"Doubting Thomas"?

Acts 2:14a, 22-32

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

Confession of St. Thomas. 

Why do we give Thomas the nickname of 'doubting' when he's just one in a whole line of people trying to figure out who Jesus is? 

John's gospel is full of characters who are trying to make sense of this prophet from Nazareth. Even John the Baptist proclaimed him coming in a way folks couldn't quite wrap their heads around. The light, the truth, the word, the one who ranks ahead of John because he was ahead of him even though he's coming after him.  Lamb of God was the title that got folks at first to ask Jesus where he was staying, and just maybe he was also ‘the anointed one.’ 

John's Gospel is full of signs and speeches of trying to figure out who Jesus is, and from beginning to end it becomes clear that to believe in Jesus means to wrestle with who he is. Or, rather, to wrestle with him. Not an idea of him or a theory or a concept, but he himself. Faith in John’s gospel is built on relationship, lived experience, hearing about this guy and then trying him on for size. 

So I guess it kind of makes sense that Thomas would be considered without faith when he thinks Jesus is dead and gone and that’s the end of it. He’d lost heart, the relationship was over. I don't know why he wasn't there hiding with the other disciples that first Easter. Part of me wonders of he just didn't care if the Judeans caught up with him, wasn't afraid to be killed because his heart was so broken at the death of his Rabbi. What would be the point of hiding from those who handed Jesus over if everything he was was wrapped up in walking with Jesus, learning from Jesus, following Jesus, who was no longer there? 

Remember, when Lazarus was dead and Jesus went back into that community of folks who had tried to stone him, it was Thomas who said 'let us go also that we may die with him.' Thomas seems to have thrown in his entire lot with Jesus, hook, line, sinker, and boat. Makes me wonder if Thomas didn't have some amount of survivor’s guilt after the events of what we now call Good Friday. 

 And to make matters worse folks use his grief to say we can't have doubt if we're going to have faith - but that's exactly why Thomas has faith and is able to recognize Jesus as his Lord and God; because he wrestled and wondered and walked with this man, the rabbi, the lamb of God, the anointed one. When we talk about faith, about the creed we profess and teach, that our confirmation kids are studying in class, we tend to think it needs to be this solid unchanging thing we never question, this list of theories we agree to and can't ever really talk about. 

But as traditional as Easter has become, it is still plain weird! As much as some of us may have gotten used to the idea of being Christian, it’s very strange. 

Whether we’re here out of habit, or because we’ve had a living encounter with Jesus, or because in the middle of our habit Jesus stepped in and we’re trying to make sense of it, being a resurrection people (who pray first, walk together, and change lives) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in a world so polarized and frightened that entire faith communities, whole families, are turned in against themselves. That’s what those first disciples were facing, fighting their own people, arguing about this man Jesus to the point that they were ready to cut one another off. 

We've gotten used to this Easter story, tamed it even, at this point put it on clearance to make way for the next big holiday. But for us, as for Thomas, it may take awhile to sink in. Remember how dismayed and incredulous the first witnesses were. And it’s no small event, either. We have an embarrassing history of infighting and warmongering, presuming to fight in the name of this Jesus. This man’s very existence has changed the world. We know the way history repeats itself when we see communities divided, when people get so polarized that honest and open conversation doesn’t even seem possible.

This is part of that resurrection miracle. The doors where the disciples had met were locked for fear of their own people, and Jesus didn’t stand outside and knock politely like we see in the old painting, surrounded with flowers and all polite and gentle about it. You know this painting? It looks like early Thomas Kincaid, if he ever drew people. But Jesus didn’t wait for those disciples to open the door to him, he just showed up in the midst of their fear and anxiety and gave them a commission. They were afraid and in hiding and Jesus broke up their pity party to send them out into the world, back into the crowds that at once crucified him and desperately needed him. 

Even Peter, in today’s Acts reading, faced up to the people who had scared him into denying Jesus, that well-intentioned man who wouldn’t let Jesus wash his feet at first, Peter stands up in front of all those Judeans and testifies to the hope that is in him now that Jesus has appeared to give him peace and power.

