Sermon - 5th Sunday in Lent (3/29/2020)
Ezek. 37:1-14; Ps. 130; Jn. 11:1-45
This is the fourth in our series of four increasingly lengthy Lent gospel readings from the gospel of John. We started three weeks ago, the last time we were together in church, which seems so long ago, with the story of Nicodemus, the religious leader, who came to Jesus by night, curious but skeptical, aware of how much of his power and prestige he’d have to give up to follow Jesus and reluctant to let himself be born all over again. Then we read the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, the outsider, come to draw water for her family but thirsty for something much more, who was invited to share a drink with a fellow thirsty stranger, another outsider as far as she was concerned, and who discovered the spring of living water rising up within herself.
Last week, we had the story of the man born blind, who not only received his sight at the hands of Jesus, but who was then driven out and excluded by fearful people who could not accept Jesus, and who in his experience of being thrown out of the community received insight, not just sight, into the Messiah who crucified and cast out to reveal the truth about the world’s sin, and who confesses faith in Jesus as God’s Son. And finally, today, Lazarus, dead four days in the tomb, filled with stink and decay, utterly beyond helping himself or being helped by his devoted sisters and family, but who is not beyond the love of Jesus that brings all things back to life.
Four gospel stories about four very different people, each of whom encounters Jesus and comes away changed in a different way, Lazarus perhaps the most dramatically of all. And yet we are now different people than we were three Sundays ago when we started this series of readings. I have sensed in many of us a type of grief over what we have lost over these last three weeks, and fear over what we may yet lose in the near future.
Even for most of us who have not yet been directly impacted by the coronavirus, we have had real losses. We have had to give up many of the daily activities that we have enjoyed and that have given meaning and purpose to our lives. Some have lost jobs and income and wonder how they will make ends meet, or have family members who are under financial stress. Some still go to work at “essential” jobs, involving lesser or greater personal risk, caring for the sick, making sure the shelves are stocked and food is delivered, and some worry about loved ones who may be in danger. Some are unable to see or visit loved ones in nursing homes, hospitals, prisons, refugee camps, or just because they are far away. Some are spending way more time than they are used to with children or other family members, and that carries its own stresses and burdens as well as joys. And some are sick, or know people who are sick, or even who have died, of coronavirus or other illnesses, which don’t stop just because there’s a pandemic. And then there is the fear about what is to come, whether it’s about our own possible sickness or that of another, of what will happen in our communities, of what we or those we know and love may be called upon to do, of how long we’ll be able to keep up this isolation and physical distancing. There is a sense of loss that all of us feel, and we know that others are feeling it too. It is grief, not unlike the grief of Martha and Mary in the gospel story today.
And not unlike the grief of the prophet Ezekiel, in exile in Babylon in 587 B.C., as he hears about the battle in which Jersualem and the Temple are destroyed, with great loss of life and suffering among all the people of Israel, the whole community that Ezekiel knew and identified with. Ezekiel has a vision of a mass grave, of a valley full of bones, of a countless number of people utterly lifeless, not even individual skeletons any more, just human bones intermingled together. And God speaks to Ezekiel and says, I know that these bones are my people, who say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” It is deeply human to experience grief and loss as a loss of hope – how can we ever again be who we once were? How can life ever again be like it was before?
When Jesus arrives in Bethany, four days after Lazarus has died and been buried, he meets first Martha and then Mary outside the town. Martha says to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” There is nothing more human at the point of loss, in the moment of grief, than to look back. What if. What if I had done something differently, what if someone else had done something differently? It is because we love what we have lost that we ask these questions, and that love is a beautiful thing. But it is a question about the past, when – perhaps! – someone could have done something to change things. It really doesn’t tell us what we can do now that the loss has happened.
And when Jesus tells Martha, “Your brother will rise again,” Martha quickly answers with the correct catechism answer, “Yes, I know, he will rise again at the final judgment, on the last day.” Yes, far off in the distant future, we look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and Lazarus of course will be included. But this is a question about the future, eventually, one day. It really doesn’t tell us what can help us now, here, in the moment of loss.
Martha’s questions focus on the past and on the future, but Jesus speaks to Martha about the present: I am the resurrection and the life. Now. For those with faith in me, even if they die, life does not end. Because the life of faith comes from God, and God is the fullness of life. God knows nothing of death. Through faith in Jesus we come to know that God love and care for us has no limit, and cannot be stopped even by death. And even more: in Jesus we see God taking human flesh so that God, who by God’s own nature is deathless, can die for us, so we can see that death is not something to fear. Jesus himself goes into the tomb, to the place of the dead, to unbind not just Lazarus but everyone and to set them free. To teach us a way of life in God’s deathless love where we can, right here and right now, live in such a way that we do not need to fear even death. This, more than anything, is what I believe Jesus wanted to give to Martha and to Mary. Not consolation about the past, what might have been. Not even hope in a future resurrection, what we hope and believe one day will be. But resurrection and life now.
And I think that’s why John says, twice, as Jesus approaches the tomb amidst the wailing mourners, that Jesus was “greatly disturbed,” and that Jesus, standing at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, began to weep himself. Not because he was sad for Lazarus, or sad for himself at the death of his friend – because John is quite clear from the beginning of the story that Jesus knew perfectly well what he was going to do and how the story was going to end. So if Jesus knew the ending of the story, why was he greatly disturbed, for whom was he weeping?
I think Jesus was disturbed by the fear in the weeping crowds, by the hopelessness and grief of Lazarus’s family and friends. At the power that death and loss and despair had over them. At the degree to which they felt, like the people of Ezekiel’s day, like people whose bones had dried up, whose hope was lost, who felt completely cut off from life and joy. Jesus wept over people being genuinely lost and frightened, lacking faith in the One who is Resurrection and Life, people who by their own efforts could do as little to cope with their grief as dead Lazarus could do to bring himself out of the grave. Jesus was greatly disturbed by the spirit of fear and despair in the air, that stank no less than the decaying Lazarus four days in the tomb. Death is never part of God’s plan; death is God’s enemy, and here are all these people paralyzed in their grief at the death of Lazarus. The power that death still has over these beloved children of God is, I believe, what greatly disturbed Jesus. What caused him to weep. Because he came not to help us cope with death, but to defeat it.
Yes, grief in a time of loss is natural and normal; we feel sad and angry and we cannot or should not deny it. But we need never lose hope. Jesus does for us the thing that we cannot do for ourselves: he speaks God’s word of life that called all creation into existence, he enters into death and the tomb to defeat their power over us. And even though we all one day die, even though those near to us suffer and die, even though along the way we experience disorienting loss and sadness, Jesus invites us into faith in a God whose love for us cannot die, which absolutely nothing can take away from us.
Especially in these days, where all kinds of loss are all around us, and we don’t know what is yet to come, Jesus promises us that we need not be afraid, not ultimately. We have all lost something real in this time of isolation and quarantine, and we may yet lose more, but if we have faith we know that we cannot lose the love of God, and the love of God transcends and is victorious even over death itself. This faith was given to Lazarus when, quite unexpectedly and without any effort on his part, he emerged from the tomb to be unbound and set free. This faith is offered to you as well, and to me.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” May we remember this promise today, and all in the days to come.