not be severed.

In this patriarchal Jewish society where husbands  had all the power and they alone had the prerogative of divorcing their wives, a prohibition of divorce, it seems, is about safeguarding the disadvantaged person. Marriages were business deals. It was never about choosing a spouse based on romance like modern marriages. No, marriages then were about making a political and financial affiliation. So if a man were to find a better deal later on, like a women with bigger tracks of land, he could just divorce the first wife and move on to the next. But what of the first wife? She would be left out in the cold with no opportunity to make her own living and little chance of remarriage since she’d been defiled. It was practically like leaving her for dead. 

Now that was legal according to Jewish law at the time but Jesus brings a higher consideration. What about the vulnerable one? Divorce is not an abstract action—real people are hurt. 

Marriage today and marriage in ancient society can hardly be compared because they are so different. But we still have the same word to describe when the marriage ends: divorce. So it is tempting to take this teaching of Jesus at face value and say that Jesus prohibits divorce. All divorce. Now and evermore. It’s clear because you can quote this verse from the Gospel. So if you are in a second or third marriage, you are committing adultery and should be shamed by the church. And this has been done for a long time.  

There is often a lot of pain after a divorce. I’ve seen it and I’m sure you have too. So the church heaping more stigma onto the divorced person doesn’t seem to be consistent with Jesus’ loving message of grace, does it?

If Jesus is so concerned about the vulnerable people and how we should not victimize them, then would he really endorse the shaming of people whose marriages have ended for one reason or another? And wouldn’t he be pleased, for example, if a victim of domestic abuse got out of a destructive relationship for her own safety? And wouldn’t he be happy for the person who had languished in a loveless marriage to have found love the second time around? All good questions to explore in a Bible study. A little more difficult to preach.

With biblical interpretation we tend to like to cherry pick which teachings we want to uphold literally and which ones we don’t. As I mentioned, this passage about divorce falls between the one about cutting off your limbs to prevent sin and giving away every single thing you have to follow Jesus. So unless you’ve done all of those things properly, you probably don’t have any business judging someone who has divorced. 

But with all these impossibly hard demands Jesus brings forth, what’s a person to do? I guess we’ll have to recognize we cannot fulfill the law’s demands on our own and we’ll have to reach out for the help of grace. God alone can save us. It is passages like these that help us get the humility to accept such grace.

Which leads us to the second part of this passage. At first, it may seem disconnected from the first, when Jesus once again uses children as an illustration of how to receive the reign of God. We remember that only a few verses earlier Jesus urged his disciples to become the servant of all, and to receive even little children, who had no standing in the world, as they would receive him (Mark 9:36-37).

In this week's story, we can imagine parents bringing their children for a blessing. Like women, children in this society did not have power or status but clearly these parents love their children and want them blessed anyway. Since kids were involved, there may have been a lot of hullabaloo 

like recess. Maybe that was grating on the disciples nerves or maybe they were just grumpy after all that talk about divorce. For whatever reason, they spoke sternly to the kids. That's when Jesus enlightens them once more. It seems like they needed that a lot. Here the "lowly" children receive God's reign as the unearned, "pure gift" of God's grace, while grown-ups don’t seem to get it so easily.

So what’s my point? I don’t really know if I know, other than I’ve tackled a really tricky text in a sermon and that it probably brings up more questions than answers. There is a lot going on in this text.  Among other things, it seems Jesus was trying to help us understand our need to care for the vulnerable. And he was trying to help us see ourselves as vulnerable—like children—in need of God’s unconditional love and grace. And I hope that my treatment of this passage has helped you see how important but also how difficult biblical interpretation can be. 

I always laugh at the book of Jonah because it ends so abruptly. Do you know what the last line of that book is? “And also many cattle.” Since I can’t quite find the exact words to end this sermon, I will triumphantly end it like Jonah. “And also many cattle.”  Amen.