All Saints Day - Lazarus

IN THE NAME OF GOD: CREATOR, PAINBEARER AND SPIRIT OF LOVE AND LIFE.
Text: Gospel of John 11: 32 - 44

I firstly want to sincerely thank all of you who have put in so much work and effort during the last few weeks to prepare for yesterday’s amazing service. I also cringe at what I imagine to be the cost in time, sweat and money.

I find it very hard to adequately express my thanks and appreciation. I can only say ‘thank you’ and tell you that the sentiment comes from the deepest depth of my heart. The love that permeates this congregation is very real.

That is as it should be for if we truly seek to know God we will find the love that is indeed God.

This time has been extremely testing both for you all as my community of faith and myself, as I, on one hand struggle to come to terms with Meredith’s loss, and on the other rejoice in the deep joy that has come into my life as I realise that the culmination of many years of study has finally come to fruition as I now will be able to work amongst my community as an ordained minister in the church of Jesus Christ.

I tell you my wish and ambition, working with our priest Tim, and you as the very faithful core remnant of St John’s, is to build up this congregation not only in numbers but also in our impact on our broader hills community. We can only achieve this goal by working together. I earnestly seek your continued support!

I have always been intrigued by the old window on my left which is part of the original 1872 church structure. The simple text “Jesus wept” is in its very simplicity a most powerful statement.

The text is found in our Gospel reading this morning.

Today is All Saints Day.

Today we remember those of our loved ones who have died during the last year and indeed those who, although more distant from our own lives, have influenced us in our life journey. We again remember and give God thanks for the lives and gifts of Stella Fletcher and Meredith Venus from our own congregation and any other of our loved ones who have died during the past twelve months.

We also think back to the so called “Saints of history” who laid the foundations and then built the Christian church of God throughout the world.

I spoke earlier of cost. For many of these saints the cost has been their very life – often taken in shocking and violent ways – and all because they spoke out against injustice and offered an alternative way to that of traditional human violence. They offered, as we do, a gospel of love and the amazing experience of a journey into the spirit of love that we call God.

The violence that was used against the saints of old is still extant in our world.
I would be unable to stand freely before people, as I am today in this church, in many counties of the world and speak of these things without bringing condemnation and life-threatening violence upon both myself and my hearers.

So we can weep with Jesus for those we have lost – it is a most natural thing for a human to do.

Let’s turn again to the text. The Gospel of John was finalised, fixed and edited possibly at Ephesus around the turn of the first century c.e. – some 70 years or two generations of that time after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. The material used points to a setting in the Jewish Diaspora and the wider Greek Hellenistic world of that time.

It’s interesting to discover the background to the name of ‘Lazarus’. It is a Greek adaptation of the Hebrew name “Eleazar” and means “God will help” or “God is my help” or “My God has helped” – very appropriate when one thinks of the setting in this pericope. As an aside there was recognised a St Lazarus in the middle ages who was known as the patron saint of Lepers. Also the village once known as Bethany is now named “el-Azariah” – a corruption of the name “Lazarus”!

“Jesus wept”.

Why did Jesus weep?

Was it because he lamented the death of his friend Lazarus?

That seems most unlikely if we think about it as the Gospel of John sets its whole agenda to portraying Jesus as the LOGOS (the Word) of God – that is, the very manifestation of God in the world – God’s voice if you like.

If that is the case it would be assumed that Jesus was, for the writer of John, all powerful and all –knowing. He would have therefore known that he was able to return Lazarus to life – why then weep in mourning?

The Gospel does tell us that he was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved”. His very humanity, which was complete and full, brought him into a close empathy with the family and friends who were in such a state of deep and acute mourning. It would be only natural for a sensitive and loving person to feel that grief and to share the experience and trauma the others were going through. I’m sure we have all experienced this transmission of sentiment at some time or another.

But it is suggested that Jesus wept for a totally different reason.

It is clear from the early verses of John 11 that Jesus knows what the power of God can and will do for Lazarus. The confusion of the disciples in that early exchange makes it clear that his disciples do not.

Mary –“If you had been here my brother would not have died”.

The bystanders –“Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”- they were anticipating a rerun of the healing miracles which are portrayed earlier in this gospel. These remarks certainly acknowledge Jesus’ power but only to keep Lazarus from dying.

There is no suggestion that anyone grasped that Jesus as “the resurrection and the life” (as the Gospel writer puts it) had power beyond death.

This failure to (once again) be fully understood (and therefore fully loved and trusted) is the more likely cause of Jesus’ tears – contrary to the popular notion that his tears provide proof of his human grief.

Also we know Jesus is not weeping in grief because the observers think he is weeping for grief and in John’s gospel such observations are almost always wrong. These situations put into the story then provide Jesus the opportunity to reveal to people the deeper truths of his being (Nicodemus being ‘born again’ – the woman at the well and the question she asks, “what is living water”?).

Jesus weeps in frustration because they say to him, “come and see” and lead him to the grave – John’s Jesus already knows!!

The tension builds in the story where we see the frustration building when he is ‘greatly disturbed’, through to Martha the housekeeper unable to imagine anything beyond the fact that there will be a stench of rotting body when they open the tomb.

John has given us a real exhibition of what resurrection and life can accomplish.
It is not hard to imagine the grief we must often bring to God when we too fail dismally to understand the meaning of real love that is being offered to us and thus continue to grope blindly for some sort of meaning in our lives. It is death that threatens our sense of purpose, imagination and value to others and the world. Death is still the enemy to us.

It permanently separates us from those we love.

But we are like Martha and Mary and the onlookers in this story. We, like them, although we have some sort of trust in Jesus, lack the imagination to look beyond the short term.

What are we searching for here – a way to heaven – a life after death – some sort of never ending life?

In this story the writer has Jesus offering Lazarus the opportunity to ‘live again’. What does he do with this opportunity?

He hosts a banquet (chapter 12) with Jesus as the main guest. He becomes a living witness to the life-giving power of God. His sisters serve Jesus in different ways – one with the meal – the other by anointing him with expensive ointment and washing his feet.

Immediately following this service there will be a baptism in this church.

Can I offer the suggestion that baptism contains both ‘Jesus moments’ and ‘Lazarus moments’?

In baptism we are symbolically buried and resurrected with Jesus – our Jesus moment.
We are also untied in order to serve and witness – our Lazarus moment.

The experience of being ordained as Deacon very clearly speaks to me of these things.
It is both a Jesus and a Lazarus moment whereby, having first been raised by God to ordination, I have been untied in order to serve – you as my congregation – and the broader community as my ordination experience is known.

May we all become aware of the ‘Lazarus moment’ when we are “raised” or made aware of God’s presence in our lives and then, having recognised and acknowledged that, to be freed (or untied) from our fears and self-interest – freed to return the love that God offers so freely - and freed to pass that love freely to others.

May we take time this week to reflect on these things.

THE LORD BE WITH YOU