Wide Embrace

Audio of this sermon can be heard here.

Over time, images can lose their significance or, in some cases, can attract new meaning. Christmas trees and wreaths were originally pagan symbols that were used to celebrate the winter solstice, but, when most of Europe was converted to the Christian faith, they lost their identity as trees worthy of worship and became a reminder of the everlasting life that Christ brought to the world. But that's not the whole story. Many of us have forgotten that, after the Reformation, evergreen trees were displayed in the homes of upper-class Protestants as a refutation of the Catholic tradition of erecting a crèche in one's home. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) I doubt that you, when you decorate your tree, are intending to thumb your nose at the Catholics across the street.

The cross of Christ, which we commemorate in the collect and epistle lesson for Tuesday in Holy Week, is its own complex image with a long history of meaning. As the collect states, the cross was originally "an instrument of shameful death," yet, through the story of Jesus, God has made it "be for us the means of life." Paul gives us a glimpse at that transformation, writing, "We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles." Paul couldn't help but think of Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which proclaims that anyone who dies while hanging on a tree is cursed by God. Remember that the bible's preferred method of capital punishment in stoning. Hanging was reserved for notorious criminals of whom the leaders of Israel wanted to make an example. Deuteronomy, however, limits the punitive nature of a hanging, demanding that the body be taken down and buried before sunset.

Jesus was killed in much the same way for mostly the same reason. The cross was a Roman institution--a way to kill slaves who rebelled against their masters or notorious political rebels who attempted to usurp Roman control of their territory. The sign above Jesus read, "King of the Jews," which was Rome's way of saying, "Look what we will do to anyone who tries to lead your people into freedom! Where is your king now?" Traditionally, bodies were left on the cross until the vultures had picked the skeletons clean--a lingering warning to any who would follow in their footsteps. Jesus was spare that fate, of course, as the Jewish leaders asked if they could keep their custom and bury him before sunset.

Paul's mission was to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to Gentiles, and he needed a way to overcome the stigma associated with a leader who was killed on a cross. The Jews who opposed the Way of Jesus would point to Deuteronomy as proof that God's messiah could not have been killed on a tree. Greeks would have sympathized with that argument, knowing that only the most shameful criminals would have been executed by Rome. As Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian put it, the concept of a killed and resurrected leader is pretty far-fetched, but the redemption of one who was crucified is beyond thinkable. Coming back from death is one thing, but no religious or political leader can come back from the cross.

Paul, however, had seen the crucified and resurrection one. Jesus had met him on the Road to Damascus, completely overthrowing everything that Paul thought he knew about how God works. His strategy in overcome the cross wasn't to avoid it but to embrace it. "The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." For the entire history of God's relationship with God's people, God has been in the business of using small, rejected things to accomplish God's great and powerful plan. God chose Abraham and Sarah, an elderly couple long past the time of fertility, to inaugurate a great nation as numerous as the sand on the seashore. The people of Israel, a rogue band of travelling herdsmen, make their long and winding way to Egypt after Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. They planned it for evil, but God planned it for good. Not only were the children of Jacob saved during a famine, but Joseph's position in Pharaoh's government enabled the salvation of the whole world--enough grain to go around. The cross was the ultimate expression of failure, rejection, and shame, which, as Paul wrote, is the exact reason that it was the perfect instrument by which God would reach out to all peoples with God's saving love.

During the Passover festival immediately before Jesus' death, some Greeks approached Philip and asked to see Jesus. When word of their inquiry reached Jesus, what was his response? "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." This is how God works. "Now is the judgment of this world," Jesus said. "Now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." The only way for God's upside-down way of salvation to reach beyond the covenant God had made with Israel was for the reign of this world to be supplanted by the reign of Christ. The powers that be must be replaced by the power of God--a power not expressed in triumphant victory but in triumphant death. "It is too light a thing," the prophet wrote in Isaiah 49, "that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

