Death's Stench, God's Glory
All Saints Day, November 1, 2009 John 11:17-44
"My hands are tied!" "I can't think clearly." "Lord already there is a stench, because he has been dead four days."
We have many different ways of speaking about our reality. We are less than free. Death and all its relatives can rock us, control us, limit us, suck all life and hope from us individually and collectively.
Unless we have stood with, cried with, listened to ones we have loved die, unless we have actually stood beside their open graves, I don't know if we can know the power of death. There is a power to death that pervades our lives like the stench of a skunk. At first you can't escape it. It's so overpowering. But even after a long while, days, months and years, that stench will still finds its way into the nostrils of our minds and hearts, into the very pores of our being, our imaginations. At some point we may have felt we were all done with it, but death doesn't just go away.
Sometimes perhaps even often we'd rather not talk about death. We may try to deny the power of death. We may refuse to draw up our own will. We may avoid cemeteries, hospitals or nursing homes. We may not make any kind of plans for our own funerals. We may become convinced that there aren't new possibilities for our relationships, our workplaces, even our schools. Sometimes even our language betrays our attempt to avoid the reality and power of death. If we don't say "the word", will death really delay its coming to us? So we say things like, "He passed away". "She fell asleep peacefully". "They left this life". But let me tell you regardless of what we say or try to think or not think, death is real. We do die. The people we love the very most die. The power of death is alive and oh so very strong.
Death can also rule our families, our institutions including the church, governments and schools. If we refuse to talk about any of the things that matter, to face them head on, if we refuse to grapple with realities that result in death, loss and suffering for many – then the power of death controls or at the very least limits us. And then we are not fully alive nor in any manner shape or form, free.
So, have you ever wondered why? Why do we have such an abundance of water and food that we waste them while so many others in our world continue to die from lack of safe water or enough food? Can we as followers of Jesus do anything about this? Should we? Will we?
Or, have you ever asked yourself if everyone truly feels welcomed in this congregation? What are we doing, so that everyone will experience a sense of belonging here? Do we need to change some things for new people to be welcomed? If we do make such changes will others who are already here leave? What shall we do then? Maybe we shouldn't do anything – just try to keep things the same? Ah, don't you just love all these questions!
I remember Harold and Emma. Harold was 40 when they were married. Emma was 17. That's a huge age gap, one that many would sneer at, perceive to be an untenable age difference for a married couple. But Emma had been a displaced person during the World War II. Only God and she knew what she had witnessed, what had happened in her life. She was mature well beyond her years. Harold was a huge but gentle man. He loved Emma deeply. I happened into their lives over 25 years after their wedding day. By that point Harold had cancer. Nor was he the first one to contract cancer in his family. His older brother had died of cancer. Harold underwent the requisite surgery and following treatment. But that insidious cancer continued to grow ravaging his body.
Near the end of his life he, Emma and I would frequently share Communion. Harold was a man of Christian faith. He worshipped weekly. He gave a percentage of his income both to the church and to charities that he and Emma felt called by God to support. He attempted to honor God in all of his business dealings. Yet Harold was also a man of few words. I will never forget the day that I sat with the two of them in his hospital room. Death was drawing very near. They both knew this. Emma held Harold's big hand in her tiny hands. Softly she asked, "What can I or the Pastor do Harold?" Then he looked at her not with resignation, but with hope. His smile mightily defied his physical weakness. "Emma", he said, "we have the cross – and that's all we need."
Lazarus had been dead 4 days. Those Jewish people believed that the Spirit hovered around a person's body for up to 3 days. Then that spirit departed accepting the reality of the person's death. Lazarus had been dead 4 days. Now Jesus comes to Lazarus' tomb. He orders the stone from the mouth of the cave that entombed Lazarus to be removed. Martha, Lazarus' sister, in touch with her own pain at her brother's death says, "No Lord, there is already a stench, he has been dead 4 days."
But Christ is not deterred. The stone is removed. Christ then iterally yells, "Lazarus come out". And the dead man emerges, bound. Lazarus is then untied.
It's an amazing story. Many are skeptical. But I ask you, cannot God the creator of the universe, restore a dead person to life? Cannot God birth new life even out of death?
The restoration to life for Lazarus brings about something of lasting significance for all of us, for the entire universe. Lazarus' restoration to life by Jesus strengthens the opposition to Jesus. Reading further in John's Gospel, merely 5 verses later, the high priest, Caiaphas, says during a meeting of high priests and Pharisees, "You do not understand that it is better for one man to die than to have the whole nation destroyed."
Do we understand Caiaphas' statement? In many ways this has been the human mantra from Day 1. Better for Abel to die than Cain. Better for thousands if not millions of soldiers to die, than for many more other civilians women and children to die. Better for the other nations to die than our nation. Better for some other family to be poor than for my family to be poor. But is any of that true? Why do so many have to suffer and die, be poor, be engulfed by poverty?
Into this drive and control of hatred, fear and death comes Jesus. By raising Lazarus Jesus continues his journey to Jerusalem. There, with great struggle Jesus willingly suffers and dies. On the cross Christ begins to work out something that can shatter the bonds and power of all death. Do we see Him? Do we trust Him?
He speaks in ongoing ways, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do… This is my body, my blood. Take, eat and drink for the forgiveness of sin – your sin, the world's sin". His suffering, death and resurrection birth entirely new possibilities.
Jesus' words and actions, His surrender is beyond the limited comprehension of our minds. Just as the forces of evil look like they have the upper hand, just as God's own Son is spat upon, tortured, humiliated and dies, in that very moment when death seems to have absolute control and God seems so distant, perhaps totally absent, in that moment, and from that moment forward God is with us, and for us and all creation in ways that usher in new life in the very face of death.
It is the dying and rising Christ who entrusts the disciples including doubting Thomas to go out, to share their new life in him with others. Amazingly, miraculously, they are enabled to let go of their fears, their envy, their jealousy. The clutches of death can no longer hold them! What matters most to them is this good news of Christ for all. They have the cross of Christ before them and behind them.
Today is All Saints Day. Those who have gone before us in the faith were far from perfect. They too were sinners. But by the grace of God they trusted Christ moving forward with hope in life, through death again and again to new life. Through them somehow, some way, the light of God shines.
This can also be our way. Then death in all of its forms cannot control nor paralyze us. Christ is the resurrection and the life. As powerful as death is it cannot ultimately tie our hands. Nor can it prevent us from thinking, from dreaming, from being part of new, even wonderful realities. Trusting God the stench of death can be removed, replaced, transformed into beginning to see the glory of God. Death as real as it is in Christ can be swallowed up. With God all thing are possible. See the cross and the empty tomb
Amen and Amen.