Scripture: John 11:32-44; Isaiah 25:6-9; Matthew 5:4 Series: After Pentecost
An All Saints Day sermon on John 11 and Isaiah 25 arguing that Christians must refuse both the denial of death and the denial of grief, since both are forms of lying. Jesus himself wept over Lazarus even knowing he would rise, validating grief as a physical, faithful response rather than weakness. The church holds practices for honoring the dead that secular life lacks, and Jesus’ beatitude ‘happy are those who mourn’ inverts expectations. Believers can grieve the departed while being comforted by their presence with God, remembering the saints who shaped them and being called to be saints to others.
Illustrations: australian-atheist-biologist-blog, funeral-industrial-complex, denver-casket-ministry, becker-denial-of-death, pray-preach-or-die, flannery-oconnor-dark-stories, and-can-it-be-hymn
November 3
Jesus Wept
Isaiah 25:6-9
John 11:32-44
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” - Isaiah 25:6-9
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” - John 11:32-44
When I was in college, this website came out called Blogger. It let anybody sign up and be a blogger, which is a funny word that sounds a lot like the French word for a joke, une blague, but it was that this decentralization of writing. Most of these blogs would have comment sections, and there would be a lot of like really intense conversations in these comment sections. I didn’t always participate in them. And I was never a troll, honestly. But I remember this one moment in a blog by this biologist in Australia. Which is itself an absurdity of the internet in the early 2000s: how did I get to the blog of a biologist in Australia?
He was a prominent atheist at the time on a lot of atheism message boards, and so I followed him on Google Reader, which was this wonderful service that collected and organized all your blog feeds. It was so wonderful that Google shuttered because they couldn’t make any money from it.
So I was reading this blog of this biologist in Australia and he was talking about a friend who had recently died. And I felt compelled to comment. My comment wasn’t a criticism of his beliefs or any of that. It was more of an observation about what was lacking in atheism. In a purely secular worldview, nobody really knew what to do when someone died. They didn’t have the habits. They didn’t know who to call. They didn’t know how to remember them. Now, I’m not saying the church has it all together, or Christians have it all together in this kind of capacity. There’s still so much bureaucracy that goes on when you lose someone you love. And if you’re the next of kin, if it’s your spouse or your parent, there are so many death certificates you have to order.
This doesn’t even get to what kind of service to offer for them. And grief is not a purely religious phenomenon. Everyone grieves.
There’s also the funeral industrial complex that goes on today, like five companies own 95% of all funeral homes in the United States. It’s cheaper to get a cremation than to rent a casket, even for a viewing in most places. And very few people are as vulnerable as the recently bereaved and they can be taken advantage of.
When I lived in Denver, one of the ministries they had there before I got there was that they built wood caskets for people and gave them away. And I just loved that. I was sad that that ministry had stopped by the time I had arrived. I like offering dignity for people in that kind of space, giving them options that the last time they see their loved one is not decided by money or a transaction.
And we’re still in this kind of material level in talking about grief. It is on this level that the church has habits that matter: who to call, what to say, how to organize a reception for someone we know, to come to the memorial, to come to the funeral. A funeral is always a waste of time in a material sense. It is never productive. You usually have to take time off of work in order to go to a funeral. You don’t go to the funeral to be productive: it doesn’t fix your grief. Grief isn’t like a broken down car or a bacterial infection that will be fixed or healed based on certain actions. Nobody goes to a funeral to be productive, we go because our relationships in this world matter more than our productivity,
All Saints Day
Today is all saints day, a day when we remember those in our congregation who have passed to life eternal this past year. Where we are not afraid to remember. We don’t hide. A few years ago, the writer Ernest Becker, wrote this book called The Denial of Death about the ways people in the contemporary world follow through with that deny death. And I think it’s only gotten more so in the last 30 years. The ways that people deny death, ignore it, move past it.
