“Jesus Wept”

A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett

Preached at Pleasantville UCC, April 10, 2011

Lent 5, Year A, John 11:1-45

“Jesus wept.”
(John 11:35)

We are deep in the season of Lent and Palm Sunday is one week away.  On Palm Sunday, we remember how Jesus entered the holy city of Jerusalem and to help us in our remembering, we re-enact that moment with a parade of waving palm branches and cries of “Hosanna!”  Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Jesus final journey to the cross, and the question for those who follow Him is this: Will go with him? 

That is what this seasonal pilgrimage of Lent is about.  Will we keep faith with our Lord?  Will we, as Christ’s disciples, model our lives and our hearts, our words and our intentions according to His teachings?  Or will we bail?  Will we walk with Jesus this Holy Week?  Will we bear witness to his suffering and sacrifice?  Will we ask God to bless us with a deeper understand of this holy and mysterious season?  Or will we decide that this Holy Week thing is all just a little too depressing for our taste?

Thirty-two days ago, on Ash Wednesday, the church began the season of Lent with an ancient and graphic ritual.  The ritual begins with once living palm branches that have been waved in the hands of children during the Palm Sunday celebration.[1]  Those branches are set on fire and burned until there is nothing left of them but a black, gritty dust.  Then we make our way to the front of the church and standing before a priest or a pastor, those burned up palms are smeared on our foreheads in the shape of a black cross as we are told: “Remember: you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Some of you were here that night and remember its power.

This yearly ritual of remembrance can hit you differently depending on where you are in your life.  For some it can be a rather unnerving reminder that says not just: remember you’re going to die.  But rather, remember you’re going to become dirt – which is to say you will die and then you will decompose and this is how you return to dust.[2]  But for some, it is a comfort to be reminded that we come from the dust of the earth and we return to the dust of the earth, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and all of our journeys – both beginning and end – are in the hands of the Holy One.

Now in the fifth week of Lent, we have come to the part of the journey when we can no longer avoid it.  “Just about everywhere you look in [this chapter from John] there is either death or…the expectation of death.  It even lingers in the very air.”[3] 

We are given a hint of it at the very beginning of our passage when Mary is identified (in verse 2) as the same person who poured perfume on Jesus' feet. And in that reference to her, we are reminded of how Mary was among the very few around Jesus who recognized that Jesus was headed for a violent confrontation with the Roman authorities and that his life among them would soon be over.  So she took a vastly expensive ointment called “nard” and she did for him the one thing she could do this side of the grave: she anointed him and symbolically prepared his body for burial.

The story about Lazarus that we study this morning actually comes before the anointing story with Mary, but even still this passage refers to that story.  And because it does, we know that John is highlighting it for a reason: we are meant to pay attention to the scent of nard lingering in the air – a fragrance frequently used in burial preparations.  And are meant to know by that smell that death is coming and there is no avoiding it.

This is a story about death.  There’s no way to avoid it.  Lazarus takes ill.  He is sick and he is dying and his sisters, Mary and Martha, send for Jesus to come and heal him.  But Jesus doesn’t get there in time to keep Lazarus from dying.  He only gets there in time “to show [them and us and maybe everyone else] something about death and something about trust in God.”[4]

There’s no way around it.  This is a story about death.  It’s a story about staring death straight in the face.  By the time Jesus gets to Lazarus he’s long dead.  He’s four days dead.  He’s beyond all hope dead.  He’s so dead that his body has begun to decompose and Martha is rightly concerned that the stench of death will be overpowering. 

This is a story that does not shy away from the words, “Remember you come from dust, and to dust you shall return.”  This is a story that meets death head on; that weeps over the terrible loss and heartache it brings; that rolls away the stone and peers into the tomb and knows that it’s gonna’ be ugly. 

This is a story about death.  It’s a story about grief.  It’s a story told in such detail that you can hear the keening cry of those who hoped that it would be different.  You can feel the aching grief of those whose lives have turned to ice in a moment. This is a story for those who know what its like to die because the one whom they loved has died and because nothing will ever be the same again.

This is a story that shows us how deep is the well of grief…and with the greatest restraint and it in the shortest sentence in the entire Bible, it is the one place in all of the scriptures that Jesus is said to weep.

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb.  It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’… So they took away the stone. And…[Jesus] cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

And the man that was dead; that was long dead; that was four days dead; that was beyond-all-hope dead; that man named Lazarus came out of the tomb with his hands and feet and face bound with strips of burial cloth.

This is a story about death.  But it is also a story about bringing the dead back to life.  This is a story about grief and despair.  But it is also a story about restoring hope when all hope seems lost. 

One of the great joys of my ministry is preparing our young people for their Confirmation, here celebrated on the Day of Pentecost.  As part of the curriculum, we teach them the Apostles’ Creed – if they have not already learned it.  And as we study the creed, I share with them the part that I consider my favorite:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
    the Creator of heaven and earth,
    and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
    born of the Virgin Mary,
    suffered under Pontius Pilate,
    was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell….

That’s it.  That’s my favorite part of the creed: “he descended into hell.”  As strange as it may seem, that one line from the Creed gives me great comfort.  For it says exactly how far the Savior will go in order to bring us back from the dead. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Another way of saying that is, there is no place we can go to escape the love of God.  This is the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and it is expressed in this morning’s text.

Episcopal scholar Sarah Dylan Breuer puts it this way:

And there is something more than that, even, something more fundamental to the order of the universe: that God is redeeming the universe God made and loves. When we cry out from the depths, God hears. When Jesus seems slow in coming, he is coming nonetheless. And if we worry that it is too late, Jesus shows that it is never too late. After we have become convinced that all is lost, when we are ready to concede to death and are seeking only to contain the damage or bury it, Jesus demonstrates that there is no loss, no death, no tragedy, no depth, no power in heaven or on earth on under the earth that can place a person, a situation, or a world beyond God's redemption, beyond the reach of infinite love and abundant life.[5]

Jesus said: “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.”

This is a story about death.  But it is also a story meant to show us that there is no depth, no loss, no tragedy, no disease.   There is nothing in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can place the world or anyone in it beyond God’s redemption.[6]  God does not reject us, even in our utter brokenness, no matter how dead we are.  “Rather, God gives us life again and again and love again and again.  And death is no match for the love of God.[7]

Jesus said: “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.”

There’s no way around it: this is a story about death.  But bringing the dead back to life is what God does.

As we draw ever-nearer the cross, may we keep faith with the Savior who keeps faith with us.  May we have the courage to stare death straight in the face, full of the knowledge that we come from dust, and to dust we shall return.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.