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.
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