GO!

A little late, but here is my sermon from November 4th, 2012 as preached at FCC Gainesville, TX.

GO.

John 11:32-44

“When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid  him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept.

Then 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?”

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.””

Will you please join me in prayer? May the words of my mouth and meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. In these ancient words, may we now find a living word. Amen.

            My experience with resurrection is very limited. As a child, I had a stuffed dog named Spunky that had a tendency to die and in order to revive her; she had to go in the freezer for a short amount of time. This often resulted in the following scenario several times a week:

*Sound of the freezer door opening*

Annoyed Mom: “Erin! Come get your dog out of the freezer!”

Hopeful Erin: “Is she alive yet…?”

Each time Spunky held true to her name, and exited the freezer feeling revived and… well… spunky.

            More recently, I had a betta fish named Midget Jr. who had much more in common with Lazarus than Spunky did. Midget Jr. got me through 2 and half years of college and my first year of seminary. Towards the end of his abnormally long life, he was “accidentally” frozen and pronounced dead upon my return back from Chi Rho retreat. My old roommate turned off the heat in our house during the one weekend in February when our high was 28 degrees. I came home from a lovely weekend in Athens, TX with Jorey Polley and walked into my bedroom only to find a dark blue ice cube at the bottom of my aquarium. I tapped the tank and nothing happened. I ran to turn the heat back on, held my blow dryer up to the aquarium, and even watched Midget Jr. for 5 hours just hoping he would have a miraculous recovery and triumphantly leap through the water just like Winter had done in the movie Dolphin Tale. I finally decided that the time had come and I needed to call my parents to tell them about the fate of their grandfish. As I tearfully uttered the news to my mom, she told me that fish can put themselves into shock and basically stop their pulse when in freezing water. After being given very explicit instructions on how to “resurrect” Midget Jr., I ran to the store as quickly as I could, in the sleet, at 11 pm, in tears, to buy a heater for his aquarium. Within 2 minutes of the heater being inside of the aquarium, Midget Jr. began flapping his little fins and swimming. IT WORKED!!! MIDGET JR WAS ALIVE!!! He lived another 3 months after this night, just long enough to see me through finals.

            In John’s account of the Lazarus story, he makes no mention of Disciples Crossing, a weary fish, or a miraculous aquarium heater, but I suspect that is because the situation was slightly different. As Mary grieves the loss of her brother, she gets word that Jesus is near by and rushes over to share this news with him. He stands alongside of her, enduring her pain, and weeps with her. As they arrive at the tomb, Jesus asks for the stone to be moved away and calls out to Lazarus, “Lazarus! Come out!” From the tomb he emerges and Jesus says to the crowd, “Take off the grave clothes, and let him go.” They stand by anxiously, perplexed by what could happen next.  

            We don’t know what Lazarus does next… We don’t know if he takes off his grave clothes and dances with joy… We don’t know if he is so distraught from this experience that he high tails back into the grave and cowers… If he was anything like my fish, he probably flapped his little fins as quickly as he could for a minute, and then went back to playing peek-a-boo with his plastic turtle.

            As I read and reread this text, I tried to imagine what I would do if I were in Lazarus’s shoes. Initially, this sounds pretty cool. I would enjoy seeing my friends and family again. I would eat all of my favorite foods and swim in pools of Diet Coke. I would go to Disneyland and ride Pirates of Caribbean all day. I would come back here and make sure my office is still purple. I would think of all of the things I wanted to do in life but never got the chance to… like see the Grand Canyon, go to Paris, learn to do a cartwheel, and see the giant Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Yes! This all sounds like a great idea! Lazarus, you were given quite a gift! Given a second chance? What a deal!

            Then I got to thinking… there are so many others things I’d like to do if I was in the same shoes as Lazarus! I miss working with the unsheltered homeless population. I would like to see every person who is homeless in Fort Worth, all of my former clients, to know the comfort and stability of their own warm bed on cool winter nights. I would like to see food banks overstocked with goods, not because of an abundance of donations, but because there are fewer hungry mouths to feed. I would like to help every child who doesn’t have a hope in the world, feel loved and purposeful. I would like for churches and religious intuitions of ALL faiths to build bridges instead of walls that separate one another. I would like to hear politicians working together instead of tearing one another down on national television. I would like to never again hear the cries of a woman or a child who have become the victims of sexual assault and now have nowhere to go.

