Life to the Dead (Lent 5A)

Life to the Dead
Homily delivered the Fifth Sunday of Lent (Lent 5A RCL)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
29 March 2020; 10:00 a.m. Ante-Communion with Hymns

Recorded and posted on facebook.com/trinityashland 
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45; Psalm 130

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Elena and I had a major trial in our faith just after we were married while we just starting our own family. We had become friends with a young couple. After several years, they were finally able to get pregnant and had a beautiful little baby boy. After a month or so, though, it became apparent that sometime was wrong. He had been born with a genetic defect: the upper layers of his skin were not fully connected with the deeper layers. If you touched him slightly on the arm, it quickly would turn into a large blister, would easily burst and become infected. There was little that the doctors could do. Despite two months in intensive care, the baby’s body was covered with second-degree burns.  His parents were not allowed to touch him, so they could not even comfort him as he screamed his little life out in agony. During the ordeal, we prayed. Our friends prayed. And the baby suffered and slowly died.

It is not the only time in my life when I witnessed the unbearable, wondering if God existed at all, or if so, how he could be good and loving.   My mother-in-law, after a long life of hard work and joyful service, deserved, to our minds at least, the golden years with her children and grandchildren.  But cancer robbed her of that, and us of her.  My father, whose faith in God, love for others, and joy in living was such a sign for me as a young man of God’s love, also did not get what appeared his just reward.  Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease robbed him, bit by bit, of his personality and memory, and left his sweetheart, my mother, bereft and abandoned.    

Life can seem at times to be a string of scenes where God, if Good, seems absent or impotent, or if Almighty and ever-present, seems to be a monster.  There is no way to get our heads, let alone our hearts, around it.  Maybe the problem is the term “Almighty.”  A much better translation, I think, would be “All Nurturing.”  The point is not that God can do anything, but that there is no situation so bad that God cannot help. 

Many of us have been praying these last few weeks, hoping that God would stem the tide of the pandemic.  The infection rates have begun to spike, as predicted.  Entering into physical distancing and isolation and quarantine, we have seen our old way of life undone.  Many in our community now have gone into self-quarantine. With the shortage of test kits, most can’t even know if we actually have the virus.  But we are beginning to see cases both here and in Medford.  We have seen our world’s economy devastated, and the livelihoods of millions destroyed.  Our local economy in large part has gone by the boards.  We pray and still hope against hope that we and those we love will be spared worse.  But we cannot see into the future.  If deaths from the pandemic begin to appear in our community and among those we love, we will feel the sense of betrayal all the more.    

From the beginning, people of faith have had to deal with unfulfilled hope, and apparent abandonment.  In today’s Gospel, both Mary and Martha separately confront Jesus about his delay in responding to their plea to come and help their brother Lazarus:  “If you had been here, he would not have died.”  When Martha asks it, she adds hopefully “Even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” She does not dare ask him to raise her brother from the dead; she has already been disappointed enough in Jesus.  Jesus’s answer, “Your brother will rise again,” draws an ironic, almost bitter reply from Martha, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection—on the last day!” She leaves unsaid what she is feeling, “But that doesn’t do us much good here and now, does it?” 

Jesus replies, “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. Do you believe this?” She replies, timidly, “Yes, Lord, I believe”—not that her brother will come forth again—but “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”  She trusts Jesus, but is too beaten down by grief to hope for anything concrete for her brother.  

When Mary in her turn confronts Jesus about his delay and lack of help, she is reduced to weeping.  Jesus does not reply.  Observing this scene of grief he himself is deeply moved.  The Greek says simply “his insides were put into turmoil.”  And when they show him the place where the body lies, he begins weeping.

So the bystanders say, “See how he loved him!” But others take it as an occasion to doubt Jesus: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

When confronted with horror, we respond with despair, or sometimes with what seems to be unwarranted persevering trust.  At other times we blame others, questioning their motives or abilities.  We’ve seen that in this current crisis as well. 

But then in the story, Jesus performs a sign pointing to the mystery of God being present here in Jesus, this Jesus who weeps and suffers along side us. It is his last great sign before the cross and its inevitable sequel: coming forth victorious from the tomb. 

He raises from the dead his friend Lazarus, something that Martha hoped for, but was afraid to ask.  He raises him not to life eternal and transformed.  Remember that, Lazarus’ resurrection on the last day would not have comforted Martha, who wanted her brother back here and now.  Jesus gives Martha and Mary what they want, and brings Lazarus back from the grave to this mortal life.

The author of the Gospel of John tells us: “...these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through faith in him you may have life” (John 20:31).  As this story tells us, it matters little whether it is life here and now or life on the last day. 

In Dostoyevsky’s great novel Crime and Punishment, this story plays a central role.  Young radical Raskolnikov has committed a murder and theft to even, as he thinks, the score of social injustice. But he suffers from guilt and self-loathing from it.  He meets a young prostitute, Sonya, forced into sex work to feed her younger siblings.  She herself once suffered from guilt and self-loathing.  At the main turning point in the novel, she tells Raskolnikov what changed her: this story from John’s Gospel. She reads it to him. It is hard for her. Her voice breaks several times, she pauses and stammers, but she reads the whole luminous tale. 

When Jesus says, “Whoever believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Sonya draws a painful breath, and reads on, in her own voice “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who should come into the world.”  The story changes Raskolnikov’s heart.  He begins the long hard process of regaining his own humanity. In the end, there is redemption and joy, both for him and Sonya, who accompanies him to Siberia to help him through his penal exile. 

When Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he leaves the deed unfinished.  Lazarus comes forth, but Jesus tells Mary and Martha to untie the funeral cloths, to “unbind him.”    That is how it is with us: We, though alive back from the dead, remain bound and paralyzed by the grief and disappointment we have felt. Jesus tells us to unbind each other, to complete the miracle.  Sonya goes to Siberia with Rakolnikov, we assist one another in this ordeal.  We share in being present for each other. 

Beloved,  I have known the healing and strength of Jesus.  I have seen what can only be called him giving life to the dead.  And with Martha, and with Sonya, I say with all my heart, “Yes, Lord Jesus. I trust you.  I believe, I give my heart, to you.”

Beloved, we are going to get through this.  In fear and anxiety, we will find Jesus mighty to save, and always at our side in whatever we have to go through.  In illness and even in death, we will see that the way of the Cross is the way of light and life.  As St. Julian of Norwich taught, all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. 

In the name of God, Amen.