“...even though they die, will live...”
Scripture Lesson: John 11: 1-6, 17-45
Dr. Matthew Brown
March 13, 2005
It was a fine spring day in the late 1980’s when I received the gilded invitation from a local funeral home enticing me to play in a golf tournament they were sponsoring for clergy. Well, you know I had to go..., mind you, not because I am a golfer. I am not.
But it was worth putting on a pair of plaid pants to go and find out what kind of container they would serve the drinks out of. I mean if the auto makers who sponsor the pro tournaments dot the golf course with this year’s models, what would these guys choose to display. I don’t know, I had this vision of walking off the eighteenth green to pull a soda out of an ice-filled, burled walnut, model B340 casket. Alas, it was not to be. No one even pulled a bag of golf clubs out of a hearse, though you know what kind of green roofed tent was used for registration.
When your occupation leads you to deal with death on a
fairly regular basis, to survive you will inevitably seek some levity to
balance some of the sadness, whether it be the time my secretary freaked out
when she opened my office closet and mistook a baggie of Ash Wednesday ashes
with somebody’s aunt Matilda, or the mystery of why each time I approach the
tent for a graveside service, some somber-faced official will greet me saying,
“The head is on this side.” Okay?? I could easily imagine there to be more
laughter at a mortuary convention than what you’ll hear at the Comedy Zone.
Life’s vagaries have led each of us to often say, “I had to
laugh to keep from crying.” And some
times we do both almost at the same time, the cathartic release of emotion as
natural and unavoidable as death itself.
Shakespeare suggested that “men shut their doors against a
setting sun,” and I don’t think he is speaking about letting cold air in on a
winter day. No, he is referring to our
hesitancy to confront the issue of the winter of our days, specifically our
mortality. We approach the subject of
the inevitable with all the interest of an eight year old (or 44 year old)
facing a bowl of brussell sprouts, yet they say that along with the
Some people spend their lives in such fear of it that they
never actually live the days they have.
W. H. Auden said, “Life is the destiny you are bound to refuse until you
have consented to die.” There is a great
difference between living and living in fear just as there is such a great
chasm between living without hope of a resurrection and living in hope of the
resurrection. The apostle Paul said it
well, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most
to be pitied.” Christmas is a day of
great and glorious celebrations but Easter is the reason we’re in business
here. We gather around an empty cross to
remind us that death, the event we fear and the subject we avoid, does not have
the final word.
That is the foreshadowing present in our story today, but it
is important to recognize that this story does not seek to deny that death does
have its sting.
A death has occurred.
A family grieves. A community
gathers around to offer support. Rituals
are enacted both compassionate and curious.
We may not be able to deal with all the emotions but we can bake a
casserole, and so loss inevitably brings out a bevy of Pyrex and corning
ware. For some strange reason we have
concluded that nothing says you care like a bowl of baked beans.
We do not know the standard recipes of Jesus’ time but we
know that Mary and Martha would not go hungry.
Neither would they hear any disparaging remarks about Lazarus, their
lost loved one. In death, we’ll give the
deceased the mercy we would never give them in life. We’ll finally find the grace in the neighbors
we only judged when they were living.
Hands are held. Plans
for burial are carried out. A life is
remembered. Lazarus is exonerated of
past sins and glorified for good deeds.
And here and there laughter leaks out as stories are recounted and good
memories are shared. Sometimes the most
healing words at a time of death are, “Do you remember the time...?” Healings words that remind us that life,
however short it seems, is a gift.
But there is a cloud hanging over this scene in
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have
died.” O, what an insidious thought that
is. Once those seeds of blame and
bitterness take root, they can quickly grow to shield all light from your life
for the rest of your days. “If someone
had something, this would not have happened.”
It is the thought that stems from our inability to grasp the reality
that we are finite, limited beings living in a finite, limited world. Ecclesiastes was observing reality when he
said, “There is a time to be born and a time to die.”
We are born, life is precarious, and we shall die. Assigning blame will not alter that and our
acceptance of this allows us to see the light in our living days. William Sloane Coffin writes, “The one true
freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early as possible, for
death is an event that embraces all our lives.
And the only way to have a good death is to lead a good life. Lead a good one, full of curiosity,
generosity, and compassion, and there’s no need at the close of the day to rage
against the dying of the light. We can
go gentle into that good night.”