            On second thought, this whole “given new life” thing is a lot to handle. Maybe Lazarus’s story doesn’t have as much of a fairy tale ending as I had originally thought.             “Take off your grave clothes and let him go,” Jesus says. That’s a lot of pressure… where will he go? Where would I go? Where would you go?

I’m starting to feel defeated. I’m at the end of my rope. Just wrap me in the grave clothes and move the stone into place, I’ve been defeated.

            Last weekend something pretty amazing happened at this church. We baptized three people… Three people who, like many of us, have heard that call from God… like Isaiah, like Lazarus, to ‘go’. Similar to my resurrection experience, my baptism experience was fairly limited to stuffed animals and pets up until last week. On the Thursday before Adrianna, Cat, and Austin were baptized, Mark and I went over every possible detail from testing each microphone and page protecting the liturgy. As I stood in the empty baptistery, I looked at my surroundings and knew that soon this empty space would be full and would become something much greater that I could imagine. On Sunday morning, I stepped down into the baptistery with the youth in tow, and I knew this spaced had changed. Something once empty and cold, was albeit, still cold, but it was different. It was full… and not just full of water, it was full of something else.

            In the waters of baptism we find renewal… we find hope… we find that our grave clothes have been removed. Once we were dead and now we are given new life. We come to Christ – whether it be through baptism, desperately wanting to serve our neighbor, or emerging from a tomb of some sort – to be filled. We ask Christ to wash us in the waters of new life, stand alongside us as we reach out to the distraught and broken hearted, and to revive us when we feel completely dead. While the physical act of baptism may occur only once, we are forever washed in the grace of God and the brought into God’s family. Much like Lazarus, we are given a second chance… we are given new life.

            In class this past week, my professor passed down a great pearl of wisdom that, at first, made a room full of seminary students anxiously awaiting their ordination want to slam their heads on the desk. “Ordination is NOT initiation into ministry. Baptism is.” At first, several us felt discouraged because we are working our tails off to become ordained…. But all we really needed to do to become ministers was to be baptized? NO! We demand tuition refunds! But then as this pearl of wisdom seeped beyond our sleep-deprived brains and into our bleeding hearts, we began to understand the truth of this statement. Whether we are baptized as an infant, child, or adult, whether we are immersed or sprinkled, we are baptized into the ministry of Jesus Christ.

            My all time favorite passage in the Bible is from Ephesians 4:1-6.

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.”

            Of the four gospels, the book of John is known as the “wisdom gospel” and as the revelation of God’s word. We all know how it begins:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

            Resurrecting Lazarus was one of the last things Jesus does before he is crucified. In fact, it’s the last miracle that occurs in the book of John before he withdraws from the Judea spotlight, celebrates Passover, and predicts his own death. It’s a beautiful image actually… Just before his death, Jesus resurrects Lazarus and gives him new life. It is almost as if Jesus knows what’s coming next and resurrects Lazarus specifically to carry out his ministry. It’s a reminder that Christ gives new life to us, just like he did to Lazarus. In this new life, we are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus. Just as God did at the beginning of the gospel of John, the word became flesh. The word became living, breathing, and mobilized flesh. We must embody the word of God in our actions, our thoughts, and most importantly in our hearts.

One Lord. One faith. One baptism. One God and Father of all, who is over all, in all and through all. We are called to live our lives like Christ, to make “minister” a verb, not a title. Each day we are given a new opportunity to be like Christ and to transform the world around us.

            The resurrection of Lazarus was not Jesus’ last miracle. We embody the word of God and ministry of Jesus. Jesus continues to live through us. Any time that we choose peace over violence, hospitality over neglect, joy over suffering, or understanding over ignorance; we continue the miracles of Jesus. We must take off our grave clothes, the things that hold us back like violence, neglect, suffering, or ignorance, and go out into the world with the confidence of our new life in tow.

            Maybe I was on to something at the beginning… this whole “second chance” or “given new life” thing seems pretty fantastic. So, what would you do if you were in Lazarus’s shoes?