Where Is Jesus?
Sermon
To The Cross and Beyond
Cycle A Gospel Sermons for Lent and Easter
Object:
For the last few years our family has visited The Dalles, Oregon, for Memorial Day to be with my wife's relatives and to decorate graves in the cemetery. One thing I notice as we visit that cemetery: When you're in the western, older side of the cemetery, visitors are chattier, even happy, carrying on humorous conversations as they stand next to gravestones of people who died a hundred years ago. But, as you enter the newer portion of the cemetery where people have recently been buried, you feel the emotion around. You see families you don't know, but you can tell: the sighs, the hugs, and the tears.
Bereavement hurts, even in the near vicinity of death. So some people never attend funerals and some never visit in hospitals or nursing homes. No matter how they protest they want to remember the person as he or she was, to some extent it's because we all want to avoid the pain of death.
Another way we avoid death's pain is to create gentle terms for dying and the circumstances of death. Funeral homes have "slumber rooms." Instead of saying, "He died," we say, "passed away." Various groups have their own tender expressions, which aren't always understandable to others. I remember my dad's cousin talking about a recent Danish immigrant to North Dakota nearly a hundred years ago. He came into the mercantile one day, all excited, to announce to the gathered farmers that "So and So," one of the farmers in the county, had "popped the pail." For those younger and the non-North Dakotans, he was trying to reproduce the euphemism: "Kicked the bucket."
Also, when we're near the precincts of death, because we're ill at ease with pain and dying, some people nervously, even compulsively, flock around with comforting advice, whether asked for or not. They say things like, "God called him home," or "He's with God now," or "There must be a reason." We've all heard these, probably said them ourselves. We've grown up with them, and they're sincere attempts to help our friends and relatives in their grief. But, without our thinking about it, some of these statements carry the message that God has killed the person. Yes, God has taken the person home to heaven but only after death has released him.
Paul the apostle came along a few years after Jesus' resurrection and perfectly expressed Jesus' life and mission when he advised Christians they should rejoice with those who rejoice but weep with those who weep. For all that we'd like to help others in grief by saying something profound or comforting, usually people in grief need someone to answer the phone or make phone calls for them, to answer the door and get the mail, and especially to drive them somewhere because they're not safe behind the wheel. In grief we much more need someone with us than someone advising us.
Although it's hard the closer we draw toward death to get our thoughts in a neat row, we need to do so here in worship as we study the scriptures. And the clearest way to think about death is first to attend to what Jesus did and did not teach. For all that Jesus taught God's love and challenge, Jesus never taught his students that God plans the earthquake that flattens children in their school. Although Jesus said that God's love follows us to any extreme and that the consequences of our sins must be dealt with, Jesus didn't say that God directs the hurricane that drowns entire villages, nor does God fan the flames that overtake firefighters. If God does such things, then Jesus, God's Son, was only going around fixing what his heavenly Father broke. In the Bible we hear the apostle Paul write that he's having a hard time choosing between remaining in this life or succumbing to death in order to be with his Lord. We take that as a very pious statement -- dying to see the Lord. But it's not a cute quip for Paul. Paul stated clearly that death is an enemy. In fact, it's the last enemy yet to be destroyed.
Samuel Johnson, that always interesting eighteenth-century Englishman, said to his biographer Boswell, "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." If that doesn't happen exactly, at least death makes us intent; because our thoughts and emotions can become fuzzy in the presence of death. If death doesn't always concentrate our thinking, it certainly concentrates our attention. I've called on families in hospitals attending their dying loved ones. Days or weeks slide by, sirens wail at the Emergency Room, Lent comes and Easter goes, the family is unaware. Their world shrinks around their loved one. And in that tiny, painful space, just as we wonder when we approach the newer graves in the cemetery, they ask out loud or silently: "Where is God in this?" Near the pain and mystery of death we falter. I remember the bumper sticker, "There is no hope. But I might be wrong." In the hospital, often in an emotional jumble, no matter a person's faith, the bumper sticker changes to: "I thought there was hope. But I might be wrong."