There is not always someone to blame but there will always
be questions shrouded with mystery. Such
is the nature of life and death.
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have
died.” This is an important point in the
story, for it reveals that God does not always meet our expectations just as it
reveals our desire to be our own gods.
How much of life is wasted trying to tell God what God needs to do? How much anxiety would we avoid if we could
recognize that God is God and we are not?
This story does not try to deny that death has its
sting. Jesus certainly does not deny it
as he weeps with those who weep and confronts his own meeting with a
cross. Is it not poignant and comforting
as we look at Jesus here with Mary and Martha?
Remember that in Jesus we see God, and here we see God weeping at the
pain we have to bear. “For God so loved
the world...”
This story is not about avoiding death. Death will have its day and all that
Just as Jesus calls Lazarus to come out from the darkness of
that tomb, rising from death to life, so too, Jesus calls us out of the
darkness that shrouds our lives and points us to that ever bright, everlasting
morning when God will wipe the last of the tears from our eyes and death will
be no more. Just as Jesus shouts,
“Unbind him, and let him go,” so too, will we be unbound from all the
bitterness and blame, all the fears and tears, all the problems and plagues
that enslave us.” My Lord, what a
morning that will be.
Death will have its day, but “if for this life only we have
hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
A friend of mine died recently, and it was one of those
deaths that folks observe as coming too soon.
Too soon for the children. Too
soon for the spouse. Too soon for the
community. The experience of his death
was raw and visceral for many.
I came to know Brac the way we come meet so many who
populate our lives through the unpredictable, yet ordinary events of daily
life. We were living in Morganton at the
time. In the city of
I succeeded better than most, being 5’ 7” and thus, more
easily lost in the crowd. A six-foot
friend named Jane could not be so anonymous, and so some six years ago at the
A certain local minister felt this pang of compassion and
volunteered to help at that first practice, but as soon as Jane witnessed my .
. . incomprehensible mastery of the game of soccer, she knew it was time to
call in the Cavalry, and thus, Brac Gooch walked into my world.
Read, if you will, every book on the market about child
development, the psychology of children, or elementary education. Watch Oprah if you want, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter, there are just some people
who are wired to be able to make a connection with kids; some people to whom
children are drawn; some people who can get through to children in a way that
the rest of us cannot; some people who are a living witness to the words of our
Lord, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them. That was Brack Gooch.
He was loud, he was boisterous, and he was downright
entertaining to those of us sitting in the stands, but more than that, he was
good. It was a joy to watch Brac and
those kids that season. They started as
that roaming amoeba that you find on most youth soccer fields, but they became
a team.
Brac was something else.
He could harass them; teach them, and make them laugh all at the same
time. Those kids responded to him, they
learned from him, and they really enjoyed themselves.
Some people, yes, some people have that gift. Ask any kid who lived nearby who was the
coolest, and a bunch of them would say Brac Gooch. And so it was, that when Brac joined the
church I was serving, he was introduced to the congregation as the coolest guy
in town.
The man was cool! I
mean, he was the only man I’ve known who could make an old corduroy sport coat
look GQ!
Brac knew, more than most of us that we are indeed earthen
vessels. For five years he courageously
battled an elusive shadow that kept reappearing on a CTscan. He knew that life was precarious and fragile,
but yet, he also knew it was a gift to be relished. And so we were blessed by his laugh. We were taken by his smile. We were moved by his unflagging endurance.
Death made its sting felt. A family grieved. Recipes were retrieved and a mad rush of cooking commenced. Rituals were enacted. A community gathered. We call them funerals and whatever the word originally meant, it has come to mean something about endings. “Closure” is the supposedly therapeutic term we use, and there is a place for that.
But, I’m more of a fan of the language offered by our Book
of Common Worship which calls the gathering “A service of Witness to the
Resurrection.”
Christ said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they
die, will live.”
O, there were plenty of tears that day because we are
limited and cannot comprehend this mystery called death. But gathered around an empty cross, those
tears glistened as the light of eternity shone upon them.
Jesus called out to the one he loved, the same way he loves you and me, “Unbind him and let him go.” My Lord, what a morning that will be.
Amen.