John 20:19-31 "Living the Resurrection"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         So – do you feel transformed?  Resurrected?  Or - how about simply renewed?  Even a little bit?  Is your life different?  Or is it pretty much the same as it was – with its own set of broken dreams and fears about tomorrow?

         I mean, Easter was supposed to change everything, right?  Easter was going to put us on a new road.  Every year, we are told that Easter will make our lives different.

         That is why we sang those joyful hymns last week, right?  “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.”  That is why we let loose the alleluias and decorated our sanctuary with fragrant lilies and tulips and those powerfully sweet smelling hyacinths, right?  That is why we rocked the rafters with the Hallelujah Chorus and marveled as it reverberated off the walls and ceilings, right? 

         Easter was supposed to have changed everything, right?  Right….It has only been a week, but, for most of us I would venture to say, the Easter Spirit is gone already.  Poof!

         Most of us have retreated back into the tombs of our own making, the ones that lock us up from the inside.  Some of us are once again living in the shadow of illness, others in the graveyard of failed relationships and family crises.  For still others, it might be job insecurity and loan debt.

         Well, do not despair if you are feeling untransformed or un-resurrected or even un-renewed today, if, in your estimation, your life has not really changed since last Sunday even though it was supposed to. 

         Do not beat yourself up about it, but rather take to heart that this sermon is for you.  It is for you because you have reacted to this whole resurrection business pretty much the same way as the disciples did – and it only took them a single day to descend into the shadows.

         As Anglican seminarian Byrony Taylor writes, when we find the disciples in our Bible passage today, we see that they “are hiding from fear of the Jews. Are they hiding from God like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden? Perhaps they are, in a way. What was the last thing they did before the arrest of Jesus? They fled and denied knowing Christ, even though each of them had said they would be willing to die for Jesus. They are still not willing to die for Jesus. They are hiding and they are terrified.

         They know Jesus is dead. They know that his body has gone from the tomb but they have no understanding as to what this might mean. I think they believe what Mary first tells them, that the body has been taken away and they don’t know where they have put him. Mary has since told them that she has seen the Lord but this just makes no sense to them.”

         If the disciples’ lives had changed at all, it was not a positive transformation.  In these verses, we find them more confused than ever.  However, most of all, we find them afraid, and so they are holed up in the back of a non-descript Jerusalem home, off an alleyway in a not-so-good part of the city.  The shades are drawn, the windows shut, the door locked.  Thomas has drawn the short straw, and so only he has ventured out to slink in the shadows to scrounge up some food and some water.

         Yes - the disciples are afraid.  They are afraid because the Jewish authorities might be on the lookout for them.  They are afraid because they might be arrested and tried and crucified like Jesus.  They are afraid because, should that happen, they too will surely be abandoned in their time of greatest need. 

         But they are also afraid that Mary Magdalene’s story might be true, that she really has seen Jesus.  And if that is so, then surely he will come looking for them as well – even now as the eleven nervously sit about, their tempers short, sweating in their hidey-hole where not a breath of air is stirring.  And if Jesus does show up, they can just imagine what he will say to them:  “Where were you?”  “You abandoned me?” Horrible thoughts, just horrible!

         And, of course, it is at this moment as they play that terrifying conversation  with their rabbi over and over again in their heads that Jesus does turn up.  But he does not turn on them, as they had anticipated he would.  Astonishingly, he stretches out his hands and whispers, “Peace be with you. I forgive you, you thought you were no longer my friends but you are still my friends, and I say peace be with you.”

         And then Jesus declares, “I send you.  Go and forgive others as I have forgiven you.”  And perhaps the unspoken words are these:  “You are not much.  You have got a lot of failures and faults.  But you are all I have – and you are enough.  Therefore, I send you.” 

        And then he breathes on them – gives them each a shot of the Holy Spirit.  Just like God breathed on Adam at the very beginning of time, Jesus offers them each a slug of life itself.  “Now, go and live the resurrection,” he might have said in parting.

