All Saints Sunday Year B November 4, 2012
Luther Memorial Lutheran Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Isaiah 25: 6-9 Psalm 24
Revelation 21: 1-6 John 11: 32-44
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
It has been said by some that dying is something we do alone. But that is not true. On this day, we gather in this place, and declare with the entire communion of saint that dying is something we do with God, surrounded by all the company of saints. We are welcomed home.
On this side of death, dying and how we die is a wildly varied process and I think that it is that…the act of dying, that scares us. Or at least me. A wise old priest once told me that it is a faithful act to pray for a peaceful death.
Recent days have reminded us that not everyone dies peacefully, though. People in New York and New Jersey died in horrible and tragic ways. Soldiers die from road side bombs. Bystanders die from stray bullets or from bombs tied to stray human beings. Car accidents, biking accidents, and other random unimaginable acts take lives…every day.
In our Gospel reading today, a friend and brother had died. We don’t know what caused Lazarus to die, whether it was sudden and unexpected or whether he died peacefully surrounded by his family. But we know that his sisters were deeply grieved and we read that they believed that if Jesus had been with Lazarus, he would not have died at all.
There is much to this story. There is the intimacy of the exchanges between Mary and Martha and Jesus. These sisters were close enough to Jesus to place all of their vulnerability…all of their raw emotion….squarely upon him. They were angry that he had not arrived in time. They were sorrowing. They were confused in their anguish.
There is the raw emotion of Jesus in this story. Jesus who weeps for his friends and who is greatly disturbed, we are told, although we are not told what it is that disturbs him. Jesus’ raw emotion is literally lost in translation here, because the original language does not say Jesus was greatly disturbed, it says that he was “angry and snorting like a bull.”
Anger is not an unknown response to death.
This story also contains a foreshadowing of Jesus at his own tomb. The story is laced with irony for those who know what comes later, as Jesus stands at the tomb, with a heavy stone in front of it and calls Lazarus to rise up to new life.
How many of you remember in 1986 when Geraldo Rivera was supposed to have discovered Al Capone’s secret vault? No one knew what would be found there. Would there be riches or weapons or records or victims or even a clue as to where Capone’s body had ended up? There was a HUGE television special…live on national TV where Rivera was to open up this heretofore locked vault and uncover it’s contents. Drumroll, please! Aaaaannnndddd….it. was. Empty. Except for some debris, it was empty.
That is not the case in the story from John’s Gospel today. The tomb is not empty, and when Jesus cries out “Lazarus come out!” Lazarus does. Stinky grave clothes and all.
Jesus was not giving Lazarus a stage direction nor was he issuing a gentle invitation to his dead friend. This imperative to “come” was filled with the implications of an invitation to discipleship. There are only 3 other places in the Gospels where Jesus uses the same Greek word that is translated here as “come”. All 3 are in the same story, told by the writers of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. It is the story of the rich young man who wanted to follow Jesus and who asked him what he needed to do in order to do so. Jesus said “sell all that you have and come follow me.” This version of the word we translate as “come” (deuro) is the same word Jesus uses to call Lazarus out of the darkness of the tomb. It is not a simple instruction. It is not merely a directive. It is not only a command. It is an invitation to life.
In order for Lazarus to be fully raised to new life he would have to be unbound from the grave clothes. That is Jesus’ next instruction to those standing near. “Unbind him and let him go.” Let him go and follow Jesus.
We live as people who are bound. We are bound by prejudices that infect our relationships with others. We are bound by our own desires to have more possessions and money and land. We are bound by our neglect of Creation. We are bound by our failure to care adequately for the poor. We are bound by fear and insecurity. All of us are bound by something. And this is why we need our community of faith, the communion of saints….so that we might be unbound and set free to follow Jesus.
Today, it is in a spirit of gratitude…..in the midst of our stewardship emphasis called “Gifts of Gratitude”… we give thanks for those saints in our lives. Four of them left this life for the next life over the course of this year. When we think of Dick and Earlene and Anne and Barbara, we can certainly call to mind their many gifts. Gifts of hospitality and faithful service. Gifts of laughter and tears. I am thankful that for each of them, there was peace in their dying. And I think of the ways they unbound us to live for and follow Jesus.
And today we remember Daniel’s baptism this year and we give thanks that in the waters of baptism we are all called to new life. And that call is like Jesus’ call to the rich young man and his call to Lazarus in the tomb….Come! Each of you, as you are, however you are….come! Follow! Give all that you have and trust that all will be well in the end.
We are so blessed to live in a community of faith….with the communion of saints as it gathers and as it reforms. We are called with that communion to a rich feast, a feast of rich foods and well aged wines of food filled with marrow. Today, we will be called to the table for the richest feast of all….the feast of bread and wine, of Christ himself, who offers himself as the feast and as host, calls us to the table.
We come as part of a larger community, a global community, and we struggle to faithfully live into that discipleship call to serve others in the name of Christ. We serve others who are suffering, those in New York and New Jersey and Haiti and Sudan and in all corners of the earth. Some we serve with our presence and some with our prayers and some with our financial support. We can do that, as you see in your bulletins, through our gifts in this place. We cannot ignore the need of others across the world any more than we could ignore it in this community. The communion of saints is large and vast and inclusive. It does not exclude others because the God who has claimed us and named us in the waters of baptism, who calls us out of death to life and who invites us to serve as the unbound, free people of God, is a God of love.
Barbara, Anne, Earlene, Dick and Daniel are beloved children, beloved saints of God. And so are we. Each of us. God’s home is among us and God is with us as our God. We are God’s people. God will wipe every tear from our eyes; death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more for the first things have passed away.
Even in our difficulties….even in the tragedies and travesties of this life, the communion of saints lives in the peace of this certainty. Thanks be to God. Amen.
0 Comments