Maybe some stern, super-religious person declares you second rate because, when nearing death, your faith flickers with a weaker light. Jesus is more merciful. We see him today arriving in Bethany, just over the Mount of Olives, a couple of miles east of Jerusalem. Jesus' friend Lazarus has died, and we hear that Jesus loves him and his sisters Mary and Martha.
Lazarus has died. His sisters Mary and Martha believed there was hope. Now they wonder if they were wrong. Four days since Lazarus died and where was Jesus when they sent for him?
Mary and Martha greet Jesus with the same words, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (v. 21). Jesus responds to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life" (v. 25). Jesus means right now, right where he stands with Martha, as a person he is resurrection life. He as a human being is God's very life on earth. So we watch him and see what he does and the first and most obvious is that, although Jesus doesn't show up when and where we think he should, he does come to Mary and Martha, to Lazarus and to us.
The gospel of John is careful to tell us that, when Jesus sees Lazarus' sister crying, "He was greatly disturbed in spirit," meaning in the original New Testament that he has "an intense, strong feeling of concern."1Then the gospel records Jesus was "deeply moved." In the original that expresses "an acute emotional distress or turbulence."2 Finally, if it's not enough that John tells us how Jesus feels, John records that shortest verse of the Bible as the New Revised Standard Version translates it, "Jesus began to weep" (v. 35). Old English translations rendered this, "Jesus wept." But that's overly formal and poetic compared to what it really means in the Greek New Testament: "To weep or wail, with emphasis upon the noise accompanying the weeping."3Jesus didn't cry in a formal and poetic way. He cried the way we cry. Thus, those standing near conclude, "See how he loved him!" (v. 36).
Jesus' love for Lazarus is in Jesus' bones, guts, muscles, and tear ducts. Just as our love in us. This is why the early church so adamantly insisted that Jesus was a true human, not some kind of benevolent ghost. He is truly one of us. Jesus loves with his mind, spirit, and body. Jesus is with us in this world with a real body, in this world where death threatens us and doubt bothers us. We need not be ashamed to admit our doubt or fear to Jesus. If someone tries to bully us into thinking we're less than Christian when we feel such things, they're advertising some small slice of truth, some sliver of Christian ideology; but, they're not facing the Bible's broader message that even after Jesus' resurrection his disciples more than once doubted him.
When I consider Jesus'genuinely human way of dealing with grief, I think of the little girl who ran to her mother, "Mommy! Mommy! Can I go to Crissy's house? She phoned and she's really upset. She lost her doll and she's been looking for it all morning."
Her mother said, "You think you can help her find it?"
"No," the little girl said, "but I can help her cry."
Jesus comes as a person who cares enough to sit next to you and cry, which is, sometimes, all we need. If we want a fix to all our problems, we can buy the newest self-help book that promises to fix us. We can send money to the TV evangelist who promises to fix us. Jesus, however, loves us no matter what -- no matter how much money or how much faith we have. And most of the time love is enough.
John Templeton died July 8, 2008. He started the Templeton Growth Fund and gave his money to The Templeton Prize for religion, which grants a winner every year over a million dollars. "The Templeton Prize honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works."4John Templeton was a lifelong Presbyterian. He believed that spiritual things are more important, finally, than material ones -- even more important than the stock market, where he made his money. He realized that love is stronger than anything in this world. So, he provided funds for founding the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. The purpose of the institute is bound to the belief that "[t]he essence of love is to affectively affirm as well as to unselfishly delight in the well-being of others, and to engage in acts of care and service on their behalf..."5 That's a fairly good description of Jesus' love. And love, even research shows, is almost all we need, even when facing death.