So the disciples started by going outside of their locked doors to get Thomas. He was not left on his own to struggle with his faith. The disciples announced to him that Jesus had returned, and they brought him with them until the next time Jesus appeared again, in the same way, for Thomas as he needed. 

After that community was restored, Jesus continued to show up to people uninvited and unexpected. As the gospel author says, ‘Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.’ But as the author also says, ‘blessed are those who have not seen and have yet believed.’ That would be you and me. In this story here. Right here on whatever page of the bulletin or Bible you find this text. How quickly Jesus has already expanded the community.

And we are freed and inspired by Thomas to question, to look for proof, to ask of the community where Jesus might be found, and to be surprised to find him already among us. We are inspired by Thomas, and more than that, by Jesus himself, who breathes on the disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s a Pentecost moment before the great big international Pentecost event, where that same Spirit which drove Jesus’ ministry is sent upon us to drive our ministries. “As the Father has sent me,” Jesus says, “so I am sending you.”

This is not a spirit of such certainty that we will never need question or wonder again. But it is a spirit of wisdom and understanding. This is not a spirit of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but it is a spirit of counsel and might. This is not a spirit of having all the answers and programs and never again having to wonder if we’re doing the right thing, but it is a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. This is not a spirit of perfection, but it is a spirit of joy in God’s presence. 

We’re still trying to figure out who this Jesus is among us, who shows up and walks through locked doors and heals and feeds and teaches and comforts, and we’ve been wrestling with this Jesus for over two thousand years. 

But that’s faith. That’s what it means to believe, to put our trust in God, to name Jesus as our Lord and God. 

We are sent with the Spirit of the living Christ, not to fix everything that is broken in the world, but to find God living and active in places we might otherwise fear to tread. We cannot know the whole of who Christ is, because his life has not ended, he is still working, and showing up - as promised - in our Sacraments of Eucharist and Baptism, in Confession and forgiveness, but also showing up when and where we least expect it, with peace and power to set us free from our fear, restore our community, and send us into the world with the mysterious and joyful message that “alleluia, Christ is risen!”

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Matthew 28:1-10

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed, alleluia!

I love today. Today is my favorite day. After forty days of hiding the alleluia, we finally get to break it out again, in all its glory, and spend a whopping fifty days celebrating this season of Easter. That’s ten more days than we spent on Lent. So there, season of repentance, Easter trumps guilt every time.

Or does it? I wonder...

When the women go to see the tomb, there is a great earthquake as the angel rolls away the stone and just plops down on it like a golf chair. “Hey, ladies, what’s up? Looking for a body? Yeah, you just missed him. Headed to Galilee, didn’t he tell you? Might want to remind his disciples, then.”

Whoops. The disciples. The faithful twelve who were nowhere to be found while Jesus was put on trial, abused, beaten, and strung up to die. The men who had followed him and seen his miracles and been so excited about him, who turned tail and ran when the going got tough. Poor guys. Scared and scattered, what in the world will they make of this announcement from the women? Worried Jesus might call them on their abandonment? Frightened he’ll find another group of followers who’ll do better this time, leaving the twelve to grieve and wander alone?

But I wonder, too, what the women made of it? That angel scared the Roman guards into passing out, but the women stayed alert, payed attention, took it all in

And while their buzzing brains were trying to make sense of it all, as they are on their way to tell the men about this curious and terrifying thing that just happened

“Rejoice!” says Jesus. I know it says ‘greetings’ in your bulletin, but the Greek word is less formal than that, more of a ‘peace and blessings’ or ‘shalom y’all’ or ... well, really, we don’t need to get picky about it. He could have said ‘asparagus soup’ and it still would have been wonderful. Because

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed, alleluia!

