GENESIS PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Monday, April 7, 2014

06 April 2014 “Raise This” John 11:1-45

  Could Lazarus have known?  He had been ill and must have felt how serious it was. Did he hold out hope like his sisters, Martha and Mary that Jesus would somehow make time for him and work one of his miracles to stop this from happening? Or was his fate out of his hands?

  The April issue of the literary magazine The Sun is dedicated to essays, memoirs, and true stories about death. While the subject matter may cause some to head straight for the recycling, this is Lent and like Lazarus, Jesus knew how serious life was about to become.

   So what might death have to say about life?  In a short story by Linda McCullough Moore we have a first person account from Maggie.
   “Today I walk the shoreline only in my mind, when I so wanted to walk by the sea, to feel the wind, to walk through the stormy weather, unafraid. I’m “being held,” I heard them say. For my “protection.” My body and the rest of me, aged eighty-seven years, sit in a tiny cell with whitewashed walls.”
  Martha and Mary sat in a similar cell with Lazarus. He was stranded in his mind and likely knew not the weather or his place. He must have heard their whispers. Send word to Jesus and tell him, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

 “It seems to Maggie the storm has strong-armed the night and will not let her jailers cross the causeway to transport her to some suitable asylum on the mainland, nor will it permit her daughter Andrea to come and fetch her. Finally they tell her Andrea is on her way. ‘I should have thought to have more children, she muses. I don’t know what I was thinking.’”

 Jesus knows the storm has not passed. The storm keeps him from Lazarus. He knows there is a better place to be. A place so vital he waits for the better transport. He knows Lazarus is Ill. He also knows his illness is not leading to the sort of death expected, but to an intervention by Jesus to restore his life, and to glorify God. So he waits.

  “Maggie answers, ‘The past.’ This is her quick reply to the social worker who has come to ask where she might like to live. ‘Nineteen forty-six,’ she says, ‘would be my first choice.’ Back before I can remember. I would spend my days peppering the family with questions, asking, must it come to pass the way it does? Is there nothing we can do?

 ‘Don’t sell the house,’ she tells Andrea after the social worker leaves. ‘We have to. We need the money for the nursing home. If I don’t go, then we don’t need the money.’

  Maggie does not believe God wants life to end this way. When her grandmothers got old – seventy-one and seventy-eight – they each one had a heart attack and died, and we were sad beyond all bearing.
   ‘If you are to know your ending, first you must feel the color gray wrapped round your head and shoulders like a thin fog your sight could easily penetrate were the wispy mists not endless. It is not the thickness of the fog it is how far it goes, how long it lasts.’ Maggie’s story lasted now too long, and she had lived too much of it alone.

 At one point, when the thought of life all alone alarmed her she left the house and swore not to return until she had met a man with a loneliness as strong and enduring as hers, so they might pool their sorrows. She met the mailman coming up the walk. ‘Are you lonely?’ she asked. ‘Of course,’ he said and handed Maggie her mail. ‘But there are things far worse than that.’ He turned and walked away, and Maggie went back inside.”

Martha and Mary felt sure that if Jesus had come when their brother was ill they would not know this loneliness in his death. They were sure he would be healed and would certainly not die. They base their plea on the Lord’s love for their brother and their love for him.

  Jesus, as we will discover, is looking beyond death. He too knows the loneliness in life but he hands us our mail and acknowledges there are things far worse than that. If we are not in love with our God things will be far, far worse for us.

 Then Jesus assures us, death for those who believe will not be the final outcome of this illness of the human condition. When the dust settles we will realize the glory of God. But first, Lazarus must die. Nothing seems worse.

  “Maggie wakes with a start and does not know where she is. She blinks a few times. The light from the window seems to grow brighter, but slowly, as if God has God’s finger on the dimmer switch. She is in a room she has never seen before. ‘I was afraid this might happen,’ she says, ‘that I would wake up one morning and not recognize the world.’”

  Martha meets Jesus when he finally comes to their house. Her soul is overcome by grief over the death of a brother whom she loved. She no longer recognizes her world.  But, she is also a disciple of Jesus, so her heart and soul are filled with reverence for her Lord. Hers is a heart stirred to its very depths, and swaying between grief and hope.

 Jesus tells Martha, even though Lazarus has died he will rise again. He assures her, “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.” Then he asked Martha if she believed this. She did not waver, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

  At the tomb he assures us once again, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” If we would only believe, if we would have even the faintest faith, by that faith alone, these great truths become ours. As a result of who Jesus is, the resurrection and the life, the life of one who believes always conquers death.

 Then his proof, Jesus says, “Lazarus, come out.” And Lazarus does. He too is in a world he has never seen before. You see, the dead respond this way to Jesus’ call. The glory of God, the revelation of God’s wonderful healings in power and love, grace and forgiveness were there for all to see in Lazarus coming alive from the tomb. And Lazarus feels it in all its glory. Resurrection life, a new life where there will be suffering and pain no more.
 We know what this life requires. Faith, deep love and trust. Allowing our worldly life to die in order for our glorified life to begin. It is just a lot to ask, to believe and have faith and be sure about this born again promise.
The Quaker’s have a saying, “Let your life speak.” “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”
 Before we can tell our life what we want to do with it, we must listen to our life telling us who we are. That is if we believe. That is if we hear God.
  God has a purpose and an intention for our life that we might not know of if we do not listen. How can we be sure God is speaking to us? The answer is that we learn by experience. The key is to focus more on building our personal relationship with our Creator and less on what we think God wants us to do the rest of today. We are to focus less on our questions and more on our relationship with God.

Truth and values are being revealed in God’s holy word each Sunday and the voice of our life will speak in these stories being told even from this pulpit. Our concern for discerning or knowing God’s voice must be overwhelmed by and lost in our worship and adoration of God and in our delight with God’s creation and God’s provision for our whole life.
 “Maggie wakes up in a pleasant room, the sort of room she could have spent a happy childhood in, and then grown to be some calm and gentle person. ‘This room is too late,’ she says. ‘How can I change now?’ I always meant to change. I did. Even on my eighty-fifth birthday I made a list of ways I would be different.’ ‘You don’t need to change a thing.’ It’s her grandma Harriet. ‘You’re perfect as you are.’

 ‘I didn’t know you’d be here,’ Maggie says. ‘I should have been with you on the night you died, but I didn’t know that you were dying I never thought that you would die. When I was little, did you know you would be with me here tonight?’

 Maggie thought in heaven it would be all glaring yellow lights and swarms of angels. She did not know that it would be a congregation of the ones she loved so, all of them, only whole, not damaged or distracted, not impatient or asthmatic; not themselves, or not themselves as they were, but beautiful and better.’”

 The death and resurrection of Lazarus, and Jesus, and our very selves become those pleasant rooms in the reawakening of born again spiritual measure. We worry it is too late. We worry we must change. But our God loves us the way we are. Our God sees perfection in our halting and unsure love despite our worry. Our God will always be with us. Always.
 “‘Wait for the music now,’ Maggie says. ‘What music, Mother?’ Andrea hands her a glass of water with a straw. She has always, always loved a straw. ‘She wants some music,’ Andrea says. Her voice is far away.
 ‘Stand up nice and straight now.’ Grandmother Harriett spits on her finger and smooth’s down her fair. ‘You’re ready. You look beautiful.’
 ‘Maggie, Maggie,’ her dad says, and he bends to kiss the top of her head, and then takes her hand.

 The flowers that she holds, the baby’s breath and lilies, quiver.
 The music sounds. The people stand up.
 We start down the aisle.”



In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen                                                    040614.gpc

No comments:

Post a Comment