Sermon: John 11.32-44

I don't typically post sermons on blogs, in part because I believe that a sermon is a delivered event, rather than an article.  I also don't post them because I'm highly critical of the sermons that I preach, questioning and doubting it even after I preach.  I'm posting this one since it can give you some insight into the community here.

John 11:32-44

Preached November 4, 2012

One of my seminary classmates, Zak, can’t sleep with the lights on.  His wife Katie says that he sleeps every night with a blanket over his head so that the light doesn’t get into his eyes.  I didn’t think much of this until a bunch of us went camping.  Katie pointed into their tent one morning to show the pile of blankets that Zak puts around his head every single night.  We all have our own little sleeping quirks—I’m sure!  I like some quiet noise in the background, like a fan, but Zak has an elaborate process for wrapping his special blanket around his head, every night, so that he doesn’t have any light coming in and so that he doesn’t get too hot. 

This strange ritual of blocking the light out of his eyes keeps Zak at an appropriate distance from the brightness; it keeps him safe, shall we say.  I imagine that if Katie reached over and yanked the blanket off of his face, exposing his eyes to the lights in their bedroom, he would be upset.  I know that I would certainly be upset if someone disturbed my sleep.

“Lazarus, come out!”

While Lazarus didn’t choose to cover his ears or his eyes in the same way that Zak does, he was wrapped in the burial cloth, bound up and tucked away in a tomb.  Lazarus had been dead for four days already and had begun to actually stink.  The body begins to break down immediately after death and they say that the three day mark is safe to prevent the stench.  Being dead for four days meant that Lazarus was most certainly dead and most certainly decomposing in that tomb. 

Jesus comes to the tomb, the dark, musty cavern, and calls Lazarus out into the bright, Middle-Eastern sunlight, and forces him to re-enter the world. 

Our text doesn’t say that Lazarus resisted Jesus calling him to come out.  Our text does say that Lazarus had been ill and that his sisters called for Jesus several days prior to him actually dying.  Jesus didn’t come to Lazarus immediately, but after he had died. 

You all are no strangers to death.  In the brief two and a half months that I have been here, I have experienced the epidemic of death.  Wakes and funerals seem to come daily.  It almost feels strange to go through a week without hearing about multiple wakes and funerals, just at Billie Mills Hall.  It feels normal to have death hovering above the building, surrounding us with its stench of pain and grief.  It feels normal to breathe in the musty air, bracing ourselves for the next name to appear in the obituaries, praying that it’s not someone we hold dearly. 

It’s not just the death of our bodies though, ending up in caskets, laid out in the halls for our families and loved ones to walk through and pay their respects.  We are experiencing an epidemic of spiritual death, the death of hope for the future, for change, for a chance at life other than this one.  We’ve given up, in many ways, feeling completely consumed by this dark cloud of rotting flesh and rotting spirit, feeling as if nothing and nobody can call us out of this loneliness and pain.  A man recently told me that the doctor told him that if he drank one more time, he would die.  So he did.  One more drink and he prayed for his death, because life is too miserable here he said

The loneliness and sadness seems to fester in our very nostrils, the moment we step out of our front doors, looking around and seeing no light, no hope, no chance.

Lazarus was so dead that he was beginning to rot.  Instead, Jesus came to the entrance of the tomb and called to him saying, “Lazarus, come out!”  Lazarus, come out.  Come out into the light, come out into the earth which God our creator has designed for you, child.  Come out. 

Christ meets us in the stench of death in the tomb and pulls us out into the light, into the new beginning of life.  Christ is the hope, the comfort, the reassurance that there is a life better than this.  We are promised an eternal life in Christ’s own death and resurrection, which happened immediately following the healing of Lazarus.  Christ looks to the Heavens and weeps before he calls Lazarus to come out, then prays aloud for all to hear.  God is always with us, deep in the tomb, deep in the stench of desperation and pain. 

It is safe to remain in this tomb, to remain bound up by the fear and frustration.  Because it’s what we know.  It’s where we’ve settled in.  Nowhere in the Bible or in Christ’s teachings does it say that being a Christian is about being “safe.”  Jesus calls Lazarus to come out of the tomb, dragging him into the light of new life, and tells him to begin life again.  It’s uncomfortable and we don’t like it.  Christ speaks his prayer to God aloud for all of us, for us, the ones stuck in the spiritual and physical tombs, asking where God is in this epidemic of death and destruction.  It’s for us, the ones asking if God has in fact forgotten about us.

By calling us out of our tombs, out of the darkest place reeking with the aroma of struggle, Christ greets us with the light of a new day, calling us forth to be the children of God.  Christ, in this, replaces us in the tomb with his own body, providing for us a life far greater than the one of death. 

And when we come out of that tomb, we rely on our sisters and brothers to unbind us.  We cannot and do not save ourselves.  Christ beckons us out of the cave, then commands our sisters and brothers to unbind us, to remove the sting of loneliness.  To remove the painful label of “Whiteclay Wine-o.”  To hold our hands when we having nothing left to hold onto. 

You see, Lazarus was wrapped in the shroud, the burial cloth, by his sisters and brothers, the ones who laid him in the tomb.  Christ called Lazarus out of the tomb, at which Lazarus came out, with his hands and feet still bound up in strips of cloth, and his face covered in cloth.  Christ made him alive, then tells us to remove the fabric that is preventing Lazarus from walking, running, jumping, living, hoping, trying, believing. 

Our power as Christians, the children of God called to live in community with all of God’s precious creation, is to do the unbinding.  It is not our job to raise people from the dead.  We simply can’t.  Christ has done this for all of us in giving his life as a sacrifice for ours.  He makes all things new.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.  There is no longer weeping and mourning in the tomb, because Christ has called us out, meeting us in the deepest, darkest, rotting flesh of life, and has brought us into a community of believers to unbind us from our labels and ailments. 

Perhaps these ailments and labels are ones that we have put on ourselves, much like Zak choosing to cover his eyes with blankets.  Perhaps they have been thrust upon us out of habit, just as the family and friends of Lazarus wrapped his body in cloth for death.  But all bindings, chosen and unchosen, are to be taken away, since we know that Christ has brought us into new life outside of the crypt.

There is no stench too strong for Christ, no pain too great, no heart too sad, no body too weak for Christ to resurrect and call out of the tomb of death.  And for this, we rejoice.

Thanks be to God.