I mean, the women, the men, the followers and rulers, barely had time to get used to the idea of his death, had only just gotten started into grieving, and here he is again, standing right in front of them,

and I can only imagine the terror and energy that grabbed those women as they saw him, fell down before him, and took hold of his feet. My guess is they would have embraced him upright, but their knees probably gave out. All of their energy for so long had been put on this Rabbi, their lives had been absorbed in the ministry of teaching, feeding, healing, and then, when they spoke too much truth to power, the one who loved all was taken from them and slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb. And if you’ve ever loved somebody, you know what pain it can be to see that one in pain. They could do nothing to stop his execution. They could do nothing to hasten his death so he wouldn’t suffer so much. They couldn’t even bury him properly because of the holiday.

I know Jesus knew the women’s pain, because he’s been walking with us while we’ve been hurting, loving us while we’ve hated ourselves and each other. So he comes as one among us, living in the pain with us, and though he loves us more completely and honestly than anyone else can, we let him be crucified, we clamored for it last week, every time we deny him or live like he’s just another excuse to either give up chocolate or buy multiple pounds of the stuff, we’ve forgotten what his life is like.

So while we can be ridiculously happy that he’s not ever going to die again, what do we do with the guilt at how we’ve killed him? What do the men do when they find out he’s been resurrected?

Well, we don’t get that part of the story today. We’ve got fifty days, remember, to live into this story. But what we do get, I think, is a little bit better.

Remember, the angel appeared, rolled back the stone, and told the women to let the other disciples know Jesus was on the way to Galilee. They were on their way to do just that, no more convincing required, when Jesus himself, in the flesh, stopped on by just to say hello.

It seems to me that Jesus was also a bit excited to be back. Maybe I’m projecting here, because I absolutely love to say 

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed, alleluia!

but I think Jesus was just as eager to see those women as they were to see him, if not more so. Just as glad to be on the other side of death as to know in his skin and bones that we’re right there with him because of what he gave us.

We can live in guilt, sure. There’s always going to be more we can’t and don’t do than what we can and do. But Jesus himself walks with us. Jesus in the flesh greets us on the road and restores us.

The women grabbed at his feet, maybe because that was all they could bear. Maybe because it was a sign of service and intimacy - remember how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet before he handed himself over. But for all of our things done and left undone, things said and left unsaid, good intentions that never got anywhere, promises broken, injustices ignored, so on and so forth, in the light of the resurrection these things, like us, are just dust. Unlike us, they will not last. Our guilt and sin, our failures and misdeeds, they have power, they have consequence, but they are not the end-all, be-all definition of who we are.

Something more solid is here, friends. Something more lasting, more permanent, more true.

So grab hold. Grab hold of his feet, though they still bear the marks of the nails. Grab hold of his presence on the road with you, whatever face he seems to wear today. Grab hold of his body and blood given and shed for you at this table, and be nourished for the resurrection life ahead of you because it is already living inside of you. And taste and see, if Christ lives in you, and he does, then you also shall live, because after all

Christ is risen, alleluia!

He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17; 31b-35 

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was gong to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord - and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” ... Jesus said,  “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Judeans so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Sermon:

Jesus and his disciples are in their prime. Three years of good ministry together, established and well-known, ready and able to take over the world, it seems. They’ve got a following, they’ve got converts, they’ve got it all, and national attention, too. Which isn’t the best kind of attention, but, hey, you’ve got to step on a few toes if you’re going to have a strong message. Yep, Jesus and his dirty dozen are primed for their takeover... and in the middle of preparing for the annual emancipation celebration, no less. What a perfect time for an uprising, since the Roman government doesn’t believe in their God it would certainly take them by surprise when the masses rise up, following their fearless leader, Jesus, on to victory against the colonizers.

It could have happened that way, too, if Jesus was that sort of leader. It could have been a bloodbath of a rebellion with just a word from their Rabbi. But Jesus had a bigger takeover in mind. A greater emancipation to accomplish. And he knows that whatever brave faces the disciples put on now, they will soon be scared silly, scattered, and denying any association with him. It’s the way of the world, saving yourself when it seems the ship is sinking. The Romans have been ruling by force, and the religious leaders have fallen into a fear deep enough they will send an innocent man to death in order to prevent the possibility of rebellion.

