RAISING LAZARUS

(Preached on Sunday, March 9, 2008)

When he had said this he cried with a loud voice, ALazarus, come out!@  The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.  Jesus said to them, AUnbind him, and let him go.@        -John 11:43-44

 

The smell of death hung heavy in the air.  Not the actual stench of decaying flesh, but the oppressive, foreboding sense of grief that engulfs any gathering of family and friends when a loved one has died.  Lazarus was dead.  Four days now.  It had begun to seem like an eternity.  The sounds of death were all around.  The hushed whispers of private conversations.  The gentle sobbing of Mary, his sister.  The weeping and wailing of the professional mourners outside the house.  The long periods of silence, following half-hearted, half-spoken words of consolation.  Lazarus was dead.  It was four days now.  All hope seemed gone.  The old superstition that the soul hung around the tomb for three days in hopes of some way of being rejoined to the body, no longer even a possible long-shot hope.  This was the fourth day.  No form of reunion was possible now.  Lazarus was dead.  He body wrapped in bandages.  His face covered with a cloth.  His body anointed with herbs and spices and creams to try to preserve it.  The stone rolled into place in front of the entrance to the tomb.  Lazarus was dead.

 

The smell of death hangs heavy in the air.  But we don=t smell it, for we are Lazarus.  It hangs in the streets of Baghdad where in spite of over 4,300 U.S. soldiers dead and 5 years of combat and billions of dollars spent, violence and near-anarchy still reign supreme, as evidenced by 68 more innocent Iraqi civilians being killed in a suicide bombing of a marketplace on Friday.  After all this loss there seems no way out of this tomb of death.

 

The smell of death hangs heavy in the air.  But we don=t smell it, for we are Lazarus, bound in the bandages of grief that threaten to overwhelm and cripple us daily.  Author Edgar Jackson poignantly describes grief when he writes: Grief is a young widow trying to raise her three children, alone.  Grief is the man so filled with shocked uncertainty and confusion that he strikes out at the nearest person.  Grief is a mother walking daily to a nearby cemetery to stand quietly and alone a few minutes before going about the tasks of the day.  She knows that part of her is in the cemetery, just as part of her is in her daily work.  Grief is the silent, knife-like terror and sadness that comes a hundred times a day, when you start to speak to someone who is no longer there.  Grief is the emptiness that comes when you eat alone after eating with another for many years.  Grief is teaching yourself to go to bed without saying good night to the one who has died.  Grief is helpless wishing tah things were different when you know they are not and never will be again.  Grief is a whole cluster of adjustments, apprehensions, and uncertainties that strike life in its forward progress and make it difficult to redirect the energies of life.

 

The smell of death hangs heavy in the air.  But we don=t smell it for we are Lazarus trapped in our own tombs of death like a maze unable to find our way out.  And so CEO=s of mortgage companies going bankrupt due to so many sub-prime mortgages failing still receive million dollar bonuses and severance packages, while average workers are losing their homes, losing their construction jobs, losing their way of life.  And home prices are stagnant or falling, homes are not selling, pensions are being affected and the economy is in the dumps.  Everywhere we turn seems to be the wrong turn and we face one stone wall after another.

 

The smell of death hangs heavy in the air.  But we don=t smell it, for we are all Lazarus.  Bound in our own forms of death.  Depression and anxiety from loss or immobility: the professional realizing after all these years there is little gratification after all in his work; two persons facing the possibility that their marriage as it has evolved cannot continue; parents enduring the seemingly endless disappointment in their troubled child; the adolescent struggling to find reason for hope.  We are all Lazarus.  We know his reality all too well.

 

But death was not the final word for Lazarus.  Lying in that cold tomb with the smell of death heavy in the air.  Wrapped like a mummy, bound so that he could not move.  From a long way off, he hears a voice calling to him: LAZARUS, COME OUT!  A voice so compelling even his dead body could not help but respond.  A voice full of the power of life and light.  A voice capable of breaking into the silent tomb of death, splitting the stillness that shrouded his eardrums.  A voice with power to break the chains of death, unlock the cell of the grave, break down the walls erected by sinfulness. 

 

Jesus was the source of that voice.  Jesus, his friend who did not come while he was in bed ill.  Jesus, his friend who seemed to have come too late.  Jesus, who had that clear channel of communication, that power-link with God, the Creator and Sustainer of life.  Jesus, who understood full well that his mission was to release the captives and set the prisoners free.  Jesus, who said to them, AUnbind him, and let him go.@

 

It is Jesus who holds the power of life and resurrection.  It is Jesus who calls to each one of us, we present day Lazarus=, saying, ACOME OUT!@  (I imagine that one reason Jesus shouted at Lazarus that day was in order to make sure that he is speaking loud enough even for us, listening in on this scene.)  So he shouts: ACome out of your tombs!  Come out of death!  Be unbound and walk free.@  He is offering us the way out of the mazes of death in which we are trapped, lost and wandering, unable to find our way out, our way to hope, our way to life.  He is calling us to the light and life.  He is offering us a way that unbinds us as we learn to live in community, with the help and aid and support of one another, of other Lazarus= who are also unbound and set free.  He is calling us to leave behind the life of death, suffocating and binding us.  Walk with me in eternal life he says.  Eternal life that is not just a future reward of creedal belief.  But eternal life that is the revolutionary change in you in the present.  A transformation that takes place when you die to the old way of doing things and are raised with Jesus to a new life in the Spirit of God.  A new life liberated from the fear of death.  A new life liberated from the anxiety of failure.  A new life liberated from the idolatries of the world, especially the false worship of war and money.

 

Instead, Jesus offers us a new way.  The way of loving enemies, praying for enemies, forgiving enemies, doing good to our enemies, overcoming evil with good.  This is simply living the Resurrection Life of the eternal kingdom of God.  This is putting into practice the reality of Christ=s table.  Does it work?  Is it practical?  I once had a conversation with a business man who declared: AMy biggest challenge is to get my people to want to be a success.@  I asked him what he meant by that and he said: ANew customers require more work.  It=s much easier just to keep house in the company, hunker down with the folk that we have.  Keep old customers happy rather than get to know new customers.  You will find, despite what they claim, that many businesses develop a prejudice against new customers.  Success in business can be a pain in the neck.@  It=s not a matter of whether it is practical.  It is a matter of whether we want to embrace life; whether we want to be a success. 

 

Where do you see defeat and death?  What new life is God waiting to bring about there?  Defeat comes in long-held anger, resentment, and bitterness.  New life comes in forgiveness, letting go, moving on.  Death comes in incurable physical illness.  New life comes in healing of the spirit.  Defeat comes in the loss of a well-loved job.  New life comes in skills shared in another creative arena.  Death comes in the loss of a spouse.  New life comes the day it feels good to laugh again.