All Saints Day
November 4, 2018
Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44
INTRODUCTION
I love All
Saints’ Day. I love the hymns, I love the texts, I love the memories. Every
pastor I know, present company included, says they’d rather preach a funeral
than a wedding, because we get to preach the hope of resurrection – and All
Saints Day is sort of a big, annual funeral, because it is all about the life
and comfort we find in the resurrection promise, especially in the midst of the
various losses we experience.
Just look at
these texts. Each is written to and for a community experiencing a difficult
time, and each of them holds in tension the extremes of human emotion: the deep
sadness, grief, and fear we feel when we’ve lost, or are losing, someone or
something important to us, and the hope we find in a God who keeps promises. As
you listen to each one, listen for those emotions. As these texts mention
death, think not only about the ultimate sort of death, but also about the
mundane deaths we experience every day – people moving away, job change or loss,
losing your faculties and abilities, realizing you can’t be as active anymore
as you once were, any sort of meaningful change to what you have come to
understand as “normal,” whether the change is good or bad. Recall the feelings
you have in those experiences of death and change, and listen in these texts to
God’s words of hope and new life for you. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
As I read
through the texts for today, I noticed a common image across all three: tears. Both
Isaiah and Revelation talk about God wiping away tears from the eyes of people
who are surrounded by death, grief and fear. And the Gospel text, this famous
story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, is full of mourning and sadness,
even expressed by Jesus himself. This is of course the story in which what is
famously the shortest verse in the Bible appears: Jesus began to weep. So much
pain. So much grief. So many tears.
Yet these texts are also full of
hope! They all contain good news! So why would I notice not the hope, but the
tears? Perhaps because these past couple of weeks in our country have echoed
some of the same pain, grief and sadness. First there were the fourteen
homemade pipe bombs sent to, among other political leaders, two former
presidents. Then, eleven worshipers shot dead in a synagogue in Pittsburgh on
the Sabbath, during a baby’s naming ceremony. Another attempt at a mass
shooting in a predominantly black church, but when the shooter couldn’t get in,
he killed two African Americans at a Kroger’s grocery store instead, while he
told a white man nearby that he was safe because, “Whites don’t shoot whites.”
Each report more chilling, maddening, and heart-breaking than the last. So much
pain. So much grief. So many tears.
What a time
to be celebrating All Saints Day, this day in the church year that is a sort of
memorial service for all who have died, for those saints who have gone before
us. It is a day we celebrate the eternal feast, the promise of resurrection,
the ways that God turned death into life for so many of our loved ones before
us and still does and will for us. It should be a joyous day! And yet… in weeks
like the ones we have just been through, I don’t always want to jump straight
to the hope and joy of the resurrection. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I want to
get there eventually, but sometimes, I just need a little more time to lament.
Lament. It
is a central but all-too-often overlooked piece of the biblical narrative, but
one that I have been returning to more and more lately. Lament is the
expression of deep sorrow or grief about something or someone, like the loss of
a person. It is the Psalmist’s cry in Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” It is the Israelites who sat down and wept by the waters of
Babylon, because they could not find it in themselves to sing their song of
faith while they were forced to live in a strange land. Lament is the “sighs
too deep for words,” that Paul refers to in Romans. It is the deep sadness of
Mary weeping inside the empty the tomb, believing as she did that they had
taken away her lord’s body. Lament.
I have
lamented. I have lamented in the past two weeks for sure, and also at many other
times over the course of my life. I resonate with those in the Bible who have
also lamented. And so that is why I am so drawn to the tears in our passages
today, and in particular, to Jesus’ tears. It might seem strange that Jesus is
crying at this particular moment. When he first found out that his friend Lazarus
was sick, Jesus intentionally delayed departure, seemingly waiting until it
would be too late to save him. So this situation is, kind of, his own doing! At
least he could have prevented it. And then once he gets there, he knows
resurrection is just around the corner – both the raising of Lazarus, and not
too long after, Jesus’ own resurrection. So why, then, is Jesus crying? What’s
he got to cry about?
