All Saints Day

Ruth 1:1-22; John 11:32-44

Today we celebrate All Saints Day or more properly the portion of the Holiday that is more closely historically connected to All Souls Day.  It is a day where we remember the saints who have gone before us.  More specifically the Saints of our lives, the faithful departed who we have loved and lost as they entered the church triumphant.  Those who have taught us and nurtured us and helped us grow in our faith no matter how long of short their lives may have been.  And it is a day when we can think about and talk about and publicly acknowledge our grief and the pain we continue to feel over the loss of loved ones.  And honestly this is a such a gift because this opportunity seems rare in our culture and even in our church.

And today we receive some help, yet again from the example of the faithful women of the bible.   Today we listen and bear witness to the grief of these holy women.  And I have added the story of Naomi from the book of Ruth which is not part of All Saints lection but is in fact in the regular lectionary for today.  And it is a story about the depth of our grief and how even in the darkest times, love and hope survives, sometime in the most unexpected places.  And Naomi has it hard, in a fairly short period of time, she loses everything, her homeland, her husband, her sons and with them her livelihood and security.  It is a devastatingly tragic story, and the passage ends with her uttering this crushing line: “No longer call me Naomi, (because Naomi means sweetness in Hebrew), call me Mara, which means bitter because the Lord has dealt harshly with me.”

But even then, in spite of all that loss, there remains hope.  Even in the darkest times Naomi is not truly alone, Ruth a daughter-in-law with no formal obligation clings to her in their shared grief, shares her burden and ushers in new hope through their relationship.  And we will get to hear the rest of their story next week, but just know that it doesn’t end with bitterness but with redemption and new life for both of them.

And the finally and perhaps most powerfully, in our Gospel lesson we meet Mary and Martha, we see grief so deep that even God incarnate weeps with his friends.  And really, I am glad this story is here today, because John chapter 11 is my favorite in the whole bible and it really does tell you just about everything you could ever really need to know about the story of our faith.  And today we don’t even get to hear the whole thing, only the climax, the meaty center of a much larger story. But in the part of the story we missed, we learn that a man has died and Jesus has come to greet his grieving sisters who he calls his friends and we learn he loves them.

When Mary sees first sees Jesus, she greats him with the exact same words her sister did moments earlier “Lord if you had been here my brother wouldn’t have died.”  It seems a harsh and even bitter statement.  Yet it is true.  Jesus knew days earlier that Lazarus was ill and that had the power to save him.  But Jesus knew many other things as well.  Jesus especially by this point is part of a much larger story with much larger implications for himself and the whole of creation. But none of that is comforting to Mary because her brother is still dead.

And so when he finally arrives, when he sees Mary and Martha and his friends weeping, when he sees their pain, he cannot remain unaffected and suddenly none of that other stuff matters to Jesus anymore either.  This is a moment when we see Jesus at his most divine and his most human.  Jesus the Son of God, who is the agent of creation, who has absolute power over all things even death, still does the most human thing imaginable and becomes overcome with emotion as he joins in the weeping at the tomb of his friend.  His ultimate power and control over the situation does nothing to blunt his compassion.  His friends are grieving, they are hurting and he feels every ounce of their pain and distress.  Being God incarnate does not distance him from the very real, very strong emotions that accompany death, he feels them all, he weeps right along with us. 

And this is another instance where our modern translators don’t do us any favors.  The Greek here is much stronger than our sanitized English, it literally says he was moved in his belly.  A better translation might be “Seeing them crying, Jesus felt like he had been punched in the gut and cried out in anguish.  Asking where they had laid him, he burst into tears.”

I have heard it said before that Christians shouldn’t show outward signs of grief at the loss of loved ones.  That if we truly believe in the resurrection, we shouldn’t be overly bothered by death because our loved one is in a better place or whatever.  But these are really just things that people say because your grief makes them uncomfortable and they don’t like it.  Because this story shows the lie of these sentiments.  Mary and Martha clearly believe in the resurrection, Jesus knows for certain that Lazarus will be raised, yet they all still grieve together even to the point of being emotionally overcome and physically distressed by their grief.  Jesus doesn’t shy away or admonish Mary’s grief or Martha’s (which is more internalized and questioning and less explosive but still strong).  Instead he accompanies them, he feels for and with them, he holds on to them in this painful time.  Showing us that not only is it okay but it is healthy and good to grieve the death of our loved ones and to feel and express those feelings of grief for as long as it takes.  There can be nothing unchristian about following the example of Jesus’s own behavior.

But Jesus does a lot more than weep, he does a lot more than simply share the grief of his friends.  He acts.  He defies the stench of death and releases Lazarus from the tomb.  And our reading for the day ends not with weeping but with joy.  With Lazarus’ friends literally losing him from the binds of death.

But this joy comes at a terrible price.  For this is not the end of the story, if we were to read on we would discover that in the very next verse, some of the people who are there at the tomb, go and tell the officials what Jesus has done.  And this is the final straw.  When the officials hear about this latest act, they decide it is time to arrest Jesus and put him to death.  Within weeks he is dead.

In a very real way Jesus trades places with Lazarus in that tomb.  In order for Lazarus to live, Jesus must die.  And so knowing full well the consequences, a weeping Jesus chooses to save the life of a friend that he loves.  And this same Jesus, who loves us and calls us his friends, makes this same choice for each of us.  Jesus weeps so that our tears may be wiped away and Jesus dies so that we might live.

This is where we find ourselves on this All Saints Day, standing in the place between grief and hope, between death and new life.  And everyone is somewhere in this space, maybe some days we are closer to Naomi, feeling like our name is Mara that bitterness is all we have.  Maybe we still shout at God, Jesus if you had been here my loved one wouldn’t have died.  Maybe we are starting to feel like we are being loosed from the binds of grief, fragile buds of new life springing at the corners.  Maybe we have come to the place where are just awed and thankful for the time we have had together and the miracles of our lives.

But one thing we learn from Naomi, Mary and Martha is that no matter where we are, Jesus is with us. Jesus accompanies us on wilderness journeys.  Jesus tries his best to answer our whys and our accusations and our second guessing.  Jesus weeps with us in our pain, and not just in the polite way, Jesus ugly cries with us balled up on the bathroom floor. 

And in the midst of it all, Jesus sets to work bringing us back to life, no matter the cost.  Jesus chose to die to suffer death on the cross, so one man so that Lazarus could live again.  And he willingly, freely makes that same choice for each and every one of us.  Jesus chooses to bring us new life out of death, in this life and the next.

It may not be what we imagined, it will never replace what we have lost, but new life is possible, new hope, new purpose, new life is offered to us all though the love of Christ.  New dawn springs eternal even from the darkest night.  Amen.