I read about a man who for his dying wife put on her makeup every morning. She'd been able to put on her own makeup during the early stages of her illness. The woman was concerned with her appearance and so, as she grew weaker, her husband began to help her, until finally, although clumsily, he did it for her. Even when she was in a coma her husband still combed her hair and put on her lipstick and eyeliner. He didn't do a good job, but a loving one.6
When we face death, we bring our questions about God and faith; yet, if we are too frightened or numbed by death to ask questions, Jesus loves us enough to ask us questions. He says to Martha, "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" (vv. 25-26). Jesus cares for us so much that he helps us consider our faith. It can be hard to hold to faith in God, especially as we walk closer to the grave of a loved one or to a loved one hovering ever nearer death. But Jesus doesn't scold Mary or Martha or us because we think he hasn't been around at the right time. He loves us anyway. He loves us despite our doubt or our faith. He loves us all the way through life and through death and into our final life in the fullest presence of God. So it's one who loves us who asks, "Do you believe this?"
When we're shaky or when we're steady, we place our trust in Jesus who loves us. When we're thinking clearly or we're so muddled that friends insist someone else drive us, we trust, however imperfectly, Jesus who loves us.
Because Jesus shows us his unlimited love by what he says and by what he does, we believers don't view life and death the same as others. We now set out to be the loving presence for others that Jesus is for us; because, for us Jesus is life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life, meaning he's the source, explanation, and goal of life. Because Jesus loves us, we trust that our life isn't a mere tick in the clock of the cosmos. Because Jesus loves us, our life isn't a blink in the eye of eternity. Therefore because Jesus loves us, our death isn't a snowflake melting into the ocean of time. As we approach our end of the cemetery we trust Jesus that death isn't our brief light crashing into darkness. It's putting out our earthly lamp because God's true dawn has arrived.
Communion
To show how much God loves us, God sent Jesus as a genuine human, able to understand our doubts, feel our pain, and share our problems. We can trust Jesus'genuine concern for us throughout our living and all the way through our dying. Thus we also trust his invitation here -- to come and receive the means of grace. Amen.
__________
1. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1988), v. 1, p. 295.
2. Louw and Nida, p. 315.
3. Louw and Nida, p. 304.
4. www.templetonprize.org.
5. www.unlimitedloveinstitute.org.
6. Carolyn Burns in Patricia Anderson, All of Us: Americans Talk about the Meaning of Death (New York: Delacorte Press, 1996), pp. 233-234.
Bereavement hurts, even in the near vicinity of death. So some people never attend funerals and some never visit in hospitals or nursing homes. No matter how they protest they want to remember the person as he or she was, to some extent it's because we all want to avoid the pain of death.
Another way we avoid death's pain is to create gentle terms for dying and the circumstances of death. Funeral homes have "slumber rooms." Instead of saying, "He died," we say, "passed away." Various groups have their own tender expressions, which aren't always understandable to others. I remember my dad's cousin talking about a recent Danish immigrant to North Dakota nearly a hundred years ago. He came into the mercantile one day, all excited, to announce to the gathered farmers that "So and So," one of the farmers in the county, had "popped the pail." For those younger and the non-North Dakotans, he was trying to reproduce the euphemism: "Kicked the bucket."
Also, when we're near the precincts of death, because we're ill at ease with pain and dying, some people nervously, even compulsively, flock around with comforting advice, whether asked for or not. They say things like, "God called him home," or "He's with God now," or "There must be a reason." We've all heard these, probably said them ourselves. We've grown up with them, and they're sincere attempts to help our friends and relatives in their grief. But, without our thinking about it, some of these statements carry the message that God has killed the person. Yes, God has taken the person home to heaven but only after death has released him.
Paul the apostle came along a few years after Jesus' resurrection and perfectly expressed Jesus' life and mission when he advised Christians they should rejoice with those who rejoice but weep with those who weep. For all that we'd like to help others in grief by saying something profound or comforting, usually people in grief need someone to answer the phone or make phone calls for them, to answer the door and get the mail, and especially to drive them somewhere because they're not safe behind the wheel. In grief we much more need someone with us than someone advising us.
