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Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church Come
Out of There: Lazarus and Us Transcribed from the sermon preached November 1, 2009 The Reverend Max Lynn,
Pastor St. John’s Presbyterian Church 2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705 Telephone 510-845-6830 Fax 510-845-6837 http://www.stjohnsberkeley.org Scripture
Readings: Isaiah 25:
1-10, Revelation 21:1-6,
John 11:1-6, 17- 45 When I was eighteen I went to
Kansas to visit my brother. One
day I
helped him dig a basement shelter from tornados. It was hot and the air
was
heavy with moisture and bugs. As
the
afternoon wore on massive cumulous clouds began to gather and become
dark. My brother
Doug, a volunteer fireman got a
call giving him orders to go watch for tornados.
He went to the highest point in Kansas to the
lookout, a massive
molehill. I sat around clicking beer bottles together saying, “There is
no
place like home.” After a couple of hours the watch was called off in
favor of
severe thunderstorm warnings and Doug came back. We sat on his porch
for
sunset. Soon we
heard a deep rumble in
the distance and a wall of wind slammed into us, followed thirty
seconds later
by pelting rain and exploding thunderbolts.
The noise was tremendous and frightening. As the front passed the
temperature dropped from about 95 degrees
to a pleasant 80, and in the morning everything looked clean and fresh.
Two weeks ago we had a solid storm here in Northern
California. We
don’t get lighting like
the Midwest, but the wind tore off the tarps we had placed over various
objects, rain leaked into the building in the usual places, and the
power went
out, caused by a short in our main power lines.
We have had a crazy two weeks of emergency fixing; a
climactic
flurry to a stormy six months of construction and change here at St.
John’s.
I have learned about truss beams and sewer laterals,
sump
pumps and power lines. If
I only had a
nickel for every time someone has asked me, “is that in your job
description? Or,
“In what class did
they teach this in seminary?” Well that class would be entitled Servant
Leadership: Getting It Done 101, or Pastoral
Psychology 652:
Transference and Avoidant Disorders in Pastors and Congregations,
or maybe
just, Trusses and Toilets for Dummies.
Often the world will catch us in the mundane hustle
and
bustle, the noise of city life, the cares and concerns of this world,
and we
fear that God may be distant. The noise from our lives, the noise of
life in
the city, science and technology, entertainment, dress, alcohol, and
sex, life
in the US in the 21st century may be drowning
out our ability to
hear God, or God’s ability to hear us.
If God were with us, wouldn’t things be easier?
But the need for God will keep popping up, for
despite our
ability to keep ourselves busy, despite the amazing human ability to
come up
with technological advance, wars kill more people, great towers still
crumble,
bridges still break, and repairs need repairing, people lose houses and
jobs,
mother’s die, children are thrown in jail, friends get breast cancer,
and heart
surgeons are still human. Despite
air
conditioning, we find ourselves hoping for shelter from the heat and
the storms
of life.
Each of the passages this All Saints Day are written
by authors
to audiences who have been going through loss, suffering and tough
times. Isaiah’s
envisions both the destruction of
Jerusalem by Babylon and the destruction of Babylon by Persia
proclaiming, “the
blast of the ruthless was like a rainstorm, the noise of aliens like
heat in a
dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of
the
ruthless was stilled.”
27:1-5
is a poetic passage
from Isaiah and it is not entirely clear which city he is referring to,
Babylon
or Jerusalem. Thus
we may suspect
both. The ruthless
of Jerusalem and the
ruthless of Babylon both have met with the justice of God. “God has been a refuge to
the poor, a refuge
to the needy in their distress.” As
Isaiah sees it, all things work for the good of those who love God. When we are in the midst
of suffering and
tribulation it is difficult to see God’s purposes. But restoration is
in
process. Both the Gospel of John and John’s Revelation are written late in the First Century CE. Christians were seen as heretics by establishment Jews and therefore ostracized and persecuted; we see this reflected in the resentment of John in his very derogatory use of the term “Jews”, a resentment which has been used as fuel for Christian anti-Semitism ever since. Still, the rest of the outside world saw Christians as Jews. Indeed most Christians in the first century still held a Jewish world-view. The
very foundation of the Jewish worldview, the temple in Jerusalem was
destroyed
by Rome in 70. Beginning
in 68 the
gates of the city were closed and under siege by the Roman
army. Unable
to breach the city's defenses, the Roman armies established a permanent
camp
just outside the city, digging a trench around the circumference of its
walls
and building a wall as high as the city walls themselves around
Jerusalem.
Anyone caught in the trench attempting to flee the city would be
captured, crucified,
and placed in lines on top of the dirt
wall facing into Jerusalem. It was said that by the end of
the siege 10s
of thousands of crucified bodies lined the city. Finally in 70 Jerusalem was
destroyed, Herod’s
temple looted and burned. A large part of the Jewish
population
was enslaved or massacred. Either as slaves or as refugees
tens of
thousands of Jews were dispersed throughout the Mediterranean,
including Asia
Minor where the seven churches John is writing to are located. “The
coins
inscribed Ivdaea Capta (Judea Captured) were issued
throughout the
Empire in order to demonstrate the futility of possible future
rebellions.
Judea was represented by a crying woman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Jerusalem#Destruction_of_Jerusalem Now juxtapose this image with our passage from Revelation where John envisions the Holy City, a New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. The dwelling of God is with men…He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away… I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.” While Rome has her crying, John sees God coming to wipe away her tears, to open her gates, to be a temple not built with stone, but in the heart of faithful men and women. There
are times in our lives when God seems to be busy somewhere else. We may be thinking, ok,
this is getting a
bit difficult God, a bit more than we can handle, we could use your
help
here. And yet, it
seems, God stays
attending somewhere else.
