I remember the first time I got called to a death when I was
a chaplain. It was a gentleman who I had
visited a week or so earlier when he had first been admitted and I had spent 30
minutes or so talking to and praying with his wife. As I walked into the room where the man’s
wife and her daughter were sitting, there was just a sense of tragedy. As she talked to me and shared memories of
her husband, I found out that she and her husband would have been celebrating their
2nd anniversary that day. She
told me how they had met and how one evening they were talking on the phone and
she mentioned that she didn’t know how she was going to get to her doctor’s
appointment the next day. He
commiserated with her, but then the next day he showed up at her doorstep
having driven 8 hours from his house to get there.
This man was the love of her life. They had met later in life and she was
grief-stricken. Her best friend was gone
and she was left alone. But as she spoke
more and more, the thing she kept coming back to was her certainty that God was
with her now and that God would never abandon her in her grief. Her faith was strong and it was seeing her
through.
There is no way to soften the loss of a loved one, nothing we
can do to take away that pain. And as we
read in the gospel today, the pain that death brings also affected Jesus. In the story of Lazarus, word had been sent
to Jesus that his friend Lazarus, a man who is described as being ‘one who
Jesus loved,’ was ill, he was near death.
Yet Jesus waited two days before traveling to the home of Lazarus. And when he arrived, he was informed that
Lazarus had died four days earlier.
Mary, Martha, and others had waited patiently for Jesus. They held onto faith that the Lord would be
there. Yet Lazarus died anyway and they
grieved for him. And they held firm in
their faith that God would be with them through the pain. And when Jesus arrived we see his reaction. We are told a couple of things. First, we are told that he was disturbed,
though a better way to describe it would be to suggest that he was angered at
the fact of death, Christ was angered that death occurs. And second, we are told that Jesus wept. If there was ever a moment that demonstrated
the humanity of Jesus, it is this.
Jesus’ friend was dead and Jesus mourned. God mourned this death. God mourned this death just like God mourned
the death of that woman’s husband at the hospital. God mourned the death of Lazarus just like
God mourned when you lost a friend, or a parent, or a grandparent.
So often we hear people tell us when a person dies that it
was part of God’s plan. But I don’t
think death is part of God’s plan. The
pain that death causes is not part of God’s plan. God is disturbed by the pain the death
causes. God is grieved by the pain that
death brings to God’s beloved children.
But what we see in the story of Lazarus is that God is not
going to sit idly by in the face death.
God is disturbed and God is going to act on our behalf. And what we start to see in the story of
Lazarus is that God is doing something that is costly. Jesus calls out Lazarus from the tomb, but
that act is, ultimately, costly for Jesus.
Immediately after telling us about the resurrection of Lazarus, the
author the gospel of John tells us that the opponents of Jesus began to plot
against Jesus. Ultimately, what we see
is that it is the act of bringing Lazarus out of the tomb that helps lead Jesus
onto the cross and into the tomb. It is
in confronting death directly and raising Lazarus that is the straw the breaks
the camels back for the opponents of Jesus.
It is what helps set the path that leads to the cross.
God is disturbed by the presence of death in this world; God
is so disturbed at the pain that death causes us, and causes God, that Jesus
takes on death; Jesus takes on sin; and on the cross Jesus defeats them.
God’s love for us is so great that God is willing to suffer
on our behalf in order that the sting of death might never touch us. God is moved by our grief and through the
cross, God defeats death so that we might have life and have it with abundance.
But the other thing that happens in the cross Jesus brings
the living and the dead together so that we are all unified in Christ. Because of Jesus’ actions on the cross, we
are assured that we will not be separated from God. As Paul reminds us, there is nothing that can
separate us from the love of God in Christ.
We have no need to fear death or to see the death as some tragic end
because God has defeated it.
You see, God has freed us from the fear of death and because
of that, we are now freed to truly live.
We are freed to be part of God’s work in the world because we don’t have
to be consumed by a fear of death.
And today, on All Saints Day, we don’t mourn those who have
died, we celebrate them because we know that we are still united with them
through Christ. We recall the fact that God has promised to bring us all
together in a new creation and we celebrate the fact that God is always at work
in this world.
Now I have to admit that I used to always think that All
Saints day was about some so-called great people, these Saints, and it seemed
like something that not everybody got to be.
But as I’ve grown, I’ve learned a bit more about these people we call
saints and I know they were far from perfect.
I mean, St Francis partied so hard before committing his life to God, he
could have put the Kardashians to shame.
And Augustine very famously said, ‘Lord, make me holy; just not
yet!’. I mean, these saints were people
just like you and I. Just like you and
I.
What we are celebrating is the presence of God in their
lives. It is God that made them holy and
it is God that makes us holy. I didn’t
understand that growing up. I hoped that
one day I would be a saint too, but I missed the point. You see, we are ALL saints in the eyes of
God! We are all beautifully created and loved just as we are, without regard to
gender, sex, race or sexual orientation.
We are all the saints of God, patient, and brave and true (as the
Episcopalian hymn goes).
And so today we celebrate the saints who have lived before us
and who remain united with us through Christ, as someday we will each be
celebrated, but ultimately, what we are really celebrating is not our own
goodness or the goodness of our deceased friends and family, but we are
celebrating what God did in their lives and we are giving thanks for what God
is doing in our lives.
Ultimately, we are celebrating and worshipping the God who
pulls back the shroud;
Who wipes away our tears
Who declares to us that there is nothing that can separate us
from Christ’s love;
The God who defeats death;
Who defeats sin;
Who saves us;
Who frees us;
Who calls us to new life;
Who reminds us that we, each and every one of us, is a
beloved child of God.
That each and every one of us is a saint in the eyes of God.
And it is through Christ that we are brought together as one,
and we are united now and forever with those who have died before us, with our
loved ones, so that through Christ, they are never absent, but are part of the
body of Christ that transcends time and space.
And so each and every time we come to the table, we are
reminded of God’s constant presence through the Eucharist, through the bread
and the wine, the body and blood of Christ that blesses us, sustains us, and
strengthens our bodies and souls. That
presence of God in our lives that binds us together with the saints across the
ages and that same presence of God that makes all of us Saints. And because of that, we can truly say, thanks
be to God.
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