The Death, the resurrection, and the life

Preached at Anchorage Presbyterian Church on March 24, 1996 Scripture: Psalm 130; John 11:1-45

I.  The Death:

    Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD,
      Lord, hear my voice!
    Let your ears be attentive
      to the voice of my supplication.

    Russel Baker, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote in 1982 about his first encounter with death as a young child in a small town, and his towns ritual response to death:

"Your father's dead," Kenneth said.

It was like an accusation that my father had done something criminal and I came to my father's defense.

"He is not," I said.

But of course they didn't know the situation.  I started to explain.  He was sick.  In the hospital.  My mother was bringing him home right now...

"He's dead," Kenneth said.

"He is not either!" I shouted.

"He is too," Ruth Lee said.  "They want you to come home right away."

I started running up the road screaming, "He is not!"  It was a weak argument.  They had the evidence as I hurried home crying, "He is not...hi is not...he is not..."  I was almost certain before I got there that he was.

And I was right.  Arriving at the hospital that morning, my mother was told he had died at 4:00 a.m. in "acute diabetic coma."  He was 33 years old.  When I came running home, my mother was still not back from Frederick, but the women had descended on our house, as women there did in such times, and were already busy with the housecleaning and cooking that were Morrisonville's ritual response to death.  With a thousand tasks to do, they had no time to handle a howling five-year-old.  I was sent to the opposite end of town to Bessie Scott's house.  Poor Bessie Scott.  All afternoon she listened patiently as a saint while I sat in her kitchen and cried myself out.  For the first time I thought seriously about God.  Between sobs I told Bessie that if God could do things like this to people, then God was hateful and I had no more use for him.

Bessie told me about the peace of Heaven and the joy of being among the angels and the happiness of my father who was already there.  This argument failed to quiet my rage.  "God loves us just like his own children," Bessie said.  "If God loves me why did he make my father die?"

Bessie said I would understand someday, but she was only partly right.  That afternoon, though, I couldn't have phrased it this way then, I decided that God was a lot less interested in people than anybody in Morrisonville was willing to admit.  That day I decided that God was not entirely to be trusted.  

It seems that up to that point of his life, Russel Baker had expected a lot more from a God whom he had heard so much about.  It seems that Russel Baker needed more from a God whom he had, up to that point, trusted.

I don't think that it is a contradiction, or a betrayal, to my faith to admit that death has a very real power in this world.  People die.  People that we care about die.  People that I have cared about seem to have been ripped away from this life.  That's power.  Death also has a very real power to cause people, even Christians, to question the reality God's genuine love for people; as illustrated by Russel Baker's story. Death has power in this world; and quite frankly, I'm weary of Death.  I agree with the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay who wrote of death, "I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.  I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for death."   It appears that death is a powerful force, that even Christians have to encounter.

    Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD,
      Lord, hear my voice!
    Let your ears be attentive
      to the voice of my supplications.

I was twenty-five years old; very new to ministry.  In fact, it had only been two or three months since I had decided to go into the ministry.  God had been knocking hard the previously few years, and I decided to stop fighting and answer my call to ministry.  I had almost a year to wait until I would start seminary.  My home church found plenty for me to do while I waited to leave for seminary.  I didn't know where I would be going yet, I only knew that I would be going.  One of the things that my church found for me to do was to help out in the youth program.  They needed adults to help out with the Jr. High youth and I figured, what the heck, I need experience in ministry, I'll do it.  I was more afraid of doing youth work then I was when I started here; and, over the following months, I learned a lot about myself, ministry, and death.

On a youth group outing, a 13 year-old boy, named Matt, drowned in a swimming pool.  No splashes...no screams...he was swimming one minute...he was dead the next.  Now up to this point in my life I believed that bad things could not happen during church events.  Surely God had a little more style than that.  Yet, in spite of this belief, a 13 year-old boy died.

It was as if God had hit a switch and Matt, who up to that point had been the most alive kid that I had ever met, was dead.  One of the other adult youth leaders was a doctor, a cardiac specialist, he immediately began to administer CPR...but Matt remained dead.  The Paramedics arrived and applied all kinds of equipment and work on him all the way to the hospital...nothing.  The doctors did all that they could...nothing.  It seemed that the only one who could have done anything about it was noticeably absent.  I expected more from a God whom I had just given my life to a few months before.  I needed more from the God whom I had rearranged my plans and my future.  I felt that God had abandoned us, abandoned me, and I let God know it.  If God would only have done something, then Matt would not have died.  I felt, the entire church felt, like Martha and Mary must have felt.

    Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD,
      Lord, hear my voice!
    Let your ears be attentive
      to the voice of my supplications.

    I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
      and in his word I hope;
    my soul waits for the Lord
      more than those who watch
        for the morning,
      more than those who watch
        for the morning.

Mary and Martha were on good terms with Jesus.  They were friends with him.  Jesus made visits to their house; they fed him; they listened to him; they believed in him; they trusted him.  They had a brother named Lazarus, whom Jesus also knew and loved.  But one cruel day, Lazarus became ill, and in those days, any illness was a serious one.  Martha and Mary sent word to Jesus, "He whom you love is ill."  Surely Jesus would drop everything and rush to their side.  Lazarus was a friend.  Jesus dropped everything to go to the aid of people that he did not even know; surely he would go to them in their time of need.

