Finding genuine hope in Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead
Vietnam veteran Eugene J. Toni went to see the Vietnam Veterans'
Memorial in Washington, D.C. Standing under a full moon in March 1991, he
flipped through the paperback directory of names on the wall, looking for
friends. Eventually, he turned to the T's in a long-shot search for an uncle he
had never met. Instead, he found his own name. He and his wife, Nancy, walked
down to panel 17, counted to line 121. He said, "I showed her my name, and
then we both looked at each other in amazed disbelief."[1]
Today’s gospel reading has three possible
interpretations.[2] First, people
may take the reading literally, expecting God to intervene supernaturally to heal
an incurable disease, prevent bad things from happening to loved ones, and
generally to solve the world’s problems. These misguided hopes at best offer temporary
relief and usually break hearts when God fails to deliver. As an old tradition reports,
when Lazarus was unbound, the first thing he said was, "Must I die
again?" to which Jesus replied, "Yes." And Lazarus never smiled
again.[3]
Second, John’s account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead may be a
historicized version of the parable of Lazarus and Abraham found in Luke’s
gospel.[4] In that
parable, an ill beggar named Lazarus daily lies outside a rich man’s house. Receiving
no help from the rich man, the beggar dies and goes to heaven. Then the rich
man dies and goes to Hades, the abode of the dead. There, the rich man laments
his fate. When Abraham rebuffs the rich man’s plea for Lazarus to bring him
water, the rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to warn the rest of the family
of their impending fate. Abraham replies that people who fail to heed the
prophets will not listen to someone raised from the dead. As Christian beliefs
about Jesus’ miracles developed, this parable calling for justice may very well
have become the basis for John’s story of Lazarus’ resuscitation.
This interpretation offers a more realistic basis for hope, repeated in
both today’s Old and New Testament readings, that God will end injustice, vanquish
evil, and make all things new.[5] The
dead are raised – metaphorically. Indeed, we can see signs that God is at work
through people changing death into life. Extreme global poverty is declining,
fewer people are dying of hunger, life expectancy is increasing, and child
labor is disappearing.[6]
This interpretation’s demand for justice has special relevance in view
of the hate crimes at Pittsburg’s Tree of Life Synagogue. Jesus was a Jew.
Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were Jews. An attack on Jews is an attack on the
community to which Jesus belonged and t ministered.
Jesus, however, did not minister only to Jews. When a Syrophoenician
woman begged him to heal her daughter, Jesus did so. And when asked who his neighbor
was, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, identifying himself with the
Samaritan. That the authors of the gospels preserved these occasional stories constitutes
clear evidence that Jesus frequently, and in the eyes of his contemporaries scandalously,
ministered to non-Jewish Palestinians, a fact conveniently ignored in many churches.
Walking the Jesus path by seeing ourselves individually and collectively
as Lazarus, persons whose lives are transformed by God’s power, thus requires
loving Palestinians and Israelis equally. Our faith precludes both anti-Semitism
and ignoring the plight of displaced, devalued Palestinians.
Third, the gospel reading may symbolically describe the meaning of Holy
Baptism, the living enacting Baptism’s grace. The old Lazarus dies; is wrapped
in burial clothes (his baptismal garments), and then “rises” to new life, answering
Jesus’ call to come out of the tomb even as the newly baptized is raised out of
the baptismal waters.[7] New
Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan describes the story as process
incarnated in event, the process by which God brings life out of death in the
present.[8]
This spiritualized interpretation coheres with the grace evident in the
lives of the (S)saints – whether spelt with a lower or upper case “S” – grace
that manifests itself in our lives as wisdom, courage, and strength for coping
with life’s perils and problems. Looking at you, or at any congregation in
which I know people, I always see persons whom God has raised from the dead. I
see addicts in recovery, broken hearts that were healed, once empty souls now
filled with love, the lost who have found their way, and much more.
Resurrection transforms us from the walking dead into the genuinely
alive. Unlike Vietnam Vet Eugene Toni who was surprised at seeing his name on
the Wall of the Vietnam Memorial, we confidently trust that our name, along
with the names of all God’s people, are written in what the author of the book of
Revelation called the Lamb’s book of life.
When you entered St. Clement’s this morning, you came into a place of
new hope, new life, new beginnings. God may not offer the answers we want. But
God does offer a realistic, trustworthy hope for both a better, more just world
and more abundant life eternally connected to God and to God’s people. May
Jesus words, "Roll away the stone;" always echo in our hearts and
minds, renewing and strengthening our hope. Amen.
All
Saints Day sermon preached November 4, 2018
Parish of
St. Clement, Honolulu, HI
[1] C. Thomas Hilton,
"Christmas Fulfilled," The Clergy Journal, March 1992, p. 17.
[2] John
11:32-44. The three approaches to interpreting the gospel are from Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John:
I-XII (New York: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 428-430.
[3] A. Dudley Dennison
M.D., Shock It to Me Doctor! (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1970),
p. 108.
[4] Luke
16:19-31. Cf. John Shelby Spong, Jesus for the Non-Religious (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), p. 93.
[5] Isaiah 25:6-9; Revelation
21:1-6a.
[6] Dylan
Matthews, “23 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much
better,” Vox,
October 17, 2018 at https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health-crime-literacy-good-news?fbclid=IwAR29ZjdNPC4yMxfryVadXndlSc5dV9L2EExzo7Mhx3Eoi58CWw7DoywQmkI.
[7] A.N.
Wilson, Jesus: A Life (New York: Fawcett Communications, 1992), p. 183,
citing Morton Smith’s work.
[8] John
Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), p. 95.
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