         Thomas, of course, missed that profoundly spiritual, deeply life-changing moment of both forgiveness and commissioning.  No wonder he was disappointed, miffed, a wee bit angry, wanting his own special proof, which he articulated in as graphic a way as he could think of, given the circumstances. 

         “Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it could happen to me.”  And that’s all I have to say about that!  Oh Thomas, you never doubted the experience the others had.  You just wanted it for yourself.

         And lo and behold, Jesus took Thomas at his word, returned a week later, offered Thomas that same peace and forgiveness that he had offered the others and, as a sort of bonus perhaps, told Thomas he could in fact put his hand not simply on the wounds but in the wounds. 

        "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe.”  The Bible text does not actually say that Thomas did as he was invited to do – though certainly artists down through the ages seem to think that he did.  However, whether it was from touching the wounds or hearing the words of peace and forgiveness, Thomas made his confession:   “My Lord and my God.”

         This story of Jesus first appearing to his disciples and then a week later to Thomas is the passage that the lectionary assigns for us to read on the first Sunday after Easter every single year.  Maybe those folks who developed the lectionary – that three year cycle of Bible readings that frame our church year – maybe those folks figured they ought to give something to people like yourselves who came back to worship on this, one of the lowest attendance Sundays in every church in all of Christendom, people like yourselves who do not feel particularly different after the lilies and the Hallelujah Chorus, but who came back anyway to continue your seeking, determined to, in some small way, do as Jesus said and actually live the resurrection.

         And so the lectionary creators gave us this story of Thomas, hoping, I think, that we would discover something so fundamental in this incident as well as something deeply profound about this particular disciple.

         What is striking to me first in this story is that Jesus comes offering peace, not a sword.  Jesus breaks into that locked, airless room in Jerusalem that is ripe with fear.  Jesus breaks into the tombs that the disciples have created for themselves, but he does not bury them with anger or malice or resentment.  He does not bury them with all those things that the world heaped upon him at the time of his death. 

         Instead Jesus comes offering forgiveness and the peace that passes all our understanding, the peace that is part and parcel of true reconciliation.  Jesus comes and shows them a way out of the tomb, setting them on the path of a new beginning.

         As United Church of Christ pastor, Kate Huey, reminds us:  “Whenever we're afraid and hiding out, all locked up, God comes to us in the midst of our fear and says, "Peace be with you." Whatever doubts churn in our minds, whatever sins trouble our consciences, whatever pain and worry bind us up, whatever walls we have put up or doors we have locked securely, God comes to us and says, "Peace be with you." Whatever hunger and need we feel deep in our souls, God calls us to the table, feeds us well, and sends us out into the world to be justice and peace, salt and light, hope for the world.” Forgiveness is a powerful tool. 

         Now if the vast potential of forgiveness is one thing we can take from this story, then the role of belief and doubt in our lives and on our spiritual journey is surely another.

         In my research for this sermon today, I learned that the Greek word used in this Gospel narrative for “believe” has less the meaning of “believe” as we generally define it and more the meaning of  “trust.”  And so we might well read:  “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be untrusting. Trust.” 

         It is not a question of doubt versus belief, but rather it is a question of trust.  Doubt is all right, if it is linked to trust. Doubt in the midst of faith is a good thing.  As theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.  It keeps it alive and moving.”        

         And so Lutheran pastor, David Lose, challenges us:  Can we understand “that doubt is not the opposite of faith but an essential ingredient? That hardboiled realism is an asset to vibrant faith? That (we) can bring (our) questions and skepticism, as well as (our) insights and trust, to (our) Christian lives? 