After Jesus hears about Lazarus being ill, we are
told he
stays “two more days in the place where he was.”
We are not told why.
We
don’t know what he is doing. We
may
suspect that Jesus was reluctant to return to Bethany near Jerusalem
for fear
of his own safety. The
disciples are
worried about his safety when he finally does decide to return. But in John’s story, it is
God’s glory, which
will show even in death. Bethany is on the way to his calling to
Jerusalem.
It seems odd to me that when Jesus is planning on
raising
Lazarus from the dead, that he breaks down weeping.
If he is so confident, why cry?
Or why does John record it as part of the story? John’s Jesus is super
confident and all
knowing, yet he weeps.
I suspect that John’s audience has the same
questions and
comments of Mary, Martha and everyone else in the story: if he had been
here,
certainly he would have kept Lazarus from dying.
Not only has John’s audience been under the pressure
of being
members of a heretical sect within Judaism, and persecuted and
scapegoated by
the Roman world, but also they no doubt continue to suffer from
poverty,
disease and death. So
many of the
saints and apostles who had first hand experience of Jesus before his
death on
the cross have also died.
If the resurrected Jesus were with them, certainly
this
suffering would not be. Regrets
of
omission are some of the most common feelings connected with grief. If we would have taken mom
to get a check up
earlier, if we would have checked on the baby sooner, if we would have
insisted
on that second opinion, if only we had kept her on life support a bit
longer,
if only we would have forgiven him so that he could be at peace, if I
only
could have said goodbye. If
only. Death has
that finality to it; time runs out
on everything that we were thinking about doing, everything we feel we
should
have done but didn’t. Time
is up, no
more second chances, game over. “If
only” in the face of death means never. We can’t change the bad that we
have
done to that person, or the good that we didn’t do.
Our chance for them to change, to undo the bad that
they have
done, to do the good that they should have is over.
But it is not just about what we have or haven’t
done, our
grief is about who is missing. If
only
he were here. If
only Rod Hamblin and
Al Dole, and Don Worth and Margaret Emmington and Stanley Armstrong
Hunter were
here. If only those saints were still with us.
If only Jesus were still with us.
Before any solution is offered, Jesus feels the pain
of
loss and suffering. Jesus
weeps with
us. God feels our
finitude, our sense
of incompleteness, our brokenness, our loneliness.
God feels the pain of human love.
And yet with Christ all these feelings do not have
the last
word. Pain and
death does not have the
last word. Roll
back that stone, God’s
grace is coming in; hope is coming in to give new life.
I am the resurrection and the life, those
who believe in me, though they will die, will live.
We cannot avoid death, but hope exists even beyond
death. Hope is
different from
optimism. Optimism
is afraid of
weeping. Optimism
insists that things
will always get better, that if we are positive only good things will
happen to
us. Optimism would tell us to hold back weeping when we lose our house
or job,
or someone dear. Or
worse, if we were
only positive, if we only prayed with real faith, then we wouldn’t
succumb to
disease or death. Optimism
would lead
us to deny sin. All
the evil and
suffering in the world need not affect us, we can exist in a vacuum,
apart from
it. Sir Roger
Woolmuth noted that “a
pessimist is someone who doesn’t believe his book about torture,
murder, and
brutality will sell, while the optimist is someone who believes it
will.”
Hope is built on the conviction and faith that
despite the
fact that pain, suffering, evil and death exist, a life lived for love
and
peace is connected by the grace of God to another reality, a glorious
life, an
eternal kingdom, a New Heaven and a New Earth that already exist. Roll back that stone.
Frederick Streets writes in the Christian Century
that the
Lazarus story points to the resurrection of Jesus himself. “The miracle
is not
(just) the resurrection of Lazarus, but the eternal hope that is
brought to
life in us through Jesus Christ as we live our own lives and die our
own
deaths. It is a sobering thought that God is perhaps more concerned
about our
affirmation of this eternal hope than about the time and manner of our
death. (Grief
and glory - Living by the Word - John 11:1-45 – Column
Christian Century, March 10, 1993 by Frederick J. Streets )
Martin Luther said, “The world tells me, in the
midst of
life I am going to die. The Gospel tells me, ‘in the midst of death I
live.’” Julian of Norwich sang her song from the depths of the Black Plague-infested fourteenth century: But
all shall be well, It
dawned on me here at the end of this sermon that many first Century
Christians
were hiding their worship in caves like the one Lazarus was buried in. I suspect that folks may
have been saying,
“Well if we lived at the time of Jesus, or if Jesus were here, then we
would
not allow fear to entomb us.”
Difficulty and death foster fear, and fear kills our
direction, our momentum. It
tempt us to
run or hide, to feel we are to weak, too broken and too sinful, too
dead to
affect the world. We want to look around for someone else, someone
better and
stronger than us to step in. If
only
they were here. We back away from life, decide that God has more
important
business to attend than us, to and settle in a tomb of excuses and
self-pity. All may
seem lost. But
Jesus comes, and it is not too late.
The smell of death does not deter him. Roll back that stone. He is so confident that we
will rise to new
life that he thanks God before he speaks to us.
But soon enough he does speak to us.
Get up; come on out of there.
You are forgiven. I don’t care how small you are,
how old you are, how
poor; I don’t care if your theology is not all figured out, if the beam
of your
temple is cracked. I’ve
got your temple
right here. Come on
out of there, there
are lives to be saved, there is good news to be preached. Don’t let my death or the
death of your
brother stop you. We
live and
love. I am the
resurrection and the
life. Roll back
that stone. Get up.
Come on out. |