Denying Death Its Due

John 11:32-44
When Mary came to the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell before him 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 gathered there together weeping, he was convicted in spirit and disturbed within himself. He said, "Where have you put him?"

They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "Look how he loved him." But some of them said, "Couldn't this man, the one who opens the eyes of the blind, have kept this one from dying?"

Jesus, once more convicted in spirit, came to the tomb, which was in a cave, and a stone was placed over it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone!"

Mary, the sister of the one who had died, said, "Lord, by this time it will stink, for it's now the fourth day."

Jesus said to her, "Didn't I tell you that, if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
So they took away the stone. Jesus raised his eyes and said, "Father, I thank you that you heard me. I knew that you hear me always, but I spoke on behalf of the crowd so that they might believe that you sent me." Having said this, he called out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped with a facecloth. Jesus said to them, "Set him free and let him go."

Once a rooster got me in trouble. Actually it was a chicken, a 6-foot-tall singing chicken. But I remember it as a rooster and this is why: One of my best friends in seminary was a guy by the name of Wayne Harberson. It wasn’t clear why we became friends, but we definitely did so. Wayne was significantly older than I was, almost my father’s age. He came to seminary after serving for many years in human resources and the department of psychology at the University of Houston. I didn’t think about it much at the time, but now I realize how much he had to downsize his life to come to seminary.

A few weeks ago I mentioned what our apartments looked like at Perkins School of Theology. One room efficiencies built right after World War II with Murphy beds that pulled down out of the wall. We downsized from a small apartment to go to one of those rooms. Just down the hall from us Wayne was trying to downsize from a house into one of those rooms.

We were fast friends even though we came from very different worlds. Many nights, Wayne would go out to dinner with Suzanne and me and Laurence and Helen, our other good friends whom we just visited in Scotland. Later in the night we’d take a study break for worship in the chapel and then head up the street to a frozen yogurt shop. And in those mundane moments as our friendship developed we learned a lot about each other. We learned how differently we thought about theology and how similarly we felt about the church. I even learned that Wayne’s real first name was Joyce, though he wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know that.

But I was going to tell you about the rooster. Wayne’s birthday was April 15 and by that time in the year we loved Wayne enough that we wanted to do something big for his birthday. So we concocted a plan to have a singing telegram visit him during our introduction to Bible seminar class. This was the big required class that met three times a week. 75 students in Selecman Auditorium.

The teacher that day was Dr. Bill Power, a great storyteller and scholar who was also a very imposing figure. He had a good sense of humor but he would rarely crack a smile. I talked with Dr. Power before class to let him know that we had arranged for this singing telegram to come at the end of class and hoped that he wouldn’t mind if he came in as he wound up his lecture. And, oh, by the way, the telegram was going to be delivered by a singing chicken. Dr. Power never actually told me it was going to be O.K., but he didn’t say ‘no’ either, so we went ahead and arranged for the telegram. Wayne didn’t suspect a thing.

The lecture that day was on Job and Dr. Power was talking about the passage where Job says, “I know that my redeemer lives” [Job 19:25]. It’s a lovely passage and one that inspired a great hymn by Charles Wesley all about the consolations of God’s salvation in Christ. But Dr. Power was making the point that Job was not asking for consolation when he utters that phrase. The word that is translated ‘redeemer’ is a Hebrew word ‘goel’, which means something like a blood avenger. What Job wants, in the face of all his calamities, is someone who will take up his cause and avenge his losses. He doesn’t want a consoler, he wants a goel.

So that’s what Dr. Power was talking about when he suddenly looked up and stared at the back of the auditorium. I could tell he was trying to ignore whatever was back there and I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew what it was and there were still 30 minutes left in the class period. Finally he could ignore it no more so he turned to me and said, in his sternest voice, “Mr. Joyner, I think your rooster is here.”

Well, it wasn’t a rooster, it was a chicken, but I wasn’t going to correct Dr. Power. And the chicken took the cue and came on in. He was a born performer and he wasn’t going to be content to sing “Happy Birthday” and go on his merry way. Oh, no. He had to tell a few jokes – a few risqué jokes. And sing a few extra songs – a few risqué songs. All in the middle of Bible class! Even though the class loved it, I was dying, trying to melt into my seat which was right next to Wayne and the chicken. When the bird finally left, Wayne stood up in place and said, “I know that my goel lives!” He took it so much better than I did.

Wayne must have been a great teacher and administrator at the University of Houston, but he was an even better pastor. He was born to do it. And I learned so much from watching him and from arguing with him and from sharing so many meals with him. We were with him as he met Diane, who became his wife and joined him in that tiny room in Martin Hall. And we kept in touch every so often as he went to serve churches in Palestine and then in Houston, Texas. He was loved everywhere he went and he helped so many people see Christ.

If this sounds like a memorial tribute, it’s because it is. A month ago I got the word that Wayne was ill and two weeks ago I caught up with him by phone in a hospital in Houston. He was in good spirits and was very glad to hear from me, but he told me he had liver cancer and it didn’t look good. It was an awkward phone conversation. I couldn’t get the words out. And I didn’t know what words to say.

So I planned to take a brief trip out to Houston last Thursday. Just overnight. Just to see him. But I think Wayne must have thought that was a pretty extravagant and needless thing for me to do. Early Thursday morning, with his family all around and before I left my house, he died and his long struggle ended. Tomorrow, at his old church, they’re going to have a great celebration of his life.