         Doubt, then, as well as forgiveness is a powerful tool, and perhaps that is why in our story, in the very last verse, Jesus blesses Thomas – slips in a final beatitude – meant not solely for this much- maligned disciple, but for us as well.  Oh Thomas, you never doubted the experience of the other disciples.  You always trusted Jesus.  You just wanted that extraordinary experience for yourself.  Don’t we all!  “Blessed are you who trust – trust that I am risen, that I am here - even if you do not see me.”

         The picture on the front of our bulletin is a painting done by Caravaggio, an early 17^th century Italian artist known for his dramatic lighting and his close physical observation of his subjects. 

         In this painting entitled “The Incredulity of Thomas,” the artist shows our disciple not just putting his hand on the wound in Jesus’ side - with perhaps the backs of his fingers touching whatever was inside.  Caravaggio paints Thomas actually wedging his finger deep into the gash – right up to the second knuckle and still going inward.   

         Surely the artist could have gotten his point across in a less graphic way!  I actually always found this particular depiction of Thomas and Jesus kind of gross, the disciple’s fingers probing deep inside an open wound – until this past week when I read an analysis of this painting by another artist, Jan Richardson, who is also an author and Methodist pastor. 

         She writes, “As Caravaggio sees it, Christ stands to the left, chest bared, drawing Thomas’ hand into his wound as two other disciples look on. It is an intimate scene: Christ bows his head over Thomas’ hand, gazing at Thomas as he pulls him toward his wound; Thomas leans in, brow furrowed, the other disciples standing so close behind him they threaten to topple him straight into Jesus.

         Yet Thomas seems about to tumble into the wound of his own accord. He is doing more than merely looking where Christ leads him; his whole being is absorbed in wonder. The first time I saw this image, I immediately had the sense that Thomas was thinking, ‘There’s another world in there.’” 

         Richardson goes on to say, “Perhaps that’s what strikes me so about Caravaggio’s painting: it stuns the viewer with the awareness of how deeply Christ was, and is, joined with us.

The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison: they are a passage. Thomas’ hand in Christ’s side is not some bizarre, morbid probe: it is a union, and a reminder that in taking flesh, Christ wed himself to us.”

         There is another world in there – and we are a part of it.  It is as real as the nail holes in Jesus’ hands and feet, and as real as the wound in his side.  It is as real as the final blessing he gives us – in spite of our doubts – or perhaps because of them.  It is as real as the forgiveness he offers. 

         There is another world in there – a world that Jesus embodied, a world of justice, peace, and compassion.  There is another world in there, and just as Jesus invited Thomas to probe and peer and so become part of the new life pulsing inside those injured hands and scarred side, so he invites us to be a part of the world that is his Good News, the world of transformation, renewal, change.  He invites us to be part of that world even as he sends us out, like the disciples long ago, sends us out to live the resurrection.  

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.

Matthew 28:1-10 "The Earth Shook: Evidence of Resurrection"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         United Church of Christ pastor, Jim Hibbett, tells the story of his own young children who, one Easter morning, awoke to find their pet gold fish lying on its side, so very still, in its round glass fishbowl, looking, for all intents and purposes, completely lifeless. It took only a glance for their father before he declared the children’s finned friend dead and suggested that the toilet be used as the best means of burying the fish.

         And so, the young ones gathered around the watery porcelain tomb and watched as their father slowly poured the fish into its final resting place.  They were about to say their final goodbyes even as their father’s hand reached for the flusher handle when the fish suddenly did a little flip and began to swim about actively.

         Needless to say, on that particular Easter morning and for those particular children, the story they would hear later in church took on a very real and exciting meaning.   But evidence of resurrection?  Sounds to me more like resuscitation or even a near death experience!

         Many years ago, a pastor did an Easter children’s sermon.  The kids flocked around her on the steps at the front of the sanctuary, all of the boys and girls dressed in their Easter finery, most of them on the wired or hyped up side after consuming large portions of the contents of their Easter baskets before leaving for church – chocolate rabbits, yellow marshmallow peeps, colorful malted milk eggs, and the like.  

