John 11:1-45 – the Raising of Lazarus
Coming At Life Like Deirdre
Yesterday I drove to Des Moines for the Home-going services
for my friend Deirdre. Home-going, if
you haven’t heard the term before, is the way a funeral is referred to in the
Black church. Deirdre was a Seminary
classmate of mine, and someone I would call a friend and teacher. She passed out suddenly a few weeks ago, and
never woke up. She was 46 years old with
a family, so it has been pretty hard to adjust to.
The Home-going was an amazing service; a packed church, with
no less than 5 ministers who each took a turn in the pulpit – and that was all
before the Eulogy. There was family
tributes and letters of condolence and scripture and prayer… And, of course,
the strong gospel singing we all needed to lift our heavy hearts on that day.
But I learned things about Deirdre yesterday that I didn’t
know before. It was well known at Seminary that Deirdre had a prosthetic
leg. It wasn’t something she talked
about much, except in all the ways you talk about prosthetic legs – how it made
her dresses fit, the way it stopped fitting well when she was pregnant, how she
wouldn’t let it stop her from dancing….
It was generally understood to be a result of cancer in childhood, but
she didn’t spend a lot of time telling that story. Yesterday I heard it in full during the
family tribute.
Deirdre had come into the world as a bundle of joy – she
exploded onto the scene, as you might say, even as a child. She had a presence that made had everyone
remember her name, and a personality that filled a room from a young age. She had apparently always had a flair for the
dramatic, a bold outspokenness, and smarts up the wazoo, even as a kid.
It was in college at Iowa State, when she was about to become
cheerleading captain, that she was diagnosed with cancer. Even after months of chemo and radiation
treatment, and taking her leg, the doctors still told her mother it was
terminal cancer.
But Deirdre lived another 26 years. And, according to her cousin, came at life
with more energy than before. She was
more loving, more expressive, more ambitious, more free-spirited, more
politically engaged, more committed to following God’s call.
She really came at life with all she had, when she had a
second chance at life. That was the
Deirdre I knew. A woman who never held
back what she was thinking, never let you leave a conversation without knowing
you were loved, never passed up an opportunity to teach – to teach about race
through the eyes of a black woman, or about motherhood, or about wifehood, or
about faith. When she read scripture in
chapel, it came alive and the words were forever changed in your memory.
Our scripture today is about new life. The story of Lazarus’ resurrection is,
possibly, the most miraculous passage in the bible. And it has it all – faith and doubt, grief
and joy, loved ones and strangers, anointing and stench. It has the tomb, the cloth, and the
unbelievable. It is like a gospel in
miniature.
Mary and Martha come to Jesus with absolute faith – indeed,
they send word to Jesus regarding Lazarus’ condition with the same certainty
and confidence that his mother Mary sent word to Jesus about the wineskins
being empty at the wedding…certain that he’d know what to do. But, when Jesus arrives – two days late, of
course – they probably don’t know what to think. It’s unclear here – whether these words,
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” – are simple
testimonials or recriminations. But what
is clear in that statement is their unwavering faith. Unlike the doubtful onlookers, who – except
for that one guy who said, ‘isn’t this the one who healed the blind man’ – are
all standing around wondering why in the world he wants into the tomb… I mean,
it had already been 4 days. The Jewish
belief was that the soul left the body after 3 days – so we are told it had
been 4 days to emphasize that Lazarus was, in fact, really dead. After all,
there was a stench.
But Jesus had to get into the tomb, because that was where death was.
Jesus had to look death straight in the face, and take his power. He had to feel the grief and do it
anyway. He had to show death who was
boss. More importantly, he had to show
the disciples, and the Jews, the meaning of his words. This verse is John,
Chapter 11. In Chapter 10, he just
finished telling the disciples that he will lay down his life, of his own
accord, and he has the power to pick it up again. He has the power to command life and defy
death.
Very few people experience the
opportunity to defy death, as my friend Deirdre did. But we all have the ability to command our
lives as if we’ve defied death.
When I first met my friend Kath, I was amazed by her
attitude. She had joined our small
non-profit team at a time of great discord within the staff. Our executive director, who worked in a different
office downstate, had hired a manager for our office – in theory, to coordinate,
motivate, and improve our efforts. But
rather than accomplish that, he was working to take control and driving the
staff out, one by one. Kath was a saving
grace in that office. She was an excellent listener, recognizing the
challenging work environment but refusing to give into frustration. She was grounded and engaged with the
problems in the situation while always keeping an eye towards the
solution. She never let anger or
resentment overshadow her mood, or her willingness to work on the problem, and
somehow with her steadfastness managed to vanquish my anger and resentment, as
well. I never understood how she could
be so positive, day in and day out, in such a contentious work environment.
It wasn’t until later that I learned that her short, sassy
haircut was actually regrowth after chemo… that she was in remission after
being diagnosed with breast cancer at 36 while uninsured. That in that same past year, her brother had
passed away and her mother had been diagnosed with cancer as well. Then I understood her attitude, her new job
working on health care reform, her determination to use all her power to make
it a good working environment… It was in fact a concentrated effort to begin
life anew. Kath simply refused to let
death take up room in her daily thoughts.
Jesus begins his ministry in the book of John by calling the
disciple to ‘come and see’. Come and see
what the Kingdom of heaven is like. Come
and see what we can do together. But
here, in this story about Lazarus, the invite to Jesus is also to ‘come and
see’ the body – come and see death. Is
it any wonder that Jesus is frustrated, that Jesus is ‘deeply disturbed’? That Jesus looks to heaven and says to God,
“At least YOU understand me!” Jesus is
inviting disciples to come and see new
life… the world keeps inviting us to see
death when Jesus wants to invite us to new life.
