(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on April 2, 2017, Lent V)
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Life Now or Later?
As Svetlana finished packing the last box, she looked across her room. It looked how she felt: empty. Where once had stood the desk that she and her friend Julie had turned into a castle, was nothing but bare wooden floor. In the place of her bed, where she and her friend Sarah had staged countless gymnastics tournaments, were nothing but dust bunnies. Where her mirror had hung and where she had once innovated hairstyles that had left her mother and father in tears of laughter, was nothing but the chipped paint of her wall. The window where Whiskers would sit and watch the squirrels, was vacant. Even worse, Whiskers would not be making the move.
A tear quivered on the edge of her eye. How could life go on?
The next day she slouched sullenly in the back of the van as her family pulled out of the driveway for the last time.
Hours passed before finally her mother ventured a word into the back of the van. “Svetlana, I know it’s not easy.”
“Not easy?” the twelve-year old responded. “It’s impossible. I don’t know when I’ll see Julie or Sarah again. And I know when I’ll see Whiskers again—never.”
Her mother gave a deep sigh. “Yes, it will be very difficult. I know. But I promise that you’ll make new friends, and once we’re settled we’ll get a new cat. Why, I imagine that in a few years’ time, your life in our new home will be just as wonderful as the one you’ve had here.”
“Yes,” Svetlana responded, “but that’s just the point. I don’t want a wonderful life in a few years. I want a wonderful life now.”
Hours later, the van approached its new home. Svetlana woke with bleary eyes. A girl outside the house next door stared at the van and gave a timid wave. Svetlana blinked with a flutter of curiosity. Her mother reached back and rested a hand gently on her knee. Svetlana felt something—a little lift, a small ripple or rising.
“Here we are, Svetlana. Our new life.”
From a Story of Power to a Story of Life
Our text today proclaims the good news of resurrection. But to get there we have to make a few detours, because whoever wrote today’s text had, I think, a slightly different agenda: namely, to demonstrate God’s power and to compel belief. This agenda comes to light early in the story, when our storyteller shows Jesus contemplating the imminent death of his beloved friend Lazarus. Jesus weighs his options: heal his friend, or wait and demonstrate his power.
I’ll confess, this picture of Jesus disturbs me. This is not the Jesus I know. This is not the Jesus who is moved to compassion by the sick and the hungry. Nor is it the Jesus who refuses Satan’s temptation to prove his power. This is a calculating Jesus who sanctions a suffering friend’s death, and the grief of many other friends besides, all so that he might demonstrate God’s power and strong-arm folks into belief (cf. 11:4, 42, 45). Such a Jesus cries little more than crocodile tears. His compassion is little more than a magician’s ruse.
Let me put my cards on the table. I am trying to read today’s story not according to the interests of the writer, who sits outside the story and has his own designs on it, but according to the experience of the characters, who actually lived the story. What concerns the writer of this story is the strong power of God—a power that looks less like love and more like a magician who demands applause. What concerns the characters in the story, however, is an entirely different matter, I think. What concerns Martha and Mary, Lazarus and Jesus, is the same thing that concerned Svetlana: life.[1]
What Martha Wants…
Just to be clear, I believe this scripture is as God-breathed as any other scripture. I believe the heart of God is pulsing somewhere underneath it, just as it pulses underneath all the words in the Bible. This is why reading the Bible requires interpretation. The words are human. But what they are trying to say, what they mean to say, comes somehow from God. To read the Bible, we must bring our stethoscope and hold it up to the text; we must listen closely for the heart of God.
When I slide my stethoscope over today’s text, I first hear a muffled thump-thump when Martha confronts Jesus with her disappointment that he did not come sooner.
