Welcome to All Saints Day, or actually the Sunday that we celebrate All Saints Day on. It’s a day reserved for the remembrance of our dearly departed. Different congregations have different traditions for doing so, but they all share the message of looking forward to our being reunited with our loved ones one day, and that is a hopeful and joyful message that our we and our world needs. The thing is, I ran into sort of an embarrassing problem in my sermon preparation this week, and no it wasn’t that heart pounding dream or nightmare that I have where, during the reading of the first lesson, I realize that I forgot to write a sermon. So young people, bad news, the “ I forgot to study for a test” dreams don’t stop when you leave school, they just evolve. No, my problem deals with the frustration and deeply unsettling feeling I get whenever I encounter the gospel for today. This is a really good news story. A brother and friend has died and the repercussions are deep, deep sorrow and even Jesus is deeply disturbed and crying, but Jesus defies death’s hold and commands Lazarus to come forth from the tomb, and he does. Awesome, sort of. It’s embarrassing because I’m a pastor, a proclaimer of the resurrection, one of those called to encourage faith and my stomach gets all twisted up because, well… Do you know how many people I wasn’t ready to let go of here on this earth and ended up losing? Jesus loses his friend and gets to bring him back and my heart screams, “ How is that fair?” If there’s anyone that should really trust in the resurrection on the last day, it should be Jesus, but he gets his friend back. Why? I could really feel Job’s frustration, so like him, I asked God and sought and listened for God’s answer. So I wrestled and found help and, not a complete, but somewhat of an understanding. My son and I have had a covenant ever since he was very very young, and I would expect that it endures to this day. It’s really pretty simple, and it was born out of necessity based on our relationship. I have always enjoyed joking around with Nathan and have always sought to develop critical thinking and healthy skepticism, so I would often make things up when we were talking. It was usually tall tale answers to questions or funny falsehoods that I was very careful to make sure he had caught on to the truth before we parted ways. I was always impressed with his truth detector. Dad, why is it so dusty out here? Well that’s because there’s more dirt on the ground this time of year. Oh. It would only be a short time and his head and eyes would turn back to me with a knowing look and maybe a well deserved eye roll. Then he would get the truth as I knew it or we would go investigating. The key to the fun though and the health and welfare of our relationship and my credibility was our covenant. The covenant was that the word “promise” was never a compromise or to be toyed with. If I promised him that something was the truth as I knew it, he could take that to the bank so to speak. Now I have to ask him! So the promise was and is a big deal, and he learned that we don’t make promises that we can not be 100% sure that it is within our ability to keep. Period. I would call it a sacred word with deep relational meaning. I can’t promise you that I will be somewhere for you, but I can promise you that I will do everything within my power to be there. Not making and breaking promises and only making and keeping promises imbues them with power. It establishes bonds of trust, accountability, reliability and respect. I think scripture shows us that God operates on the same principle. Above all, God is gracious and faithful to the promises or covenants that God has made. Even when we fail to keep our part of the covenant, God doesn’t bail on the covenant or the relationship. God’s faithfulness is at the level of making a promise and it is actually fulfilled in the making. God’s that trustworthy. God’s trustworthiness is founded on earned trust and relational integrity and even beyond that, going beyond the bounds of what is right or fair to be gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love. I guess that’s where I find comfort in the scripture for today and what John is trying to tell us in his gospel. Here’s a little info on the Gospel of John. It is divided into four parts, an intro, the Book of Signs, The Book of Glory and the conclusion. The first half is showing who Jesus is, that is the divine Son of God through the intro and then Jesus’ words and deeds of Power. Jesus makes 7 different I AM statements, “I am the bread of life.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am the door of the sheep.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I am the good shepherd.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” and “I am the true vine.” These statements are significant because Moses was told by God that “I Am” was how to refer to God. “Tell them I Am sent you!” This is a declaration of Jesus’ divinity and power and Jesus performs seven signs or deeds of power that parallel the sayings in the first half of John. Changing Water Into Wine, Healing the Royal Official’s Son, Healing the paralytic at the pool, Feeding over 5,000 with fish and loaves, Walking on the water, Healing a man born blind, and in today’s gospel, Raising Lazarus from the dead. These show Jesus’ all encompassing power, identity as the Son of God and therefore a faithful and trustworthy partner. “I know, because you have told us, that he will be raised up on the last day,” Mary says. Jesus had made that promise back in the sixth chapter of the gospel of John. So maybe instead of frustration, hurt and jealousy, I should see the power to fulfill the promises. Jesus, shows us in the raising of Lazarus that he has dominion over death, not that because he is powerful, he doesn’t have to wait like the rest of us. We needed a sign, and when he says I Am the resurrection and the life it connects the promise of the resurrection of the last day to God’s steadfastness and trustworthiness. So it’s not because of an unwillingness to deal with the pain but an opportunity to show us that we could believe. Jesus commanded the really, really dead to come forth. So I believe, but I find comfort in the fact that Jesus knows better than anyone that knowing about the reality of the resurrection on the last day doesn’t take the here and now pain away. So how do we deal with our present reality? Deny our pain? I’m not very good at that. Platitudes about being in a better place? They seem to be telling me that I don’t have the right to grieve and am being selfish. Jesus wasn’t selfish and he got to grieve, and so do I and anyone else. What about now? What about the jealousy I have over others or even over Jesus getting to be with Lazarus for a little longer? I found a lot of help in the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner. It’s not platitudes and it’s not a guilt trip. It’s the journey of a fellow sufferer that endured losing his child to progeria. To me, in my faith, in the Christian faith, I recall our belief in the communion of Saints. It’s a great day to consider it. We are called to bear one another’s burdens in prayer and action and we believe those that came before us hold us in prayer. Kushner offers a Chinese tale that points to a way forward. Once there was a woman whose only son had died. In her sorrow she went to ask a wise holy man if there was a way to bring her son back to life. “Fetch me a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. We will use it to bring your son back to life.” He said to her instead of sending her away or trying to reason with her. At once she quickly set off looking for that elusive mustard seed. The first place she came to was a huge mansion. Knocking on the door, she asked “I am looking for a house that has never known suffering. Is this the place? It is very important to me.” “You have come to the wrong place,” they told her. They begin to pour out all the tragic things that have befallen upon them. “Who is better to be able to help these poor unfortunate souls than I who has experienced sadness and can understand them?” she thought. Therefore she stayed behind and consoled and comforted them before going to another house that has never known sorrow before. However, wherever she goes, from huts to palaces, there is never one without tales of sadness and misfortunes. In time to come, she became so involved in listening to other people’s sad stories that she forgot about her quest for that elusive mustard seed. Shared pain. I needed to hear that. Jesus shares my pain and your pain. We share the pain of others. We don’t change the outcome and bring people back, but there is strength in numbers, and together we don’t feel quite so alone. To borrow from Rabbi Kushner, I think that the communion of saints and this type of love are the weapons God gives us that enable us to live fully, bravely and meaningfully in a less than perfect world.
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