Love never ends. March 26, 2023. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

 

John 11:1-45

So . . . do you think that Lazarus wanted to come back? That may seem like an odd question, but I really wonder about it. And my curiosity stems from another, more basic question: what exactly happened to Lazarus during those four days when he was dead? Was he just in darkness or oblivion? Seems doubtful. Jesus promised the criminal dying next to him that today he would be with him in Paradise. I have to believe that Lazarus had at least some vision or taste of that Paradise. And if so, if he had an immediate awareness of the love, beauty, and bliss of God surrounding him and filling him, I’m not sure that he would have been eager to return to life in this world. If he had what we would now call a “near death experience,” then like many of those who have gone through that, he might not have wanted to come back at all. I think, for example, of David Ditchfield’s story, which he recounts in his book Shine On. He has a powerful near death experience, and when he finally tells someone about it, he writes:

     It was such a relief to let it all out, how I’d left my body and found myself with Beings of             Light . . . and the waterfall of galaxies, the stars and the shimmering blue cloth and the             unconditional Love that came from the Light. I finished by explaining how I’d found myself      back in the emergency department afterwards.

    “Honestly, I felt like I was being dragged back to this world by an invisible force and I really     didn’t want to come back. Not one bit. But it happened in an instant, like I’d suddenly                 crashed through some invisible barrier. Next thing I knew, I was back in the Emergency             Department lying back underneath the fluorescent strip lighting. It was like I’d crash-                landed.

 I wonder how Lazarus felt, suddenly finding himself in a dark, musty tomb with his body and his face all wrapped in burial linen. Talk about a crash landing! But of course we don’t know because in this very long narrative which we usually refer to as “the raising of Lazarus,” there is almost no attention given to Lazarus himself at all, no discussion of what he might feel or want or need. Rather, the story focuses on the disciples and their level of faith, on Mary and Martha as they grieve and struggle with their own belief, and above all, on the way Jesus reveals his love and power. It’s not that Lazarus is unimportant, it’s just that he’s going to be fine, whether he lives or dies. The story really isn’t about him.

 And we can say the same thing about the other stories of Jesus restoring people to life, like Jairus’ daughter and the widow of Nain’s son. Jesus doesn’t bring these people back to life because the departed need or want it: he does it because he feels compassion for those who mourn and he wants to reveal a crucial truth about God and human beings in relation to God.

 And that crucial truth is this: death does not separate us from God. God is the Lord of all existence, the Lord of every dimension and every state of being that ever was or ever will be. When we move through death from this life to whatever comes next, God is God and God is there with us. The Psalmist puts it beautifully in Psalm 139:

 Where can I go then from your Spirit?

            Where can I flee from your presence?

If I climb up to heaven, you are there;

            if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. (Psalm 139:6-7)

 Jesus can summon Lazarus back into his body just like he can revive Jairus’ daughter and the widow of Nain’s son because they have not ceased to exist, and the loving power of God holds them in life wherever, however they are. Paul says it simply in Romans: whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s (Romans 14:8).

 The greatest sign of that, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus himself. But even before that happens, during the course of his earthly ministry, Jesus points to life beyond death, and he especially does so in moments of extreme grief, when people are devastated by the death of loved ones. There is just no pain like the pain of loss, and Jesus knows that. He feels tremendous compassion for those who grieve: in our story today, he weeps when he feels the pain of Mary and Martha. And in the same way he cares for all of us when we hurt like that and feel the heartbreaking pain of loss. But he demonstrates that the Lord of Life holds all who have died in love. They have not been lost. The sadness and separation we feel is real, but it is temporary.

 If we truly believed that all the love we give and receive in this life just disappears into oblivion, and that all the people we cherish just perish forever, we could easily live in despair. But that is not the case. Paul assures us in First Corinthians that love never ends (1 Cor. 13:8). Choosing to believe that matters; trusting in that is what allows us to love freely and unreservedly in this world and when we grieve, to grieve in hope. So as a community of faith, we remind each other that God is love, and love never ends. One way we do that is by praying for those who have died. We do not pray for the dead out of a medieval desire to spring them from purgatory. We pray for those who have died because we love them, and in God’s love we are still connected to them. All prayer is an expression of love. Just as we pray for all the people we love who are alive in this world now, so we pray for those we love who have passed on to the next life. We might wish they would return to this world like Lazarus, whether they want to or not. But if they do not come back to where we are, we will most certainly go to where they are. And we will see them again in the light of that Love that enfolds them and us, now and forever.

