Meanings
of the Cross: Eternal Life
Sermon preached by the Reverend Patricia Farris
March 06, 2005
Scripture:
Psalm 130 and John 1:1-7, 11b-45
In
all the stories in this Lenten series on “Meanings of the Cross,”
Jesus has been drawing people from death to life: Nicodemus, the woman
at the well and now, today, Lazarus. His is calling them from some
form of living death to true life everlasting. In each of these stories
we see Jesus embodying the words he finally says today: “I am
the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they
die, yet shall they live, and everyone who lives and believes in me
shall never die.”
Of
all these stories, the story of Lazarus is surely the strangest one
and the hardest to understand. There is not time this morning to unpack
all of its layers of meaning, but we will go with it to the heart
of the matter, to the core belief of our Christian faith: Jesus came
that we might have life and have it abundantly.
How
do we get to an affirmation of life in this rather bizarre story of
death? Today’s story is not a story about Jesus and a stranger.
It’s the ultimate “Friends” episode, really: sisters
Mary and Martha, brother Lazarus, best friend, Jesus. This story is
all the more poignant because it happens among a close group of friends
and confidants.
And
so, when something dramatic happens, expectations and emotions run
high. Just two days before Passover time, Jesus receives word that
his friend Lazarus is dying. His sisters call their friend Jesus to
come and save him. He finally responds, but clearly in his own time,
and goes to Bethany and calls Lazarus out of the tomb.
This
story holds together all that we feel and all that we believe about
life and death. We can see ourselves in Mary and Martha, can we not?
We Christians love life. We are people of the incarnation. We love
this life with all of its crazy mix of joys and blessings and challenges.
We do not want to face our own death. We do not want our friends and
loved ones to die. We naturally do everything in our power to spare
them suffering and pain. When what feels like the end draws nigh,
we hold on tight. And who of us does not call upon God to intervene,
to take away the suffering, to turn away the power of death? “Lord,
if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
But
the Lazarus story is brutally honest. It forces us to face the facts.
Humans do not live forever. By illness or accident or plain old age,
we will die and we will go
(continued...)
"Meanings of the Cross: Eternal Life"
Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris, March 06, 2005 down
to the grave. Our faith does not alter that fact of life. We cannot
avoid it and we cannot shield those we love from it. The reality of
Jesus’ own life, suffering and death communicates this same message.
Precisely because of this, Jesus did
not intervene when Mary and Martha pleaded with him. He hesitated. Everything
in him must have been desperate to go and spare his friend the death
that was at hand. But miraculously rescuing Lazarus or us from the truth
of this life is not what faith is about. Jesus knew that he was about
something much more, the mystery of eternal life that then as now is
very hard for us to believe.
He
says it all in that one sentence, in the present tense, the here and
now: “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus
is the here and now reality of resurrection. Right here and now in our
lives, Jesus is calling us out of our tombs, just as he called out Lazarus,
inviting us now to embrace the full power of life on this side and when
the time comes, on the other side of the grave.
Eternal life is not about magically
sparing us death. Eternal life is also not just what happens after we
die, after we move into “life fulfilled beyond our imagining,”
as we say in our service of death and resurrection.
As we’ve seen in the stories of
Nicodemus and the woman at the well, Jesus brings the gift of eternal
life to us while we are yet alive. He calls us from death to life in
every moment. Live, he says! Oh, but I’m not dead yet, you say!
If you’re here, you are, I suppose, more alive than dead this
morning. But isn’t there something entombed within every one of
us? Aren’t ways, even now, in which a little part of us has died:
some person we’ve written off, some challenge we’ve avoided,
some dream we have not pursued. This kind of death can happen at any
age, in any circumstance, in any state of health or ill health. In some
sphere of life we just stop being alive. We stop growing and changing
and risking.
I can’t say what it may be for
you. Only you can search your heart and identify your own premature
tomb---a tomb of bitterness that now separates you from a friend or
member of your family: a tomb of resentment about something in the past
that you will not release and let go; a tomb of suspicion and prejudice
that separates you from everyone different from you; a tomb of low self-esteem
that separates you from your true self; a tomb of apathy or cynicism
that separates you from the full commitment and risk of discipleship;
a tomb of nostalgia that keeps you from embracing the present and living
into the future.
Jesus knows our tombs. He has inhabited
them all and he has opened them all. Now he calls us out, grave cloths
and all. There’s no excuse about waiting until….waiting
until we feel stronger, waiting until so-and-so apologizes to us, waiting
until we’ve got it all figured out, waiting until we feel stronger,
waiting until we feel ready. Jesus calls us out of our tombs even now,
that we might be fully alive and thus never die.
(continued...)
"Meanings
of the Cross: Eternal Life" Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris, March
06, 2005
We
hear the Lazarus story in the remaining few weeks before Jesus will
face his own death. There is so much in this story that will echo
again in his own: Jesus is deeply troubled, Jesus weeps, he calls
out in a loud voice, the tomb is near Jerusalem, the tomb is a cave
with a large stone covering it and the stone is rolled away. The hour
is almost at hand when the Son of Man will be glorified.
The awful truth of our faith is that
you can’t get to Easter by skipping over Good Friday. Oh, wouldn’t
we like to? Wouldn’t we want that for Jesus? Isn’t that
just what we want for ourselves and for those we love? But Jesus has
not come to spare us all that this mortal life will bring, even death
itself. He has come to show us what it means to live fully in every
moment so that living or dying our life may be in him and nothing
will ever be able to separate us from his love.
The meaning of eternal life at the
heart of the cross is two-fold. For us mortals, suffering and death
is a fact of life, just as it was for Jesus himself. In our suffering
and in our death, Christ is with us. He shares our every sorrow. He
knows our every tear, our every fear. In our living, he knows everything
that holds us back from the fullness of life for which we are created.
He calls us out! He calls us to life! On the other side of every tomb
and every death is life in all its fullness, all its joy, all its
power. The Easter hymn says it: “Christ is alive! Let Christians
sing. His cross stands empty to the sky!”
And
so, let us gather at his table, to remember his gift of himself for
us, and to hear him inviting us, even now, to life fulfilled beyond
our imagining as he says to us again this day: “I am the
resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die,
yet shall they live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall
never die.”
Notes:
© Patricia Farris, 2005. Permission is given for brief quotation
with attribution. All other rights reserved.
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