         As one would expect, the pastor engaged the children by retelling the story of the resurrection.  He talked about the women coming to the tomb early in the morning before sunrise.  He told them about the stone that sealed the tomb being miraculously rolled away.  He reminded them of the fear and trepidation the women felt as they peeked into the darkened mouth of the cave.  And finally he asked the essential Easter question:  “And when the women looked into the tomb, what do you suppose they saw?”

         One particularly wide-eyed little girl could barely contain her excitement and enthusiasm as she blurted out the greatest miracle about a tomb she could think of that morning:  “Jellybeans?”

         Evidence of resurrection?  Sounds to me more like a sugar coated version of this story that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

         Each of the four Gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – have their own version of what happened three days after Jesus was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem, the Holy City.       The four storytellers have their own ways of relating what occurred three days after the disciples had resigned themselves to the finality of death and the defeat of their dreams (“"It was a good campaign while it lasted. But we didn't get Him elected Messiah. Death has the last word. We had hoped, but you've got to face facts.”). 

         The four evangelists have their own ways of narrating what transpired three days after Jesus was hurriedly laid to rest in a garden tomb, three days after hope had been killed, three days after the tomb was sealed shut with a massive rock blocking the only way in and out of it.

         However, it is Matthew’s story, the one we just read, that is the most dramatic of the four different versions, peppered as it is with bunches of colorful and unique details. 

It begins at dawn, as all the narratives do, with women (in this case, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary) tiptoeing through the dew on the garden grass, making their way to the tomb.  These women, however, do not take sweet spices and oils to anoint the body of Jesus, as the women in the other Gospel accounts do. 

         In the Gospel of Matthew, these women are no dummies.  They know there is a boulder sealing the tomb, an immovable rock that was set permanently in place on Friday just before the Sabbath began.  They know there is no way on God’s green earth that they could get to the corpse no matter how hard they tried – even if they had wanted to – which they did not. 

         Were they going to the tomb to discover evidence that Jesus had actually done what he said he was going to do?  Did they go to the garden to be assured of his resurrection?  Not a chance! 

         As Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “Resurrection (unlike springtime) is entirely unnatural. When a human being goes into the ground, that is that....You say good-bye....and you go on with your life as best you can, knowing that the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them...."

         Face it: The two Marys were going to the cemetery just like we might go to a cemetery – to touch the cool and solid marble of the gravestone of a loved one, to lay a flower atop the freshly mounded dirt, to pay our last respects, and, for the two Marys, to acknowledge that death and evil and all the malice and all the ridicule and all the hate that was heaped onto Jesus had won out.  They came to the cemetery to soak up the silence and to acknowledge the finality of the end:  “That was it,” they might well have whispered to each other as they approached the cave.

         But they were wrong.  Instead of yet again having to confront their own powerlessness, they confronted the power of God.  Instead of being haunted by the death knell silence, they were shaken by the rocking and rolling of a violent earthquake, so strong, so sudden that, as the Gospel writer tell us, it knocked the socks off the Roman guards assigned to the garden and flattened them – like dead men. 

         Instead of witnessing the world as it had always been, the women were the first to experience a world transformed because it was the two Marys who heard the message of an angel that, the Gospel writer tells us, looked like lightening and wore clothes as white as snow and delivered news –

Good News - that was meant to shake, rattle, and rock the world. 

         And in one fell swoop, as the earth shook, that angel – the power of God personified - rolled the stone away, perched himself on top of the boulder, and said to the two Marys, “I know – in your heart of hearts - you’re looking for Jesus, the One they nailed to the cross.          But guess what?  He is not here. He was raised, just as he said. If you want, you can take a look inside the tomb where he was placed. But get on your way quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He is risen from the dead. He is going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’ That is the message.”

