Sunday March 9th 2008

REFLECTION  BY

THE REV. PAUL MULLEN

AT

SCARBORO UNITED CHURCH, CALGARY

MARCH 9, 2008

“DEATH BECOMES US”

Scripture:   John 11:1-45

Well, if you think we have a long waiting list to see the specialist today, imagine having to wait four days with a life-threatening illness. Lazarus was dying and in fact died before the beloved healer could come. And he wasn’t even from Saskatchewan!

My intent is not to make light of the grief of the family of Jack Hinz  -  the dying man from Saskatoon who Calgary Health turned away this week ostensibly because he wasn’t from Alberta. My intent is to give you a small sense of Martha’s anguish and frustration  with Jesus when he takes days to travel the four km from Jerusalem to Bethany. At least in those days healers made housecalls!

Martha is not comforted by Jesus' response to her frustration.  She is angry that Jesus has waited  three days before responding to the word that Lazarus, her beloved brother, was ill.  When Jesus arrives he is so late that Lazarus has already been dead for four days, an ancient Semitic way of saying he was really and truly dead. She knows there is no longer anything he can do to keep her brother alive.  When Jesus responds to her with reassuring words, that Lazarus would "rise again in the resurrection at the last day," Martha thinks he is trying to dismiss her grief with a well-known and perhaps trite saying.

Many people in Jesus' day believed that there would be a resurrection of the dead in the last days of the world, and many did not.  It was a subject of controversy and dissension  -  a hot topic.  Martha and Jesus had probably discussed this subject before.  But that is all it was for her  - a subject, a theory.  She seems to hear Jesus' words as if he were simply saying, "Don't worry about it, Martha, everything will be OK."  It is not a message of comfort she is looking for, and angrily she lets Jesus know about it.  Her grief is not going to be dismissed with the mouthing of a easy phrase. It is as if she says to him: "I know that, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day, what good does that do me now?  How does that fill this gaping hole within me where my brother used to be?"

Jesus' response to Martha is quite unusual.  He does not get defensive or attempt to avoid the issue.  Instead of words, he puts himself on the line.  He shows God's love to Martha by being that love.  "I am," he says, "I am resurrection and I am life.  Just as I am with you now, and the resurrection is with you now."  He tells her the meaning of God's love as he knows it.  Not God is . . ., but "I am."

This is the way Jesus lived, and the way he lives today.  He comes to the suffering, the terrified, the lonely, the dying and the grieving and says, "I am with you."  He brings the presence and love of God to us.

Through the life and death of Jesus, we are shown that God is with us.  God cannot or will not prevent suffering and tragedy  -  even for his own son as he hangs on a cross  -   but God will not abandon us.  This is God's name when he comes to us in the person of Jesus - Emmanuel, God-with-us.

None of us are immune to pain, suffering and death.  As Job found out, even the most devout must suffer, often at the same time as the wicked prosper gleefully and in apparent good health.  Jesus used the ancient saying "the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike" not to show God's unfairness, but to show God's fairness. Death comes to all. God doesn’t play favorites.

In response to suffering and death, some are driven away from God, others brought closer.  Some are driven to despair, others to stand in awe in the presence of the divine. The choice to draw closer or fall away, ironically perhaps, is ours.  As the ancient writers of the Book of Deuteronomy heard God's word: "I have given you the choice between blessing and curse, life and death . . . therefore choose life."

Jesus tells us that choosing life means dying to the way of the world – all that seduces us into believing we can be satisfied with stuff and security, power and fame, pleasure and comfort. That we can make life perfect or complete by ourselves and our own actions. These are the things that bind us unto death, place us in a tomb and roll a stone  to seal us in.

In faith we make that choice. When we believe that God loves us and respects us - even when we reject, run away from  and even crucify God in every way we can -- then, in the face of that grace, we can begin to see that death is not the end of God's love.  Death is not punishment or rejection by God.  Death is not the end of life, it is part of life -- part of the gift of life in which we draw closer to the Giver of Life.  When we know this, death loses its sting.

Like Martha, we will still have our pain, our emptiness and our loss.  Faith does not make life simple or easy. Faith enables us to have less resentment, less bitterness, less alienation, less anger  – the sting that suffering and death often bring.

We can be filled instead with gratitude. We can be deeply thankful for the true miracle, the real miracle, the miracle of life in all its fullness, the miracle that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Whether you believe miracle stories like this actually happened or not, please do not miss the point of what a true miracle is. A number of years ago I attended a seminar at the Foothills Hospital with the late Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the eminent psychiatrist who specialized in working with dying patients. As part of the workshop Dr. Kubler-Ross interviewed a dying patient – a woman with terminal cancer. The interview had hardly begun when the woman began talking about her miracle cure. Her symptoms had disappeared and her health was returning. She was sure that God had cured her of this dreaded disease.

After the interview ended Dr. Kubler-Ross took questions and comments. Several Doctors, one after another, rose to point out that the woman’s cancer was merely in remission, a common occurrence where symptoms abated for a while. They assured us that there had been no miracle cure, that the cancer would return and the woman would most certainly die within a few years at

the most.

            At that point, a retired United Church Minister, Rev. Stanley Hunt, stood up. He slowly looked around the room of gathered medical personnel and began pointing his finger at them. “You Doctors don’t understand what a miracle is. The real miracle is life.”

Jesus stands before the tomb of your existence, head raised in the ancient attitude of prayer, desiring profoundly that you have a life of abundance. Deeply moved, from the depths of his being he shouts your name. Can you hear it? “Come out,” he says, calling us from the way and place of death into the fullness of life. Can you feel the emptiness of death fall away? Can you risk choosing life? He invites you to let those around you, those closest to you, to help with the unbinding, to let them be part of the way to freedom, part of the true miracle, the miracle of life.