 | |||
 |
| ||
 |
A Sermon Delivered at First Christian
Church Stockton
"Now
a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her
sister Martha. Mary was the
one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair;
her brother Lazarus was ill. So
the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is
ill." But when Jesus heard it, he said, "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." 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 where he was. Then after this he said to the
disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to
him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you
going there again?" Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours
of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they
see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because
the light is not in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our
friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken
him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep,
he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his
death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake
I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to
him." Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples,
"Let us also go, that we may die with him." When Jesus arrived,
he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany
was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to
Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard
that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. "Martha
said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have
died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of
him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the
resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "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. Do
you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that
you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told
her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And
when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. "Now
Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where
Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling
her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they
thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet
and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not
have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with
her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He
said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord,
come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how
he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened
the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" Then Jesus,
again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was
lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the
sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench
because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I
not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" "So
they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father,
I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I
have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may
believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a
loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his
hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a
cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." Many of
the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did,
believed in him." This
morning is confession time, my friends.
Not a Jimmy Swaggert confession "I have sinned" sort of
confession. I need to tell
you the truth about something. You
might consider it a bit odd or strange.
You might even think that I am off my rocker, but I do need to tell
you something. I would ask
that you keep it between us, our little secret.
Please do not let it leave this room.
Here is my confession: I
much prefer to preside over a funeral than at a wedding.
I have thought about bringing this to my therapist but I'm afraid
of what she might think, so maybe you can pray for me.
I don't know exactly why I prefer doing funerals over weddings.
Maybe it is because funerals are much more predictable.
I have never had anything go wrong at a funeral, and the deceased
has never complained. I
cannot say the same for weddings. Also,
I know for sure that funerals are permanent.
I have not heard someone telling me that the man I buried ten years
ago was seen walking downtown with a new wife.
Funerals are always permanent, weddings only half the time. I
am thinking about adopting a new wedding policy.
I am thinking about making my fee for performing a first time
wedding one half of what the couple is spending on the entire wedding and
reception. If they are
willing to fork up five thousand dollars for the flowers, music, food, and
entertainment, then the actual wedding ceremony ought to cost more than
the couple of dollars. If
they see that getting married is a financial investment, then maybe they
will think twice before getting married First
weddings are more like what you read in a fairy tale. Cinderella meets frog, she kisses frog, frog turns into
prince, Cinderella and prince marry, and they live happily ever after.
But fairy tales soon turn into reality, prince still acts like a
frog eating insects for breakfast instead of cereal, and girl discovers
that glass slippers are uncomfortable.
Cinderella returns to her rags, the Prince heads back to the pond.
And the only ones happy are the lawyers.
This scenario occurs nearly 50% of the time. Have
you noticed that second or third weddings are usually not as elaborate?
These couples know that a wedding ceremony is not what the marriage
is about. They have gained
wisdom, replacing glass slippers with bedroom slippers, and they prefer
frumpy men over princes-frogs. And
if the man they are marrying is a frog they have no interest of making him
into a prince. They accept
the toad as he is, warts and all. When
these couples come to me for premarital counseling they are less inclined
to talk about the bride's dress and who will cater the ball, and more
likely to talk about companionship, values, dreams, parenting styles.
So do you think I should talk to my therapist, or will you just
pray for me? I
have some other strange thoughts to confess to you.
I sometimes wonder if God had showed us our lives on a big screen
before we born, and we saw ever detail, ups and downs, highs and lows, how
many of us would chose to be born? There
you are, at birth, surrounded by mom and dad, holding you, looking into
your eyes, smiling and cooing, learning to breast-feed.
And here you are again, learning to walk, everyone so proud,
cheering you on. Your first
birthday, a candle in the cake, you smash the cake with your hand and
grandma hollers at you. On
the potty chair, mom encouraging you to use it instead of your diapers,
dad drunk on the sofa watching All in the Family.
Your first spanking, your first playmate, your new little brother.
Dad drunk and yelling at mom; going to school the first day,
learning to read, being picked on because your ears are too big, being
picked last for the team, getting good grades, getting yelled at because
you got a C in math, and on and on until graduation from High School; mom
and dad now divorced, your best friend joins the military, your heart
broken by the one you thought you'd be with forever.
Your whole life, seeing friends and relatives dying, falling in
love, having children of your own, discriminated against, falling out of
love, losing a job, getting a promotion.
All laid out before your eyes, and God says, "So, do you want
to go, or never be born at all, and go back into nothingness?"
How many of us would want to be born? I
thought I had it all worked out in therapy, but there are some things you
can't even tell your therapist. In
this mornings reading about Jesus, Mary, Martha, and Lazurus, Jesus knows
that Lazurus is going to die, but instead of intervening and healing
Lazurus, Jesus delays going to Bethany so that Lazurus would die. Lazurus, Jesus, Mary, and Martha are all good friends, and
maybe they grew up together. He
wasn't one of the twelve. Heck,
somebody had to work to support the missionaries.
And as painful as it was, Jesus needed to allow Lazurus to die so
that Jesus could prove to them that he had power over death, that death
did not have the final word on our lives, that Christ had come to conquer
the power of death. Notice
a couple of interesting things in the text.
Lazurus is laid in a tomb that is sealed with a rock.
Jesus asks Mary, "Where have you laid him?, " the same
question Mary Magdalene asked the man she thought was the gardener when
she went to the tomb of Jesus. Do
you find that interesting?
What
is refereed to as the shortest verse in the Bible is found in our reading:
"Jesus wept". Who
could blame him? His best
friend had died, Mary and Martha are wrought with grief, Jesus has been
blamed for not saving his friend as he had others.
But I have a hunch, and mind you, it is only a hunch, that
something else is going on with Jesus besides grief for his friend.
What I suspect as I listen to the text is that Jesus is being
confronted with his own mortality, his own humanness, and his own
impending death. He sees the
cave where Lazurus lies dead. He
sees the stone that covers it. He
sees the grief others are in. It
is a moment like at Gethsemane where he has his fears and doubts,
questions about whether he should go to the cross.
Jesus weeps as he faces his own life and destiny. I
also believe that Jesus must have known that when he entered the tomb and
called for Lazurus to rise up and come out that his enemies would become
the plot to crucify him. The
people were there as witnesses. They
see the power Jesus has over death. And
Jesus will become too popular, and so he must be killed.
It is in the raising of Lazurus from the dead that prompts the
religious authorities to plot with the Roman government to crucify Jesus.
He may become a king, riding into Jerusalem with crowds waving palm
branches and shouting "Hosanna." There
are times when we all face our own humanness, where we are overwhelmed
with despair, overcome by an existential dread as we scan our lives and
see the future. Some people
tell me that they feel as if they have been buried alive and unable to
escape. The doom and gloom is
utter hopelessness. And it is
there in the tomb that is sealed by a rock where Christ comes in and heals
our wounds, forgives our transgressions, and offers us life. He says to us "Come out". Michael Malone
| ||
 |
|||
