NOTE: Today's sermon is followed by the reading of the Necrology and prayers for our departed saints.
All Saints' Day, Year B
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44
All Saints' Day is a day of victory. During our celebration of those who have preceded us in eternal glory, we pray with hearts confident that they now dwell by the side of our God, who, by his Son's death, swallowed up death forever. We celebrate the promise of eternal life for all God's saints baptized into the great congregation of faithful across generations, but we still have a bittersweet reminder that for us, the threshold to new life is earthly death.
Our reading from John today captures some of the complexity of that experience, but both the translation and the truncation of the passage somewhat dull the visceral, difficult emotional experience of Jesus and his friends as they cope with the death of Lazarus. At the start of John 11, Mary and Martha inform Jesus that Lazarus is gravely ill. But Jesus' response is not to go to Lazarus right away. Jesus says in response to this news, "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." John then explains, "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 that he was."
But like every well-meaning comfort offered in the face of death, this explanation does not dispel the grief. Mary seeks out Jesus knowing two things: that he loves her and Lazarus, and that he can heal far beyond any ordinary physician's skill. When Jesus finally arrives, Mary falls to his feet and says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Martha meets Jesus when he arrives in Bethany earlier in the passage and says the same thing: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." How often have we found ourselves uttering those same words? If you had intervened, God, my brother, my mother, my friend, my husband, my child, would not have died? If you had been here, God, 603 people would not have died in mass shootings in the US this year. If you had been here, God, 12,000 children would not have died in Gaza in the past four months. I still remember thinking to myself four years ago, "If you had been here, God, my friend who took his life would still be here too."
We don't have to imagine how Mary felt saying this because it is the way we feel every time the grief of death overwhelms us. It is a voice of both confidence and accusation. God, you have power over life and death, so why didn't you do something? We know Jesus had a reason for not going to heal Lazarus' illness sooner. He had shown his power to heal, but now he had to demonstrate that he could do more than that. He had to show that he had power over death itself. In the Gospel of John, this miracle is also the catalyst for the Pharisees' conspiracy to kill Jesus, and Jesus' destruction of death could not have been absolute without his own death and resurrection.
It still doesn't hurt less, though, and Jesus knows that. That's why, when faced with the intense pain of those around him, he did not admonish their grief or try to explain it away. He grieved with them, as one of them. Jesus wept. But the translation of Jesus' response doesn't quite capture the depth of his feeling in that moment. Our translation says, "he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved." There's a dignified stoicism in that description that suggests he was grieved just enough to be socially palatable. But the Greek word translated to "grieved" suggests an anger and passion in grief, that same sort of feeling that stirs in us when we cry out, "Why God?" The word translated as "deeply moved" suggests a profound internal upheaval, the knot formed in the pit of our stomachs when we experience tragedy, the sickness of heart, mind, and body that makes us weep and shake and throw up. Jesus experienced the pain of Lazarus' death just as Mary and Martha felt it.
Jesus doesn't diminish their sorrow, he shares it with them. Knowing that no explanation of death can make it hurt less, he shares our losses as well, whether they are decades old or days old. Later in our service, we will pray for those beloved people in our lives who have departed this world for the next. We will say their name, the ring bell for them, and a short silence will follow. That silence is the space once filled by a person, a space that is still left in our lives that no other person can fill. But we do not have to be alone in that silence. Sitting next to us, feeling what we feel in that silence, is Jesus Christ, squeezing our hand, telling us that when loss feels too hard to bear, he is there to share it. He is present, he is listening, and he is holding that cherished departed soul in his arms until the day we are reunited.
Each of us will meet our Lord that way, past the threshold of earthly death. One other thing to remember about the story of Lazarus is that he did not become immune to physical death when Jesus raised him. He would pass that threshold again one day and for the last time. Death is an unavoidable part of our physical condition, but it is not an unavoidable part of our spiritual condition, and that is why today is a victory. Death is a transient state, but life is imperishable. Not only that, life becomes more vital, more perfect, and more complete as we dwell forever in the presence of the source of light and life, the God who made and redeemed us, who treasures us beyond measure. Today is a day of victory because those we love and see no longer remain with us still in unending joy. Today is a day of victory because Jesus died once so that none of us would ever truly die, but rather join the great cloud of witnesses, of brothers, and mothers, and friends, and children who are forever free from the reach of death. Today is a day of victory because Jesus said to Martha and says to all of us still, "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." Alleluia, Amen!