Sermon - March 9, 2008: Fifth Sunday in Lent

Pastor Heisley

Sometimes our sole agenda for living is not dying. Sometimes we are so empty that there’s nothing else to think about. Sometimes all we can do is stay alive, without meaning, without purpose. And our living becomes our death. 

I’ve had a busy week, a good week. Doing all of the normal Lenten things, getting ready for Easter, planning for our long hoped for capital campaign. Fretting over how all of these things will go. And visiting doctors. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just normal check ups, all piled together in one week. First my family doctor. I’m in great health, she says! Next my periodontist. My gums are better than they’ve been in many years! And finally, my dentist, just for a little tune-up. 

But all of this can feel like staying alive for the sake of staying alive. Staying alive and healthy, but for no good reason. Maybe we live like this out of fear. Fear of dying. But fear doesn’t teach us how to live. 

The late British novelist Susan Ertz wrote, “Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” We don’t know how to live. We only know how to stay alive. So what is living? Is it simply staying alive long enough to bankrupt Social Security and collapse Medicare and to use up the earth’s resources? That is living? 

I’m basing most of what I say today on an article written by Frederick Niedner of Valparaiso University. He says that we unwittingly “reduce God to the role of personal bodyguard one day and house doctor the next.” We live with God, we walk with Jesus, we breathe with the Spirit, when we need to, when we want to be relieved of our illness, our ennui. When we want to feel better about ourselves. Instead of filling our emptiness with purpose and value, we reduce God to a tool to assuage our ill feelings. 

Mary and Martha had called for Jesus. His friend, their brother Lazarus was dying. Jesus didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he waited several days and finally decided to go to Lazarus in Bethany. When he got there he did a very strange thing. He raised Lazarus from the dead. Raised his friend out of the stench of the tomb. Breathed new life into a corpse, in spite of the fact that he knew that in a few days he would be killed himself. It would all be over. He raised Lazarus so that he could die again, die forever, soon enough. 

Jesus said to Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” And we think he’s talking about life coming from death. But in John’s gospel glory and glorification are code words for crucifixion. “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you would see the crucifixion of God?” Soon, soon enough, Jesus would die and his followers would experience death with him. 

But they just wanted to stay alive. They just wanted to keep going to the synagogue and to till their land and to raise their children and to mind their business. For as long as possible. But that’s not living. That’s just desperately extending our days. Hanging on for another hour, another minute. 

Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb so that his own glorification, his own death on the cross, his own being lifted up on a tree towering over all of creation might reshape living itself. No longer would living be the necessity of going on and on and on. No longer would living be aimed at length of days. Living is now walking into the face of glory. 

Living is now knowing that death looks like it’s winning, but it’s not. It’s the biggest loser of all. 

Lazarus came out of the tomb bound from head to foot. Bound by old ideas of living, the ideas that kill us. But there was a command of Jesus: “Unbind him and let him go.” Take the shroud of death off of him. Release him from the need to live in that old, deadly way. Strip him of pretense and false hope and shallow joy and give him purpose and meaning and give him life. And he was stripped and made naked. 

“Naked as jaybirds we head off to get ourselves glorified.” That’s what Niedner writes about us as we stand in front of Lazarus’ empty tomb. Naked as jaybirds, as we long for health, for full and long life, for the promise and hope of a future. Naked we turn to look to Christ, the author of our salvation, and we see him in not standing there, but in glory, hung on a tree, hung for all to see, hung so that death can be killed. 

And we die with him. We drown daily in the waters of baptism, the flood of water that gushed out of his side when he was stabbed with a spear, we drown in salvation itself and our every day is changed. No longer do we need to live longer. We will live forever! No longer do we need to desperately cling to that which will prolong our breathing. The Spirit of God has been breathed into us, the Spirit that is the Spirit of Jesus’ glorification. 

Naked as jaybirds, we head off into life, to get ourselves glorified. Amen.

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