Jesus knows what is in our hearts, what fear and hope and uncertainty. He also knows what sort of mess he’s about to be carried off into and what the confusion of the events of Good Friday will do to his students. He could give them a battle plan, a strategy to stick together and hit the Romans while they’re looking the other way. He could give them a secret message, hidden keys to unlock a massive arsenal once he’s been carried off. 

Well, I mean, he could, and might, if he were anybody else but Jesus. Uprisings only recreate the cycle of oppression from the underside. Turning the oppressed into the new leaders just means more frightened, entitled leaders will be in command. No, the whole system has to be wiped out. The Passover freed the Israelites from slavery but left the Egyptians to drown and suffer, and that’s just not enough of a liberation for God. No, God’s liberation is bigger than that, and Jesus knows it’s going to shake the world to its core because nobody has been able to accomplish an across-the-board salvation for oppressed and oppressor alike. There’s always a bad guy and a good guy, always has been.

Until tonight. Tonight there’s no ‘bad guy’ and ‘good guy.’ Tonight there’s only ‘little children.’ We are not set against each other when Jesus comes to wash our feet, we are set together in the love and care of a savior who is willing and able to carry our weariness, our past and our future, who love us into wholeness, no matter what dirt we’re dragging around on our stumbling feet.

Jesus and his disciples are in their prime, and it seems they are poised for a takeover, but the strong and the silent, the zealous and the traitor, all are put in their place - not as powerful leaders but as beloved children. Children with dirty feet and empty bellies, who long for importance and influence and are embraced for who they are in spite of what they have done and left undone. They are loved with a love that only God can express, and then, somehow, Jesus calls them to love one another with that same love. It is as if they have been anointed so abundantly in love that it will pour forth from them as it pours forth from Jesus.

I was blessed to be at the annual Chrism Mass in Albany the night of the snowstorm this week.  It’s the worship service where oil is blessed and set aside for anointing of the sick, of the students, of the ordained, and others. The Bishop spoke at that Mass of God’s abundance being like the oil that is poured out over prophets, priests, and kings. Like the love of God, poured forth upon God’s people and overflowing into the world.

When I was in Seattle for a class on Baptismal remembrance, we had a service of anointing where anyone who wanted to affirm their baptism was invited forward and anointed in blessing. Abundantly anointed in blessing. I mean, all over our faces so we smelled of it for days. One woman afterward said how she wanted to go forward but thought the line was too long and she didn’t want to make the service go longer even though she really desperately wanted that blessing. She mentioned how, not long after in the worship service, we shared the peace, and when she was embraced by her neighbors, their faces still covered with oil, greeted cheek to cheek, she received the anointing she had wanted so very badly. God’s abundant love poured out on us and overflowing into the world.

This new commandment Jesus gives his students before he hands himself over to be crucified, this commandment to love as we have been loved, this is not optional. Neither is it something of our own doing. Of course, we have the rites and the rituals to practice the commandment in our liturgy, to prepare and be refreshed for the rest of our daily living, but it is as much a gift to love as it is to be loved. This commandment is equally a promise, a reality taking shape and form among us as we share our life together around this table.

Tonight we celebrate the life of Jesus given and shed for us all, the commandment to love in a way that only God can love. A love which lives in and among us now by the spirit of the risen Christ among us. We will enter two days’ reflection on the suffering and death he faced for our salvation, not with fear of judgment but renewed by this meal to face Jesus on the cross and know we are loved.

Children of God, Jesus knows the paths our feet have trod, he has held our sin and sorrow in his hands with care, even when our cracked souls ache with dryness. And knowing what life can bring, how we will run away and long to be found even as we fear it, Jesus holds our feet, feet that have followed and feet that will run, and he washes them and claims them, claims us, that we may have life with him. Whether you feel you are in your prime, just getting started, or starting to wind down, Jesus holds all, knows all, loves all of you. No matter where your feet may take you. 

For now, our feet take us to the table, then to the cross and on to Sunday.