         You know, if you read this story carefully, you will note that the women did not even take the time to look inside the cave.  They just took off to tell the others. And maybe it was because they had faith enough not to take a peek – even at the heavenly invitation - to see if the angel was telling the truth or just joshing them, but, if that encounter in the garden was not enough to ensure that they would believe what had happened, then surely what occurred next would. 

         Whom should they meet on their way out of the cemetery, but Jesus himself?  “Good morning!” he whispered (Good morning?). And he reiterated the angel’s message: “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell the others.”

         And presumably the women did as they were instructed – because here we are, over 2000 years later, gathered together in this sacred space to say to one another on this Easter morning, “Don’t be afraid.  He is risen.  We need to go and tell the others.” 

         Tell the others?  Why?  Because the earth is trembling beneath our feet.  Why?  Because you just do not keep Good News to yourself.  Why?  Because on that morning just before dawn long, long ago in a garden far, far away, the world was rocked and rolled and shaken to its very core – never, ever, even these millennia later, never to be the same.

         “We need to go and tell the others” – just like the women did.  That is the commandment of Easter, you know.  Both the angel and Jesus proclaimed it.  “Go and tell the others.” 

         But what, pray tell, do we tell them? Ah, the essential Easter question.

         Do we jump through analytical hoops to come up with a rational explanation of what happened in that cemetery?  Do we say that, because the Bible tell us so, that is reason enough to be convinced –and do not worry about the discrepancies between the four Gospel versions of the story?  Do we tell them that they will not get to heaven (whatever that means) if they have any doubts at all about what happened there in the graveyard?

         “Go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?  I can think of three things as starters.

         First of all, we bluntly and forthrightly tell them that Easter is not about them.  Rather, Easter is about God.  As Methodist Bishop William Willamon writes, “It is not about the resuscitation of a dead body….It's not about the "immortality of the soul," some divine spark that endures after the end. That's Plato, not Jesus.

         It's about God; not God as an empathetic but ineffective good friend, or some inner experience, but…. God who makes war on evil until evil is undone, God who raises dead Jesus just to show us who's in charge ….On the cross, the world did all it could to Jesus. At Easter, God did all God could to the world.”  We tell them about our “God who creates a way when there was no way.” 

That is resurrection - and the earth shook.

         “We need to go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?

         Second, we tell them that what happened at Easter really says little about what they will experience when they die. 

         Episcopal priest Michael Marsh puts it this way:  “The joy of Easter is not only that God has raised Christ from the dead. Easter joy is also about the possibility and the promise that, regardless of what our lives are like now, new life is available to each one of us here and now…..Perhaps we should worry less about whether there is life after death and more about whether there is life before death.” We tell them about all the holy possibilities for renewal and transformation in our lives right now. That is resurrection – and the earth shook.

         “Go and tell the others.”  But what, pray tell, do we tell them?

         Third, we tell them that at the heart of the Easter story is the fact that God has said yes to Jesus and no to the powers that killed him. (Borg/Crosson).  God has said yes to love and forgiveness and no to hatred, revenge, and vindication. 

         We tell them that to declare that Jesus is risen is to proclaim that Jesus exists in the present and is not simply a figure of the past that we read about in four ancient Gospel accounts with conflicting details and differing sequences of events.  

         As Michael Marsh has noted, “What matters most about Easter is not the empty tomb (of 2000+ years ago) but (what matters most) is what we do tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that. How will we now live differently?

         Jesus did not die and rise again so that we might continue life as usual. If this new life and freedom do not change us we might as well put the stone back over the tomb. If we leave here today and don’t think about Easter again until next year then we’ve entirely missed the gift and, I would say, the point of Easter. Our lives are the evidence of resurrection, or not….Life is eternal. Love is immortal. We are free to live. We are free to love.

         We tell them that the end of the (empty tomb) story is the beginning of our life.  We tell them that Jesus continues to be known - even to us, even today.  That is resurrection - and the earth shook.

         “Go and tell the others.”  That is the commandment of Easter.

