Death

 

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

March 13, 2005; 5th Sunday in Lent; Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(John 11:1-45) – Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it, he said, "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." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to 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. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Sometimes I'm surprised how many people are practicing Christians. In so many ways it is an unpleasant religion. After all, in Christianity death is everywhere. We worship someone who was tried and convicted of a capital crime and slowly executed in a manner that today we would call torture. It was slow, public, humiliating torture unto certain death. Far worse than those hangings in old Fort Smith or the public beheadings in modern Saudi Arabia. And we call the day of that execution Good Friday.

Death is all over our religion. We started this season of Lent by rubbing death into your face on Ash Wednesday with the words, "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return." We follow a teacher who tells you only if you lose your life will you save it. If anyone wants to follow him, we are instructed to take up our cross and follow. So we wear crosses around our necks. How strange, we would think, to see someone with necklace jewelry of a hangman's noose or an electric chair. We decorate with execution instruments.

It seems like death is what Jesus is always looking for. Wherever there is some form of death, there is Jesus. Ten lepers scream to him from their exiled quarantine. An insane man living in a Garesene graveyard. A woman who is about to be stoned. He's drawn to death like a magnet. Bob Capon says, "Jesus never meets a corpse that doesn't sit up right on the spot. Consider. There is the widow of Nain's son; there is Jairus's daughter; and there is Lazarus himself. They all rise not because Jesus does a number on them, not because he puts some magical resurrection machinery into gear, but simply because he has that effect on the dead. They rise because he is the Resurrection even before he himself rises -- because... he is the grand sacrament, the real presence, the mystery of a kingdom in which everybody rises."1

"For Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to reward the rewardable, improve the improvable, or correct the correctable; he came simply to be the resurrection and the life of those who will take their stand on a death he can use instead of on a life he cannot."2 That's what Paul learned on the road to Damascus. Once he died to making his life into some sort of project, he was a new creation. The only way to get to resurrection is to die. The only way to get to the lilies and light of Easter is through Passion Sunday and Good Friday.

Barbara Brown Taylor says, "Maybe that is why the lectionary gives us John's story about Lazarus on the fifth Sunday of Lent. It is a kind of rehearsal for what lies ahead, in which Jesus does for his friend what God will do for him. It is his and our assurance that there is power loose in the universe that is stronger than death, stronger even than our fear of death, which is able to call us out of our stinking tombs into the fullness and sweet mystery of life."3

I remember seeing Jesus in the presence of death. It was many years ago in Mississippi. A parishioner of mine named Gary started visiting with me about theological things -- faith and Jesus. Gary was in his mid-30's. He was a natural theologian. I was amazed how much he read and how much he could absorb from his reading. He laughed and said he was making up for lost time. He had waited three decades to get interested in this stuff.

Gary, like so many people, had sowed his wild oats in his younger days. But now he was settled, with a life partner, and a responsible position as head of oncology nursing for the Baptist Hospital System in Jackson. He was so smart and so full of life. And he was dying. He had been infected with HIV back in the days before we knew much about it and how to prevent it. By the time I met him, Gary was close to breaking records for longevity with the virus. He and his partner David had been together the better part of a decade, as I recall. David was healthy. They both knew they would not grow old together.

Maybe that knowledge added to the intensity of Gary's spiritual pilgrimage. He was telescoping a life's experience with God into the short time he knew he had. He didn't waste time about the why of his having become infected. But he did ask why there would be such a virus in God's world.

Maybe it was living with his own illness that made him so good at caring for cancer patients. He had the reputation as the nurse you really wanted if you ended up on the oncology floor. And he seemed to have enough patience and perspective to rise above the egos and conflicts of hospital personnel and politics to manage the administration of an effective department. He loved his work.

But the disease progressed. The medicines maintaining him grew less effective. Once he took a leave of absence until a new protocol bought him some more time, and he returned. But he had to move more toward administrative duties as his energy flagged. He took it in stride. Oh, he mourned it. He grieved not being able to work a twelve-hour shift on the floor, but he accepted it, and let it go. Every time he lost something important to him, he found he could live just fine without it.