Palm Sunday 2014

This Sunday is a bit different than usual. We process in with palm branches singing "Hosanna!" and by the time we've gotten through the rest of the readings for the day we've shouted "Crucify him!" and Jesus gets the death penalty we demanded. Palm Sunday begins a week of particular Christian prayer, reflection, and worship, called Holy Week. It's the most important week for our faith. Out of all four Gospels, only two have a Christmas story (one with sheep, one with magi) and the other two don't (Mark and John start off with John the Baptist fully grown and already preaching). But the Crucifixion and Resurrection (to varying degrees) are in all four Gospel accounts. The letters of Paul remind us again and again that without the death and resurrection of Jesus we are lost.  So we enter Holy Week with the story of Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem and then are plunged into the depths of what we call the Passion narrative, which is a word of intense love and suffering.
But this is not the whole story. We walk together through the week, and through the weeks ahead, to dig deeper into more of what this is all about. For now, the text of this year's Palm Sunday sermon is below:

Matthew 21:1-11
Matthew 27:11-54

What in the world just happened? How did this party get so out of hand? When did shouts of celebration and “hosanna!” turn into vile mockery and demands for crucifixion?

Today is the first day of our most important week in the Christian church. We have let our calendars dictate that we do not have time off for worship through the weekend up to Easter, so we get the big first climax of our identifying story all in one big terrible chunk this morning. Otherwise we would stay with that triumphant procession today and only reach into the darkness of the crucifixion Thursday and Friday. It seems too quick - to have these two stories so closely read, back-to-back. But, then again, they are not two stories, but one.

This is the week we tell the story that everyone knows. Whether you’ve ever been into a Christian church or not, if you’ve never heard of Christmas or the Bible, you know this story. It is the story of betrayal, of people at our worst, at our cruelest, as we hurt those who love us most and try to make our way in the world we have made. 
It doesn’t take a degree in Theology to know that when we get hurt, or frightened, or feel threatened, we lash out and hurt others. It doesn’t take any particular faith to believe that we are capable of great evil in this world. Truly, this is the story that everyone knows. From the kid down the street whose mom just lost her job so now he gets picked on for getting government assisted lunches, to the spiteful ex-spouse making a mess of things after a bad break-up, to the ways we hold back from each other when we’ve been burned one too many times, we know what Jesus is going through, how fickle the human heart is, how weak we are up against ourselves.

The problem is, we have come to believe that this is all there is to the story. We’ve gotten used to it, learned to protect ourselves from the hurt in the world by putting up blinders, putting labels and statistics on groups of people so we can deal from a distance instead of in community. There is so much hurt in the world that by the logic of averages it must simply be the way things are and the way they have always been and the way they are meant to be.

Which is why it is so important we center around this story. Because we only think we know it. We only think we understand what it means. 
We’ve heard so many preachers and teachers tell us that we’re going to burn in hell if we can’t love like Jesus. 
We’ve heard so many folk tell us that they won’t come to church because it’s full of hypocrites and irrelevant traditions that don’t impact my here and now. 
We’ve heard that the church is dying. 
We’ve heard that we’re in financial trouble. 
We’ve heard it all… we think.

But we gather to tell this story because it is only part of the story. That’s why we stretch it out over an entire week, why we tell it over and over again throughout the year in the way we celebrate the liturgical seasons. 
It is so big, so grand, so good, that we have to live deeply in it, more than just a snippet here and there.

How is this mess good? Why would we want to sit in the pain and the torture and the blood? 

Someone asked in a Confirmation class last year “can God forgive Hitler?” 
In other words: Where is the line? 
What is the point at which we deem someone irredeemable? 
You know what we used to do to people like that? 
We crucified them. 

We still have the death penalty, and it is still part of our broken system. The chair, the lethal injection… the lynching tree. Even social death, Scarlet Letter-style shunning, solitary confinement out in the open.

That sort of ‘justice’ leaves a mark on everyone. Locking people up behind bars of steel or bars of statistics, we have broken apart the living organism, the breathing ecosystem, which God created good in the beginning.

