The Choice Is Ours Ezekiel 37 37L1-14, Ephesians 5:1-14, John 11:1-44 March 13, 2005, Year A Fifth Sunday in Lent The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Aging and our attitudes toward death have a perverse relationship. In our youth, death - especially our own - does not enter our consciousness. We make life-risking choices as if death did not exist. As we age, its remoteness diminishes. Unless it overcomes us earlier in life, death reaches that point where awareness of it is part of our daily life. Or, as an older friend says, "We reach that age in which we begin planning our social calendar by reading the obituary page." Upon receiving word of his friend's impending death, our text says Jesus stayed two days longer where he was. A better translation is that he endured two days longer. Arriving too late, Lazarus' sister greets him. "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Believing Jesus could and would have healed his friend Lazarus, Martha reveals both her faith and her frustration. Most of us, familiar with serious illness and death of a loved one, can feel with Martha not only the grief but also the frustration. Perhaps something more might have been done; but it was not done in time. Someone we love dies. Surely our Lord would have done something to stop this tragedy? Where was God? It's not that we doubt. Either we don't understand or we try to understand by grasping at unsatisfactory answers. "It was her time," we say, as if God sits around leisurely selecting at random those for whom "it is their time." So how do we understand this remarkable bring-back-to-life story? As a success story for Jesus, and a lucky break for Lazarus? If we truly listen, that is not what we hear. Instead, death walks with Jesus in today's Gospel as he moves in measured pace toward his own suffering and death. The raising of Lazarus is the final and greatest sign of Jesus, a symbolic narrative of his victory over death at the cost of his own life. While some modern philosophers and sociologists claim we are "beings-toward-death," Jesus, offers us freedom from our "Beings-toward-death" into "Beings-toward-life." Jesus' words to Mary and Martha are not the unctuous tones of an undertaker. No word here of "It'll be okay; he's out of pain and misery, and doesn't he look natural?" as I've heard at countless funerals. Instead, Jesus says, "Your brother will rise again." Martha, familiar with religious sentiments on such occasions, says she knows about the doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead on the last day. She's a good Pharisee, who believes right things. But Jesus says, "I'm not talking about your right belief. I myself am the Resurrection and the Life I'm talking about. It is belief in me, not in properly formulated doctrines, that is life-giving." Deep down, in a personal way, I know this story is about me. I am in it, playing the parts, save one. When someone dies whom I dearly love, especially if that death seems untimely, the pain of my grief makes me into Mary and Martha. Yes, along with Martha, I can claim he will rise again in the resurrection. But just as Mary, I throw in my accusation: If you had been here he would not have died. Faith and bereavement enmeshed; anger, pain and hope rolled into one. At such times my feelings about God, like Martha's feelings about Jesus, are at best confused and ambivalent. And it's not just about death. "Why doesn't God do something about this situation?" we pray as we watch our child go down an undesirable path, we lose a job, a marriage disintegrates. In today's church wars we wonder why God does not fix things. It's hard getting God to obey us. After all we're the ones on the scene. We know what we need. God should listen to us and take our advice. If God would only be here when needed, there would be no tragedy in our lives. At times I am only an acquaintance of the one who died, and as bystander in this episode my role is as comforter. I observe from afar a tragedy - the death of a child at the hands of a drunk driver, someone else's job terminates or marriage disintegrates. I offer help - often misdirected. I care. And I wonder, "Why did this have to happen? Could not he who opened the eyes of a blind man have prevented this misfortune?" Sometimes I am a Pharisee who sees Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. I realize Jesus can only be who he claims to be. That means I will have to adjust my life accordingly - changing everything about my life. However, having him killed proves easier. And sometimes, in my grief, I am also Lazarus: bound, entombed. My aversion to death binds me; my desire to be with loved ones, now lost, is powerful, immediate, and tinged with doubt that I will be reunited with them in God's time. I want to be with them, and I want it now. You might even say that at such moments of grief and doubt, pain and uncertainty, I am dead to the world. I am shut up alone in a tomb - a tomb that keeps out light and life, joy and community. The root problem is that we have not been let in on the whole story. Before Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb, he said, as an aside: "Father, I thank you for having heard me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." Out of the tragedy and sorrow of a friend's death comes good. It was not good that Lazarus died. Lazarus didn't die so people might believe in Jesus. Death and life, evil and good, darkness and light are not each separate things. Good is merely evil put back on its feet again. Life is the positive end of death. Darkness makes light possible. Before we rush into situations blaming God for not turning up on time, we have to realize that we don't ever quite get the whole story. Instead of blaming God or suggesting that God has been absent, we need to believe that God and God's purpose are always at work. God does not will evil or tragedy. Yet God's love works good even at moments of personal or institutional despair. All death is untimely, rude, unfair, and somehow hopeless, whether it is of the aged in a nursing home or an infant in a hospital, just hours after birth. All deaths lead to dust, dry bones in valleys, dissolved bodies in tombs. But resurrection does not mean the restoration of life to a corpse, it entails rather a transformation of life. Moreover, the eternal life that Jesus gives his followers does not abolish death but rather transcends it, offering authentic life, life in its fullness. "Eternal life conquers death without abolishing it." It begins not at death, but from the moment we accept the life available to us. As dramatic as they are, the most important words Jesus speaks in this whole episode are not "Lazarus! Come out!" but rather "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live." And good for us that this is the case! Good for us: Because, while this is a story about other people who lived long ago and far away, it also involves us. For we can be confident death will test our faith - death of someone we love, or death in a situation that shocks and dismays us. In our collect today, we acknowledge only God can bring order to our unruly wills, and we ask for the grace to love God's command and promise so that in this chaos our hearts may be fixed where true joys are to be found. So today, Jesus stands outside our tomb - our last stop on our journey to God. The hole is dug, the excavated soil placed off to the side and the area surrounding the grave is covered with artificial turf. Over the grave is a metal framed contraption and thick straps hung to support us. When all is neatly arranged the mourners are invited to the grave site. Standing outside of each of our self-made tombs, Jesus calls, "Bill! Come out!" He loves, he cares, he too calls your name, saying, "Come out." But he leave the choice with me and you.