Sermon preached by The Rev'd Nicholas Lang

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

The Fifth Sunday of Lent – March 9, 2008

Over the past month or so there have been several auto accidents in our state that were responsible for the death of far too many teenagers. These are not only sudden, tragic, unnecessary deaths. They are hard to accept and to come to terms with. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, year olds are not supposed to die. They are poised to begin really living—college, careers, relationships, their own home, all await them. Even if we did not know the teens, we are shocked when their young faces appear on our TV or in the newspaper. It is a disturbing event.

The Gospel we hear on this final Sunday of Lent is equally disturbing or, at least, it was for the family and friends of Lazarus. He was a contemporary of Jesus which means he was a young man and, even though the expected lifespan was considerably less than it is today, the death of Lazarus was still untimely, premature, and startling. This is not a “good death,” not the kind that comes mercifully after a long life or as a release from a lingering, painful, debilitating illness. This is a great loss—for Mary and Martha and for Jesus and for a wide circle of friends.

There is much that separates us from the ancient era when Jesus walked this earth and from the story of Lazarus we hear today. To say that times have changed is a gross understatement. But what is not different, what we share with the women and men in first century Judea is that our fear of dying preoccupies much of our human activity. Most of us want to live as long as possible and we order our lives accordingly.

The irony of this is that so many people are either bored or dissatisfied with the time they already have. British novelist Susan Ertz observed, “Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” Yet we join health clubs, go one endless diets, pay for medical plans, support cancer research, enforce safety promoting legislation, and do all sorts of things to delay our death.

Mary and Martha were no different. Terribly disappointed that Jesus took so long to arrive after receiving the urgent message that Lazarus was critically ill, they tell him that his being there sooner might have prevented their brother’s death. “If only…” Do you find that strange? Not the part that he did not come sooner; their confidence that Jesus could have prevented the death of Lazarus—but could be of little help now beyond joining the wailing and deep sighs of the other mourners.

Mary and Martha were two of the closest friends Jesus had besides the twelve disciples and his mother. He was a regular guest in their home and they dined together, probably on a fairly regular basis. They had seen or at least heard all about the many miracles of healing he had performed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they witnessed his very first miracle at the wedding of Cana—changing water into wine—albeit somewhat paltry by comparison to others.

And, he had already told his disciples that he was going to Bethany to awaken Lazarus. Why would their faith stop at their assurance that he could prevent Lazarus’ death—but not restore him to life after death? No, Jesus did not come in time and Lazarus was now dead four days and in the tomb. According to Jewish custom, this meant that his body has begun to decompose and that his soul had departed. Jesus’ good friend was irrevocably and totally dead.

What is also puzzling is the reaction Jesus has to the scene of the mourners at the gravesite. John’s Gospel—the only one of the four that records this story—tells has that Jesus “was deeply moved.” Preachers have often used this to assure us how much Jesus loved Lazarus and how even he was to feel intense human emotion. Nice, but I don’t completely buy it. I don’t think Jesus was just crying about his friend’s death. The translation of the original Greek word used here means more than grief. It suggests an array of strong emotion—not excluding anger.

I wonder if his tears were not a mixed bag—shed first over the frailty of life and the senseless death of young life. I think Jesus was weeping because of the randomness of this death. I think he was weeping for Lazarus but also for these teenagers whose lives would be tragically ended two thousand years later.

But I also think Jesus wept because people who had come to know the power of God working through him; close, loyal friends who had seen him work all kinds of wonderful works in God’s name did not anticipate anything astonishing happening that day at the tomb.

The moment of truth has come. Can Jesus bring hope to a situation that is as hopeless as Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones? He turned water into wine and gave sight to the blind, but can he give resurrection to his friend who is dead? The answer we find in the Gospel today comes to us as a resounding “YES” as Jesus summons Lazarus and the dead man walks out of the tomb.

If this story is to have any meaning for us, we need to ask ourselves the tough question: “Do we really believe in resurrection?”

None of us will get out of this world alive. Shortly before he died in 1981, author and playwright William Saroyan reportedly called the Associated Press and left the following statement: “Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed that an exception would be made in my case. Now what?”

Now what? That is the big looming question, is it not? We must all, in the end, die. Like Mary and Martha, we all have our “If only’s” to bemoan when we think about the death of others we have known—certainly when we reflect on the deaths of these teens killed in recent car accidents. How do we make sense of any of it?

An article in The Christian Century several years ago suggested that “Death and resurrection, grief and God’s glory, are parts of the life of faith. The fullness of God’s glory is for God to reveal. In the meantime we live for faith alone. It is a grace-filled moment when we know that for now this faith is enough. Facing the fact that we will die and accepting the death of others can bring us to a new meaning of life…The ultimate gift of our vulnerability is believing in the power of God over death.”

Perhaps we are like the mourners who stood at the tomb of Lazarus that day in Bethany. Maybe we don’t expect God to act in our lives—especially in extraordinary, astonishing ways. Maybe we expect that God will be active only in the afterlife, but not with us in the flesh.

What the raising of Lazarus means for us—in addition to demonstrating God’s ultimate power over death itself and giving us a preview of the resurrection of Jesus that will follow not long after—is that God offers life not only for the future, but for now. Jesus came to make this life—the one we know, the one we all work so hard to extend—to make this life abundant. God’s promise that we will be raised with Jesus stills holds, but there is also a promise for the right now. Resurrection life begins here in this life before it brings us into the life to come.

Maybe the church has gotten in the way of our recognizing this glorious blessing. For many people the church is a place of quiet, of slumber, a place where we pray to have death take a holiday, certainly a place where we bring the dead when life ends. The church should be a place of resurrection, of awakening. Sunday, in particular, is Easter all over again.

The resurrection of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus are guarantees that Jesus moves among us, coming to give us life, coming to untie and unbind us from what keeps us locked up in our own metaphorical, symbolic tombs: addiction, depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, anger, resentment—whatever it is that keeps us from knowing the abundant life God wants us to enjoy.

Imagine that you are going to die in one minute. The last things you are going to experience are hearing this Gospel, listening to the preaching, sitting in this church, smelling the incense, thinking and feeling what you are thinking and feeling right now. This is the end of your life…You have no time to write a note or make a phone call. All you can do is to experience what is, right now. A simple exercise—but very profound. It brings you into presence very quickly. You stop whining, you stop needing, you stop fighting, you stop being concerned with physical comfort, you stop wanting, you stop achieving, and you stop maintaining. Enlightenment, accomplishment, awareness all become meaningless. You are just present.

Obviously, since you are all still breathing—aren’t you?—this exercise was meant to get you more focused on living than dying. And, if you listen really well, I think you might here it: the strong, commanding voice of Jesus: “UNBIND HIM! LET HER GO!”

His directive does not refer to the undressing of our burial robes but to the truth that all of us are Lazarus. We’re not dead yet—but we are all headed for the tomb. When we woke up this morning, we were one day closer to our death. We may not literally get a second chance at life like Lazarus did—but, in a sense, we all get a chance, maybe lots of chances, to do it over, to do it better, to make life more than it is, to live it more fully, more creatively, more expansively.

And that’s really what today’s texts are about—about living life as a magnificent gift and living it to the fullest in the blessed hope and assurance of the resurrection to life eternal. And that sure is good news--good enough to make one shout the “A” word*—even in the deep of Lent.

*For the curious—this would be “ALLELUIA!” –verboten in Lent.