March 13, 2005

Lent 5 (Series: "I Can't, but He Can")

            Do you know what to say at funerals?  I never know what to say at funerals.  It’s always so awkward.  The one I was just at was no exception.  The chapel was dead quiet.  People acknowledged each other with faint smiles and nods.  I said nothing to anyone. 

            What’s to be said?  There was a dead body in the place, for crying out loud!  Just last month, I took the guy out to lunch.  Lazarus and I told jokes over falafel.  Aside from a bad cough, I thought he was healthy. A week later, I heard about the diagnosis.  The doctor gave him 60 days.  He didn’t make it that long.  So now, we were both at his funeral.  He was in the casket.  I was in the pew.  Neither of us spoke.  Death had silenced us both.

            The church was full, and I was standing in back.  I recognized most of the people. Bethany is a small town.  I knew the two women in the front pew.  Martha and Mary are the sisters of Lazarus.  Mary, the quiet one.  Martha, the busy one.  She couldn’t even sit still at the funeral.  She kept looking over her shoulder.  Who for?  I wondered.

            A few moments later, my question was answered when a man entered the room.  Martha rushed down the aisle to meet him.  Every head turned.  “It’s Jesus,” whispers filled the room.  He was wearing a tie, although you got the impression that he rarely did.  His collar seemed tight and his jacket out of date.  A dozen men were following Him.  They had a well-traveled, wrinkled look, as if they had been riding all night.

            Jesus embraced Martha, and she wept.  As she cried, I was wondering what Jesus was going to do.  What would He say?  What would Jesus say at funerals?  I mean, He had spoken to the storm clouds and the demons.  But death?  Does He have anything to say about death?

            My thoughts were interrupted by Martha’s accusation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  I couldn’t fault her frustration.  She and Jesus had been close friends.  She put Him and his followers up in her home.  Mary and Martha knew Jesus loved Lazarus.  So they had urgently requested his help days earlier to come and heal their sick brother.  They were friends in need.  Martha’s broken heart came from the ugliness of sin and death.  I mean, haven’t you asked God that same question before:  “Why don’t You do something to stop this?”  It isn’t necessarily unbelief.  It is the aching shudder of grief.

            And Martha still expressed hope.  Not necessarily that Jesus was going to raise Lazarus from the dead at that very moment, but she said, “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”  Isn’t that they way a believer talks to God when words fail?  “I don’t even know what to ask for, but I know You will do what is right!”  Martha still believed in her friend.

            Then Jesus really got my attention.  “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” I will never forget these words.  All of a sudden, Jesus wasn’t only speaking to Martha.  He was speaking to all of us.  You, too!  We might have to pass through death one day, you and me, but then we are also going to hear the voice of Him who first made this promise!  Jesus, in a more than superhero fashion, asserted his authority over the grave and his power to give life!  His power to resurrect.  That not only is He the giver of life.  He is life!

            He was saying that if we believe in Him and who He is and what He has done for us, we will not die forever.  We will never be separated from Him.  We will have eternal life to look forward to.  Because of our sins, and because we live in a world made ugly by sin, we may experience physical death.  But that won’t be the end!  We will live with Him forever someday.  And this promise isn’t only for “someday.”  No.  Jesus was saying that we live with Him, in Him, through Him, because of Him, NOW, and such life can never be taken from us!

            And then, in very pointed words, Jesus asked “Do you believe this?”  DO YOU BELIEVE THIS?  Friends, do YOU believe that Jesus IS the life?  And that even though you are dead in your sins, He can give you LIFE – life with Him that lasts forever?  Do YOU believe this?  How you and I answer that question is very important!  Of that I am sure.  He wasn’t just asking Martha.  That question was for all of us.  And He gave us good reason to answer it “yes.”

            When Jesus told Martha that He was the Resurrection and the Life, and asked if she believed Him, did you feel that He wasn’t really listening to her grief, but just telling her to buck up and trust in God?  I don’t.  I don’t because of what Jesus did next.  He wept.  He sat on the pew between Martha and Mary, put an arm around each, and had a good cry with them.  Jesus wept at the ugly mess sin has caused us by bringing death into our world.  Jesus wept with them.  He wept for them.  Jesus weeps with us.  He weeps for us.

            Jesus weeps so that we will know that mourning is not disbelieving.  Flooded eyes don’t represent a faithless heart.  A person can walk into a cemetery rock-solid certain of life after death, but still have a hole in their heart.  Jesus did.  He wept, and He knew He was ten minutes away from seeing Lazarus alive again!  His tears give you permission to shed your own.  Grief doesn’t mean that we don’t trust.  It simply means that we can’t stand the thought of another day without the Lazarus or loved one of our life.  If Jesus gave us that loved one, He also understands the tears.  So grieve, but don’t grieve like those who don’t know the rest of the story.

            Jesus hugged Mary and Martha, stood up, and turned to face the corpse.  The casket lid was closed.  He told Martha to have it opened.  She started to refuse, because the body had been in there so long.  But after Jesus reassured her, she turned to the funeral director and said, “Open it.”  I was standing up, so I could see the face of Lazarus.  It was white and waxy.  I thought Jesus was going to weep again.  I never thought he was going to speak to his friend.

            But He did.  A few feet from the casket, Jesus yelled, “LAZARUS, COME OUT!”  Now, I have seen preachers address the living.  But the dead?  Jesus was stepping out on a limb.  If there was no rumble in that casket, He would have looked like a fool.  But there was a rumble, all right.  Everyone in that room heard and saw what I did.  Movement in the coffin!  “The dead man came out!”  Dead men don’t do that!!  Do they??  Dead men don’t “come out!”  Dead men don’t wake up!  Dead hearts don’t beat.  Dried blood doesn’t rush.  Empty lungs don’t inhale.  Closed eyes don’t open.  No, dead men don’t come out – unless they hear the voice of the Lord of Life!

            The ears of the dead may be deaf to our voices, but not to His!  Jesus Christ is “Lord of both the dead and the living.”  When Jesus speaks to the dead, the dead listen.  In fact, I am sure that if Jesus had not actually addressed Lazarus by name, the tenant of every tomb on earth would have come out!  Lazarus jolted up in the coffin, blinked, and looked around the room as if someone had carted him there during a nap.  Some screamed.  Some fainted.  Everyone was shouting.  And I believe that everyone there, if they didn’t already, came to faith that Jesus is their Resurrection and Life!  And that because of Him, we will live!  And me?  I learned something, too.  I learned what to say at funerals.

            I learned that there is a time to say nothing at all.  I learned that my words can’t take away the coldness of grief.  But my presence can warm it up a bit.  Your words and my words can’t give a Lazarus back to his sisters.  But God’s Can.  You and I cannot give life!  To ourselves or others!  But Jesus can!  We can’t, but He can!  And it is just a matter of time before He will come down from heaven with another commanding shout, and all of us who have died will rise from our graves!  Friends, please know this:  the same powerful voice that called Lazarus to life is promising us life right now, and that one day He will unlock our tombs as well!

            Until then, we grieve, but not like those who have no hope.  And we listen.  We listen for his voice.  Because we know who has the final say about death.  We know what Jesus says at funerals!  He says: “I am the resurrection and the life.”  Friends, take a look into the empty tomb of Lazarus… You will have an empty one too!  DO YOU BELIEVE THIS?  Jesus has given us good reason to!  Amen.

 

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