         We need to go and tell the others that Easter is not about our afterlife but is about the power of God – and the power of love.  We need to go and tell the others that Easter is not about whether we will experience life after death but rather whether we will experience life – real life – before death.  We need to go and tell the others that Easter is especially not about the mechanics of how the stone got rolled away and whether there really was an earthquake that morning but rather is about the mechanics of how we are going to live our lives differently going forward and whether we will reflect the Risen Christ in the justice and mercy we will inevitably be called upon to show toward others.

         That is what we need to tell the others. Those things are evidence of resurrection. Those things are what will make the earth shake and tremble beneath our feet.

         The dean of a Catholic seminary told a first year student that he should plan to preach the sermon in chapel the following day. The student had never preached a sermon before.  He was nervous, and he stayed up all night.  However, in the morning, he had no sermon.

        

         So he stood in the pulpit, looked out at his classmates and said, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         All of them shook their heads “no” and he said, “Neither do I. The service has ended. Go in peace.”

         The dean was not happy. “I’ll give you another chance tomorrow, and you had better have a sermon.”

         Again, the student stayed up all night; and again he could not come up with a sermon. Next morning, he stood in the pulpit and asked, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         The students all nodded their heads “yes.” “Then there is no reason to tell you,” he said. “The service has ended. Go in peace.”

         Now the dean was really angry. “I’ll give you one more chance; if you don’t have a sermon tomorrow, you will be asked to leave the seminary.”

         Another all-nighter, but, again, no sermon. The student stood in the pulpit the next day and asked, “Do you know what I am going to say?”

         Half of the students nodded “yes” and the other half shook their heads “no.”

The student preacher then announced “Those who know, tell those who don’t know. The service has ended. Go in peace.”     

         “Go and tell the others,” Jesus told the two Marys. 

         “Those who know, tell those who don’t know.  Those who know tell those who don’t know that Jesus is risen in a way that we will never understand but in a way that we all have the potential to experience.  Those who know tell those who don’t know that evidence of the resurrection lies in our acknowledgment that new life is bursting from within each one of us, in our affirmation that the world, through our doing, can be transformed.

         “Those who know, tell those who don’t know. This sermon has ended. Go in peace.”      

by Rev.Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.)       

John 11:1-45 "It is about Now"

  You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute it properly!       

         Three friends were discussing death, and one of them asked: "What would you like people to say about you at your funeral?"

         The first of the friends said: “I would like them to say: ‘He was a great humanitarian who cared deeply about his community.’”

         The second one said:  “I would like them to say: ‘He was a great husband and father who was an example for his children to follow.’”

         The third one said, “I would like them to say, ‘Look, he’s breathing!!’”

         Not many of us look forward to death – at least not while we have the health and wherewithal to discuss it good-naturedly with our friends.  Given a suitably vibrant constitution and abiding friendships, surely there is a piece of each one of us that hopes we will defy the odds and try out immortality - or at least find ourselves movin’ and shakin’ for a good many more years to come.   If we look through the eyes of blessing, when we look around us, we cannot help but see that there is so much of life left to live.

         Lazarus of Bethany must have felt that way – until he got sick, that is, until the cancer metastasized, until he could feel his lifeblood ebbing and slowing to a trickle, until he could no longer ignore the smell of impending death that his own body sent forth as a signal of the inevitable.

         There is so much of life left to live. Surely that is how Martha and Mary felt as well – and perhaps not so much as when Lazarus got sick.  When they sat by his bedside and soothed his fevered brow.  When they came to understand that all their nursing and all their comfort care would do no good in the long run. 

         They knew Lazarus was in dire straits, and so, out of the depths of their souls, they cried out to the only one they hoped could help them.  They did the only thing left for them to do. 