An opportunity to love. March 19, 2023. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

 

John 9:1-38

So I was in a hurry and running late, and I hate being late. But as I was trying to get out the door, I could not find my keys. Now, we all have our pet peeves, and one of mine is losing my keys. I can handle crises, pastoral emergencies, even deaths with some degree of equanimity, but my keys go missing – and it just frustrates me beyond measure. So I’m quickly looking around, aware that I need to go, but there are no keys anywhere, and my frustration level is rising. And so of course I turn to Lori Ann and say, “Someone took my keys!” Now, only two people currently live in our house, so it was pretty clear who I thought that “someone” was. But even as I unreasonably accuse my wife of misplacing them, I look and realize that my keys have been in my hand the whole time. I do dumb things like that, and it’s embarrassing, but beyond the ridiculousness of looking for something that I am actually holding, the disturbing thing about such an incident for me is how quickly I try to blame someone else. It’s not even conscious: it’s almost like a reflex. And I don’t think I’m alone in that. In the biblical story, blaming others goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, when Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent, and humans started a blame game that continues to this very day.

Sometimes we blame others out of sheer frustration: we need someone else to vent our anger on. Sometimes we do it out of fear: we’ve messed up, but we want someone else to get in trouble. There’s been a lot of talk about advances in artificial intelligence lately, but one commentator said that AI is clearly not close to being human. Why? Because no computer blames its mistakes on another computer. But at a deeper level, I think we often assign blame as a way of finding meaning, or at least some intelligibility, in our world. This may account for the terrible tendency some people have to blame victims. When something horrific happens to someone, it’s almost like it makes it more bearable if we can somehow think it was justified: “Oh, she was asking for it!” “Yeah, well, he just got what he deserved!” That can and does happen around illnesses. She got cancer – but, hey, she smoked for thirty years. He had a heart attack – but look, he was overweight and didn’t exercise. The idea of random suffering  and unexplainable tragedy is hard to bear. We so desperately want the world to make sense.

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Who’s to blame? If a newborn’s sin is responsible for his own blindness, of course, that implies he must have sinned in a previous life, which raises fascinating possibilities. But that’s a topic for another time. What matters now is that the disciples are trying to make sense of what would otherwise seem to be senseless misfortune – a baby born blind. Someone must be to blame! And the blaming in this story doesn’t stop there. The Pharisees want to know who’s to blame for this unauthorized, Sabbath-day healing, which has so upset their settled notions of what’s proper. And the parents, caught up in the scandal of someone actually helping someone else, point the finger at their own son: talk to him: he’s of age. But Jesus will have none of it. Of course it’s not the man’s fault, and it’s not the parents’ fault either. The question of who’s to blame is irrelevant. 

Jesus is not a blamer. In fact, throughout the Gospels he shows no interest at all in explaining the nature and origin of suffering. He doesn’t mumble things like, “Why are there so many lepers?” or “How can God possibly allow so many people be crippled and lame?” Instead, he is very pragmatic. He practices a radical acceptance: reality is what it is. The only question that matters is: How are we to live faithfully in that reality? And as this story shows us, for Jesus living faithfully means loving and doing the works of God. So he heals the blind man, just like he feeds the hungry, and he welcomes the outcasts into community, and proclaims good news to the poor, and generally shines the light of God’s love on every instance of pain he encounters. The only explanation Jesus ever offers for the existence of suffering in this world is to see it as an opportunity to love.

We may or may not like that. But that’s how Christ calls us to make sense of the world. No one wins the blame game. That doesn’t mean we’re not responsible for our own actions; it doesn’t mean people who commit crimes should not be held accountable for their crimes. It means that devoting spiritual and emotional energy to blaming others, blaming the universe, blaming God for suffering produces no good results. It’s not a wholesome way of being, but one that can easily poison us. 

And it’s just not necessary. We know how the story ends. We know Jesus rises from the dead. We know that in the end love wins and goodness prevails. We are all going to be okay, more than okay. If we can just trust that, then we can stop worrying about who to blame and focus on loving. We can rejoice in the goodness and beauty we encounter. When others suffer, we can work to relieve their pain. And when we suffer, we can rest assured that we are not being punished, but can live in hope and look for the love of God to break through our pain in one way or another. 

Look, we all know that blaming goes on all the time – in our personal relationships, in our politics, everywhere. And it’s insidiously easy to join in that. So, if nothing else, this morning I invite us all to pay attention to ourselves, which is not a bad Lenten exercise. I know that when I start to blame others for bad things, when I give way to feelings of bitterness and vindictiveness, I don’t feel good and I don’t feel close to Christ – and I love less. When I put all the blame stuff aside and focus on helping others who are hurting, I feel happier and closer to Christ – and I love more. And I don’t think that’s an accident. Rather it is one thing we can happily blame on God.

We can trust God. March 5, 2023. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

John 3:1-17

Perhaps you’re familiar with the game “Would You Rather…”? It’s fun and easy. So let’s shake things up this morning and give it a try. Would you rather have a personal maid or a personal chef? How about this one, would you rather be in jail for five years or be in a coma for a ten? And finally, would you rather be the age you are now with all your memories, wisdom, and experience or give up all of that to start over in life as a newborn babe?

