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
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