Although it's hard the closer we draw toward death to get our thoughts in a neat row, we need to do so here in worship as we study the scriptures. And the clearest way to think about death is first to attend to what Jesus did and did not teach. For all that Jesus taught God's love and challenge, Jesus never taught his students that God plans the earthquake that flattens children in their school. Although Jesus said that God's love follows us to any extreme and that the consequences of our sins must be dealt with, Jesus didn't say that God directs the hurricane that drowns entire villages, nor does God fan the flames that overtake firefighters. If God does such things, then Jesus, God's Son, was only going around fixing what his heavenly Father broke. In the Bible we hear the apostle Paul write that he's having a hard time choosing between remaining in this life or succumbing to death in order to be with his Lord. We take that as a very pious statement -- dying to see the Lord. But it's not a cute quip for Paul. Paul stated clearly that death is an enemy. In fact, it's the last enemy yet to be destroyed.
Samuel Johnson, that always interesting eighteenth-century Englishman, said to his biographer Boswell, "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." If that doesn't happen exactly, at least death makes us intent; because our thoughts and emotions can become fuzzy in the presence of death. If death doesn't always concentrate our thinking, it certainly concentrates our attention. I've called on families in hospitals attending their dying loved ones. Days or weeks slide by, sirens wail at the Emergency Room, Lent comes and Easter goes, the family is unaware. Their world shrinks around their loved one. And in that tiny, painful space, just as we wonder when we approach the newer graves in the cemetery, they ask out loud or silently: "Where is God in this?" Near the pain and mystery of death we falter. I remember the bumper sticker, "There is no hope. But I might be wrong." In the hospital, often in an emotional jumble, no matter a person's faith, the bumper sticker changes to: "I thought there was hope. But I might be wrong."
Maybe some stern, super-religious person declares you second rate because, when nearing death, your faith flickers with a weaker light. Jesus is more merciful. We see him today arriving in Bethany, just over the Mount of Olives, a couple of miles east of Jerusalem. Jesus' friend Lazarus has died, and we hear that Jesus loves him and his sisters Mary and Martha.
Lazarus has died. His sisters Mary and Martha believed there was hope. Now they wonder if they were wrong. Four days since Lazarus died and where was Jesus when they sent for him?
Mary and Martha greet Jesus with the same words, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (v. 21). Jesus responds to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life" (v. 25). Jesus means right now, right where he stands with Martha, as a person he is resurrection life. He as a human being is God's very life on earth. So we watch him and see what he does and the first and most obvious is that, although Jesus doesn't show up when and where we think he should, he does come to Mary and Martha, to Lazarus and to us.
The gospel of John is careful to tell us that, when Jesus sees Lazarus' sister crying, "He was greatly disturbed in spirit," meaning in the original New Testament that he has "an intense, strong feeling of concern."1Then the gospel records Jesus was "deeply moved." In the original that expresses "an acute emotional distress or turbulence."2 Finally, if it's not enough that John tells us how Jesus feels, John records that shortest verse of the Bible as the New Revised Standard Version translates it, "Jesus began to weep" (v. 35). Old English translations rendered this, "Jesus wept." But that's overly formal and poetic compared to what it really means in the Greek New Testament: "To weep or wail, with emphasis upon the noise accompanying the weeping."3Jesus didn't cry in a formal and poetic way. He cried the way we cry. Thus, those standing near conclude, "See how he loved him!" (v. 36).
Jesus' love for Lazarus is in Jesus' bones, guts, muscles, and tear ducts. Just as our love in us. This is why the early church so adamantly insisted that Jesus was a true human, not some kind of benevolent ghost. He is truly one of us. Jesus loves with his mind, spirit, and body. Jesus is with us in this world with a real body, in this world where death threatens us and doubt bothers us. We need not be ashamed to admit our doubt or fear to Jesus. If someone tries to bully us into thinking we're less than Christian when we feel such things, they're advertising some small slice of truth, some sliver of Christian ideology; but, they're not facing the Bible's broader message that even after Jesus' resurrection his disciples more than once doubted him.
