God at Work in the Waiting

3-29-20

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

In 2012, after being a pastor for just shy of a full year in New Jersey, I was on deck to preach on November 4^th, less than a week after Hurricane Sandy. That Sunday, the church had no heat or light - and no printed bulletin either - but both services that morning were packed. It was All Saints Sunday, and this very text – Jesus raising Lazarus from death – was the gospel of the day then too. During worship, we sat in the natural light of the sanctuary, coats still on, after having Sunday School and adult forum by candlelight. Earlier that week, I remember waiting impatiently for the power to come back on – sort of like when that big storm went through here last year, and all those trees came down.  

Then, as we are now, we were all waiting for life to return to “normal… though for many of us, the “normal” may be long in coming, and may look very different than it did before.

We all know what waiting is like. Waiting for things to change, waiting for the suffering to pass, waiting with a hope that life will someday be better and that our distress will be a just memory.

Sometimes, our waiting is rewarded. The power comes back on. The baby is delivered safely. A potential employer calls and wants a second interview. But sometimes we wait, and we wait… and we seem to wait in vain. Either nothing happens at all, or worse… the thing we fear the most takes place.

Lazarus, Jesus’ friend, was not just sick. He was dying. And his sisters Mary and Martha knew that his only hope was for Jesus to come and heal him on the double. They sent word to Jesus, urging him to come quickly. Then they waited. And waited. And waited some more… until it was too late.

When Jesus finally arrived, Lazarus has been dead and buried for FOUR DAYS. There was no mistaking it for a coma. There was no chance of a sudden recovery. The memorial service was long over, and the luncheon leftovers all eaten.  In fact, the smell of death and decay had already set in – which is not something that we in twenty first century north America have much experience with. But it was a normal – though final – part of mourning the loss of our loved ones.

In her latest book, Mortician Caitlyn Doughty reports that one of the questions that she is often asked in her talks with kids about death is the question: “Can you describe the smell of a dead body?” Doughty writes that the smell of decay – which we imagine the sisters referring to – is not evident unless the person has been dead for several days, which Lazarus had. It seemed that Jesus had lost his chance to heal Lazarus – he was beyond saving.

Caitlin Doughty also wrote something interesting in her 2019 book that seems particularly timely. In this same chapter, she shares about Dr. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, who, in the mid-1800s, noticed that new mothers who were treated by midwives fared better than those who were treated by trainee doctors. Why would that be? The trainee doctors also had contact with people who had died… and handwashing was not a common practice yet. Dr Semmelwies came to see that contact between the two was dangerous for the women in labor.  “So, Semmelweis issued a mandate that hands must be washed between the two activities. And it worked!” Not such a big wonder to us now.  But he was proven right when “Rates of infection dropped from one in ten to one in a hundred within the first few months. Unfortunately, the finding was rejected by much of the medical establishment of the time.” (164)

Why? Because for doctors, “hospital odor” – or the smell that would have come from Lazarus – was a sign of prestige.  To put it crassly: Handwashing was resisted in the medical community at the time because “[this] smell was a badge of honor they had no intention of removing.” Not even for the safety of other people… specifically new mothers. How things have changed! Or have they?

Mary and Martha knew what this smell coming from the tomb meant, and it was both natural and also good news. It meant that it was too late for Jesus to arrive and save him. Mary and Martha had resigned themselves to the fact that they will never see their brother Lazarus again in this lifetime. Their waiting and their hope in Jesus seem to have been in vain.  

Then suddenly, they heard that Jesus is just outside of town, that he just heard the news of Lazarus’ death. Martha heard first and dashed out to confront him. She is the first to say what is also on Mary’s lips, which we heard a moment ago: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Mary and Martha thought that Jesus’ job was to PREVENT bad things from ever happening. Jesus was supposed to come and SAVE their brother from having to die – well, really just postponing the inevitable. Jesus was supposed to heal Lazarus BEFORE his illness became fatal. We may fault them for their “lack of faith,” – after all, this is JESUS we’re talking about…. But again, after all… WE know the end of Lazarus’s story.