I think it is really important as Christians that we don’t deny death. Jesus talks about death a lot. Those who wish to save their life will lose it. Those who lose their life, for my sake will find it. Those who die for me will find it. I had a teacher once who would say that a, a Christian preacher should always be ready to pray, preach or die. There’s a starkness to that, which I appreciate because it points to this question: where does my faith lie?
Lazarus
And this is the question we find in John 11 when Jesus goes to Mary and Martha’s house and hears word that their brother Lazarus has died and they’re grieving. They’re at a loss.
Jesus is grieving, too. Jesus is at a loss. The connection with his friend has been severed by death. Even though he may know the end of the story. He knows that Lazarus is going to wake up and rise again. He knows that Lazarus will be back. Jesus still grieves.
This is so important because there are many Christian traditions which may not have the denial of death, but they have a denial of grief. As if grief itself is a weakness. As if grief itself points to a lack of faith. Grief is a physical response. Grief is not an intellectual response to the loss of a loved one. It is the physical reality that we are no longer whole. And depending on your connection to the person who is gone, it affects you physically in deeper ways. We may fully believe that they are present with Jesus and still miss them. And that’s okay because Jesus wept. Jesus didn’t laugh at Mary and Martha because of their grief. Jesus wept.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. There is not a denial here. There is an inversion of expectations, as with many parts of the Sermon on the Mount. Grief is something that Jesus equates with blessedness. In Greek, it is even starker. The word, is Makarias, which means happy more than blessed. Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Jesus points to a tension in the sermon on the mount between our life to come with God, and our current life amidst the brokenness of the world. This is the same tension pointed out by Jesus in John 11 when he goes to visit Mary and Martha and weeps over the death of his friend.
To be a Christian is not be forced to feel happy or sad. To be a Christian is not to be forced to feel anything. We have the freedom to be joyful and the freedom to mourn. We have the freedom to weep as God weeps and to sing for joy as the angels sing. We have the freedom not to lie.
The denial of death and the denial of grief both come down to lying. They both lie. They both lie and they push people to lie about where they are and, honestly, who they are.
God gives us the grace to stare death in the face and be unafraid. Now we may not always feel that boldness, but that freedom is there.
Flannery O’Connor
I’ve always loved the novels and stories of Flannery O’Connor. I think the heart of good news is found in her story, , A Good Man is Hard to Find, about a serial killer and a family just trying to go on a road trip. Her stories can get dark. They are often referred to as Southern Gothic.
O’Connor was a faithful Catholic all her life. In one of her letters, someone asks her how she can write such dark stories being a Christian. Her answer was basically that it was because she was a christian that she could look at those dark places without fear.
Jesus wept over Lazarus. Then he said, Lazarus, Come Out!
We can weep this day over those whom we have lost. We can also be comforted by their presence with God and our future together.
Isaiah 25, our first reading of the day, is one of my favorite descriptions of the new creation. It is a feast. It is a party that doesn’t get old. It is life together.
On All Saints Day, we remember that our life together here includes the lives of those who have gone before us. They are still with us and we celebrate with them.
Our Choir sang earlier from my favorite hymn. it voices the utter astonishment of grace, that God would save even me.
And can it be that I should gain An int’rest in the Savior’s blood? Died He for me, who caused His pain? For me, who Him to death pursued? Amazing love! how can it be That Thou, my God, should die for me?
I could go on and on about the power of these words, but they matter especially this day. If you have come to faith, another person was a part of that journey. Many of the people that have showed us faith have passed before us. They witnessed to God’s mercy and love and Christ’s amazing love that forgives even me, even you.
I want us to remember those saints today, as well. They may not be members of this church, but God used them to shape our lives, and thus shape this church.
What Amazing love that died for us. What amazing love that brought such people into our lives.
And then the last step is just important. Not only do we have saints in our lives, we are called to be saints in the lives of others. We are called to share and show and give and offer and love and serve in such a way that folks are blessed by Jesus Christ. You aren’t alone in this. The Holy Spirit is with you. What amazing love that can make you holy. No matter what you think may except you from God’s grace, God has seen it and still loves you.
Thanks be to God!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.