All Saints – November 3, 2024
The Rev. Nat Johnson
Isaiah 25:6-9 | Psalm 24 | Revelation 21:1-6a | John 11:32-44
Our story from the Gospel this morning really begins 31 verses earlier. John tells us that there was a man from Bethany named Lazarus who’d become ill and that his sisters, Mary and Martha, sent word to Jesus, presumably to ask that Jesus come and heal their brother. But when Jesus heard the news, he deliberately stayed where he was with the bizarre explanation that Lazarus’ illness would not lead to death but would be an occasion for the glory of God to be revealed. He waited for two days before rallying his disciples for the journey to Behtany. It took them another two days to arrive and when they got close, Martha went out to confront Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” He then told her that Lazarus would rise again, that all who believe in him, even though they die, would live. “Do you believe this?” Jesus asked her. “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
After this exchange, Martha returned to her home and told her sister, Mary, that Jesus was waiting for her. She quickly got up and went to him and when she arrived, she confronts Jesus with the same words her sister had: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
“Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died.”
I suspect that each of us here today can relate to the words that Martha and Mary spoke to Jesus that day. Death and loss are constants in the human experience. And yet, the constancy of death does not make it any easier for those of us left behind to carry the weight of grief. And, I suspect that these words might also ring true when we consider the grief of things like collective trauma, like senseless deaths due to weapons of war, like the loss of life due to natural disasters like fires, hurricanes, and tsunamis.
“Lord, if you had only been here…”
Perhaps, like me, you can resonate with the bystanders at Mary and Martha’s home who asked, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this one from dying?” Where is God in the midst of death? Why does God delay? Why must we be burdened with the weight of grief.
In the dominant culture of our society, grief is often relegated to the private sector of life. Public displays of grief are acceptable only to the extent that they are performed in a “proper and dignified” manner. Tears are okay but only in moderation. Mourning is tolerated so long as it doesn’t impede for too long our productivity and consumption within the market economy. We are more comfortable offering empty platitudes than we are sitting in the discomfort of lament. In a society that has cultivated to perfection the desire and expectation for instant gratification, we are encouraged to “move on,” to “suck it up,” to “start rebuilding,” to “get out of the cycle of grief as quickly as possible.”
But there’s something about this story of Mary and Martha, Jesus and Lazarus that offers a challenge to this way of thinking. If we hold the story with curiosity instead of judgment, we might discover a few things that will help us understand, that might offer us a pattern to deal with the grief of loss, of collective trauma, and of the devastation of death.
Commentators often criticize Mary and Martha, and those who mourn alongside them, as lacking in faith. They suggest that if they had just had more faith, they would have realized what Jesus was going to do, they would have truly understood that death is never the last word, that Jesus possesses power that flows from the very life of God. But this critique fails to consider that Martha and Mary’s accusation could just as equally been spoken from a place of deep and abiding faith that did in fact recognize the power of God in Christ.
Martha, in the same breath that she hurls her accusation at Jesus also confesses that she believes, “Even now that God would do whatever” Jesus asked. When Jesus asked her if she believed that those who believe and live in him would never die, she doesn’t hesitate to affirm her belief that he is who he says he is. Martha teaches us that the anguish of grief is not an impediment to our faith, that anger in the face of death is not a threat to our confession that God in Christ is making all things new. Martha gives us permission to dispense with empty platitudes, with words of consolation that seek to avoid the weight of grief.
When Mary confronts Jesus, she falls at his feet under the burden of grief. “Lord, if you had been here…” Our translation of scripture tells us that upon seeing Mary, Jesus was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” It paints a picture of tender compassion and gentleness, but the Greek underlying that phrase is more violently visceral. Jesus is overcome by shattering sorrow and he begins to weep. He does not tell Mary, Martha, or their friends to “get over it.” He does not chide them for their grief, even in the context of his promise of life. Instead, Jesus accepts their invitation to “come and see” the reason for their grief. He walks with them into the reality of their sorrow, into the anguish of their loss. He weeps for their hurt. He weeps for his own loss of a beloved friend. He experiences the maddening devastation of death. It seems strange that Jesus would be overcome by such emotion knowing what he was going to do next. And this is perhaps even more of a reason to see the work of grief as holy work. Jesus enters into the depth of their hurt, experiences its heaviness.
As the crowd takes Jesus to the closed tomb, he issues a series of commands: he tells the crowd to take away the stone; he commands Lazarus with a shout to come out of the tomb; and he commands the community to unbind him and let him go. From the depths of their shared sorrow, Jesus works transformation in and through the community. Jesus has just claimed to Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, that he has within himself the very power of God to impart and sustain life. A power that not even death can overcome. But this power is not exercised by waving a magical wand to reverse the tragedy of loss – restoration and resurrection does not cancel out the experience of sorrow, fear, and anguish they had just endured. When life emerges from death, what we discover is that the devastation of death shapes the restored life we’re given when Jesus calls us out from the tomb.
There’s one more detail of the story that deserves our attention this morning. Though Lazarus’ resurrection is wrought by the power of God in Christ, his restoration to the community who loved him also required their involvement. Jesus commanded Lazarus to vacate the tomb, but he also commanded the community to unbind him and let him go. Jesus continues to bid each of us today to join him in the holy work of resurrection and restoration. It is true that we ourselves do not have the power to call life out of death, but we do have the power to participate in God’s life-giving act, to gather around those whom God restores, to unwrap their hands and feet and head, to draw them into the beloved community and bear witness to the new life they have received.
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Earlier this morning we prayed to the God who knits us together in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of Christ. I have been especially captivated by this image as I’ve wrestled with the concept of grief and the promise of life that is narrated in this story from John’s gospel. On this day, All Saints Day, we emphasize our theological conviction and commitment to the idea that God in Christ unites us to Godself and to one another. We confess that this unity transcends the limitations of time and history because those who die in the Lord are already united with him in his resurrected life through their baptism. And we celebrate their testimony, honor their lives and their stories, and count them among the cloud of witnesses who surround us. We join our prayers with theirs as we lament the last vestiges of death that shroud our world, as we praise the God who gives us life, and as we look with hope to the day of salvation when the fullness of divine life will be all in all.
In just a few moments, I will invite you to renew your baptismal promises to continue in the apostles’ teaching and in the prayers, to persevere and resist evil, to proclaim the good news, to seek and serve the lost, and to strive for justice and peace. As a proper occasion for baptism, All Saints Day appropriately calls us to remember that these vows are never taken in isolation, that in baptism we are united with God and with one another. And, this feast day also reminds us that we renew our vows in the context of death and devastation, of loss and unresolved grief. Whether it’s a recent death of a loved one or the weight of grief that comes from collective trauma or the devastation of war, we are called to life and bid to hold fast to promise of our baptism.