The Landscape of Lent: Cave

April 6, 2014 -- 5th Sunday in Lent

John 11:17-44

¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, ¹⁹and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

²⁸When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” ²⁹And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. ³²When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep. ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

³⁸Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴²I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Sermon: “The Landscape of Lent: Cave” 

As you know, I spent this last week at the Next Conference in Minneapolis, where Presbyterian folks from across the country asked the question of what’s ‘next’ for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  After three days of what can only really be described as an exhausting and invigorating family reunion, I found myself in the Minneapolis airport with a head full of thoughts, a Lazarus resurrection story in front of me, and a blank document on my laptop.  It was what I like to refer to as “sermonating time” (and, in case you’re concerned, I never call myself The Sermonator!). 

Anyway, I was sitting near my gate, where I found hundreds and hundreds of little tables, outfitted with an ipad mounted opposite of each chair.  “Free!” it said.  As I sat in that “free” space, and proceeded to write this sermon, I suddenly had a funny feeling someone was hovering behind me, and took out my headphones and turned.

“Do you need anything” a waitress asked, not very kindly.  “No, I’m fine,” I replied.  “But do I need to order something to sit here?” I asked, noting that the only place to sit at the gate seemed to be one of the hundreds of tables with ipads mounted on them.  “Well.” she retorted, “You are at a restaurant.”  And she walked away.  I gathered my things and did the same, moving to another so-called “free ipad” table, but near a window, far from her withering gaze.

Goodness what effort they went to making the airport technologically inviting, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to offer ipads to tech-addicted folks like myself.  What a grand vision, and grander investment to back it up.  And, what a total failure in terms of welcome, all because of a snarky waitress who made it clear that nothing in this life is free, not even a chair in an airport, and that unless I paid up, I wasn’t really welcome.

At the outset, the story of Jesus and Lazarus comes off as a failure, too.  You see, Jesus was told his good friend Lazarus was sick.  He was told how urgent the need was.  He knew time was of the essence.  But he didn’t get there in time.  He failed.  Lazarus died.  Mad with grief, Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary state their disappointment, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”

He should have been there.  He wasn’t.  The Next Conference reminded me that we say this in the Presbyterian church all the time as well. 

Lord, if you had been there – at that divisive presbytery meeting, at that frustrating session meeting, at that struggling isolated church, our churches would not be dying.  Our denomination wouldn’t be declining rapidly.  If you were really here, we wouldn’t be faced with aging out, becoming irrelevant in a world of “spiritual but not religious” young people and bitter debates over theology, inclusion and polity.  Lord, if you were really here, your church wouldn’t be dying. 

We are fortunate to be in a vibrant community (which I’ll say is rare these days), where we love each other radically and worship fully, without great tension.  But we learn from our grandchildren and neighbors that we are in the minority because we see church as a “living” place.  Most do not.  Most see a place that judges them, or excludes them, or welcomes them with conditions, like that table at the airport.  A dying place.

We do not want death.  Like the Dylan Thomas poem, we “rage, rage against the dying of the light!”  We produce comprehensive plans that we hope will guarantee that we will survive forever.  We meet and meet, strategize and advertise, welcome visitors and serve others in mission.  And still, for the most part, we lack an entire generation’s participation in what we know to be church.

Sometimes, the response to this missing generation is almost identical to what I experienced in the airport: a technological flood.  We assume that screens or ipads or tweets or facebook or a fancy facility will make us relevant, and perhaps it does. 

Perhaps a weary traveler, like I was in the airport, tentatively sits in our pews.  But sadly, though we try so very hard, all it takes is one feeling of being an outsider like not knowing the words to the Lord’s Prayer or a stranger watching to see what they put in the offering plate, seeming to say that nothing in life is free, and all of those efforts fail.  The welcome proves hollow. 

The church feels like a family, yes, but one with all its own language, order and expectations that seem overwhelming to learn.   And this feels, when our churches aren’t flooded with young people, when we get strange looks for being Christian, when we intentionally keep quiet about our faith so as not to make people uncomfortable, an awful lot like failure.  Perhaps like Jesus felt in that moment he finally arrived at Lazarus’ house to find a whole community tearing their clothes with grief.

