Terminal Illness...Not!!! John 11:1-6, 11-15, 17-27
The video kind of softens it before it
actually happens. In the movie, Martha
simply says, “It has been four days.”
However, while they left the line out of the movie, we see them quickly
depict it once the stone is down. Mary
and Martha gag, we hear men coughing back the nausea, and many of the folks
cover their faces…we see the result of Martha’s NRSV warning of “Lord, there is
already a stench.” Or, better yet, as
old King James puts it, “Lord, by this time he stinketh.” Any of us who watch the CSI type of shows
where they encounter dead bodies, along with their resulting foul, decomposing
smell, are familiar with the sight of folks reacting to that smell…some of us
here may have even encountered that smell as the bacteria that are living in
each of our pancreases today, start eating away, first at our pancreas and then
at the rest of our organs, causing our bodies to exude a very foul smelling
gas.[i] Yet we see Jesus, the wind evidently blowing
in his direction, lift his face high even as others are covering theirs, and
say, “Father, I thank you for having heard me.”
Jesus then turns his face directly toward the tomb and says, “Lazarus,
come out!” Everyone watches. Some think Jesus is a madman torturing the
poor sisters and others mourning…even Martha questions what Jesus is doing,
Mary, calls her sister to trust Jesus.
Then we watch folks fall away in fear as a body bound in burial cloths
comes staggering out of the tomb. Many
of them probably thinking in terms of where many of us would go, especially
this time of year, that a ghost or zombie (though zombie was probably not part
of their vernacular) was stumbling out of the tomb. Jesus says, "Unbind him!" Then we
see, as they began removing the burial cloths that there was not even the
slightest hint of decomp.
Death…many folks don’t like to deal
with it—they don’t want to see it, hear about it, or consider it, especially if
it might relate to themselves or someone they love.
Considering the death of someone we
love, once it has occurred, many of us look at the story of Lazarus, and might
dwell, day to day, on the thought or hope that something like that could occur
for our loved one, a husband, a wife, a parent, a child, a friend…we would just
about give anything to have them back in the same way that Mary and Martha were
able to welcome their beloved Lazarus back into their arms. I would have probably felt the same way, had
not one of my favorite authors and theologians given me pause to think. C. S. Lewis, in A Grief Observed, a book that was really his journal reflecting on
the loss of his beloved wife, Joy, to bone cancer:
I never even raised the question of whether a return, if it were
possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient of my past.
Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come
back and then at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They
call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal?[ii]
See, what we so often forget is that
Jesus did not raise Lazarus from the dead for his own benefit. He did it for the benefit of Mary, Martha,
the disciples, and the others who were there…to strengthen and encourage their
belief. It was not for Lazarus. Am I suggesting that Lazarus was not happy to
have more time with his sisters and friends?
Maybe, or maybe not…. I don’t
know. But I have to wonder, as we John
states twice in the verses following our reading for today, that Jesus was
“greatly disturbed.” In the midst of
both of those “disturbances,” we read that “Jesus wept.” There are many who say that Jesus wept
because he loved Lazarus so deeply. And
I will admit that could be the case, but I tend to agree with other scholars
who suggest that they were not tears of sorrow, because that would negate the
whole point of Jesus’ comments to Martha earlier (I’ll get to that in a
moment). I think that they were tears of
frustration, frustration that the people just didn’t get it. They may have been tears of frustration,
because he knew to convince them that he was going to have to call Lazarus out
of the tomb…and Jesus knew that that would mean for Lazarus, what Lewis knew it
would mean for his wife…that for them to live with us again, they would have to
experience the process of dying all over again.
Lewis had seen the pain that Joy endured suffering through the bone
cancer before she died—he found that it was selfish of him to wish her back
alive with the possibility that she would have to endure that kind of pain all
over again. We have to remember, Lazarus
was not resurrected from the dead, for Christ had not been resurrected, that
possibility of being raised to never die again, was not yet a possibility…Lazarus
was resuscitated through the call of Christ to come out of the tomb. He would have to endure the taste of death
once more. Two factors lead me to assert
that Lazarus was resuscitated and not resurrected…one, that if Lazarus was
resurrected, and therefore still alive, we would see his picture at least once
a year, if not more often, on the cover of those magazines lining the checkout
aisle at the grocery store; secondly, Paul tells us that Jesus is the “first
fruits of those who have died…But each in his own order: Christ the first
fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ…For the trumpet will
sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”[iii] Paul reminds us that those who have died,
rest in the peace of Christ, until He returns with the trumpet blast, and then
first the dead, then the living will rise to meet Him and join Him in His
Eternal reign.
Some of you may be wanting to ask, “So
if this is the point, why didn’t we read all of the passage, or this half of
the story, instead of the first half, and what’s with the sermon title?” Well, all of this connects to the point, but
is not the point…so here we go…
There is something that many of us may
dread more than a call that a loved one has died. It is the call from the doctor’s office…to
“please come in...there are some test results we need to go over…”. We arrive at the doctor’s office, only to
have the doctor reluctantly shuffle through some papers on his desk before
looking up at us and saying, “I’m sorry to tell you, but tests reveal that the
treatments haven’t worked” or “ the disease has spread,” “ you only have six
weeks to live.”
Now I will be the first to admit that
I have never been called into the office to hear those words. Some of you have…others of you maybe had sat
with loved ones as they heard those words…or heard the words related by someone
you know that heard them. However, I
believe there are only a few ways that we can respond.
One, we can give up hope and become
depressed. We can close ourselves off
from everyone and drift into a deep depression, each day filled with sorrow,
more for ourselves that for those around us.
We can respond as one of my colleagues
has, with the determination to enjoy life, live each day to the fullest, and
continue his ministry until he physically can do no more.
We can respond in the way an actor
responded in what I think is one of the most powerful scene out of the
television show 7th Heaven. The character is someone who has survived
years after receiving a diagnosis of weeks.
He is in the hospital room talking with a patient who has given up hope
after receiving a six week diagnosis. He
says, “Harold, you know, they can’t give you six weeks…and they can’t take them
away. You’re not going anywhere until
God is ready to embrace you…and that just doesn’t have a darn thing to do with
medical authority. I’m living proof of
that.”[iv]
There is a fourth option. It is to respond with the words of Jesus,
“This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the
Son of God may be glorified through it.”
You see, my brothers and sisters, with Jesus, for those who have joined
themselves to Him, there is no such thing as a terminal illness. That is the point of our reading this
morning…that is the point that Jesus was trying to get across that no one
seemed to get.
Jesus told the disciples that it was
time to go to Bethany, that Lazarus had “fallen asleep.” They didn’t get it. He put it in terms they could
comprehend. “Lazarus is dead” (at least
as far as they could understand).
Then Jesus encounters Martha and her
automatically fussing him out, “If you had been here (in other words “if you
had come when I sent for you), my brother would not have died.”
Jesus tells her that her brother would
rise again. She responds that she knows
that there is the future resurrection.
Jesus responds with the words that we hear at almost every funeral, “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.” This is
the point that Jesus was trying to get across.
Yes, these physical bodies will most likely give out before that trumpet
blast. Yes, we may be planted under the
daisies , placed in a mausoleum or had our cremains placed in an urn or
dispersed into nature. But that is not our end.
If we have a relationship with Christ, we still live on with him—we do
not die but rest in his arms until the trumpet blows and we rise given new
bodies and join him in the New Jerusalem.
That is the hope that we have that no tomb, no smell inducing parasites
and decomposition, and no doctor can take from us: with Christ, we will never die...for those
joined to Him…”no illness leads to death…”
Praise be to God.
In the Name of the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment