Sermon Preached at St. Aidan's Alexandria (April 10, 2011) Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A: Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 130, Romans 8:6-11, John 11:1-45
"O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem."
This week I finally broke down and watched the movie Toy Story 3. By now I'm guessing those of you out there who are either children or the parents of young children have seen this movie dozens of times. But I had heard from several friends that Toy Story 3 would leave me in tears at the end, and I just don't need that in a cartoon, so I avoided it. But there it was sitting in my Netflix instant queue, taunting me, and eventually curiosity won out. Maybe because I had been prepared for a more somber animation experience, I didn't completely lose it. In fact, as the final credits rolled I was smiling through those tears, because the movie is a powerful tale of new life.
The delightful cast of toys faces a new frontier in their third movie. They have been gathering dust in the toy box for quite a few years now as their kid, Andy, has gotten older. They reminisce about their golden age as toys, when their days were full of play and they were Andy's first choice of entertainment. But now their kid is grown up and getting ready to leave for college, and the looming question is what will happen to his old playmates.
If the toys could have their way, everything would go back to the way it was when Andy was 8 years old, and it would go on that way forever without changing. Even in the world of Disney, though, that isn't possible, so the toys prepare to go into "attic mode." To them it is more appealing to live out their days in a musty, dark corner somewhere than to imagine life any other way. They're trying to stay as close as they can to those good old days, even though it really means they are giving up life altogether.
Last time I preached, I spoke about considering the lilies and not making life more complicated for ourselves by trying to be more than we are. And while we are often tempted to foster anxiety, we can be equally tempted to avoid those situations that would call us to new life, because they might shake up the way things have always been for us. Crawling into a cardboard box in the attic just to stay near what is familiar starts to sound pretty appealing.
Today's gospel reading is all about new life. It may seem at first that Jesus simply restores life to Lazarus, and he goes forward like nothing ever happened. We don't necessarily know anything to the contrary, because we don't hear much about Lazarus after this story. In the next chapter he attends a dinner party with Jesus, and soon afterward the Jewish authorities plot to kill Lazarus, because his return to life has caused many Jews to believe in Jesus. But what Lazarus received from Jesus was new life – it was something much more than what he had known before.
We have been reading from the Gospel of John on Sundays throughout Lent, so it is important to touch briefly on the differences between this gospel and the others. Some of you already know this, so you can just sit there looking smug for a minute. The other three gospels – Mark, Matthew, and Luke – are closely related to each other. Matthew and Luke incorporate large sections of Mark, and they seem to have shared some other sources as well, though we no longer have any manuscripts or records of what those were. But John is not part of all that. Though the author of John was aware of the same Christian traditions as the other gospel writers, and he may have even seen some of their writings, he is in a league of his own.
I tell you this for two reasons. First of all, you have to understand that everything in John's gospel – every single word – has a theological focus, and the primary message is that Jesus came from God and will return to God, that he is a channel of the divine. John was not really trying at all to write an accurate historic account of Jesus' life. He was writing a theological document. All of the details he shares about Jesus' life point toward Jesus' divinity – there is no nativity story in John, but instead the beautiful prologue that speaks of Jesus' origin with God – "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
You also need to know that the story we read this morning, of the raising of Lazarus, only appears in the Gospel of John, which means it was something that was important to John in particular and his theological message. This story has a crucial place in the plotline of this gospel. In the other gospels, the event that pushes the Jewish authorities over the edge and makes them start plotting to arrest Jesus is his "cleansing of the Temple," when he pitches a fit and turns over the tables of the moneychangers and merchants. But in John, that story appears in the really early chapters, and instead it is Jesus' raising of Lazarus that serves as the final straw for the Jewish authorities. So what happens in this story changes the whole trajectory of the gospel. What happens in this story is remarkably powerful.
Some of the details of the event reinforce its miraculous nature, like the specification that Lazarus had been dead for four days by the time Jesus arrived. There was a Jewish belief at the time that someone's spirit hovered around their body for a couple of days after they died, so if Lazarus had been in the tomb for a shorter amount of time, folks could have assumed that his spirit just slipped back into his physical body. The story also tells us about the odor around the tomb – all these details make it clear that Lazarus was dead as a doornail, and his return to life can't be attributed to anything other than the power of God working through Jesus Christ. These details show that Jesus didn't just revive Lazarus' old life by sticking in a new pair of batteries. He gave him a new life and a new beginning.
Last week we read the story of Jesus healing a man who had been blind from birth. That event also generated skepticism rather than joy. Afterward, the Pharisees interrogated the blind man and his parents, and they drove the man away. It is hard for anyone, then or now, to argue that instantly being able to see after a lifetime of living in darkness could be called anything short of new life. But again, the idea of something so powerful was frightening to those witnessing it, because if Jesus could bring such power and such change to the blind man, he might try to shake things up in their lives as well, and they liked things they way they were.
Last week we told a version of Jesus' healing the blind man in Godly Play as well. The story the children heard ended this way: "When Jesus came close to people, they changed. They could see things they could never see before. They could do things they could never do before." After that, each of the children was invited to choose another object from the room that would help to show more of the story of the blind man. One child went straight for Noah's Ark, and with both arms full of that big heavy boat he explained why he chose it: "Because it's full of life," he said, "and Jesus loves things that are full of life."
You probably don't need more sermon than that. I've been upstaged. Jesus loves things that are full of life. The question is whether we do too. Because the life that Jesus gives requires change. The life that Jesus gives asks us to do things we never thought we could do before. And to be full of life, we sometimes have to give up part of what is old and familiar, even what is beloved.
Noah and his family sailed away on a boat full of new life, but first they had to watch everything they knew disappear underwater. Andy's cherished toys found new life in the arms of another child, but first he had to unselfishly give them away so they could all begin the next chapters of their lives. Jesus gave new life to his dear friend Lazarus, but first he had to say goodbye to him and weep beside his tomb. In a few weeks I will embark on a new life in ordained ministry, but first I will have to leave this place. And you – you all have your own stories of the loss that new life requires, as you have started new schools, changed jobs, welcomed children into your families.
"I AM the resurrection and the life," Jesus says. "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live." Jesus not only gives away new life; Jesus is that life. The Gospel of John asks us to embrace this as the reality of our lives, to give up the old ways that limit us to make room for the mystery and power of what God can work in us. As we walk through this last leg of Lent together, I invite you to prayerfully examine what in your life needs resurrection and life. Do you want to go into "attic mode"? Or are you ready to be raised into new life with Christ?