When I consider Jesus'genuinely human way of dealing with grief, I think of the little girl who ran to her mother, "Mommy! Mommy! Can I go to Crissy's house? She phoned and she's really upset. She lost her doll and she's been looking for it all morning."
Her mother said, "You think you can help her find it?"
"No," the little girl said, "but I can help her cry."
Jesus comes as a person who cares enough to sit next to you and cry, which is, sometimes, all we need. If we want a fix to all our problems, we can buy the newest self-help book that promises to fix us. We can send money to the TV evangelist who promises to fix us. Jesus, however, loves us no matter what -- no matter how much money or how much faith we have. And most of the time love is enough.
John Templeton died July 8, 2008. He started the Templeton Growth Fund and gave his money to The Templeton Prize for religion, which grants a winner every year over a million dollars. "The Templeton Prize honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works."4John Templeton was a lifelong Presbyterian. He believed that spiritual things are more important, finally, than material ones -- even more important than the stock market, where he made his money. He realized that love is stronger than anything in this world. So, he provided funds for founding the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. The purpose of the institute is bound to the belief that "[t]he essence of love is to affectively affirm as well as to unselfishly delight in the well-being of others, and to engage in acts of care and service on their behalf..."5 That's a fairly good description of Jesus' love. And love, even research shows, is almost all we need, even when facing death.
I read about a man who for his dying wife put on her makeup every morning. She'd been able to put on her own makeup during the early stages of her illness. The woman was concerned with her appearance and so, as she grew weaker, her husband began to help her, until finally, although clumsily, he did it for her. Even when she was in a coma her husband still combed her hair and put on her lipstick and eyeliner. He didn't do a good job, but a loving one.6
When we face death, we bring our questions about God and faith; yet, if we are too frightened or numbed by death to ask questions, Jesus loves us enough to ask us questions. He says to Martha, "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" (vv. 25-26). Jesus cares for us so much that he helps us consider our faith. It can be hard to hold to faith in God, especially as we walk closer to the grave of a loved one or to a loved one hovering ever nearer death. But Jesus doesn't scold Mary or Martha or us because we think he hasn't been around at the right time. He loves us anyway. He loves us despite our doubt or our faith. He loves us all the way through life and through death and into our final life in the fullest presence of God. So it's one who loves us who asks, "Do you believe this?"
When we're shaky or when we're steady, we place our trust in Jesus who loves us. When we're thinking clearly or we're so muddled that friends insist someone else drive us, we trust, however imperfectly, Jesus who loves us.
Because Jesus shows us his unlimited love by what he says and by what he does, we believers don't view life and death the same as others. We now set out to be the loving presence for others that Jesus is for us; because, for us Jesus is life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life, meaning he's the source, explanation, and goal of life. Because Jesus loves us, we trust that our life isn't a mere tick in the clock of the cosmos. Because Jesus loves us, our life isn't a blink in the eye of eternity. Therefore because Jesus loves us, our death isn't a snowflake melting into the ocean of time. As we approach our end of the cemetery we trust Jesus that death isn't our brief light crashing into darkness. It's putting out our earthly lamp because God's true dawn has arrived.
Communion
To show how much God loves us, God sent Jesus as a genuine human, able to understand our doubts, feel our pain, and share our problems. We can trust Jesus'genuine concern for us throughout our living and all the way through our dying. Thus we also trust his invitation here -- to come and receive the means of grace. Amen.
__________
1. Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1988), v. 1, p. 295.
2. Louw and Nida, p. 315.
3. Louw and Nida, p. 304.
4. www.templetonprize.org.
5. www.unlimitedloveinstitute.org.
6. Carolyn Burns in Patricia Anderson, All of Us: Americans Talk about the Meaning of Death (New York: Delacorte Press, 1996), pp. 233-234.