Our bones may be dry… we may feel like Ezekiel in the bottom
of that valley, looking around at all the bones littering the floor. Ezekiel wants us to know that the bones are
‘dry’, to tell us that these bones were, in fact, really dead. But even they have new life potential in
them. Even they can be resurrected. With a new breath from God – the word used
here is the Hebrew word, Ruach. Ruach
is God’s breath in these bones, God’s wind that touches the apostles in the
upper room, God’s spirit rushing across the waters when Jesus is baptized,
saying “this is my son, with whom I am well pleased.” Ruach
is the life-force that breathes in us anew.
Ruach is the wind behind our
backs when we find the courage to start fresh, to renew our purpose, to pick up
our life - or to lay it down for God. Ruach is the spring wind across the Great
plains, bringing new life.
The valley of dry bones is our challenge, as well as our
opportunity. We may feel completely cut
off by the presence of God. But God
can, and will, breathe new life into our dry bones.
In Chicago I knew a woman in the church I served as an intern
that was a tough old bird… a notoriously caustic old woman. Her name was Dea, and nearly everyone was
afraid of her. She was on the larger
side, which exacerbated her bad knees, and she moved slowly with a cane. She also had a tendency to appear like she
was giving everyone the side-eye or stink-eye when she looked at you.
The church had housed and supported a non-profit feeding
program, called Elijah’s Food Pantry, for something like 30 years, and it was
Dea who was in charge of the program.
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, our patrons would file in starting a
little before 9 am, sign in and take a number, and then wait to be called for
their bag of food. Dea sat at this
intake desk every Tuesday and Thursday, playing the bad cop; barking out
numbers and hollering at people who missed their cue. The food pantry took place in the basement,
and the Pastor could hear her upstairs in his office. And sometimes, he got complaints from the
patrons who felt abused and unwelcome.
The food pantry staff often griped that they didn’t get enough help from
the congregation, but when volunteers did show up to help, the found the
atmosphere just as unpleasant for helpers as it was for patrons.
Generally, Dea made the place somewhat inhospitable. My assignment during this internship was to
try to alter the atmosphere in the food pantry.
So, I got to know the patrons who visited the pantry, as well as the
people who ran the program. I spent
every Tuesday and Thursday with them, offering coffee and conversation to
patrons, and an extra pair of hands to the staff.
Now, Dea had been fighting her doctors’ advice to have a knee
replacement for many years. One of her
reasons for putting it off was caring for her husband, who suffered dementia,
and the other was the responsibility of the food pantry, and how they might
fare without her. This was even though
the church did not have an elevator and it was physically painful for her to
struggle down the 8 steps to get into the basement, and then back up when it
was time to leave, twice a week. When
her husband went in the hospital for a health problem, the doctors refused to
take no for an answer regarding the knee surgery, and the food pantry workers
braced themselves for operations without Dea.
It was during this time I started visiting Dea in the hospital, and got
to know the woman beneath the harsh, barking exterior. I learned about some of the things she was
clinging to desperately to make her life work, and her fears about losing those
things.
Her knee surgery was a quick success, but her husband
spiraled downhill and was kept in the hospital.
During that time, Dea struggled with the loneliness but also reflected
on what it was like to constantly be caring for someone who didn’t always know
where he was. When her husband was
transferred to a dementia care assisted living facility, Dea was angry and
resistant. But a few months after he moved in there, Dea made an abrupt
decision to move there as well. We were
all quite surprised that this woman, who fought to keep things the same for so
long, turned around and charged fearlessly into a completely new
situation. It is true, moving to the
assisted living facility allowed Dea to be closer to her husband, but the move
had caused him to decline fast. She
confided in me during one visit in anguish that he no longer remembered her
when she visited him at the facility. In
fact died shortly after she moved there.
Dea, however, never looked back. She has found the single-apartment style
homes more adequate to her physical abilities.
She appreciated not having to do all the chores involved in caring for a
home. And she found new life in the
social atmosphere and busy activity schedule of the assisted living center. When I visited her there, she was nearly
giddy with new friends and hobbies. She
told me I’d have to come visit either first thing in the morning or at the end
of the evening, because every other time she was would not be found in her room
– she was out with the other residents, having fun. She told me the only problem she now had was
that, not having to cook or clean for herself and having so many choices at
meal time – that she was gaining weight.
How did the food pantry fare, you might ask? Well… the truth is the pantry staff had been
preparing for Dea’s retirement for many years.
As a staff, they had discussed the transition, they had chosen her
replacement, a younger woman with lots of ideas and energy, but who was
intimidated by the old bird and not willing to cross Dea’s bark, and they were
ready. And waiting. And waiting.
And waiting, for Dea to retire. It
didn’t take long for them to adjust. One
visit to my old church showed a slicker and more efficient food pantry that was
applying for renovation grants and welcoming patrons with friendliness.
When Dea finally found the courage to let go of her fears,
her grasp on the life she used to have, she found it wasn’t death awaiting her,
but life renewed. God was ready to move
in her life, but she had to roll away the stone and face the risk.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Resurrection and
Jesus’ presence among as doesn't just mean life after death. God is the One who gives life, who creates life, who brings
life, who restarts life, who breathes Ruach into us, anew. It means that God continues to breathe
into our lives right now. Because Jesus promised abundant life, here and now, without delay. God breathes life into the spaces and places
around us where we defy death by cherishing life.
The resurrection gives witness that God is a God of life, who
continually seeks ways to breathe new life into us. Watch for the valleys of dry bones in your
life… watch for the wind that blows across the dry spaces. Watch for God’s breath, that you may inhale
deeply and see God moving in you. While
we hold on to Jesus’ promise, God gives life now, without delay.
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