You may remember the stories about Martha and her sister Mary. Mary is the spiritual one. She is the one who can put her earthly troubles out of sight and mind and contemplate higher things. Martha, on the other hand, is the more earthy sister.[2] The gospels portray Martha as a woman very attuned to the present needs: when we see her elsewhere, she’s immersed in the middle of life, cooking and serving, tidying up and preparing (cf. Luke 10:38-42; John 12:1-2). Whereas you might be able to console Mary with spiritual platitudes—such as, “Your brother, Lazarus, is in heaven now. God wanted him there”—I doubt these would fly with Martha. Martha, remember, is rooted in this world. She is immersed in life. When her brother, Lazarus, lost his life four days ago, she must have loss much of her life, too.
Martha, I think, shares a kindred heart with Svetlana and many of us today. We love life, even with its many imperfections. When we lose it, as Svetlana lost her home, as Martha lost her brother, we do not simply settle for some heavenly deferral or exchange when we will get our lives back. Life is more sacred than we know. Something inside us cries out for more life now—somehow.
That’s what we see with Martha, who addresses Jesus with her honest hurt: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (11:21). Jesus’ response—“Your brother will rise again”—is little consolation to her in the here and now. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” she concedes, as if to say, “But that’s not what I’m talking about.” What Martha is talking about is not the afterlife, the life hereafter. She is not concerned for Lazarus’ eternal salvation. What Martha is talking about is life here, for Lazarus and her both. She doesn’t want the final resurrection later. She wants a little resurrection now[3]—I say “little,” because of course this resurrection won’t last forever; Lazarus will have to die again.
…Is What Jesus Wants
As I let my stethoscope drift across the text, the next place I hear a hushed thump-thump is when Jesus cries. Tears tell us what really matters to a person. And this is one of the precious few scenes where we actually see tears on Jesus’ face.
Why does Jesus cry? According to our story, it is not for Lazarus. Like Martha, Jesus knows that Lazarus will rise again on the last day. According to the story, Jesus cries because he sees the tears of Mary and all the people with her (cf. 11:33-35). What grieves Jesus is the loss of life—not just in Lazarus but in all the people around him.
In other words, what concerns Jesus is the same thing that concerns Martha: not the life hereafter but the life right here.
Little Resurrections
What happens next in the story is a mystery. It is the mystery of an empty tomb. It is the mystery of life from death. It is the mystery of our faith.
I don’t know a thing about the mechanics of resurrection. If you want, you can google that. I’m sure you’ll find scientists who have proven it and scientists have disproven it, believers who proclaim it and unbelievers who disclaim it. All I know from today’s story and from my own faith journey, is that the good news doesn’t just mean resurrection later; it means resurrection now! The good news is not insider information on some heavenly exchange rate that we’re hoping to cash in on—ch-ching! The good news is that Christ is the resurrection and the life, unbinding us and letting us go now from losses that entomb us.
What that resurrection looks like, how it feels—that is the stuff of experience. Maybe you’ve felt it before. Maybe you’ve felt it when someone has shared your tears. Maybe you’ve felt it in someone else’s touch. Maybe you’ve felt it when someone else has persuaded you, or even dragged you, outside the cave of your loss.
These are all little resurrections, yes. Does that diminish the truth of the more dramatic resurrections? I don’t think so. If anything, the Jesus in today’s story shows us that what matters just as much as any final resurrection are the little resurrections—the kind that helped Martha and Mary live beyond the death of their brother, the kind that helped Svetlana live beyond the loss of her home, the kind that help you and I live beyond what seems like the end.
Prayer
God of empty tombs,
Who calls to us today
As Christ called to Lazarus,
“Come out!”—
May we, like Martha,
Trust defiantly in the good news
Of resurrection and life,
Not later but now;
Plant our faith firmly
In the goodness of this earth and this life,
To which your kingdom comes.
Amen.
[1] This angle
of interpretation is inspired largely by John D. Caputo, The Insistence of God: A Theology of the Perhaps (Indiana Series in
the Philosophy of Religion; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013),
231-232.
[2] Case in
point: she’s the sister who complains about her dead brother’s stench (11:39).
[3] “Even now,” she says, “I know that God
will give you whatever you ask of him” (11:22).
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