         They sent word to Jesus: “Master, the one you love so very much is sick.”  As Lutheran pastor Lee Griess pondered, “We can almost hear Martha, can't we? Surely he will come; surely he will help. Didn't he aide the paralytic? Didn't he cure the leper? Didn't he give sight to the blind and help the lame? And they hardly knew him. Surely he will come. Surely he will help.”

         And, of course, one would have thought, because it was Lazarus dying that our rabbi would have dropped everything and beat feet to Bethany to help out in this time of desperate need. After all, as the Gospel writer tells us, Lazarus was the one that Jesus loved. 

         However, as Lee Griess continues, “But he didn't come. He didn't help. Lazarus got worse, and Martha was left to watch and wait. And when Lazarus slipped into unconsciousness, getting weaker and worse, Martha whispered in his ear, ‘Hold on. Hold on. He will come. He will be here soon.’

         But Jesus didn’t come. He didn’t help. And finally it was done. Lazarus died and four days later, Jesus came. And Martha is hurt.”

         Imagine that!  It was four days later, after the connection between the body and the soul had been eternally broken, which was the Jewish belief, after death was therefore assured and there was no hope of turning back, after the body had been wrapped in its funeral attire and placed inside a cold cave-like tomb, after the rock had been set in its immovable place, after what was left of Lazarus had begun to decompose and emit that awful smell that corpses do:  It was after those four long and pain-filled days that Jesus showed up. 

         What took him so long?  The Gospel writer does give us an answer to this pivotal question, you know.  The Gospel writer tells us in no uncertain terms that this story is not about Lazarus.  It is not even about Jesus.  It is about God, for Jesus told his disciples, “This sickness is not fatal. It will become an occasion to show God’s glory by glorifying God’s Son.”

         And so Jesus put everything on the line - all his ministry, all his beliefs - and he showed up when he knew his friend was dead and gone.  No wonder the sisters were angry.  No wonder they were upset.  No wonder Martha ran down the road when she saw Jesus in the distance.  No wonder she threw herself at him – unladylike and downright scandalous behavior that it was.  No wonder that, out of the depths of her anger and despair, she laid it on the line for him. 

          “Master, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Even now, I know that whatever you ask God he will give you.”

         And Jesus calmly replied, “Your brother will be raised up.”

         And Martha, being the good Jew who knew her Torah, who knew as all good Jews knew that bodies would be resurrected physically at the end of time, but not now, not now, replied, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”

          And Jesus answered her with those familiar words that we hear at every funeral, those words on which we perhaps mistakenly stake a claim on our own immortality, and I say mistakenly because those words are not about the future.  They are about the present, “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life” – to quote from The Message translation of the Bible.

         Soothed by this puzzling statement, Martha wiped her tear-stained face and dutifully found her sister, and Jesus became the focus of the whole anger, grief, and despair scenario a second time. 

         “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

         Maybe it was just too much for Jesus, all the emotional upheaval, all the sobbing and wailing carried on at a fever pitch, but whatever caused it, Jesus’ emotions grabbed him as well – and would not let go.  First, he got angry.

         “Where did you put him?” he asked.  And they took Jesus to the tomb with its eternal rock set in place, and there, for the moment at least, Jesus’ own grief at the death of his friend poured out of him.  He wept.  He wept, and the tears ran down his face and settled in his scruffy beard.  He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe.

         After all, as the author of the blog, Magdalene’s Musing, noted, “…glory comes at a cost. The cost (here) is one dead man, and two sisters who mourn and suffer terrible grief, not only at the loss of their brother, but at the failure of Jesus to act in time to save him.”

         But even in the midst of such an emotional scene, there were still the practical ones among the crowd of neighbors and friends, the ones who, for the most part, could not see much beyond their own noses. 

       “Well, if he loved him so much,” they murmured and whispered.  “Why didn’t he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.”

         Hearing such backchat, Jesus, the anger again welling up within him, commanded, “Remove the stone.”

         And Martha, ever the practical one, piped up.  “Are you crazy?  He will smell.  After all, in case you have forgotten, he has been dead four days!”