Eventually he had to retire. For a while he got into flowers and gardening at home. When that was too much, he became absorbed by his books. After a while, he was mostly bed-ridden. But even there, he was good natured and witty. The perfect host for a stimulating if brief conversation. It was a big transition when he moved to the hospital bed in the guest room. David stayed faithfully caring for him, taking a brief leave from his own work to help full time.

I got a call from David one morning. "Gary asked me to see if you could come over. And can you bring communion?" His voice sounded anxious. When I got there, Gary seemed much as he had when I had seen him before. Weak, but responsive. His welcome was heartwarming. David said he had called Gary's parents, and they would be over soon. So we visited and waited. When Gary's mom and dad arrived, we gathered around his bed and shared communion. He was tired then, so we let him rest. Someone was always in or out.

About twenty minutes passed, and David came in the living room. "Gary's asking for you." I went in. He looked up at me and said, "Lowell, could you do the litany?" My heart caught for a second, making sure I understood. "Do you mean the Litany at the Time of Death?" He nodded yes. "Is it that time?" I asked. He nodded gently, and whispered, "Yes." I suppose an oncology nurse knows these kinds of things.

I called everyone back around Gary's bed and explained what Gary had asked. The Litany at the Time of Death is on page 462 of your prayer book. The rubric reads "When a person is near death, the Minister of the Congregation should be notified, in order that the ministrations of the Church may be provided." Gary is the only person who ever asked me for his own litany.

God the Father, I said. Have mercy on your servant, replied Gary's mother and father and David.

God the Son, Have mercy on your servant.

Holy the Holy Spirit. Have mercy on your servant.

We prayed the litany. Then Gary told each person in the room he loved them. There were hugs and tears. He knew he was surrounded by love. Then we waited. It was about twenty minutes later -- with his priest, his nurse, his parents and his partner around his bed -- that Gary took his last breath.

It was so sad. If I could have waved a wand, I would have wanted Jesus to walk into that room with a prayer or a pill that would cure Gary and make him alive and well again. But even if that had happened, Gary would have had to die all over again, like Lazarus. That's resuscitation, not resurrection; rescue, not triumph.

Something else had happened with Gary. His resurrection had begun long ago. Every time he lost something he thought he had to have, he found he could live without it. By the time he was finished, he had emptied his cup. There was nothing left. He was finished. He had poured out his life and love completely, and died like a whisper. For those of us who watched, we knew we had seen what a holy death might be. His mother looked up at me, almost surprised, and said, "That was beautiful." Something profound in her was healed.

Reflecting on a similar experience with a dying friend, Barbara Brown Taylor says well what I might like to say.

Lord, I believe, but help thou my unbelief, because I still do not want to die. I believe Jesus has power to raise the dead, only I do not want him practicing on me. I want a God who will cut my losses and cushion my failures, a God who will grant me a life free from pain. I want a God who will rescue me from death, who will delete it from the human experience and find another way to operate.

What I, what all of us, have instead is a God who resurrects us from the dead, putting an end to it by working through it instead of around it -- creating life in the midst of grief, creating love in the midst of loss, creating faith in the midst of despair -- resurrecting us from our big and little deaths, showing us by his own example that the only road to Easter morning runs smack through Good Friday.

"I am resurrection and life," Jesus says to grieving Martha. Not "I will be" but "I am" -- right here, right now -- resurrection and life for anyone willing to believe that it might just be true. It is not a safe story, but it is a strong one, with power to lead us through the graveyard and out the other side.

 

1.  Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, and Judgment, p. 405

2.  Ibid, p. 317

3.  Barbara Brown Taylor, Can these bones live?  The Christian Century, 3-13-96

----------------------------------------------

To subscribe to an (almost) daily e-mail meditation from Lowell, based on the scripture readings from the Prayer Book Daily Office of Morning Prayer, send an email to: lowell-request@arkansasusa.com and type the following command: JOIN lowell youremailaddress (example: JOIN lowell JaneDoe@aol.com)

 

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.