 For those who opted to start all over again, I wonder if you really know what you’d be getting into. Because being a baby means that you are utterly vulnerable and dependent. Sure there are some nice things about having absolutely no responsibilities. Hopefully being held and nurtured, not to mention getting to sleep 12-16 hours a day without any guilt. But would it be worth it? Imagine having zero control over anything in your life - not when or what you eat, not whether you are clean, not who touches your body or moves you from place to place. Imagine being totally reliant on other people not just for your well-being but for your very survival. That level of defenselessness and dependence, to me at least, sounds terrifying. Of course, I realize that infants don’t find it so because they don’t know to be scared yet. Loud noises and falling are the only instinctual fears newborns have. Their own state of vulnerability doesn't frighten them. They are able to live in a state of total trust…because they haven’t yet been hurt.

 Hence the challenge in Jesus’ call about experiencing a second birth - it's a challenge because we all have been hurt before. In his book, The Book of Forgiving, Bishop Desmond Tutu puts it this way, “We all experience pain. This is the inescapable part of being human. Hurt, insult, harm, and loss are inevitable aspects of our lives” (p.70). That inevitability means that we all carry with us the weight of the things that have been done to us, as well as the harms that we ourselves have done to others. And because of those pains we don't have the possibility of returning to the state of perfect innocence and trust of a newborn. We just can't do that!

 Nor would we likely want to. We’d much rather hang on to our hard-won life lessons and wisdom gained from experience. We like believing that we have things more or less figured out, and can take care of ourselves, thank you very much. In other words, we are Nicodemus. Because when Nicodemus objects to Jesus's teaching about a second birth I don't think he's really concerned about the logistics of the womb and the physical birth process. His concern is about being born, in his words, “after having grown old.” After having done all the hard work, taken the hard knocks, and now reached a position of wisdom and maturity. He asked Jesus “how”, but my guess is what he really is asking is “why”? Why would anyone want to be born again? Why would we want to start over and go through all that fragility and need and fumbling and hard lessons again? How can we live a life of total dependence and trust when we know the world will hurt us? We resist the idea of a second birth because we know it is not safe.

 And so does Nicodemus. That’s why he waits until it’s night to go to Jesus. Because knowing Jesus is risky business. He’s the one who just literally turned everything upside down in the Temple marketplace and is all about changing the status quo - even our own safe, secure, status quo.  Nonetheless, Nicodemus comes to Jesus because there is something compelling about him. “Rabbi,” he says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” Nicodemus lets himself be curious, ask questions, and in doing so reveals, to some degree, his own vulnerability. To which Jesus responds by alluding to Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. Nicodemus - a religious expert- would have known what Jesus was talking about. An Old Testament story (Numbers 21:4-9) where the Israelites are being plagued by deadly snakes. In their helplessness, the people cry out to God. So God tells Moses to make an image of a serpent, stick it on a pole, and instruct anyone who is bitten to look upon that serpent and be healed. It’s ironic that God's response to the people's distress is to use the image of the very thing that reinforces their weakness and fear as the means of their salvation.

 In the same way Jesus knew that he, too, would be lifted up, on a cross - talk about something that reinforces a sense of weakness and fear! It’s an image of human vulnerability. A shocking spectacle of the way this broken world can hurt us and violently rob us of the security - the old life - that we think is so valuable. Yet, once again, God uses the image of weakness and fear to heal and save. To demonstrate the lengths to which God will go to in order to convince us that we are loved. To show us that, actually, we can risk vulnerability and being born anew. Because despite all the painful lessons life has taught us, we can trust God.

 All of that profound meaning is packed into Jesus' seven verse monologue that we heard proclaimed moments ago. But if you didn't get all of it, don't worry. Neither did Nicodemus. The conversation with Jesus that night didn't lead to a dramatic conversion. Nicodemus went back to his safe and familiar life as a Pharisee. But a seed was planted. And we know this because a few chapters later in the gospel of John, when his fellow Pharisees are looking for a way to arrest Jesus Nicodemus pushes back, just a bit, with a challenging question (John 7:45-52). And still later, after Jesus has been lifted up on the cross, after the depth of his vulnerability has been put on public display, Nicodemus is among the faithful who aid in Jesus' burial (John 19:38-42).

 There is nothing that makes us feel more vulnerable than being confronted by death, but in that willingness to finally embrace vulnerability, Nicodemus shows himself ready to embrace the new life that Jesus came to bring. How can anyone be born after growing old? By letting go of fear and trusting the God who loves the world and proves it through vulnerability.

 Researcher Brené Brown teaches that vulnerability is the birthplace of love, joy, trust, intimacy, courage - everything that brings meaning to our life. Vulnerability is the birthplace. Because what we need is birth, Jesus tells us, more than we need to feel safe. Birth is not safe. It demands effort, bringing us through fear, confronting us with our weakness, our need and our vulnerability. But the payoff is life. New Life that Jesus came to bring. And all games aside, wouldn’t you rather have that?