Regrettably, we do not say Morning Prayer very often anymore, but, in the 1979 Prayer Book, the rubrics require that," unless the Eucharist or a form of general intercession is to follow," one of three prayers for mission will be said. The third begins with a beautiful statement of the far reach of God's salvation as embodied on the cross: "Lord Jesus Christ, who didst stretch out thine arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of thy saving embrace..." (BCP pp. 57-58). Those arms, bloodied by the whip and exhausted from carrying the wooden beam, were forcibly stretched out and nailed in place by those for whom that act was the ultimate repudiation of the victim's agenda. Those nails were confirmation of Rome's victory over the crucified one and his followers. Yet that same image, with which we now adorn our churches and the jewelry we wear around our necks, has become for us the ultimate sign of God's victory--God's salvation for all people. Were it not for the traditional, historical, theological rejection that the cross represented to both Jews and Greeks, the cross of Christ could not have become the very means of the salvation to Jews and Gentiles alike. It is the very transformation of that image that is the transformation of our future. Through it, we, too, are brought from a verdict of guilt and rejection into a state of justification and acceptance by God. It is those very arms, spread wide upon the cross, that come down to embrace each of us as one who belongs to God.

Who Is This?

Yesterday, in a wonderfully written, wonderfully short Palm Sunday sermon, Seth Olson gave to us the same question the whole city of Jerusalem was asking when Jesus entered the city to much fanfare: "Who is this?" The crowds answered, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee," but, as Seth pointed out, the disciples' betrayal, denial, sleepiness, and violent impulse suggested that even those closest to Jesus were not able to answer that question fully. We, too, are asked that question--a question that can only receive its fullest answer in the light of Easter Day--but we are asked to suspend our knowledge of what lies ahead and wrestle with the question as we make our way through Holy Week. Today, as I encounter some of the poetry of Isaiah that is routinely applied to Jesus, I wonder again whether we really know who Jesus is.

In the first part of Isaiah 42:1-9, the prophet recalls the commissioning of Yahweh's servant: "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him." Let everyone see and know that this is the one whom God himself has selected, called, named, and equipped to accomplish his work. And what is that work? "He will bring forth justice to the nations." That's it? Justice to the nations? Not anymore than that? Well, the rest of this lesson as well as the other poems about this servant of Yahweh show us that there's more to say about that justice and how that justice will be accomplished, but the fundamental mission of Isaiah's servant is to bring about justice to the nations.

How will this servant bring about this justice? "He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice." Unlike so many of God's prophets, who walk through the streets crying out for repentance or promising a violent end to those who disobey, this servant will not raise his voice. He will be so gentle and careful that even a flickering candle will not go out under his watch. In other words, even those whose future seems dire, whom God presumably has forgotten already, will not be abandoned by this servant.

As the second half of this lesson confirms, in the accomplishment of this work, the servant will point everyone back to Yahweh:

"Thus says God, the Lord,
    who created the heavens and stretched them out...

I have given you as a covenant to the people,
    a light to the nations,
    to open the eyes that are blind,

to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
    from the prison those who sit in darkness.

I am the Lord, that is my name;
    my glory I give to no other,
    nor my praise to idols."

This work will be a light that illuminates the Lord as the creator of all things. This bringing-forth of justice will reveal the true glory of Yahweh to all nations. When the prisoners are released from the dungeon, everyone will see and know that the Lord is the only one worthy of worship and praise. It is the justice on the meek that will point everyone to God's true identity.

For two thousand years, Christians have been reading Isaiah 42:1-9 and applying those words to Jesus. After all of that inherited biblical interpretation, have we forgotten what this is all about? Sure, Jesus is more than the servant of Deutero-Isaiah's poetic identification, but if we are so intentional about making the link that we would read this passage as the first lesson on the Monday of Holy Week--if this is the beginning of our answer to the question, "Who is this Jesus?"--we'd do well to pay attention to what the prophet actually says.

Who is this Jesus? He is the one who brings justice to the nations. He is the one whose care for those whom God has seemed to have forgotten reminds us who God really is. Justice is the right-ness of all things. God's justice is the great leveling out of the world. Those who have climbed to power on the backs of the oppressed are pulled down, while those who have been trampled are raised up. That's true economically, politically, and socially. Jesus is the one who points all the nations back to God by insisting quietly, gently, yet resolutely that God's justice be the way of the world. That gentle insistence is what got Jesus in trouble in the first place. Have we forgotten that that's the Jesus we follow?