    I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
      and in his word I hope;
    my soul waits for the Lord
      more than those who watch
        for the morning,
      more than those who watch
         for the morning.

Yet, surprisingly, Jesus did not rush to Lazarus' side.  Jesus did not do much of anything. He stayed where he was at for two more days; and Lazarus died...What must have been going through the minds of Martha and Mary?  Perhaps they began to think that God was a lot less interested in people than anyone in Judea was willing to admit.  Maybe they decided that God was not entirely to be trusted.  Remember, they don't know the end of the story, to them Lazarus died, Jesus was nowhere to be found, and that seemed to be that.


II.  The Resurrection:

    O Israel, hope in the LORD!
      For with the LORD there is
         steadfast love,
      and with him is great power to
         redeem...

When Jesus arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.  This is an important statement.  During the time of Jesus, there was a popular Jewish belief that the soul hovered around a dead body for three days hoping to again enter the body.  After the third day, when the soul saw that the face had began to change color, it left the body for good.  Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.  This underscored the finality and the reality of Lazarus' death.

When Martha met Jesus, she made it very clear that she was disappointed in him.  She was struggling with her belief in Jesus and his apparent neglect.  I believe that she expected better from a Lord whom she had given so much.  Mary, also, made her disappointment know to Jesus.  Both told him, "Lord, if you had been here, My brother would not have died."  Death appeared to have all the power in their situation.

Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." And, to hammer the point home, Jesus asked to be taken to the grave and he raised Lazarus from the dead.  And John tells us that because of this, many of the people who had been there believed in him. 

    O Israel, hope in the Lord!
      For with the Lord there is
        steadfast love,
      and with him is great power to
        redeem...

I went to Matt's funeral.  I was devastated.  I felt guilty; I was sure that I could have done something to save Matt if I only had thought of it.  Since I was one of the leaders, I felt responsible for Matt's death.  And Up to the point of the funeral, I thought that Matt's dying was the hardest thing that I had ever experienced.  I was wrong; the hardest was facing his parents at the funeral.  I had never met them before.  I hurt, and I knew that even as badly as I hurt, they hurt more.  And I felt as if I had, in some way, caused it.  I eventually got in the line...I remember shaking the father's hand...introducing myself...looking at his feet...Then, as I took his mother's hand, I exploded with tears and I kept apologizing over and over...and that woman, who hurt more than I could ever know, put her arms around me...and held me...and told me that it was not my fault...it just happened...and she held me as I cried in her arms...Matt was still very much dead, but somehow, in spite of that fact, I experienced the resurrection in that moment when I was in his mother's arms.

The resurrection is not merely some future day when all the dead people come back to life. The resurrection is that little, seemingly minuscule piece of hope that arises out of even the most tragic and painful experiences.  I do not have to wait until I die to know what it feels like to be raised from the dead; I experienced it.  Somehow, in spite of what had happened to Matt; in spite of the pain and the questions that everyone felt; in spite of all that, my faith survived and even grew.  That is the power that Jesus has over death.  Yes, Jesus can raise the dead; yes, Jesus was raised from the dead; and don't get me wrong, these are very important; but, the most important thing for me is that Jesus removed that death from within me.  Because of my faith in Jesus Christ, there is no harm without hope; there is no sorrow without solace; there is no death without resurrection.


III.  The Life:

Ironically, if I had never been called to ministry, I would not have experienced the pain of Matt's death; but because of that pain, I have been able to be present when others have experienced similar pain.  Christians are not immune to the suffering in the world; on the contrary, Christians are more in touch with it. It is in the midst of suffering and death, and despair that Christians work.  It is in the midst of a suffering world that the Church has been called to mission.  It is in the midst of a world filled with death that the Church has been called to proclaim life.  It is in the midst of a world familiar with despair that the Church has been called to minister.  The life that Christians live is a response to the grace that Christians have received.

Faith in Jesus is not merely about eternal life in heaven; faith in Jesus is about life.  Life in its most glorious and life at its most ghastly.  The Christian is not guaranteed an easy and prosperous life.  A Christian is promised life, and life more abundant; I can promise you that some of that abundant life will hurt.  But I can also promise you that some of that abundant life will be pretty darn amazing.

Next week we will encounter once again the highs of Palm Sunday and the lows of Maunday Thursday and Good Friday.  We will see once again the pain of betrayal and death and the joy of resurrection.  As we once again encounter Holy Week and Easter, and as we live each day, may we be ever aware of the resurrections that happen daily in our lives that give us hope, even when our faith seems to be lacking.  For the Good news of the Gospel is that not even death can overcome the life that we have been given through Jesus Christ, who experienced abandonment, betrayal, harassment, mistreatment, and death on a cross; who experienced all the pain that this world has to offer and Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, and through his resurrection Christians are not only given the assurance of life in the next world; Christians are given the assurance of life in this world.

The death reminds us of the preciousness and brevity of human life. The resurrection offers us hope in the face of hopelessness.  The life is the response to the hope and the grace that we have received through Jesus Christ, who lives in us all.

     O Israel, hope in the LORD!
      For with the LORD there is
        steadfast love,
      and with him is great power to redeem...

 Amen.