Ezekiel 37:1-3(4-10)11-14
Romans 6:16-23
John 11:(1-17)18-44
Psalm 130
This past Monday at St. Stephen's we held a funeral and celebration of the life of Lura Elizabeth Huntington Webb. She was 84 years old when she died and she left a legacy of devotion, faithfulness and commitment to her much loved Episcopal Church.
The previous Friday I attended the funeral of a 32 year old person whose untimely death raised more haunting questions than answers. It was a very sad and difficult funeral for anyone to get through let alone his parents. Unlike Laura, Jon was unchurched.
All of us were somewhat like Martha and Mary in the Gospel story telling Jesus "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." This is quite an unusual statement. It combines a remarkable degree of faith with a hint of blame. If Jesus is really so powerful, then why NOT hold him responsible for the times and ways when he doesn't use that power? And oftentimes we do hold God responsible.
We blame God for accidents, for the World Trade Center attacks, for murders, killings, disabling conditions and diseases. How often have you heard - "It was God's will." Bad things aren't God's will! At least not in any simple sense.
In Rabbi Harold Kushner's book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People, he writes about this very thing coming at it from a different angle.
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Some
people will find the hand of God behind everything that happens. I visit a woman in the hospital whose car was run into by a drunken driver running a red light. Her vehicle was totally demolished, but miraculously she escaped with only two cracked ribs and a few superficial cuts from flying glass. She looks up at me from her hospital bed and says, "Now I know there is a God. If I could come out of that alive and in one piece, it must be because He is looking out for me up there." I smile and keep quiet, running the risk of letting her think that I agree with her (what rabbi would be opposed to belief in God?), because it is not the time or place for a theology seminar. But my mind goes back to a funeral I conducted two week earlier, for a young husband and father who died in a similar drunk-driver collision; and I remember another case, a child killed by a hit-and-run driver while roller-skating; and all the newspaper accounts of lives cut short in automobile accidents. The woman before me may believe that she is alive because God wanted her to survive, and I am not inclined to talk her out of it, but what would she or I say to those other families? That they were less worthy that she, less valuable in God's sight? That God wanted them to die at that particular time and manner, and did not choose to spare them. |
Lazarus is dead but Jesus tells Martha and Mary, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even through they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."
Jesus waits two days before returning to Bethany to see Lazarus. In the meantime Lazarus dies. Jesus acts only from God. He doesn't immediately respond to others' urgings. He reveals God's glory on God's time!
Upon his arrival at the burial place, Jesus was greatly disturbed by all the sadness, weeping and tears he saw from the people there. Jesus himself wept.
Surrounded by this grieving and weeping, Jesus prayed to the Father - and said. "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you would always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."
He then cried with a loud voice - "Lazarus, come out!" As Lazarus came out, Jesus turned to the community of gathered friends and relatives and said, "Unbind him and let him go."
With this call to Lazarus to come out, Jesus asked the community to have a healing response... he asks them to unbind him, let him go free.
We - you and me- are called today on March 17, 2002, to release others from death including ourselves. We are asked to unbind others and reach out in our communities, to invite people to come to St. Stephen's (Good Samaritan) on a Sunday, to break out of the "frozen chosen" mold and discuss our faith publicly. We are asked to give the "gift of life" to others through our belief in the abiding presence of Christ.
You ask how can we do this - we're older now and tired or we're too busy with our own lives and don't have time to do these things Well, there's one thing you can do and that is to teach reading to someone who doesn't know how to read. You can do this through your school district's Community Education program. All it takes is time and for some of us we have lots of it to spare.
Reach out to Alcoholics Anonymous in Paynesville ans Sauk Centre and offer them meeting space in the Guild/Parish Hall. Reach out to the hungry and contribute to your local Food Shelf as Good Samaritan is already doing.
I could go on and on with too many overwhelming things to do. Just choose one thing to do and commit to it. And for ourselves if we are depressed, lonely, or overcome with grief and despair sometimes, let us choose Life - a New Life, like Lazarus' - that comes from Jesus' life and our own prayer life. A life of light - a life of hope and love for those around us.
For me, Jesus and a new life can be experienced by anybody today. Jesus is with me as he is with you. I know this through prayer and my experience of him. In the words of my favorite hymn -
He is also very tender minded, crying and suffering with us on the way to that joy as he was with Lura Webb and the 32 year old man who died last week very unexpectedly. Won't you allow Jesus to be part of your "life journey?" Perhaps he's calling you to do something very risky with the rest of your life to reach out to others so that you may say with Thomas - "Let us also go that we may die with him." Now, don't you want to live in Him, with him, and by him for the rest of your life? It could well prove to be the life you have been looking for a long time.
Amen.