John 11:1-45What a beautiful day! The Sun is shining , it’s warm and there are now unmistakable signs that Spring is just around the corner—flowers and trees are budding, signs of life are everywhere—signs of resurrection—its one of those things that is easy to take for granted—that new life springs up from the cold, barren time of winter. And of course, we are getting ready to celebrate the new life made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus—the unmistakable sign of the power of life over death. But I’m getting ahead of myself—we’re still in Lent—the season of self-examination, the season of shadows and doubts. Before we get to the bright shining glory of Easter, we still have to journey a bit further in the darker places.
This episode in the gospel where Jesus confronts death is a powerful reminder, that lest we forget, we are still bound by the rules of mortality—we still die, and the truth we dare not forget is that Death stinks! There is no other way of putting it–death simply is horrible. It intrudes into our lives, oftentimes with little or no warning. Accidents, illness, war, violence. That’s the way it is…Death has always been with us, always lurking nearby, and that’s a reality that is hard to face.
Part of the burden of being human, you see, is having the knowledge of our own mortality–we all know, even if we don’t choose to think about it very often, we all know that someday, we will die. We can’t truly celebrate Easter without first confronting the reality of our mortality—if we choose to turn our eyes away from the signs of death all around us, then the Resurrection of Jesus is reduced to a supernatural miracle that makes for a nice happy ending to the story of Jesus, but means little for ourselves still trapped by the limits of mortality and steeped in the stench of death. What I mean is, that in order for the Resurrection of Jesus to really be Good News us and for the universe, we cannot ignore the presence of death that surrounds us everyday.
To quote Pope John Paul II, we live in a world that, celebrates a “culture of death”, a world where the strong and the powerful ignore the weak and the vulnerable, where people who become a nuisance and a burden because of their poverty or illness are easily done away with, either by direct violence or simply by choosing to look the other way.
This culture of death is nothing new—it has been with us from the beginning of time—just look at our scriptures, just look at the headlines—again and again the powerful grind the weak into dust; greed and violence reduce the poor and humble to a state of despair and the world begins to resemble the valley full of dry bones that Ezekiel encountered.
There are still valleys of death today– places like Iraq, Darfur, or the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco, where war and violence are part of the culture. We live here in Ukiah with a culture of death in the form of addictions, where some people make their living by enslaving others to drugs and we would rather not notice this until this culture of death finds its way into our own families—how many of us have to see family and friends and young people destroyed by addictions and greed before we do something about it? What do we say and do in the face of such a pervasive culture that celebrates individual freedom, worships celebrity and fame, rewards greed and denies billions of our fellow children of God the basic necessities of life? 20,000 people die everyday because they are too poor to live.
Brothers and sisters, this world is in trouble–we are the dry bones in Ezekiel’s valley, we are Lazarus, dead in the tomb, we are the dead in need of resurrection. We are the church always in need of reformation and resurrection; we are the body of Christ, laid in a tomb awaiting the power of God. And God is calling to us—the resurrected Lord is standing outside of the tomb and is calling us to come out, come out from the culture of death and be transformed into the community that celebrates and cherishes life.
Can we hear that Jesus is calling to us? Can we begin to experience renewal and resurrection? Or are we bound up too tightly in death, like burial wrappings that need to be cut off of Lazarus?
If we can truly move from death into life, through our own renewal and resurrection we then will become the ones who stand up in the face of death and the enemies of life, we become the ones who call out the dead and dying of this world and unbind and free them in the name and power of Jesus.
This is the power of life over death, and we have a part to play in this great healing, by proclaiming the same message that Jesus proclaimed to the sisters standing outside their brother’s tomb—Jesus is the resurrection and the life—what does that mean for us? I’ll first tell you what it doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean that we are born to suffer and barely tolerate this life, this existence, while awaiting something better after we die—“Life is short, and brutish and painful then you die”. Now we know that in reality, many people do lead miserable lives of suffering and pain and unimaginable difficulty—facing illness, war, the loss of family and community, uprooted and in despair. For these souls, the promise of heaven is there and can help make this life bearable—but this isn’t the natural or desired way to live—this is living by waiting for death—this is not what Jesus came to proclaim. We who live in relative comfort, safety and security cannot merely say to those who suffer, “this is your lot in life, but cheer up, heaven awaits you!” To say that or to think that there’s nothing to be done for the suffering is cruel and it’s a lie, told by the prince of lies to hide the truth of what Jesus taught about life. He said, “You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”
That’s our message—that’s our calling—to communicate this to the suffering of this world—life wins over death—and this life, this existence is supposed to be lived abundantly—and where there are people who do not live abundantly because of conditions, or choices or circumstances, then we’re called to work to change those circumstances for others. That’s what it means to be a neighbor on this planet.
So what do we actually DO when we come face to face with the forces of death? What do we say to the loved one with cancer, or the parents of a baby born too soon? How do we actually live like we’re the neighbor to the poor and dying of this world. How do we do the work of life? We cry with them, we hold them, we share their grief and pain, we love them through the darkness, through the tears, and we pray with them and for them, we give them signs of the promise of life, we work to restore hope—we do practical things like building and feeding and healing—we get involved in the lives of the dying, and we work to change the systems and structures that promote death. And by all of these acts of life and love, we show the world the truth that death is not the end. Death no longer has the power it once had over our lives.
Death is still awful, death is still a mystery to us in so many ways, we still mourn and grieve when we lose a loved one to death–even Jesus, who came to raise Lazarus, even Jesus wept at the anguish and pain he saw. Death separates us from our loved ones with a seeming finality that is shocking and numbing when it happens. That is what makes Jesus’ raising of Lazarus all the more miraculous. Not only was death overcome, but relationships were restored as well—brother to sisters and to friends. That is the truth of Jesus’ own resurrection-it’s about restoration of relationships….
But again, I get ahead of myself—and so for now, we still wait in the shadows, in the darkness before the dawn of Easter. Amen.
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nice work, brother