Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the fifth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2002, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-7, 11-44 Lazarus, come out!
-John 11:43
Martha, ever the practical sister, protested: "Lord, he's been dead four days, there will be a stench!" In the lovely and beloved words of the old King James Version, "Lord, he stinketh!" But Jesus won't leave it alone, so out he lurches anyway, all trussed up like a mummy. I'm horrified to find myself wondering if Martha and Mary and Jesus and all the rest of them were holding their noses.
The Gospel according to John has a reputation for being overspiritualized, ethereal, otherworldly, eerie, even weird. But John doesn't spiritualize death: a dead man stinketh. In those days folks thought that the spirit of a dead person would hover around the body for three days, but on the fourth day it would depart for good and then decomposition could begin. Even so, the Jewish people were then and are now believers in quick burials, usually within 24 hours of death.
Jane found a poem and she read it to the Deacons at their meeting the other night. It focuses on the downside of Lazarus' rising, the inconvenience and awkwardness of it. His old dog was a one-man dog and barked at everybody after he died, so they got rid of the dog. His girlfriend has finished her weeping and found another boyfriend. They've rearranged his room. And now he's back and they don't know what to say to him. Please understand, we didn't know Jesus could do this. We're glad you're back. But give us time to think.
And I don't find it at all difficult to believe that the people saying these embarrassed things are Mary and Martha and all the rest of Lazarus' near and dear. Even if you're heartbroken with grief, you aren't necessarily in a position to welcome resurrection, and you may not want folks to start messing around with the reality of death. There's something cruel about it.
In fact, there's quite a bit of cruelty in this story. When Jesus first hears about Lazarus' illness, he deliberately stays put for two more days before he even starts to go to Bethany and do something about it. It seems as if he wants to be sure that his good old buddy Lazarus is totally dead, because a miraculous cure from a disease wouldn't make nearly as much of a public impression as a resurrection from the dead. That's not a nice thing to do to someone that you supposedly love. And don't forget that Lazarus died again eventually and stayed dead.
It's been suggested that it's not really so cruel because the story isn't literally about death. It's about the way faith changes your life. The idea is that there are worse things than dying. If you're living without God, you might as well be dead. The only way to have a full, authentic, vital existence is to be connected to God. That's what matters. It doesn't matter whether your body is well or ill, breathing or rotting. So if you're going to get all worked up about something, it shouldn't be sickness and death. It makes more sense to get fixated on God, because God is a whole lot more important than death.
So what do you think about that? Does it help you feel better about death? Myself, I think it stinketh. Death still grieves and frightens me. Besides, look what the story says. It says Jesus loved Lazarus and Martha and Mary — not the sort of vague general spiritual benevolence that we think a holy man would exemplify, but the love of a friend, a personal attachment. Jesus wept at Lazarus' grave. So why should you and I not weep at a graveside?
I am the resurrection and the life, he said to Martha. I repeat those words, and I guess every minister repeats them, at every funeral and memorial service. It's a stunning claim, isn't it? But I think you and I can hear it a whole lot more seriously if we know that the man who said it was himself overcome with grief when he spoke. We don't trust cheap reassurances. We want to know that whoever speaks for God feels our pain, and feels it not just vicariously or empathetically either, but immediately and viscerally, so that bystanders say to each other, "See how he loved him!" See how he loved him!
If you read on after this in John's Gospel, it turns out that the raising of Lazarus was the last straw for those who couldn't stomach Jesus. Right then and there began hatching the plot to eliminate him. And Jesus knew it would be that way. So he was trading himself for Lazarus. The Passion story is our theme for next week, not today, but the fact is that Jesus' own death overarches the whole Gospel and is with us every Sunday, is with us every day of our lives.
It cost him something, this preaching and teaching and wonder-working that Jesus did. It cost him everything. And that cost was exacted from him like the Shakespearean pound of flesh by people just like you and me who could not abide his continual gainsaying of their values and priorities, their sense of what counts and what doesn't in life. But he did that for the exact people who would do him in for doing it. Us.
A preacher who was dying of cancer, dying "before his time" as we like to say, stood up in front of his congregation and talked about it. He said, "The same friends I enjoy now will get together a year, and three years, and twenty years from now, and I will not be there, not even in the conversation. Life will go on. In this church you will call a new minister with new gifts and a new future, and eventually I'll fade from your mind and memory. I understand. The same thing has happened to my own memories of others." And then he quoted the 103rd Psalm: "As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more." And he went on: "I'm dying. Maybe it will take longer instead of shorter; maybe I'll preach for several months, and maybe for a bit more. But I am dying. I know it, and I hate it, and I'm still frightened by it. But there is hope. I have hope not in something I've done, some purity I've maintained, or some sermon I've written. I hope in God — the God who reaches out for an enemy, saves a sinner, dies for the weak. That's the gospel, and I can stake my life on it. I must. And so must you."
Why can't I speak to you with that kind of authority? Why do I have to drag another preacher in here to do it for me? Is it because my mortality is less real than his? Let's not kid ourselves. You don't need X-ray vision to see the skull beneath this skin. This place is full of dry bones. Ours.
That same preacher, the mortal one, sort of apologized for talking that way in church, but he said it was important. He said, "If we ignore the threat of death as too terrible to talk about, then the threat wins. Then we are overwhelmed by it, and our faith doesn't apply to it. And if that happens, we lose hope."
If I lack that preacher's authority, I can at least take solace — if that's the right word — in the knowledge that the lack is only temporary, and in the meantime I have made death's acquaintance, in that peculiar way that we clergy are privileged to make it — yes, privileged! — not to mention the way that all humans do. Most of you know that we've just tended and witnessed the dying of a dear friend, and you know it has affected us greatly, but I don't think we've told you exactly how, and I think we should.
We loved him, yes, and he died, yes, but there's something more. He could not face it, that's what it came down to, and in consequence the dying itself, hard as it was, was as nothing compared to the anguish and torment he experienced and expressed and inflicted at its approach. And to tell the truth, his life was as tortured as his death, which is usually the case — as we live, so we die, it's all of a piece. All his days he was a dead man walking, and the spectacle was far more terrifying than anything to do with Lazarus. And that is what shook us, and sobered us, and drained us beyond belief.
So pray with me that you and I can see our own bones in the valley of Ezekiel's vision, and hear our own names called out at the mouths of our own dark caves, and come out and live. Not some other time. Now. By the grace of God. Literally by the grace of God.
Amen