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Sermon: The Fifth Sunday in Lent (A) - 10th April 2011
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30 am
Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14 Psalm 130 Romans 8:6-11 John 11:1-45
In psalm 130, we encounter the character of God and it isn’t anything like the God of classical understanding of God and its atonement theories developed in the Middle Ages! This psalmist’s God is responsive and relational, is a far cry from an impassive, unmoved mover. This God is attentive to the voice of those who cry “out of the depths”. The image of “the depths”, used here metaphorically for extreme despair, literally means the place of forces that oppose God. This image implies that God is not the only force in the world, and that God must contend with opposing forces. Moreover, God’s very character is “steadfast love”. This God, who is love, does not “mark iniquities”, because “forgiveness” is part of God’s very nature. God’s justice is not punitive; rather, it is transformative, forgiving love, which neither keeps a record of sins nor desires punishment for them. God’s character of forgiving love, or loving forgiveness, has no need for trying to win God’s favour or the shedding of innocent blood for the punishment of sins. A greater responsiveness than “pure, unbounded love” cannot be conceived. O “love divine, all loves excelling”!
It is safe to cry to such a God “out of the depths”, and to wait a word from this God. For this God’s word will be “a word of hope”. It is just such a God who will deliver Israel, and all people, including you and me, from all our sins.
As the result of recent horrific natural disasters, religious and secular voices from many perspectives around the world are crying “out of the depths”. Because the brute force of earth’s moving plates and tsunamis, cyclones and floods, has caused enormous suffering to people, it might be tempting to identify the causes of these tragic events with forces hostile to God’s purposes. Such events might be why ancient Mediterranean peoples thought of the ocean’s depths as the place of menacing forces hostile to the gods. However, science tells us that floods, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis are natural events. The suffering and tragedy are nevertheless real. The psalmist’s God, whose very nature is “steadfast love”, cannot possibly have willed so much suffering. The natural, brutal forces of nature have collided with God’s power and “steadfast love”. Perhaps some who are suffering from this collision can find solace and hope in the knowledge that their suffering has moved God in God’s own depths to accompany them in their depths and to offer them deliverance from their despair through God’s “steadfast love”.
In the Gospel we read that Jesus had been hiding out. Between his healing the man born blind and today's reading he had a row with the Jewish leaders. Responding to their demand that he tell them if he is the Messiah he tells them yes, but more, he and the Father are one. Taking up rocks to silence this blasphemy, they try to kill or at least arrest him, but he escapes to the land east of the Jordan. This is where he and his disciples are staying when Martha's message arrives. Yet, he waits.
Why is it God waits before responding to our requests? "How long, O Lord?" becomes a universal cry. Why does God delay in responding to our prayers for healing? How many of us have friends or family grappling with cancer and pleading for their lives? On the other hand, why does God wait so long when one comes to the point of accepting death as inevitable? Out of the depths of life we cry, "How long, O Lord?"
God's time is God’s time, not our time. “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” 2 Peter 3:8
This is the first thing this reading reveals: God's time is best. Jesus will wait two more days before going to Bethany, for a greater cure is coming than the one Mary and Martha seek. Is it possible that God delays because more is being done that we can conceive of while we wait, or more coming than we can dare ask for? God's time is best.
When Jesus does arrive, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. Martha greets him with words of sorrow and despair, mixed with an edge of anger and accusation not unlike the Jewish mourners who have accompanied her: "If only you had come sooner; 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". As all boys in Scripture classes in my day would have giggled at in the KJV it says,“He stinketh!”
Martha knows Jesus as a righteous man to whom God listens. Martha wants her brother back. Jesus tells Martha that her brother will rise again, but she hears this as the general word of comfort the Jews had been uttering to one another at the time of death since the book of Daniel introduced the idea of resurrection, some two hundred years earlier. She responds with the spiritual orthodoxy of the day: "Yes, I know he will rise on the last day.” Nevertheless, Martha wants him back now.
Jesus tries to clear up her confusion saying, "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." He is talking about power for life now, the dead living now. He is talking about realizing in this life what is promised on the last day. Dry bones given new life. Does she believe this?
Martha does not really know who Jesus is or comprehends what he means; he is talking in categories outside of human experience. He not only has the capacity to raise Lazarus up on the last day, he has the capacity to give him life right now. The one who is resurrection and life is about to demonstrate why he waited those four days. Jesus wants Martha to know this is less about what happens on the last day than today!
When Jesus meets Mary and the, the crowd sentimentalises the moment, just as we do if we see this only as a sign of Jesus' affection. This is less about Lazarus than the reality of death itself, the work and dominion of Jesus' adversary, the Evil One. There is rage and resolve in these tears as Jesus faces what it will take on his part to defeat his adversary.
That simple statement "Jesus wept”, tells us much of the Gospel of God: Jesus' determination to defeat life's enemy, remove life's ultimate limitation, and give us life beyond death's reach, regardless of what it will cost him.
The on-looking crowd is divided between sentimentality and cynicism as the disquieting, angry commotion within Jesus arises to the surface to look his adversary's work in the eye. He has come to awaken not only Lazarus, but also the entire world from its sleep.
“Remove the stone.” The glory of God is about to be revealed. Jesus shouts, "Lazarus, come out!" It is a cry that reached the depths of death and must have shaken the paving stones of hell. Lazarus emerges from the tomb.
Unbind him! This unbinding is about Jesus' ability to give life wherever there is death. Jesus is not simply the one who gives life to the dead on the last day. Nor is he limited to the gift of resurrection and life only after we have experienced our own deaths. He has raised Lazarus as a sign of his power to give life here and now.
Jesus gives new life every day. Clearly, this is what Jesus is saying to Martha: the life he gives is as much about now as then. "New every morning is your love, O Lord; as fresh as the dew and as sure as the sunrise. Because your love is better than life itself, my lips will speak your praise”. What Jesus is saying here: for those who believe in him, he has power to raise us out of the bowels of death we experience day in and day out, put our feet on the ground and send us forth into a new day filled with God's grace.
The unbinding Jesus brings, in both life and death, is about more than the future; it is about shedding our grave clothes now. As Saint Paul says, we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. … , ‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’ See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!
This sermon produced using material from www.mapc.com/worship/sermons/2008/03/09/the-unbinding and www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearA/2010-2011/2011-Lent-5-A.shtml.