As I have
let myself feel an assortment of feelings this week, and recalled other times
when I have, in my life, lamented, or sat with people who are, I have begun to
see that what Jesus does on that day in Bethany when he cries, is make time and
space for empathy. In his willingness to cry for the death of Lazarus, Jesus in
essence says to Lazarus’ grieving sisters, “Your brother is worth grieving for.
You are worth grieving for.” He doesn’t jump to paint a silver lining around
it, or say, “Who are you talking to here? I can fix this for you!” Though he
does eventually say, “Didn’t I say you would see the glory of God?” he doesn’t
go there first. The first thing he does, is lament with them. He weeps. He lets
himself feel their pain, and he cries with them.
That can be
incredibly healing in times of lament! I can think of times in my life when I
have been having a really rough time, and I keep trying to tell myself, “It’s
not so bad, Johanna. Get over it. Things could be so much worse.” And then when
I complain to someone else, and they say, “Boy, that’s really rough,” I feel
relieved! “Yes! Yes, it is rough!
Thank you for saying that, and making it okay for me to feel cruddy about it!” In
times when this has happened, that mere acknowledgement of my pain always feels
like a step toward healing.
I have found
this in my interactions with other people, too. In my family growing up, I was
often the peacemaker. I was always trying to paint silver linings and make
people feel better. As I grew up, I found this was my inclination in my adult
interactions, too… often to poor results. When someone expressed a concern to
me, I first wanted to say, “Let me break this down with you and show you why
this is not something to be concerned about. I think if you just understand,
you’ll feel better.” Turns out, that approach seldom works to diffuse conflict
or heal hearts. Maybe eventually, yes, but not at first. Because what people
want most of all when they’re in pain is to be heard, to know that their
feelings are valid, to feel like they are not alone. Once we have taken the
time to lament together, to empathize, to sit together in the pain for a little while – only then can healing begin. Only then are we in a place where we see
and hear the good news of the resurrection.
When Jesus cries, the bystanders say,
“See how he loved him!” I think it would be more accurate to say, “See how he
loves us!” Because empathy is an act of love. Lamenting together is an act of
love. It puts aside pretense and judgment and policy and even our own fears and
baggage, and dwells for a moment in the heart and needs and longings of
another. To do that, is to love.
Back at the beginning of John’s
Gospel, which we always read at Christmastime, we hear that “the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us.” What a beautiful promise – that God would dwell with
us, sit with us in our joy and more importantly, in our pain. I know this is
good news. I was amazed this past week when our confirmation students gave
their presentations of their capstone projects, which end up being a sort of
statement of what is important to them about their faith and their relationship
with Jesus. I think every last one of them said that what is important to them
about their faith is that they know God will be with them through good times
and bad, especially bad. These wise teenagers know and have internalized this
essential message. They know the importance of someone being present with you
in your hour of need, and of acknowledging your pain.
My prayer for them and for all of us,
is that we would know not only this abiding, empathetic presence that is
willing to sit and cry with us, lament with us… but that we would also know
that this ability to lament is the first step toward hope and healing, and
ultimately, transformation. That it is right after this that the people Jesus
knew, got their first glimpse of resurrection and new life. And that it is
right after this, the last of Jesus’ miracles, that he walks his own agonizing
path to the cross, and then, into resurrected glory.
The story of our faith is one that
moves through the cycles of emotions: from pain and sorrow and lament, to hope
and healing and transformation. Over and over again we see this cycle – lament
to hope to new life, lament to hope to new life – and every time, we can see
that the God who came to dwell among us, also dwells with us, cries with us,
laments with us in our pain. And then God wipes our tears and his own, takes
our hand, and assures us of what comes next: we see the glory of God. We see
new life come about. Maybe, just like the people standing there to whom Jesus
said, “Unbind him and let him go,” calling them into the work of bringing about
new life, we even find a way that we, too, are called to participate in
bringing about that new life. We don’t forget about the pain we felt, and
neither does God, but we are assured that with Christ that pain and death is
never the last thing. Because God is always the last thing, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
God always wins.
Let us pray… Abiding God, when we are lost, rejected, suffering and afflicted, we
thank you for being with us, crying empathetic tears. Make us aware of your
presence, and bring us into the everlasting hope made possible by your Son
Jesus Christ our Lord. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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