But it wasn’t a failure, despite all the evidence to the contrary (including the very real presence of death).  What it was, was a delay.  A very, very painful delay.  Sure, Jesus knew resurrection was at the end of the story, but in that moment, he was consumed with sorrow.  He wept.  The Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, the Light of the World, the Word Made Flesh bowed his head and wept at the loss of his friend.  That delay was nearly unbearable.

He came to that cave tomb and told them to roll the stone away (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).  They did, but Jesus didn’t go in.  Maybe he couldn’t bear seeing his friend in that cave tomb and maybe he was trying to show power, but for whatever reason, he stayed put.  “God, I know you always hear me, but for the sake of these people, make it obvious, will ya?”

And then he simply said, “Lazarus, come out!”  And he did.  But the work of resurrection wasn’t over.  It was just beginning.  You see, Lazarus was still bound in the clothes of that cave grave.  Jesus didn’t remove them.  He told those gathered to do that, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Let him go??  How could they possibly?  This friend, this brother, was dead.  And now he was alive!  How could they ever “let him go” again?  If anything, they should cling to him more tightly, keep him insulated from illness and danger and thus preserve his life.  But that’s not the work of this resurrection story.  The work of resurrection is not preservation: it is unbinding, and letting go.

After several days with weary church leaders, exhausted from trying these ‘best practices’ and those ‘outreach methods’ and seeing them fail, I can’t help but hear these words of resurrection from Jesus as his message to today’s Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and too Cameron Presbyterian Church. 

Do we want this powerful community of hope in Jesus Christ to survive?  Do we want our churches to know resurrection in the face of death?  Then we have to actually go against our impulse, just as Lazarus’ friends and family did.  When we are so tempted to preserve the church, protecting it from what are seen as ‘secular’ threats, when we want to never let it go, clinging to history and tradition and past moments of light, keeping it safe from those who most criticize or misunderstand it, we should do exactly the opposite. 

Because those temptations to insulate the church are the equivalent of rolling the stone back in front of that cave.  It will be safe, yes.  And it will die.

We are called instead to the terrifying work of resurrection: leave the caves of comfort and sorrow.  Remove the clothes of the grave – language of us and them, feelings of superiority or entitlement, bitter distrust of those who are different, habits that make us seem more like an exclusive club than a community of welcome.  Unbind the church, and let it go.

That is the only path to resurrection.  It was for Lazarus, it is for us, it is for God’s church, including Cameron Presbyterian Church.  Unbind it, and let it go. 

Loose this radical gathering of resurrection hope in a community desperate for good news and belonging.  Don’t tell them why they should come here.  Go to them and show them why God is already with them.  Go to the student struggling to read, needing to know they’re not stupid.  Go to the retired person living alone, desperate for someone to hear their story.  Go to the young mother who’s stretched too thin while her husband serves in the military abroad, whose every day is laced with worry.  Go to the skeptical young adult who thinks church will never be a place for them, and don’t teach them, but listen and learn from their understanding of God.  Unbind the church, and let it go, far beyond these walls.

All other efforts at resurrection, no matter how valid, no matter how earnest, will fall short, because they will be preservation and not resurrection.  If I drew anything from my experience at Next last week it was this: God is not embalming the church.  We often are, but God, God was, is and will always be, about so much more: resurrection. 

May we have the urgency of a grieving Martha begging for Jesus to show up, the trust of our Savior, praying for God to show up and be obvious about it (for the sake of these people), and the active compassion of a worried community unbinding this world, and even the church, from the forces of death and letting it go. 

Resurrection is risky.  It is terrifying, uncertain, beyond the control of our four walls.  But in a community that needs to know they’re not alone, in a country that needs to know church means not hate but healing, not cliques but compassion, in a world that needs to know God is still at work and has not abandoned us, we absolutely must take that risk. 

The good news is, God is already doing this.  Jesus is already showing up in places where grief and loss have left whole communities broken and fearful, rolling stones away from those dark caves and calling to us, to you, to me, “Unbind the church, and let it go.”  Will we?  Amen.