4-2-17
Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and from our
Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, Amen.
Yikes. Are you feeling the burn? Yet another
marathon-length reading from the Gospel of John, our fourth in five weeks.
Even though it’s the year of Matthew’s gospel, during Lent we are treated
to a Gospel of John mini-series. So it might be good to do a little re-cap, to
review of all the interesting characters that Jesus has met this “season.”
“Previously in the gospel of John,” or on what we could call, “How I Met our Savior”:
Jesus had a late-night meeting with perplexed Nicodemus the Pharisee. Next, Jesus
talked to the woman at the well, victim-of-gossip turned town evangelist.
Last week Jesus healed a man born blind and created a giant controversy
for the whole community. And today, for this last Sunday before Palm Sunday,
the season finale, his greatest accomplishment to date: raising Lazarus from
the dead. Well, really, for John it would be more like a mid-season finale,
because this story is only the half-way mark in the gospel, right in the middle
of John’s 21 total chapters. in more ways than one, this story is central
to the Gospel of John.
This is the watershed moment that sets into motion the
events that we will be remembering during Holy Week – Jesus’ passion, death,
and resurrection. It is, according to John, the incident that begins the conspiracy
by the religious leaders to end Jesus’ life. In John, by raising Lazarus, Jesus
is signing his own death warrant.
Jesus had become practically part of the family of
Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Lazarus was near death, and so they called on the
one person in the world that they believed and hoped could help – their friend
Jesus. Only Jesus didn’t come right away. He didn’t arrive in town until it was
much too late, when Lazarus had been dead for four days. What was
Jesus thinking?
Both Mary and Martha, in their grief and sorrow, lay this
heart-piercing statement at Jesus’ feet: “Lord, if you had been here, my
brother would not have died.” Buried in that statement is an accusation: “So,
where were you, Lord?” I imagine they were furious with grief. From their point
of view, while Lazarus was alive, something
– anything - could have been done.
He could have been healed. But now? By the time Jesus actually gets
there, it’s too little, too late. Death, after all, is final. Death is the one thing we cannot escape.
Where were you, Lord, they seem to ask, when Lazarus was
on death’s door? Where were you Lord, while we waited for you? Where were you,
Lord, as we sat by his side as he took his dying breath? Where were you Lord,
when we buried his body in the dark, cold tomb? Where were you, Lord?
Martha and Mary say out loud what many of us might be
thinking. We may be sitting in our own kinds of dark tombs at the moment. Tombs that are dark and smell like death. Lord,
if you had been there…. We wouldn’t have lost that job, the bills wouldn’t be
piling up… Lord, if you had been there, we would not have gotten that cancer
diagnoses, or had a tough time with that round of chemo. Lord, if you had been
there, gun shootings would not happen and people would not die at the hands of
violent people. Lord, if you had been there, our grandkids would still be going
coming to church and the future would not seem so scary….
The Psalmist who wrote Psalm 130 puts words to what is in
our hearts while we wait in these tombs – out of the depths we cry to the Lord,
and we wait for an answer with our very souls, with every fiber of our beings.
Lord if you had been there, our world would not seem so
dark and full of death, filling in the news we hear every day. Lord, of you had
been there, we would not have to wait here in the darkness of our tombs.
Hospital waiting rooms seem to have a tomb-like feel to
them, don’t they? Especially if you have ever waited all day or all night in
one of them. When I lived in NJ, I also worked as a part time chaplain at the
local hospital, which included a weekly overnight on-call shift.
Because of the
wonders of technology, I didn’t have to stay at the hospital all night – the ER
could call me on my cell phone if there was an emergency. So, from 8 PM to 8 AM
on Thursday nights into Friday mornings, I kept my phone by my side at all
times, and slept with one ear open, waiting and listening for the sound of that
special ring I set for the hospital number. When the morning came and my clock
showed 8 AM, I would thank God for another quiet night.
But not every night was this way. One night it rang at
about 12:30 AM, for the family of a woman who was fine one minute, and in
cardiac arrest the next. For the next 5 hours, I sat with that family in the
hospital waiting room, waiting for what would happen next, then waiting to hear
that she would not recover, then waiting for the last family members to arrive
to be present for her last breath… waiting for the sun to rise on the first
morning that family would face without their beloved wife, mother, and
grandmother.
Another night I was called, and I arrived after a woman
had died, and her husband and her adult children stayed at her side and
continued to gently and lovingly touch her face and her hair. They rubbed her
hands with scented lotion and brought a little humanity to their loved one in
that cold and sterile emergency room cubicle.
I’ve been on the flip side too, waiting all day in a
waiting room subsisting on prayers, uncomfortable chairs, and mediocre coffee
for hours at a time, just last year while my Dad was in surgery. We waited in a
couple different waiting rooms, drank the coffee, sat in the chairs, ate the
hospital food, waiting for the surgery to be over, and then waiting to visit my
dad afterward. The outcome of our
waiting was a good one, of course, but I know first-hand that it is not always
true in every case. Where are you Lord, when the news is not good, and the on-call chaplain needs to be called in? Where are
you Lord, when the night is dark, and it seems like the dawn will never come?
At the beginning of the Gospel of John, there is a poem
about light and darkness. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with
God, and the word was God… what came into being in him was life, and the life
was the light of all people… the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
did not overcome it. … and the word became flesh and lived among us.”
Mary and Martha spoke face-to-face with the flesh and
blood son of God. They were speaking with Jesus, the man who walked and talked,
and taught and healed. Jesus, who got thirsty, and who felt sadness, pain, and
rejection. And who wept with anger and sadness as his heart was breaking over
the death of his friend Lazarus and the pain it caused his friends. Jesus, who
broke down and cried.
How unbelievable, how daring, how incredible of Jesus to then
shout at the cold, dead tomb: Lazarus, come out!
Until, that is, Lazarus, did just that.
Lazarus
lives.
“Where were you, Lord?” We ask. He is there, in our tomb
with us. He is God with skin and a face, and has experience all that we have
experienced, even the dark dead tomb of Good Friday.
He is also there, calling us out of the tomb. He is there, calling the light of life out of the
darkness of death, just as he did that day at Lazarus’ tomb. Even though it
will cost Jesus his life.
Lazarus died again, eventually. Every one of us will have
laying in real tombs someday. Everything around us may die away and change into
until the world becomes strange and unrecognizable. Even Jesus was given into
the power of death and the grave, and was shut away in a cold, dark tomb for
three days.
But Jesus lives.
After waiting for three days, other Marys who followed
Jesus discovered that this place of death now stood empty. The dark night was
over, and the light of dawn had arrived.
Death does not win the day. Because we believe and hope
and trust in the one who is the Resurrection and the Life, we can look through death to see the coming life that
is emerging, like sun after a long day of hard rain.
It is true that death, and tombs, and waiting is always
present in our lives, and Good Friday is on its way,
But after that, always comes Easter and Resurrection and
Life. AMEN.
