Nothing Bad Can Happen Here

Lent 5, Year A
Text: John 11.1-45
The police really ought to be following me, because its seems that lately when I show up, people die. I suppose it’s a work-related hazard of mine to be exposed to death on a regular basis. Strangely, though, in the 16 years in which I have been a pastor, I’ve only been present at a death once. Usually I leave too soon or arrive too late. But the one death for which I was present was a profoundly holy experience. So if jobs are given out in the life beyond this one, I want to be an other-worldly “Doctor Sleep” (from the Stephen King novel of that title) who is present as a comfort to people as they pass to the other side.

Indeed, in this line of work I hear many stories of people having conversations with “others” in the room at the time of their passing. My grandmother was almost 102 when she passed away, and reported visits from long-deceased loved ones before she finally departed this life. At the time I passed it off as dementia, although she showed no other symptoms of it. Our own Arnold Nelson is another example of someone who had conversations with “visitors” during his final hours. Those of you who knew Arnold know he was not prone to flights of fancy! Additionally, during a hospital visit a patient shared his story of a heavenly companion who stayed with him while he was pinned under his truck until the paramedics arrived. Then he vanished.

I used to shrug off these stories, but I’ve heard too many to consider them all fantasies or dreams. All of this is to say that life is more than just the biology we define as such. There is more to this creation than we are comfortable with. And it takes someone like Jesus to come in to our world of small expectations and small thinking to blow the lid off our small lives.

Which is exactly what happened with Lazarus and his sisters. In Java & Jesus this week I was a little hard on Jesus for waiting two days before coming to visit Lazarus. I still don’t like that fact, but as I explore the gospel there seems to be a pattern of Jesus saying no but then yes. For example in Cana, Mary says: “Jesus, do something about the wine situation!” Jesus: “No.” But then yes – delicious falernium whereas before it was mere tapwater! His brothers say to him, “Jesus, are you going to the festival in Jerusalem?” Jesus: “No.” And then yes, he goes on his own. The disciples ask today, “Jesus, are you going to help Lazarus?” Jesus: “No.” But then yes! The reason? Obedience. From the Latin ob-audire; to listen. Jesus listens to God’s will and acts not a moment before or after. Even his love of his dear friends does not get in the way of doing God’s work. 

And that’s where the scandal, the stumbling comes. Our timetables and God’s so rarely coincide. Can you think of the times when you really wanted something to happen – and it did, but in a way you could not have anticipated and in at time that was better than the one you wanted?

But when Jesus finally shows up things happen! As the last in the book of “signs” Jesus enacts the final revelation: resurrection and the life. The point about raising Lazarus is not a trick, or even to save the day for his friends. It’s about reorienting our understanding of God, so as to say: God is not stingy when it comes to giving out life. God is not the withholder. Jesus reveals a God who is lavish in giving life and  more life, and the raising of Lazarus is proof. Lazarus will die again, but this sign points to who Jesus says he is and what he promises for us now. We no longer are constrained to be “beings toward death”, as Heidegger would say, but beings toward life and more life.

Many who have had NDE’s are completely oriented toward life, and it’s a wonder to see. About a year ago I mentioned Eben Alexander III, a neurosurgeon who went there and back. In his book Proof of Heaven he shares how supremely clumsy and inept he feels with the brain of his current biology, in comparison with the mental and spiritual alacrity he enjoyed while in his 8-day coma. I would be happy to have the “inept” brain of a neurosurgeon! He says that during his experience of life beyond this familiar life he encountered what can only be called “hyper-real”. He does not fear leaving this life to experience that one again.

But you don’t need an NDE to get a whiff of resurrection. Barbara was an amazingly radiant woman I knew from my first call. She was always smiling, and made you feel good just to be in her presence. She lived in the country in Eastern Washington, with her husband, Jack, a truly brilliant man. I hardly ever saw him in church. It was devastating for all of us when Barbara was diagnosed with cancer. Over the course of her treatments, and her many ups and downs, the aggregate direction of which was down, Jack began to write. My inbox would receive a Barbara update a few times every week, and it was clear this was therapy for a husband who was already mourning the loss of his wife. In typical form I was not present when Barbara died, but the lead pastor was. Later that day I read his last entry: “I was with her to the last moment, and when she breathed her final breath a palpable presence of peace filled the room. I said to the attendant and the pastor: ‘It’s OK. Nothing bad can happen here.’” Something happened to Jack at that time, something in the likeness of resurrection. I began to see him more often at our Saturday services. His anxiety and dread had left him. “Unbind him. Let him go.”

The resurrection and the life is for us now, not just when someone stands over our casket or urn to console those who mourn for us. As Augustine said (in paraphrase): Let us sing Alleluia (even in Lent!) here on earth, while we still live in anxiety, so that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security; here it is sung in hope, there in hope’s fulfillment; here as wayfarers, there, as citizens. So then, let us sing, not to enjoy a life of leisure, but to lighten our labors. Sing, wayfarers, but continue your journey. So let’s sing! (Hymn of the Day follows.)

+++Sources and Influences

Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary as almost every week. Pastor Paul Nuechterlein's material on 5 Lent , year A is here.

James Alison's passion for the God "for whom death is not".

Richard Rohr's homily, "What is Resurrection?", delivered 9 November 2013.

Alexander, Eben. Proof of Heaven. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012.

Norris, Kathleen. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. (p. 368)