But we do not know the end of our own. We join with Mary and Martha, in asking their question:  Where WERE you, Jesus, when Lazarus breathed his last? And likewise, Jesus - where were you when this pandemic started? Where were you when people we know started getting sick, some of them seriously, some of the to the point of death? Where were you, Jesus… when you seem to show up much too late to do any good?

Jesus, amid his own tears of grief, went to the place of Lazarus’ burial. And in front of the giant stone shutting the cave where Lazarus lay, Jesus said, “Take that stone away.” Undeterred by the heavy stone, by the four-day-old grave, the reluctance of the sisters, the heckling of the crowd, unaffected even by the smell coming from Lazarus’ decaying body, Jesus called forth: “Lazarus! COME OUT!” And Lazarus… CAME OUT. Wrappings, and smell, and all.

With Jesus, death … leads… to life. In Jesus, we trust that, even in the midst of grief and suffering and death, Jesus IS present, and he is also working through us to bring about new life. He knows death all too well, including how it smells. But no grave could hold him; no stone could keep him in. And so we hope: even when we are filled with fear, and don’t yet see a way forward, as we wait for a new kind of normal.

Eight years ago, I preached in a chilly sanctuary full of people, and today I’m in a warm but empty sanctuary. And while I would never desire to repeat that experience, I can say that I have learned a few things from Hurricane Sandy. I have learned that a time of crisis really does reveal who people are at their core. I have seen God can and does use the compassion and generosity of people in times like these, and I hope you have seen these moments too, among the fear and the grief. And I encourage you to share these moments with one another. Where have you seen God at work in all of this?

Things are going to be challenging for a while longer yet – how long? We’re not sure. But we wait, with Mary, with Martha, and with Lazarus, knowing that our waiting is not in vain. The tomb will be opened, and we WILL be called forth, and unbound, to new and abundant life, alongside Jesus. Thanks be to God. AMEN.

Marked with Ash, Burn with Grace

Ash Wednesday 2-26-20

Every year Trinity Episcopal and Family of God Lutheran trade off hosting and preaching Ash Wednesday. This year they hosted, I preached. 

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

It started a few weeks ago – my friends giving advance notice by posts in my Facebook news feed, letting us all know that they would “signing off” Facebook during Lent, or disabling the Facebook app on their phones in an attempt to use it less often. That’s when I really know that Lent is on its way – that, and when I start seeing advertisements for fish sandwiches at all the fast food places, and an email message, from our bishop at least, that we should be ADDING a spiritual practice to our Lenten Discipline instead of giving something up for Lent.

Are you still not sure what you are going to be giving up for Lent, if anything? Not to fear - I also saw a friend share a way for your phone to decide what you should give up! Don’t do it right now, but later, simply type in “For Lent I’m giving up” and then keep pressing the predictive text option, and voila! Instant Lenten Discipline. For example, my phone’s predictive text says this “For Lent I’m giving up on me and I will be there at the same time.”

I would like to think that my social-media generated Lenten discipline would be one that Martin Luther would approve of – simultaneously giving up on “me” – my “self”/ my ego/ my need to be in control – and at the same time, taking on the intention of being present wherever I am at, with my FULL SELF, my being, my attention. After all, this is what Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are about at their core – not to make ourselves suffer to reenact Christ’s suffering, but to deny ourselves, take up our cross, so that we may more fully be ourselves – beloved children of God – for the benefit of other people.

We are lucky that this is the year of Matthew, where we spend an entire year reading through Matthew’s gospel. Most years, this expert from the Sermon on the Mount we just heard from Matthew seems to come out of nowhere (sort of like Ash Wednesday some years when Easter is at its earliest). This year, we have already spent weeks with Jesus up on the mountain top, listening to him preach the beatitudes – blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of God – and also about how we are salt and light. Just a few weeks ago, Jesus told us to “Let our lights shine…. So that others may see our good works and glorify God.” As Martin Luther supposedly said, “God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does.” So, our light shines through our service to others… and not in picking the most challenging Lenten Discipline. In other words, Jesus says: let your light, not your piety, shine before others to the glory of God.

And yet, we still come to worship on Ash Wednesday, to receive and ash cross on our foreheads, which will be pretty obvious if you go out in public after this. It signifies who has been to Ash Wednesday service and who hasn’t. An ash cross on your forehead isn’t exactly secret. But maybe some things shouldn’t be “hidden under a bush basket” or a bowl, as Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, just a few weeks ago. Some things should be done in secret, without attention being drawn to them… like if you do choose to give up sweets. But some things ought to be shared.