So now I come to preach about our text for this All Saint’s Sunday. It’s a familiar gospel passage. Jesus received word that his friend Lazarus was dying while he was away in another part of the land. He decides to wait a few days before going to see him. In the meantime, his friend dies.

This is not the part of the passage that seems most important to me, despite the parallels I can pick out. It seems to me that Jesus had very different reasons for waiting. He seems to have known that what he was going to do with Lazarus was going to be momentous – it was going to change everything. What he was going to do with Lazarus was going to show the people once and for all who he was and what sorts of power he possessed over death.

But it didn’t change the response of Mary, Lazarus’ sister, when she saw him walking up the road to the tomb. She knew his power. She had placed all of her hopes in him. She fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus looks at Mary and sees her weeping. He looks at the others who were gathered together with her to share her grief. The Bible then says something very interesting about Jesus. Some translations say that Jesus was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled,” which implies that Jesus was moved by the emotion around him. Shortly after this we have the shortest verse in the Bible, which says simply, “Jesus wept,” and the combination of these verses is used to suggest that here we have the ultimate expression of Jesus’ human nature. In fact that’s what some of the mourners say. They look at Jesus’ tears and say, “Look how he loved this man.”

But I think that’s a wrong reading. The words that describe Jesus’ inner state are not about feeling compassion and being moved to mourning. What they’re about is disturbance and anger. They describe someone who is passionate and convicted. You could say that they describe someone who looks upon the crowd and is fed up with what he sees. Some want to see a human Jesus who cries with compassion. But others want to expose him for a charlatan. They’re there wagging their heads and saying, “This guy makes blind people see, doesn’t he? Why couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”

So Jesus marches on to the tomb and again we are told that he is “deeply moved in spirit” and again the Greek words are the same. They indicate conviction and even anger. Jesus doesn’t waste time with niceties; he tells those assembled to take away the stone that had been placed in front of the cave tomb. Mary protests, “Lord, think of the smell! It’s been four days.” Four days. Jews believed that the spirit of a person stayed near a person for three days. After four, there was nothing left but the stench.

Jesus turns to her and says, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see the glory of God?” They take away the stone. Jesus raises his eyes and speaks aloud to God, making it clear that this miracle is all about helping the crowd to believe who he was and what power he represented. And then he cries out, with conviction in his voice to do what he knew he was going to do all along, “Lazarus, come out!”

There is dead silence in the air. There must have been. The shock of those who couldn’t believe this man’s audacity to call forth a decaying corpse from the dead. The suspended belief of those who wondered if maybe, maybe… And then he walks out. Still bound by the cloths that they had placed on him four days before. And Jesus says, “Set him free and let him go.” Death was denied its due and the die was cast for all that was to come.

Now here’s the parallel I draw between this story and the story of my friend, Wayne: I believe that what moved Jesus to tears was not the grief that we feel when someone we love dies. Jesus loved Lazarus. Jesus called him friend. But he knew before he ever faced the tomb that he would see him once again.

I believe that what agitated Jesus and what moved him to tears was the range of his vision. Jesus was God. John, the gospel writer, tells us that right up front. Jesus, the Word, was with God in the beginning and all things were made through him. The Word was God and without him nothing was made. So Jesus knew the world in its intended state and sees the world as it shall be when all things are restored and made right. There is beauty throughout and God’s purposes cannot be defeated, even by death.

But what must have broken Jesus’ human heart was the fact that we couldn’t see what he saw. We live in broken time and our eyes are often blinded to the incredible beauty of the world by the pains we suffer and the griefs we know. Our experience of God is mediated through lives that know soaring joys but also deep losses. We can lose sight of what God is doing and we can feel empty even when we ought to know a creation full to overflowing with the glory of God.
So when Jesus looked at Mary weeping and the crowds who were so divided and deluded in their expectations of him, he was moved with the deep conviction that the world must know what it is. The people must know who they are. And all creation must know who he is – the God who never lets death be the last word. And knowing all this – knowing how beautiful the earth is and how tragically it has been deformed by the effects of sin and death – knowing completely what we know only in part – Jesus wept.

I want to weep like that for Wayne and for all the other saints we remember on this day. I want to weep, not out of self-pity or out of my own sense of loss, but out of the deep joy of knowing that we live in a creation with so many shades of complex beauty and so many colors of light and life. I want to weep in confidence that all these lives that have touched mine are not lost or ended or destined to remain a memory. I want to weep knowing that the ones who have shown me God’s love are caught up in that love and carried on by that love into a future I can only imagine and dream and hope and glimpse.

There have been times in these last few days when I have wept for other reasons. My vision is not like Jesus’ and I can be overcome by the darkness at times. But I have also found that I have had moments of deep, inexplicable joy. Well, it would be inexplicable if it weren’t for the witness we have in Jesus Christ, the Risen Savior who conquered death and invites us to life. It would be inexplicable if it weren’t for the bread and the wine on the communion table that speak of life broken and yet continuing into eternity. It would be inexplicable if it weren’t for saints that show us in their lives how we have this treasure in earthen vessels. The beauty and the joy and the love I feel would all make no sense at all if I had not lived with saints like my friend Wayne.

You’ve got that joy, too. I trust that and know it. Give thanks to God for the saints who helped you see that. Thanks be to God.