Incompatable Union

On Sunday as we hear the long, gruesome drama of the passion narrative, it is difficult to keep enough space in our minds for the other lessons, but the Philippians Hymn (2:5-11) is not only a beautiful, theologically rich passage of scripture, but it takes on its fullest meaning in the context of Jesus' passion. Although it may be hard to preach on something other than the Christ's triumphal entry or the crowd's rejection of their king, this may be the best time to preach on Paul's poetic confession we ever get. In fact, the lectionary seems to be suggesting this to us as it is the epistle lesson for Palm Sunday in all three years and only comes up at other times on the Feast of the Holy Name in Year A and on Holy Cross Day.

Likely quoting a familiar early confession, Paul wrote of Christ Jesus, "And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross." That obedience, of which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews makes a big deal, is the consequence of faithfulness. Jesus was faithful to the point of being rejected by the powers of the world. It was his obedience to God that got him in trouble. His steadfastness in the face of temptation--temptation made real because of his full humanity--was the reason for his torture. That "becoming obedient" does not suggest that Jesus needed to learn what it meant to be faithful to his Father. It means he learned what the consequences of that faithfulness are when subjected to the powers of unfaithful human beings.

Some would argue that Jesus was obedience to his Father's plan in that the Father's plan always envisioned crucifixion. In other words, God sent his Son into the world because God desired a perfect sacrifice for sin. Others would argue that the cross was humanity's rejection of God's plan and not the center of it. I would ask what the difference is. In the person of Jesus, we see a union of incompatible natures. Like a lump of potassium thrown into a beaker of water, the divine cannot cohabit with the human and not erupt violently. Something must change. The potential for reaction is too great not to occur. The chemical analogy breaks down, however, because the divine substance is immutable. All the change must happen on the human side. No, Jesus wasn't split internally, but the incarnation--the divine coming into the human plane of existence--required a change in all humanity. It required the cross. Obedience like that--the resolute, uncompromising establishment of the reign of God--can only result in the confrontation with and overthrow of human power. Because of Jesus' obedience to God, the cross was inevitable. Because of Jesus' obedience to God, the resurrection was, too.

"Therefore," Paul wrote, "God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend..." Christ's obedience even to the point of death is the reason God has exalted him through resurrection and ascension back to his preeminent heavenly plane of existence. Only perfect obedience could result in perfect human rejection and perfect divine exaltation. Thus, our transformation is not complete with the cross but with the empty tomb and ascension of Jesus. No, we can't get to Easter before we finish Holy Week, but the seeds of that are sown in the incarnation and watered by the blood that was shed on the cross. We cannot help but glimpse the rest of the story.

This Sunday, whether you're preaching on it or listening to it, don't fail to give at least a moment's thought to the Philippians Hymn. The only time it takes on its full meaning is when it is paired with the passion of Jesus. This is incarnational atonement theology. Without it, the passion is merely a bloodbath. With it, the passion retains its redemptive nature.

Civil Disobedience

Audio of this sermon can be heard here.

The story of the fiery furnace and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who are thrown into the flames yet come out unsinged, is pretty remarkable. It's one of those "Sunday school stories" that we teach to our children because it tells us something amazing about God and about faith. "Those three men believed in God with such faith that, even though they were thrown into the fire, they were not harmed," we tell them. And there is no doubt that it is an amazing story of faith and God's deliverance. But I think that the real power of this story comes not in the fiery furnace but in the conversation before it, and, if we only judge the power of God and the faith of these three men by the outcome, we've missed the point.

Along with Daniel, for whom this book of the bible is named, these three were exiles in Babylon. They had lived in Jerusalem when the city fell to the Babylonian siege, and they were carted off to a far away land where they became slaves of Nebuchadnezzar. The Book of Daniel was written to chronicle the lives of these exiles and portray for God's people what it means to be faithful under extreme circumstances. How will they stay true to their Jewish faith despite living away from home? How will they worship without the Jerusalem temple? How will they keep kosher? How will they carry on as faithful children of Yahweh when Yahweh is presumed to be back in the holy land? Nebuchadnezzar is a narcissistic megalomaniac who has assumed semi-divine status and who demands absolute obedience and loyalty. Anyone who crosses him--anyone who questions his power or rivals his control--is likely to be killed.

