Title: “Responding to Death”
Text: John 11:32-44
Day: All Saints’ Day B
Date: November 1, 2009
My closet was a sacred space when I was in grade school. I don’t say that because I particularly valued my clothes…they weren’t anything special. It wasn’t because of it’s size…it was actually quite small. It wasn’t because it was a paragon of organization…it was always a mess. And it wasn’t because it smelled nice…it was a confined space with no ventilation where my smelly tennis shoes held residence…it smelled like a gym locker! No, my closest was sacred because it contained a tomb, so to speak. No one else really knew about it. Just me. It was the burial spot for schoolwork that I was particularly ashamed of.
Looking back on it, it was kind of a weird thing to do. When I would get back a test or a report or even a simple homework assignment with a bad grade boldly written across the top in dark, red ink, I would come home, go to my room, open the closet door, and irreverently shove the said paper down into the bottom back corner. Then, I would slide the door closed and walk away, doing my best to forget the memory of that painful grade.
I think doing this served two purposes: (1) it was satisfying – I have to admit – to wad up a symbol of my failure and add it to the rest of the collection, and (2) – perhaps more importantly – it offered me a way to try and put a painful memory as far away as I could, both physically and emotionally. Apparently, I thought this would be a helpful way to simply hide what had happened.
I’m happy to say that I don’t do this anymore. I don’t put things that I want to forget in our closet…now I have a pile on our desk! (Just kidding…kind of.) The truth is that while I don’t do this with bad test scores anymore, I still do it in a more abstract way with things that bring me pain. And – if you’re honest – you probably do the same thing. We all try to hide anything that brings us pain. It seems to make us feel better.
And it is from this perspective that I want to look at today’s Gospel reading. The story of the raising of Lazarus teaches us many things: it teaches us about Jesus’ identity as the Resurrection and the Life; it gives us insight into the assumptions of the general populace about Jesus; it lets us know that the disciples still don’t understand what Jesus is talking about; and it teaches us that there is a difference between how Jesus responds to death and how the rest of the people do.
It is this last point that warrants some attention.
We don’t know much about Lazarus before this story. In fact, we don’t know ANYTHING other than that Jesus seemed to have known him and his sisters – Mary and Martha – and Jesus apparently held Lazarus in high esteem. So we don’t know what happened to Lazarus. We don’t know if he was just old, or if there was some kind of accident, or if it was some tragic disease. We are simply told that he died.
At that point, Lazarus ceases to be the focus of the story. Now it is the crowd that receives our attention – particularly in regards to how they respond to Lazarus’ death.
I should note that how they respond to death was nothing special or out of the ordinary. They did exactly what was expected of them. But the way that this story is written seems to imply that the people’s response to death was inappropriate and even absurd! For these people, just as today, death was something scary, unknown, painful and superstitious. Death, therefore, was something that they believed should be put as far away from the living as possible. So, when Lazarus dies, he is wrapped from head to toe in strips of burial cloth. Then he is put inside a dark cave, where light no longer shines. And that cave is sealed off from the rest of the living world by a big, heavy stone. The people do their best to hide death. The irony is that when death is hidden its power over us seems to grow by the minute.
But we understand this. We certainly do our best to conceal death when it invades our lives. We, too, have burial customs and rituals…all of them done in an attempt to help us cope with the pain that we feel. But that is not to say that the pain of death simply goes away after the funeral; rather, the pain lingers on.
The vast majority of us in this room have grieved the death of a mother or a father or a sibling or a spouse or a close friend and still feel the pain of their deaths looming around us. For the family of Lois Monti, that pain is particularly poignant today. For that reason, today’s worship service commemorating All Saints’ Day – a day when we remember all of those ordinary saints’ who have gone before us – will carry a new meaning for many of you. This will be a day when those painful feelings you had at the news of a death might come back again in full force. This is a day when we can deliberately pull those painful feelings out of hiding and look at them again, but in a different light.
This is what Jesus teaches us in our Gospel story this morning. For 41 verses, Jesus has heard the cries of the crowd around him. He has heard their sorrow and felt their pain. But all throughout the story, I am taken aback by the fact that Jesus seems to approach the news of this death very differently than everyone else. And it all comes to a head at the end of today’s reading.
After arriving at Mary and Martha’s home, and after listening to their mourning, he asks to be taken to where they have laid him. Notice…he does not run away from death…he runs towards it. Once he arrives, he tells the people to roll away the stone. Notice…he does not try and keep death concealed…he opens it up to scrutiny. And with a strong, authoritative voice he says, “Lazarus, come out!” And finally, in these three words we realize what Jesus has been doing all along…he is revealing death’s vulnerability. He is bringing light into a dark place. He is bringing death out in the open, where it has no power. It is as though Jesus lights a candle in the midst of that crowd, dispelling that deep darkness of death that had surrounded them.
And that is exactly what we are doing here today: we are bringing Christ’s light into our dark places. In a few minutes, when you come forward to light your candles in remembrance of the saints you have known and loved, you will be making a bold statement. That statement is this: although we are tempted to succumb to the darkness that comes with news of a death, although we can just as easily give up all hope and instead wallow in self-pity and despair, although we could spend the rest of our lives grieving the loss of our beloved saints, by lighting this candle you are declaring that the darkness does not have the final word. By lighting this candle, you are boldly confessing your faith in the life that awaits all the saints. By lighting this candle, you are taking one step to remove yourself from that place of dark despair into a place of brilliant and abundant life.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: this is no small, meaningless event that we are doing today. This is a bold event where we can physically act out our faith, and fearlessly declare that death doesn’t have the final word: GOD DOES.
Amen.