This ash cross marks you as someone who came here today, to receive both this remembrance of your death, and also the remembrance of your life, through receiving the body and blood of Jesus. This ash cross will wash off or smudge off if you forget it’s there and the ashes tickle you and make you itch … but the cross on your forehead that you received the day of your baptism can never be erased or taken away. Today you have been marked as a reminder of your death… but under that is the promise of life that is being created out of death – our death, and the death of Jesus.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent, an inconvenient day in the middle of our week, to start an uncomfortable season in the middle of our year, to remind us of the inconvenient and uncomfortable truth that we will all eventually die. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” No thank you! Hard pass.

The truth is though, we are surrounded by death…. But we refuse to see it, and we also have forgotten how to see it. Plants and animals had to die for me to eat dinner before I came here. A tree died in order to give you this sermon. And I think that each of us knows what it’s like to say goodbye to a loved one who has died.

But we no longer see death as part of our daily reality. A veil has been drawn over how we spend our last days and moments, and what happens to us after our death, by the medical and the funeral industry. Most of our loved ones – or even us, when our times comes, spend their last moments in a hospital room, surrounded by medical equipment, and our bodies are whisked away and not seen again until the family visitation, wake, memorial service, or funeral. It is a strange time in history - in the last century, we have been separated from the ritual and sacred task than has been a tradition for centuries: mourning for our dead by caring for them ourselves, in our homes, with our families… and thus facing the reality of our own death on a regular basis.

But we have chosen, in this place and this time we live, to remove all things uncomfortable and inconvenient from our immediate sight. As death historian and eco-mortician Caitlyn Doughty writes in her memoir about her time working in a crematorium, she reminds us that: “At this very moment, [people who have died are driven] down highways and interstates in unmarked white vans … [they] crisscross the globe in cargo holds of airplanes while vacationing passengers travel above. We have put the dead beneath. Not underground, but under the tops of fake hospital stretchers, within the bellies of our aircraft, and in the recesses of our consciousness.”

We don’t want to talk about it, and we don’t want to think about it. Not today, not ever. Because death is something we cannot control or fight forever. Mortality is a battle we will always lose. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We would much rather forget, on purpose, until we even forget our forgetting. But the downside is, the time we spend running and hiding from death is time lost that could be spend on living… loving… serving… and shining.

Ash Wednesday inconveniently and uncomfortably reminds us of our death and begins a season in the church year that reminds us of our own sin and brokenness, leading us on the way to the cross, and the suffering and death of Jesus. But this season will have an end, just like death has an end. New life rises from ashes. Death is an end and it is a beginning. Jesus is both the crucified one and the risen one. I can both give up my “self,” and I can also bring myself fully present, in all my “beloved child of God” glory. I can be both made of ash and also made of light.

One pastor poet reflects on today, Ash Wednesday: “I live in a body made of ashes. It is at once fragile and resilient – easily torn apart but never destroyed.” Another pastor wrote a of poems reflecting on the death of her father, and called it “Ash and Starlight,” and wrote “On waves where trembling feet sink and dance, there rises between my toes, a peace… Where heaven and earth embrace, where the ash in my mouth, the starlight in my bones weave together in wholeness…. unfurling my hands in aching yes and clasp the holy gift, which is this day…  Another chance to live, to burn with grace.”

Today we are marked with ash but burn with grace. We remember that we are mortal beings, and that our time on earth has a beginning and an end. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But no matter what, we are held by God, who created us from the ash that comes from stars…. black as the night sky where they can be seen and shine at their most brilliant. 

Black IS the color of ashes, often associated with sin and death. It is the what we wear to show others we are mourning the loss of a loved one who has died. But black is also the color of an empty tomb, where death has lost the battle. And though we have been marked by ashes to remind us of our death, we have also been marked by the cross of Christ at our baptism, to remind us of the new life we have in Christ. We have each been claimed by God. God loves us, and is walking with us through this time. And the end of the Lent road leads us out to and Easter dawn. Thanks be to God. Amen.