This story is about their struggle, and their faith has gotten them into trouble. Nebuchadnezzar had set up an image of gold and had commanded that, whenever the appointed music began to play, everyone was to stop what he or she was doing and fall down to worship the image of opulent wealth and projected power. Of course, a faithful Jew cannot do so. To worship--literally to bow down, to prostrate oneself as a sign of obedience, reverence, and allegiance--anyone but God alone is forbidden. And so these three stood upright, refusing to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's image. They knew the punishment--to be thrown immediately into the fiery furnace--but they stood up anyway.

Nebuchadnezzar was furious. "Is it true," he asked them, "that you do not serve my gods and you do not worship the golden statue that I have set up?" He gave them a choice. "I'll give you another chance. If you are ready to fall down and worship whenever the music begins to play, you will be spared. But if not, you will be thrown into the furnace, and who will save you then? What god can rescue you from the heat of my anger?" And then the three men offered the most profound statement of faith in reply: "If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up."

Actually, the NRSV seems to do their response injustice by linking the "if" of the conditional statement with God's ability to save them: "If God is able to deliver us..." Most other translations (e.g. CEV, ESV, NIV, KJV, RSV) render it as "If this be so, God is able to deliver us..." Their unwavering faith suggests that they have no doubt that their God has the power to deliver them. Whether he will or not seems to be the real question. And the remarkable part of their faith is their willingness to accept a tortuous death and still not doubt God. "We believe that God is able to save us," they say. "But, even if he doesn't, know this: we will never serve your gods or bow down to the golden image you have set up." Their faith in God does not depend on whether God shows up in dramatic fashion to rescue them. Even if they die at the hand of this evil, godless tyrant, they still believe in the God of their people.

Might these words have been written for us as well? The Book of Daniel is not only a chronicle of the lives of the exiles who lived in Babylon. It was written as a source of encouragement and instruction for those who find their faith in God challenged by the secular authorities of the world. Sometimes the rulers of the earth are aligned against God and God's ways. Sometimes the faithful find the precepts of their faith in conflict with the laws of the land. What should they do? How do they remain faithful? To which authority will they give their allegiance? To which god will they fall down and worship?

We have the luxury of living in a country that has enshrined the free exercise of religion in its laws. Rarely is the conflict between our faith and our government as serious as the conflict that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego faced, but that does not mean that our faith is not challenged or threatened by those in positions of authority. In the face of earthly power, how do we stand up for the kingdom that God has inaugurated with the humble, self-sacrificing, reign of Christ? How do we challenge those who attack the way of peace and love? How do we stand up for those whose voices have been silenced by a tyranny of irrational fear?

We respond in faith--faith like that of these three exiles. Their faith does not depend on God answering their prayer in a particular way. It is not defined by God's willingness to show up in the way that they demand or even in the way that they need. Their faith is not proven in the fiery furnace. It is proven in their willingness to offer themselves--their whole lives--to the uncompromising belief that God is God and that God's ways are the true source of life and hope. Will that be our stand? Will we let our faith be our strength even in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity? Will we trust that God will use our faithfulness to help establish God's kingdom more fully in this world even if it costs us everything? Will we believe in God and God's ways so completely that we will stand up for justice and peace until it comes or until it costs us our lives?

Triduum Sacrum

This post also appeared in The View, the parish newsletter for St. John's in Decatur, Alabama. To learn more about St. John's and to read the rest of the newsletter, click here.

As Holy Week approaches, preparations for the Triduum Sacrum are underway in churches all over the world. Although the Latin term for the three-day celebration of the Paschal mystery does not appear in our prayer book, it has become a fairly common way for Episcopalians to refer to the period that begins with the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday and ends with the conclusion of Easter Day. Like every congregation, we have our own way of celebrating the Triduum, but many of our traditions also unite us with all Christians who observe this three-day journey.