         Jesus looked her straight in the eye, unblinking. “This is not about Lazarus, Martha.  This is not about you, and it is not about me.  It is about God, about the glory of God.

         And so, at his command, they removed the stone.  Jesus said a quick prayer, knowing that what he was about to do would seal his fate.   “Abba,” he whispered, “I have spoken so that they might believe that you sent me. It is not about Lazarus.  It is not about me.  It is about you – and your glory.”

         Jesus knew that it was one thing to heal a blind man or even touch a leper, but this?  This?  This sort of thing was quite another.  And he took a deep breath and shouted into the depths of the cave, into the depths of all the pain and despair, the sobbing, and the malicious whispering raging about him, “Lazarus, come out!”

         And lo and behold, Lazarus did, a living corpse, wrapped from head to toe in strips of white linen, with a kerchief over his face.  The onlookers stepped back – in awe and in its flipside, fear – and probably also because of the stench of which Martha had warned.

         Undeterred, Jesus said, “Unwrap him, let him loose, and set him free.”

         We do not know what happens when we die – and we have no record of what stories Lazarus might have shared with his family, neighbors, and friends – though tradition has it that he lived another 30 years.  None of us knows what happens when we die though many of us try to figure it all out.  Listen to this form letter once sent by the Department of Social Services in Indiana to a recently deceased welfare recipient:

“Your food stamps will be stopped, effective March 1992
because we received notice that you passed away.
May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a
change in your circumstances”.

         No, we do not know what happens when we die.  But we do know what happens when we live.  I like to think that Lazarus did some good before he left this earth for all time.  No one, as I said, bothered to write down the rest of his story.  However, you can visit his final, final resting place at the Church of St. Lazarus, a Greek Orthodox house of worship in Larnaca, Cypress.  No, we do not know about Lazarus’ life that second time around.  We can, however, know something about ours.

         “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now.

         It is about living with the kind of hope that Martha and Mary had when they sent for Jesus.  When everything around them had fallen apart, when all the good nursing in the world would not make a difference, when they could see in Lazarus’ sunken eyes that there was nothing else that could be done, Martha and Mary hoped for something more – for something beyond the structure of humanity as they knew it.  And so out of the depths they called for Jesus, and we as Christians might do the same.  Perhaps that is one thing the sisters can teach us. 

         When the going gets tough, call on Jesus.  Place your hope in Jesus because such hope will never fail you.  We might change what we hope for.  We may not always hope for the cancer to be gone, for the clock to be turned back to happier, healthier days.  Our hope might shift to a loving letting go, where grudges and petty resentments are laid to rest.  We might hope for a dignified death, a gentle death.

         “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now. 

         It is about living with the sure and steadying knowledge that we are not alone in our pain and in our despair and in our grief.  As Martha and Mary learned when they finally found the warm embrace of Jesus, in the end, he came to them.  And he not only came to them, he came weeping. 

         He wept because Lazarus was dead.  He wept because Martha and Mary were in such pain.  He wept because the whole course of events could not have been otherwise.  He wept, just as he weeps with us at the cancer diagnosis, the failed marriage,

all the times when things go terribly wrong, and we try unsuccessfully to make sense of loss and disappointment on our own.  He wept, and because he wept, Martha and Mary knew they were not alone.  Still he weeps – for us.  Still he weeps – and shares our pain.

         You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now. 

         It is about living here and now.  Life is not about waiting to die.  Life is about having a purpose.  Life is about the contribution each one of us makes now – today – tomorrow – and all the tomorrows to come. 

         Life is about affirming as Jesus did that everyone – everyone – but most especially the outcasts and the marginalized, most especially the ones who hurt and who litter our world with their pain – affirming and doing what Jesus calls us to do for them in order to ensure that they have the long and rich lifetimes they deserve.

         You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time because, in the end, life is about living.  And living is about the glory of God. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.