“This Illness Doesn’t End in Death.”

Sermon on Lazarus, preached at All Angels’ Episcopal Church, April 10, 2011.

A couple of years ago, I was sitting on a bench outside of church when one of my students walked up to me.  She sat down and proceeded to tell me her mother’s cancer came back.  It didn’t look good.  After several months had passed, we found ourselves standing near the same spot of that first conversation as we buried her mother’s ashes. 

That death was the first of a long series of tragic events.  It felt like every other day I was at a funeral or at a hospital or picking up the phone only to hear more heart breaking news.  

It became so frequent that it felt like Death would come home with me.  Not in a dark-cloud-morbid sort of way, but in a should-I-pour-you-a-drink-after-a-long-day kind of way.  

For a season, Death and I, we hung out.  And it felt like no matter what I did, Death was just around.  But after a few months of this, there was this moment where,  it was almost like Death actually spoke to me.  He said, “You know, I’m not the end of the story.”  

Rationally, I knew that.  I believe in the physical Resurrection of Jesus.  I believe our resurrection will one day come.  I believe that part of this entire Christian thing means that we are given true freedom.  Not the freedom that enables us to make our own decisions.  Rather the freedom that liberates us from selfishness, additions, loneliness, depression, poverty, sickness, and finally death.  But part of me, part of me didn’t, and still doesn’t, want to experience the part that comes before resurrection.  

You see, I want to rushed through the story, which is way Lazarus’s story is so important.  Because I want rushed through his story too.  I want to make my way to the end, to see him stumbling out of the cave, wrapped in strips of white linen, clapping Jesus on the shoulder with a sly look in his eye saying, “You should have seen their faces,” like it was his attempt to be funny.  

And I want to laugh at the joke because laughing is better than the crying I would have just gone through.

But that’s not how the story goes.

Jesus makes his way back to Bethany and Lazarus is dead.  Mary and Martha are devastated.  And yet, as the story unfolds, the thing that strikes me are their friends.  

In a truly responsible, pastorally-sensitive act, they simply sat with them and kept them company.  They didn’t try to give them words of comfort.  Their presence was their comfort.  They didn’t try to keep their distance.  They intrude into their space.  They made sure that their lives were inconvenienced for the sake of these two women.  They even went a step further and followed Mary so that she wouldn’t be alone after they thought Mary was heading to the tomb to cry.  It had been four day, and their friends were still there. 

If only more of us who belong to God’s heavenly kingdom would act like these incredible women.  

But here’s the truly extraordinary part: Jesus’s exchange between Mary and Martha is completely different from His interaction with His other disciples.  

To the 12, it was like Jesus was throwing up his arms saying, “Man, you guys are thick.  You don’t you get what I’m trying to say.  I was trying to be nice.  I was trying to break the news to you gently.”  

But it’s clear through their response that they were less concerned about Lazarus’s safety and more concerned about their own.  Their response exposes the real complexity of this story.  It wasn’t just that Lazarus was dead.  It was that Jesus was risking his own safety to go back to Bethany.  And Jesus was risking theirs. 

Up to this point in John’s account, multiple plots had been made to kill Jesus.  And with the power and the authority only the Son of God could exercise, Jesus walked away from two stonings.  

At this point in the John’s gospel, the disciples knew the cost of following him.  They had been alienate and ridiculed for following this man.  Their very lives had been threatened.  And no one knew the cost of following Jesus better than the 12.  

Despite the risk, they followed Him back to Bethany.  

But it’s when Jesus sees Martha where something in him changes.  His heart breaks a little.  He is moved.  And when Martha says, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” you can hear the desperation in her voice.  The pain, the grief, and everything that comes with it. 

Jesus’s response almost seems hollow in a culture that takes for granted resurrection.  He says, “Your brother will rise again.”

For those of us whom have experienced people close to us pass, we know the sting of those words.  It’s almost as if there is a subtext there that spells out, “Why don’t you have more faith?”  Like our faith is somehow less than.

But that’s not what Jesus meant.  After Martha tries to receive some distant-future-comfort, Jesus says, “No.  You don’t get what I’m saying.”  Jesus had something else in store that day.

With the words of Jesus still hanging there, Martha went to retrieve her sister, Mary.  

When Mary saw Jesus, she fell at His feet with tears in her eyes. Echoing the words of her sister, she said, “Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died.”

And again, John says, “He was deeply moved” and his spirit was troubled.

That entire process mattered.  Going through that death mattered.  Because “This Illness Doesn’t End in Death.”

It’s like baptism.  

We rush to celebrate our newest members.  

We make promises to these people that we will support them, love them and care for them.  

But we rush past the metaphor of dying.  We have to die first.  And then, we rise.

It wasn’t until I was forced to confront Death, to look him in the face, when I realized that Death wasn’t my enemy.  That victory had already been won. 

But during that season, I wrestled with Death.  We brawled.  We fought.  We exchanged blows.  And Lamentations couldn’t contain the words I had for my God.  But in the end, I limped away having taken to heart all the cliched things you hear when Death needs to teach you something:

Death gave me perspective.  

Death reminded me to love people moment by moment because each moment is a gift.  

Death reinforced the importance of forgiveness.  

And Death taught me something about Jesus’s love.

During that season, my Dad and I were in the midst of one of our normal “Father-Son” spats.  It’s crazy to think that those closest to us can bring out the best and worst in us.  But there we were, at it again, trying to prove something meaningless to one another, when it happened.  

I had just gotten back from another funeral when he called.  His best friend, a man who would have been my godfather if my father believed in a god, passed away.  Our relationship had been mending, but it was that moment where we both forgave each other for the childish ways we had been treating each other.  His death gave us both perspective.

And within a few months, after a couple more funerals, my dad was hospitalized.  A tiny piece of scare tissue wrapped itself around his bowel, killing nearly a foot of it.  Ten years ago, that would have been it for my dad.  They wouldn’t have caught it in time.  They almost didn’t catch this time.  

And there, Death was again telling me, “You still have lessons to learn if you want to really get this loving Jesus thing.”  

There was a lot of emotion in those months.  Some of which I am still processing through, but I know one thing for sure: Jesus was there.  Just like He was there for Mary and Martha.

After Martha went to get Mary, Mary took Jesus to Lazarus’s tomb. And there, He wept.  Jesus felt all the things Mary and Martha were feeling.  And He was moved.

Despite knowing how the story would end, Jesus was present with them.  He carried their pain with them.  And after a short prayer, so that no one would doubt how this was happening, Jesus proved that “This Illness Didn’t End in Death.”

He called to those around him and asked them to roll back the rock.  Jesus could have called upon the heaven to crack open this tomb, but Jesus asked those present to begin His work.

And then, Jesus called to tomb. And Lazarus rose.  

He actually rose.

In 7 days, we enter Holy Week.  We will hear the story of Jesus entering into Jerusalem.  We will wash each other’s feet.  And we will the hear the words Jesus spoke, “Forgive them for they do not know what they do.”  This is a serious time for the Church because during this time we experience the death of Christ.  But we also wait for something else.  We wait to boldly proclaim, “This Illness Doesn’t End in Death.”  For just as Jesus demonstrated that death is no longer our enemy with the resurrection of Lazarus, we testify that Jesus is Lord, with His.

1. glassnightingale liked this
2. etceterawhatever said: idk if you saw my message earlier but this was creepily relevant. i’ve been thinking about it & turning to that passage all week. thanks for sharing.
3. cespositobernard posted this