 

In Latin, the word triduum is a singular noun that means “three days.” In English, which cannot help but pluralize those words, we struggle to convey in language the unitary nature of that celebration, but, in not-so-subtle ways, the liturgy itself helps convey how those different services are united as one. As Leonel Mitchell, who in turn cites Ormonde Plater, notes in his Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and the Great Fifty Days, “the omission of the dismissal at the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday liturgies also serves to tie the liturgies of the Triduum together. In one sense it is a single liturgical act.”[1] Whether we feel it or not, therefore, the worship held during the Triduum is a single offering made to the Lord by the church that is punctuated only by prolonged periods of silent prayer.

 

The commemoration of the Last Supper on Thursday evening becomes the stripping of the altar as the church is laid bare in preparation for Good Friday. The next day, we gather in silence and begin our worship without the usual opening acclimation and, again, end the Good Friday liturgy without the customary dismissal. Similarly, the service for Holy Saturday takes place in a quiet, dark church without any particular words to delineate when the watch begins or when it concludes as the faithful gather at the Lord’s tomb. Sometime after sunset that night and before sunrise the next morning, the people reassemble to continue their uninterrupted watch during the Easter Vigil. Only after the lights have been turned on and the bells have begun to ring do we see how the mystery has unfolded all around us, and the celebration of the resurrection continues throughout the day, ending with the disciples’ journey down the Emmaus Road.

 

To see it all, however, you must begin on Thursday and continue your pilgrimage through the three days without deviating from the path that begins in the upper room and leads first to the garden, then to the high priest’s courtyard, then to Pilate’s headquarters, then up the street and out of the city to Golgotha, then to the nearby tomb, and then to the shadows of grief, where the we wait with the disciples until the first light of the miracle will reach us. Once the Triduum begins, it cannot be stopped. If you miss any part of it, however, the story is left unfinished. Like a symphony from which a movement has been cut, our carefully coordinated worship may reach its conclusion, but, if a piece of the Triduum is omitted, the celebration is incomplete.

 

One three-days-long service requires a considerable commitment from the whole parish. All of us—clergy, parish staff, flower guild, altar guild, bread guild, musicians, ushers, LEMs, lectors, acolytes, nursery workers, cleaning crew, and congregation—must offer ourselves to God in this exhausting act of worship. When we emerge from this sacred pilgrimage, we are supposed to feel that satisfying mixture of elation and fatigue that comes from an arduous journey. It is difficult, but I promise you that it is worth it. No one who completes the entire Truduum Sacrum is disappointed. Might you join us this year for the entire trip?

 

How might you prepare yourself for what lies ahead? Like any pilgrim embarking on a difficult trip, you must plan carefully for these three days, preparing yourself physically, mentally, and spiritually. Begin making space and time each day for extended periods of quiet—5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes of sitting undistractedly in the presence of God. Lighten your load by deciding which appointments and decisions need to be handled now and which ones can wait until after the journey. Study ahead for the trip you will be taking by reading the daily scripture lessons and accompanying meditations that our parishioners have written as well as the proper lessons for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, the Easter Vigil, Easter Day, and Easter Evening. Make a budget of how you will spend your time and how much you will eat during the trip. Will you need to rearrange your calendar to be present for all of the services? Will the experience be more meaningful if you eat more simply or even fast in anticipation of the journey? Consider with whom you might enjoy spending this time, and ask that person to join you for the pilgrimage or, perhaps, to celebrate with you when it is over.

 

There are moments in life when nothing else matters and all of the clutter falls away. Every year, the Triduum is one of those moments if we will let it take hold in our lives. It has the power to draw us into the presence of God, but it requires us to put everything else aside. Will we make this journey together? Prepare yourself for the road ahead. Prepare yourself to journey with our Lord.

---

[1] Lionel L Mitchell, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and the Great Fifty Days: A Ceremonial Guide (Boston, MA: Cowley Publications, 1996), 35.

Christ the King Sunday

Each year, on the Last Sunday after Pentecost, we hear the story of Jesus' crucifixion and celebrate the real kingship of God's Son. Instead of a golden crown, he wears a crown of thorns. Instead of reigning from a throne, he reigns in death on a cross. The confusion of images is a powerful and intentional way of reminding the world of its true king and the nature of God's reign. God reigns not in power but in weakness, not in pomp but in humility. Although there's never a bad time to hear that message, I'd argue that the right time to emphasize the kingship of Christ isn't in the fall but in the spring, when we shout "Hosanna!" to the one who rides into Jerusalem before changing our minds to shout "Crucify him!" to the one who stands before Pilate.

This Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion, we not only admire the ironic, upside-down, majesty-in-humiliation kingship of Christ from the safety of our pews, we feel it; we participate in it; we enact it with our words. More than any other gospel account, Matthew makes clear the connections between the events in Jesus' final days and the prophecies of the Old Testament. As we hear this version, we cannot help but notice how certain we are that the one who comes to us "humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey" is the long-awaited king. This is truly David's son. The vassal of Rome and pretend-king who occupies the throne, Herod Antipater, makes a mockery of God's anointed kingship. As Jesus enters the holy city, the crowd's enthusiasm gets the best of it. They allows themselves to hope that the arrival of a prophet and miracle worker like Jesus of Nazareth, rumored to be a descendent of David, could mean that a real king has come to Zion. They know that two kings cannot coexist, and they anticipate a showdown between the representatives of Rome, the new Babylon, and this rebellious rabbi.

But expectations and reality do not always line up, and, when it is time for Jesus to fight Herod and Pilate and secure the freedom of God's people, Jesus tells his disciple to put his sword in its sheath. "Friend, do what you are here to do," he says to Judas, willingly offering himself to those who have come to arrest him. His journey to a kingship of humiliation is voluntary, and the people abandon his cause. Crowds like a underdog, but they turn against a loser with remarkable rapidity. We would rather have Barabbas, a rebel who fought against Rome and lost, than a leader who will lie down without a fight. "Crucify him!" we shout when asked what we would have Rome do with Jesus. He has let us down. He is not our king. Yet this is what he came for--to establish God's reign on earth. And that reign is established in a king who is crucified and laid lifelessly in a tomb.

There's so much to say, so much to do, so much to feel on Palm Sunday. The preacher cannot capture it all in a sermon, but the good news is that she doesn't have to. Let the drama of the day speak for itself, but don't let the familiarity of an annual reenactment hide the magnitude of what that drama says to us again this year. We want God's king to champion our cause, but that is only possible if our cause is God's cause, and God's cause is the magnification of the helpless, the rescue of the destitute, and the elevation of the lowly. Let the totality of our rejection of God's reign be manifest in our words, "Crucify him!" Then, let God pick up the pieces and show us another way.

Our True Hope: Victory Over Death

April 2, 2017 – The 5^th Sunday in Lent

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

© 2017 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here.

 

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Martha and Mary both say those words to Jesus, and I hear them in my mind as the sorrowful cry of sisters whose beloved brother didn’t have to die. If only Jesus had just gotten there a little sooner. If only he hadn’t dawdled when he got word that his friend Lazarus was sick. If only he had reacted with a sense of urgency when the message from Lazarus’ sisters had reached him. It didn’t have to be this way. The sisters’ grief was that particularly sharp and agonizing combination of anger and frustration and powerlessness and loss, and I can’t help but hear the pain of that complex emotion in their words.

Grief like that makes us uncomfortable. That’s true of any situation over which we are powerless. We don’t like it when someone we love sobs uncontrollably. We become uneasy when there is nothing we can do to comfort someone close to us—when there are no words we can say that will make that person feel better. I think that’s why these words make me so uneasy. The middle of this lesson—the part where Martha tells Jesus that her brother would not have died if he had gotten there sooner—is one of the five gospel lessons appointed for funerals, and I always cringe a little bit when a family picks this one for their loved-one’s burial. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Martha says to Jesus, and it raises for me (and I worry for the grieving family) unanswerable questions like, “Why did my brother or my father or my wife or my daughter have to die?” and “If God has the power to heal people, why didn’t he heal the person who matters to me?” and “Why does God answer some prayers and not others? Why does God give miracles in some cases but not in others?” Martha and Mary’s question reminds us that it didn’t have to be this way, but it is, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

The sisters’ words are simultaneously a confession and a condemnation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” They recognize in Jesus the power to save their sick brother. It’s a remarkable thing and, I suppose, quite a burden to have that kind of reputation, and Jesus has come by it honestly. Throughout John’s gospel account, he has cast out various demons and cured many diseases. He had even given mobility to a man who had been lame for thirty-eight years and, as we heard last Sunday, had granted sight to a man who had been born blind. “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind,” the man reminded us. Even the crowd wondered aloud why this opportunity for healing had been missed: “Couldn’t the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Everyone knew that Jesus had that kind of awesome power. There was no sickness, no condition, no circumstance so serious that Jesus could not reverse it. But not if he didn’t get there in time.