And I’m trying to get to the good news here, I really am, but we hear this story so often we’ve learned to tune it out. Like with panhandlers or telemarketers, we know what they’re going to say, so we tune out. But we cannot tune this story out any more than we can tune out the cries of our own children, or our own hearts, because it is our story. Which is why we sit with it, and find it good.

We sit with it because it is our story, and we find it good because it started with God. 

When we break it down beyond recognition, enslaving each other, taking land and food from the poor, making ourselves gods of our own design, 
when we get swallowed up by the gods of economic insecurity or xenophobia or success, 
the God of life and peace and love and creation takes the hit for us. On the cross we see him take the hit from us. 
Jesus lives the life we are meant to live, God comes among us to love us, and just like we did in the garden, we run and hide. But Jesus follows us into our shadows, follows us into our fears, and our reaction is to get caught up in hiding, and so Jesus dies not by God’s hand but by ours.

This? This is not a surprising story. When people and power get mixed up, somebody’s gonna die. When the creator of the universe lays down his power to love us where we are, there’s risk involved there, especially since God knows who he’s handing his life over to, and we don’t have the best history of treating one another kindly. God has been putting up with a lot of garbage from humanity over the generations. 

The surprising part is that God hasn’t given up on us. 
That God is actively living among us no matter what we do to him. 
Like an artist, God keeps rearranging what we’ve thrown away and making gardens and treasures out of the broken pieces. 
God stepped into our midst to do some of that creative work, and even invited us into it with him, but it wasn’t powerful and impressive, it was simple and day-to-day stuff. The surprising part of the story is that this simple day-to-day creativity of God continues despite every mishandled attempt of ours to take over the process. 

In fact, though we haven’t gotten there in today’s reading, I’ll give you a bit of a spoiler. The story isn’t over. 

And the story we’re telling isn’t just the story of Jesus, it’s our story. That means our story isn’t over, either. 

Jesus comes back from this death of ours, stronger and more alive, sending the promised Holy Spirit so this work of creation and re-creation and renewal continues to this day by the hand of God active in this world. 
A God that big, that powerful, with every authority and reason to wipe us out like the days of Noah, has decided to work with us, to live with us, to keep bringing new life out of our pain - both the pain we feel and that pain we inflict. 

We also know this story. It doesn’t make headlines or the biggest hollywood blockbusters, but it is our story, it is God’s story, it is the story of Jesus Christ, who was born in love, lived in love, died in love, rose again in love, and will come again in love.

[spoiler alert] Death is a liar.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45 (Raising of Lazarus)

I hate to call Jesus a liar, but.... 

When Jesus heard that Lazarus was ill, he said, “This illness does not lead up to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” And then just to prove his point he stays where he is two more days before hiking down the road to Lazarus’ stinky sealed tomb.

If four days dead doesn’t convince you that dead is dead, I don’t know what does. So here comes Jesus, right into the stench of decomposing flesh, and even though back in the town where he was he put it lightly that Lazarus had ‘fallen asleep,’ he can’t say the guy’s just pulling a fast one on the neighbors for the sake of a sign. Jesus knows death, he smells it, he feels it, he weeps in response to it. So why did he say Lazarus’ illness wasn’t gonna end there? It’s like those commercials that claim a product will reduce the risk of death by 20% or something ridiculous. Nope, sorry, the risk of death for everybody, across the board, with or without medication and healthy life choices, is still gonna be 100%. It’s part and parcel of living that we’re all gonna die. And we’re gonna talk about that quite a bit over the next two weeks especially.

But Jesus saying this to his disciples, “This illness does not lead to death...” Makes me wonder if Jesus doesn’t somehow know a thing or two more about death, more about life, than we do. We don’t like it, that’s for sure. We do everything we can to hide the fact that we’re gonna die some day. From the latest diet plan, to attempts at resurrecting the past, to just plain not talking about it unless we absolutely have to, we could maybe learn a thing or two from those high schoolers dressed all in black, who wear skull rings and obsess over graveyards. Death is more inevitable than taxes, just as sure as sunrise.

