5 Lent A
March 9, 2008
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45
One of the people I most want to visit with when I take my place at the heavenly banquet is Lazarus….because he died twice. Technically, that may not be so rare these days. I hear stories all the time about people who were clinically dead for a short time maybe during surgery or a heart attack. Then, thanks to good medical intervention they were resuscitated and brought back to the life they nearly left. I even witnessed something like that as a kid when a boy about my age at the time drowned, or nearly drowned, in the pool at
But unlike those stories John tells us Lazarus got sick and died and was buried. His body was sealed up in the tomb for four days. There could have been no question that he was dead by the time Jesus got there. John tells us Jesus raised Lazarus from death to life. But it was to an earthly life which meant he would have to die again. One reason this story is so significant to the Gospel of Christ is as I said last week, what we experience influences what and how we see.
Jesus calling Lazarus from death in the dark of the tomb to life in the light of day, in the presence of his grieving sisters and many other witnesses gave them all an experience of resurrection so that when Jesus was raised from death to life the community of believers had already experienced at least one resurrection. That made it possible for them to see their risen Lord Jesus with their own eyes and to believe what they saw.
What I want to ask Lazarus at the banquet is about his life between the first resurrection and the second one. What changed about his life on the earth after he passed through death? It’s a basic tenet of Christianity that by the death and resurrection of Jesus we are saved from death for life, eternal life, abundant life, as Jesus called it. What we have been saved FOR is just as important as what we have been saved FROM.
We Christians believe that the end of our earthly lives is a temporary death. As we say during celebrations of Holy Eucharist to commemorate the dead, "For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens." (
We say that we are saved from death because of our sins through the sacrament of baptism. Through the waters of baptism we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection. We die to sin and are raised to new life, eternal life made eternal through the Holy Spirit. That’s the life we live now, and the life that will continue after our bodies die. When we are saved from temporary death, like when we survive cancer or a heart attack or stroke or a bad accident, even a tornado, fire, or flood, there’s no question in our minds what we have been saved from. We know what death of the body looks like. We spend a lot of our lives trying to keep it off in the future somewhere. The question is, if we have been saved from temporary death, the death of the body, what have we been saved for? Now. In this life. On this earth. Some of us have come face to face with that question.
What did Lazarus do with his life between the time he walked out of the tomb and when he was put back in again? After he was raised from the dead the first time was the fear of death a constant companion until he died again? Did he craft a safe life in response to that fear? Did his resurrection change the way he looked at his life on the earth? Was it more precious to him having lost it and been restored to it? Did he trust God more after he was raised from the dead the first time? Was he the only one not consumed by grief when Jesus died? The only one capable of understanding what Jesus meant when he said to Martha "I am the resurrection
We say that by virtue of our baptisms we belong to God. We live in the promise of the resurrection and we are heirs to the
There’s probably not anyone here who has not been to a wake or a visitation where both life and death are present in the same room at the same time. People come to show respect for the person whose earthly life is over. Maybe to offer a word of comfort to those who are grieving or at least a hug if words don’t come. It is common that the people gathered there haven’t seen each other for awhile. They catch up with each other and share what’s going on in their lives. They remember together.
I’ve never been to one where there wasn’t some tears and some laughter. There’s nothing more affirming to life than laughter. (I apologize if this seems insensitive to anyone who is currently grieving) but we sure had a good laugh at the visitation for my mother. She didn’t even want us to have one but it seemed right to us, so we did it anyway. She ordered her casket closed and we honored her wishes on that. So it set over in a corner with flowers on and around it.
One of our extended family members, (every family has one….a dear woman but over the years she’d lost her sense of occasion…she was thrilled to be there she just didn’t know why…) she walked right up to the casket with a framed picture of our mother on top of it. She paused a minute to look at the picture and then commented that it was a nice picture of our Mama but she just couldn’t help noticing that the piano it was setting on was just exquisite. In fact, in her whole life she’d never seen one quite like that before. One of my sister’s sweet children whispered in her ear that it wasn’t a piano in the corner, it was Grandma. She made a graceful exit soon after that. But the story made its way through the room and filled it with sounds of life and laughter right smack in the presence of death. The sounds of life overcame the silence of death.
That’s what you and I have been saved for through the death and resurrection of Our Lord. So that we can see the same splendid pattern of life, death, life that Lazarus saw and in seeing it have the courage to live for the One who gave us that life; to live all our days on the earth as fully as we can, knowing that for us death is truly swallowed up by life.