Dead is dead, or at least that’s what everyone thought. Although they didn’t have CPR back then, resuscitations weren’t unheard of, but four-days dead is another story. You might as well wheel a corpse into an oncologist’s office and ask whether the cancer that killed him can be cured. No one can heal a dead man. The only one who has the power to give life is the same one who has the power to take it—God himself. Jesus might be the most powerful healer on the planet, but he doesn’t have that kind of power, does he? He isn’t God, right?

Unlike her meditative sister, Martha follows up her words with an instinctive invitation to more: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask him.” It was truly unfathomable, so Martha didn’t even know how to ask Jesus to bring her brother back from the dead, but her faith in him left open the possibility that even death might not be the end of the story. When Jesus announced that Martha’s brother would rise again, Martha assumed that he meant on the last day, but Jesus had something else in mind. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he said to her. “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?” he asked her. “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

But, other than a vague, non-specific hope, what did that mean for her? What good would that do in this particular moment? As John retells this story, he wants us to see that Jesus was in control from the very beginning. It was no accident that he was delayed. He waited long enough for his friend to die because he wanted Martha and Mary and his disciples and us to see what he could do even in the face of death. “Roll away the stone,” he told them. “But, Lord!” Martha said to him, “He has been dead for four days. Already there is a stench!” And Jesus replied, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” After the stone was removed, Jesus looked up into heaven, said a quiet prayer to his Father, and then cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” And then it happened: the dead man walked right out of the tomb, his body and face still wrapped with the linen burial cloths.

And then what? Then what happened? Naturally, Lazarus and his sisters threw a party. God had turned their sorrow into joy. Their weeping had become dancing. So they called together their friends and extended family to celebrate this miracle. The festivities lasted for days, and the story was told with enthusiasm and conviction long after that. For years, people in the village would come up and slap Lazarus on the back, begging him to tell them his miraculous story once again. Sightseers travelled from all over to get a glimpse at the empty tomb and the family home, and, maybe if they were lucky, they would bump into one of the three siblings or another person who was there that day and saw firsthand the dead man come walking out of the tomb. For the three of them, each day felt like a gift. Lazarus had another chance at life. But eventually his age caught up with him. Like the rest of us, he, too, got old, and his sisters got old as well. And, then, one day, his tomb wasn’t empty any more. Four days went past and then four more. This time, the stone stayed right where it was supposed to stay, and over time Lazarus’ body decomposed—ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

You see, even if the miracle does happen, even if the prayers do work, even if the cure is found, eventually the result is exactly same. Death comes for us all. Even Jesus’ closest friend, the one at whose grave the Son of God wept, is not immune to death. And that is where the true miracle of this story is to be found. That is the point of this gospel lesson—not merely that Jesus has the power to bring someone back to life but that Lazarus’ revivification is a sign to us that Jesus has the power to defeat death itself. Lazarus is just a foretaste of the victory to come. He is merely a signpost on the road that leads to Jerusalem and the cross and tomb that wait for Jesus.

That is our true hope—not that our surgeon might get it all, not that the margins will be clean, not that the tumor will respond to radiation or chemo, not that we will beat the odds and live longer than the doctors predicted, but that even death itself is not the end of our story. In Jesus Christ, God has won for us the ultimate victory. Jesus and Lazarus and Martha and Mary show us what it means to believe in “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” We see that death no longer has power over those who believe in him. In Jesus, we believe not in the one who has the power to forestall death but in the one who has the power to defeat it once and for all. Don’t look to God for a way to cheat death. Instead, embrace it as one who believes in Jesus and believes that death is not the end.