So why doesn’t Jesus acknowledge that death is where we’re headed? It’s where he is headed, after all, and he’s pretty open about that. In fact, the raising of Lazarus is sort of the proverbial last nail in the coffin, the straw to break the camel’s back, the final impetus that gets the leaders their final push to seriously go about getting him crucified.

And when it comes to the death of Jesus, John’s gospel calls it his hour, his time, his glory. It will certainly be a triumph when his last word on the cross is a declaration: “It is accomplished!”

For now, though, Lazarus, the one Jesus loves, is ill, and Jesus just lets him die. Mary and Martha each approach Jesus to remind him “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” We don’t know if they say that sentence with anger or sadness or confusion or what, but it seems like an open and shut case, doesn’t it? Jesus could have prevented this, he loved Lazarus, after all, it says so right there in the story, but now it’s all over. Lazarus has been dead so long there is no possible way he could live again.

Like the whole people of Israel in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel. So far gone all that is left of them is bones. Dry bones scattered across a desert. Can these bones mean anything other than the end? Can this destruction be anything but the final word? 

Can these bones live? God asks the mortal prophet. Ezekiel answers “O Lord God, you know.” Because God is more eternal than death, and God’s love is more powerful than our powers of destruction, God puts words of resurrection into the mouth of another man who will also one day die. Prophesy, mortal! Prophesy to the bones, prophesy to the breath, prophesy and watch how God brings bone to its bone, puts sinew and flesh back on the body, and breathes new life into these mortal bodies. Watch how God can bring life in places of despair, wonder at God’s Spirit moving where for so many long years nothing has moved, witness the Spirit come in from the four winds to breathe new life into every hidden crevice dried out and done for and see this new thing God brings forth, right in the middle of parches places. This is not just a resurrection reserved for our physical death, but new breath for every place of anxiety in our lives.

There are so many deaths we die. Every time there is change, there is death. Every time we choose between two options, there is death of one possible reality over another. Every time our expectations are not met, or our plans don’t work out, every time we are hurt or lost, death is present. Every time we go back on a promise or cheat despite the values we profess, every hypocrisy and failing is a death of sorts. And death is powerful. Death is a great motivator. Death haunts us and threatens us and we run and hide behind all sorts of things so that even in our living we are dying because we are so afraid of mortality. We fill our lives with distractions so we will not drown in pain when the pain comes, but Jesus joins us in the pain, he grieves with Mary and Martha, and we get through it together, us and Jesus.

When Jesus tells his disciples that Lazarus’ illness does not lead to death, he is not, in fact, lying. Illness does not ultimately lead to death, does not end in death, because death is the great liar. Death pretends it is the last word, the final event, the end of everything.

No, friends in Christ, Jesus is not lying. Death is lying. Death claims to be all powerful, and oh so often we believe this lie that we hardly ever really live in the face of it. 

Jesus knows that for Lazarus, this illness will not end in death, because death is not in fact the end. Not for Lazarus, and not for you. When Jesus performs this miracle, the leaders decide they need to end his ministry by putting him to death, as though God would somehow stay dead. But God in Jesus lets us kill him, knowing that death is not the end for him, and because of his passing through our death and on into resurrection, death is not the end for us, either. 

God has poured out the Spirit of life into us, over us, all around us, in baptism. The Spirit of Christ lives in you, and it is by that Spirit that we live, by that Spirit that we will continue to live even after we die, by that Spirit that we may freely live while we live, unafraid of death. This resurrection is just as real as the death which made Lazarus stink to high heaven after four days in the tomb - this resurrection is in fact even more real than that. More real, more true, more eternal. 

I don't know what tomb you find yourself in these days. But I know that Jesus is in that tomb with you, and will walk out of that tomb with you, however long it takes. Four days or forty days, death is not the end. Death is not the end. Jesus unsealed that tomb from the inside on Easter Sunday and it will not hold us any more because it could not hold him. Thanks be to God.