All Saints' Day
The Very Rev. Steve Lipscomb, Dean
Grace Cathedral
1/1/09

John 11:32-44

“If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it.” That is a quote from a book called A Series of Unfortunate Events. But it could have been a quote from Mary or Martha to their neighbors, or from anyone of us who has suffered the loss of a member of our household. Someone close enough to us that we miss their voice, their touch, their smell every day.

Mary and Martha of Bethany feel that kind of pain. They are deep in shock and lost in grief for their brother Lazarus, with whom they lived. As was the case with most families in those days, the family unit was a community in itself.  Grandparents, mothers , fathers, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons all lived together in one house. When brothers and sons took wives, they brought them back to the family home, added another room or two to the house and added to the family number.

When sisters or daughters were married, they often went to live with their husband in his family home but until they were married—if they were married—they stayed right there with their family. And if they were widowed, they often returned to the security of their family of origin.

We’re not sure what the situation was with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, but the indication is they lived together alone. Maybe parents and grandparents have died. Maybe they are all unwed and together have inherited the family home. Or maybe Lazarus, unwed or widowed, owns the home and has taken in his unwed or widowed sisters. Perhaps there had been a deluge of tragedy heaped upon this family already. We don’t know the background of how they came to be together, but we can expect that they are as close as any family can be. Or, at least they were.

The sisters had sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was ill. But on receiving the message, Jesus had waited two long days before beginning his trip, and by the time he got to Bethany, Lazarus had been dead four days.

“Four days” is significant to this story. For it was believed among some Jews at the time, and no doubt by the writer of John, that when a person died, the spirit continued to hover around the body for three days—apparently in the hope that the body would recover from its “inactive” state—perhaps a coma, a seizure, a sleeping sickness of some kind. But if, after three days, the body failed to respond in any conscious way (and even began to decompose and smell) the spirit would give up its hope for reunion and separate itself permanently from the body.

By reporting that Lazarus had been dead four days, Martha wants Jesus to know, and John wants his readers to know, that this is no sickness, no fainting spell or coma that Jesus is healing. Lazarus is stone-cold, dead as a doorknob, four-days old dead!  

Martha is hurt when she sees Jesus. She knows where Jesus was staying. She knows how long it took the messenger to get to Jesus and back. She knows how long it would have taken him to get to Bethany and to Lazarus’ bedside. She says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Then she calls for her sister Mary who repeats that same accusation, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

But Jesus hadn’t been there. Lazarus was dead. Another family tragedy—and this one, perhaps, avoidable…if Jesus had come.

But the gospel story continues…saying, “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.’ [And] Jesus began to weep.”

Some people said, “See how he loved him.”
But others said, “If he loved him so much, why didn’t he come when he could have saved him? Why is he weeping now?!

Of course, Jesus knows why he waited: to show the glory of God in the raising Lazarus to life. Yet, Jesus still weeps—for his friend who suffered the pain of death, for his friends who suffered the grief of death. Jesus loved Lazarus and Mary and Martha. So he weeps at the grave of his friend.

We, too, weep over the graves of those we love. We grieve with those who grieve, even as Christians who believe and claim peace and joy in the promise of the resurrection.

On this All Saints Day, as we remember not just the great saints of the church, but also the saints in our own lives, we remember those we love who have died. That remembrance comes with sorrow in our loss but with joy in having had them with us for a while.

It is a sorrow that does not go away. Real grief stays with you. In fact, not only can one not expect grief to go away completely, we also shouldn’t want it to. For as the person you loved is not returned to you, how can you stop grieving? The loss remains, and so does the sorrow.

But grief can and does change. So we pray not for an end to the grief, but for a sorrow we can bear. For that unbearable sense of loss to be replaced by the peace of God which passes understanding, and in the joy, and hope, and promise of the resurrection and life everlasting.

Jesus said, “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.” Jesus knew people would continue to die. But he taught that not only do we find death in the midst of life, but we find life in the midst of death. Those who die will live again. This is Christian teaching and it is why even at the grave Christians can and do praise God.

So while grief is a Christian response to death, Mary and Martha’s line of reasoning was flawed. They said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” They
assumed Jesus was absent from the situation. But we know he was well aware of what was happening in Bethany, just as he is in our own moments of grief and loss. After his resurrection and ascension, Jesus is even more fully present, by the power of the Holy Spirit, with those we love at the time of their death—and, indeed, with us, who are left to grieve their passing.

In A Series of Unfortunate Events, the writer said, “If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it.” (That is so true, and scripture tells us that in Jesus, God knows how it feels, as Jesus experienced real grief himself.) In becoming human, God was and is with us in Jesus in a way that caused him to experience the depths of human pain and loss.

God is not distant and reserved. God is close, caring, and compassionate. Scripture tells us that the time is coming when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and when even death itself will be defeated. Yet, in the here and now, there are many tragedies, personal and even national or international, which cause people to question their faith.

In all these cases one hears people ask, “Where is God?” And the answer is “with us.” God was there in the midst of the Holocaust. God was there when the towers fell on September 11. God was there when the flood waters rose following Hurricane Katrina. God is there in the tragedies large and small that have us wondering why. God is there in the midst of suffering, present with those in pain, as one who learned the depths of human suffering while living among us.

Knowing that Christ knows how it feels to experience the death of a loved one, and even his own death, we can hear more clearly Jesus’ call to put away the fear of death. Jesus calls “Come Out!” Come out from the grave, and grab hold of the sure and certain hope of the resurrection that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go” to those around Lazarus, and he says the same to us. We are to be unbound, and set free from the power of death.  That is the message of All Saints Day.

We live, and by the grace of God and through the gift of God, all our loved ones live, along with angels, and archangels, and all the company of heaven. For even as we find death in life, we find life in death.

We know that Jesus is resurrection and life, and those of us who believe in him, even if we die, we will live.

In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
                                                                                                          Amen.