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

LAUGHING WITH LAZARUS

A Sermon for the 5th Sunday in Lent, Year A

John 11:1-45

You know how in a race, runners often get a second wind and sprint to the finish line? Well, that’s what we’re doing liturgically. Here we are, just about to the end of our Lenten season with Holy Week starting next Sunday and suddenly, it’s more Lenten than it’s ever been. Though we’ve got daffodils and crocuses blooming outside, spring is not in today’s readings—at least not at the beginning of them. They start with death.

In our first reading, we’ve got dry bones and not just one set of them—a whole valley of dry bones occupy Ezekiel’s vision. These bodies are so long dead that there’s no more rotting flesh, they’re just dusty bones. The people of the exile feel very much like these long-forgotten valley of bones. “Our hope is lost!” they cry out. “We are cut off completely!” Death and hopelessness.

Even today’s Psalm, 130, comes from a place of sadness. It is often read at funerals. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice!”

And the gospel lesson centers around the death of Lazarus who has now been dead four days. A rotting corpse, he is buried in the tomb. Like the exiles, it seems clear that hope is gone for those who love him.

These themes of death and hopelessness are all too familiar to us. This has been a season of death with international news of natural disaster in Japan to war in Libya and increasing violence in Afghanistan. Death is always in the headlines. It’s touched and reshaped our lives too. We know all to well the pain of losing a loved one to death. Mortality is not just a theory—it is a harsh reality for us. Smelly corpses, dried up bones, prayers of anguish and desperation—these scriptures cry out the hardship of our own lives. They remind us or our own difficult Lenten journey.

So Jesus continues his Lenten journey by going to see his friend Lazarus. He’d gotten word that his old pal was sick, but for some unknown reason, he dilly dallies for two more days before making his way to their house—just a couple of miles outside of Jerusalem. It seems almost careless of him to be so tardy. Understandably, when Jesus finally does arrive, they seem a bit upset with him. Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about the death of their brother. You cannot imagine this scene without the sound of weeping. Not only would the sisters be weeping—along with the friends who have come—but there would also be the presence of professional mourners. In Jesus’ day, the bereaved would hire people whose job it was to give dramatic expression to their grief. Their theatrical and ritualistic cries would bring everyone to emotional catharsis. Needless to say, Jesus is walking into a house of death and deep sadness.

Jesus taps into this emotional energy and takes it one himself. It says that he becomes “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” (John 11:33). In the original Greek language, this description is even more visceral. It says Jesus snorted like a horse. English translations can’t quite seem to capture the depth of Jesus’ pain. But as he makes his way through the crowd of mourners, Jesus is grieving openly and he seems shaken to the core.

It does seem odd that Jesus would react this way, especially since this story comes from the Gospel of John. In this book, Jesus is always in control. He knows ahead of time that Lazarus would be dead—it’s not like he’s surprised to find him entombed. And Jesus always knows the end of the story, so he has full knowledge that death only has a temporary hold on Lazarus and that he will very shortly call him out of the grave so there’ll be a “happily ever after,” fairy-tale-type ending. And as for all those weeping mourners—I’m sure Jesus knows they are for hire so they wouldn’t upset him. Why, then? Why is Jesus so upset?

As we have made our way through John’s Gospel this Lent, we’ve seen Jesus reveal himself to be many incredible things including God’s Word, bread, living water and light. In this story, we see that he is even more than these. He is himself the “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). As the resurrection, he has come to put an end to death. We come to realize in this story that Jesus doesn’t much like death. The two of them go together about as well as oil and water. Jesus detests death because he is the opposite of it. Just as we hate death, Jesus hates it. Here in the context of his dear friendship with Lazarus, Jesus’ passion is stirred. He snorts like a horse and he weeps openly. We can picture the tears streaming down his face as he faces down death. He can’t even stand the fact that it has temporary power over his friend. And so he demands the stone be rolled away and he calls Lazarus forth—as he calls us forth—from death to life.

The playwright Eugene O’Neill wrote a fictional account of what happened to Lazarus after this dramatic resurrection. I mean, the bible doesn’t tell us. But he must have been different after that. Four days in the tomb and then his death is reversed. O’Neill’s conclusion is that Lazarus laughed. He experienced death and found out—first-hand—that it has no sting. From then on, he is so free of fear that he constantly laughs. The chorus sings of him:

Lazarus laughs!

Our hearts grow happy!

Laughter like music!

The wind laughs!

The sea laughs!

Spring laughs from the earth!

Summer laughs in the air!

Lazarus laughs!

Lazarus himself declares to the confused on-lookers: “Laugh! Laugh with me! Death is dead! Fear is no more! There is only life! There is only laughter!”

This dramatic story in John’s gospel foreshadows, rather dramatically, Jesus’ own death, burial in a cave tomb, and subsequent resurrection. All of the scriptures for today point us to Easter. The psalmist finds hope in God, the the prophet Ezekiel’s vision ends with the resurrection of the whole valley of dry bones. The Spirit of God comes upon them and they grow flesh and are brought back to life—a vast army that stand up on their feet!

So yes, there’s no denying this Lenten journey is leading toward death. There are more weeping women to come, a body to bury, a stone to roll before the tomb. But death will not have the last word. On this Sunday when the scriptures stink of death, we still acknowledge the “little Easter” that each and every Sunday is. They point us to the great victory of the Resurrection. Soon another stone will be rolled away and, snorting at death, the one who is the resurrection and the life will himself be resurrected. And because he is our savior, his resurrection will be our own.

So let us laugh with Lazarus. Even as we sprint on into Holy Week—a somber time in which we must hear again the story of our Lord’s death. We know that death is dead. Jesus snubbed death and gave us victory over it. Death is dead! There is no more fear! There is only life! There is only laughter! Amen.

© Laura E. Gentry 2011