A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9; Revelation 21:1-6a; JOHN 11:32-44]
In this past Thursday’s edition of our weekly parish newsletter (fondly referred to as “the NOW” – that is, the “News of the Week”), I mentioned my need to attempt to connect this celebration of All Saints and our Renewal of our Baptismal vows with the pressing challenge of Tuesday’s national election. What are faithful followers of Jesus to do with their vote? For me and for many others, the campaign (specifically for President of our nation) has not only been exhausting; but it has also been a test of “faith, hope, and charity” (to refer to St. Paul’s teaching about of “love”)1.
In my NOW article, I mentioned that I have needed to understand more clearly what stands as the basis of people’s decision-making, especially trying to recognize what moves folks with whom I disagree. Without such a grounding connection, all we can do is either scream at each other (what is becoming our national pastime) or hide fearfully and bitterly from one another (neither of which makes for good biology or healthy community life). Even in this time of high anxiety, I do want to be in a faithful place of listening, all the while still knowing and relying upon the truth that All Saints proclaims and our baptismal vows express.
So, this question has emerged for me. It is one that I believe each of us is responsible for facing, answering, and being held accountable to – not just for this election day but also to clarify the possibility of tending common ground. The question is this: “What is the source of your standards?” What lies at the heart of our lives? What is the generative source of who we are and what we do?
As an inconsistent follower of Jesus, my own response to this question is to hold our baptismal vows as a steady touchstone of what needs to stand at our life’s center. These vows mark the outlines of how followers of Jesus are to live, what we are to do, and how we think and honor the content of our hearts. And yes, as I said in my article, this is unavoidably a “religious” question precisely because everyone is “religious”. The problem is what we worship, what we hold at our life’s center.
So, on this most wonderful All Saints Sunday, expressing as it does the practical and life-changing consequences of Jesus’ resurrection, I want to call your attention to the opportunity to reconfirm the vows, by which we are irrevocably connected to God’s Christ and to the life that neither fear nor death – nor any election -- can contain. I call your attention to what our baptismal vows remind us to do as members of Christ’s Body; and especially in these times of trial, I remind you to hold one another close that together we may have the courage to grow into the “full stature of Christ” (a most poignant phrase from our Baptismal promises)2.
Perhaps you will be relieved to know that I don’t think that a sermon is the context to review our vows simply because such a review demands and deserves reflection and discussion among us. Perhaps the “Inquirer’s Class” that I hope to offer this winter and into Lent can give us this opportunity. Nonetheless, there are a few elements in today’s All Saints gospel that provide direction for followers of Jesus in these contentious times.
That gospel comes from the story of “The Raising of Lazarus”, which centers around Jesus’ demonstration of his Godly authority over fear and death. This story provides us with insights into what life is like with Baptismal faith at the center. But first, let’s establish the lesson’s setting and context.
The setting is that Mary and Martha and Lazarus (all siblings) live in the village of Bethany, a town located on the southeastern slope of the Mount of Olives, less than 2 miles from Jerusalem. These three became dear and trusted friends of Jesus, regularly offering him a safe house when the Lord was in the Jerusalem environs. Their sense of deep connection is dramatized by Mary (Martha and Lazarus’ sister’s) when she anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them clean with her hair. In today’s reading Jesus is visiting his grieving friends, on the occasion of Lazarus’ death. So it struck his disciples as strangely confusing upon receiving this hard news of Lazarus’ death that Jesus waited two days before traveling to Bethany. And this is the curious point at which today’s reading begins.
With polite and reverent terms, both sisters sequentially expressed their disappointment and anguished heartbreak that Jesus hadn’t come in a timelier manner. After all, he wasn’t that far away when Lazarus died. In turn, both women echoed their hurt and their confusion: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask God, God will give you.”3
These comments from his friends, Mary and Martha, stung Jesus, I am sure. It’s no fun when we disappoint people we love, especially in their deepest hour of need. Yet, Jesus consciously delayed his presence because there was a greater issue at stake. That the sisters and the entire town was in an emotional uproar of grief created two important issues. The first is that Jesus, seeing the anguished people in tears, also wept.
“Jesus wept”: It is the shortest sentence in the entire Bible. And Jesus’ tears are the first thing our baptismal vows call us to do: to have compassion for the woe that all people’s lives contain.
I think that this is related to Jesus’ teaching that we are to pray for our enemies, which is to say that somehow we are to keep their humanity at hand and refrain from turning them into disposable things. In a country and a time when disagreement and rage too easily rob us of our humanity, holding onto a sense of compassion and even weeping over the chasm that separates us is a first and necessary step toward healing.
“Jesus wept”. It hurts to be human. It can hurt even more to remember our humanity when by our words and actions we destroy our own humanity and that of others. Our baptismal vows, the ones that bind us to God’s Christ, also bind us to one another, even when that connection hurts and threatens. Compassion lies at the heart of our baptismal vows.
Immediately after this expression of compassion, Jesus instructed the men who tended the gravesite to “take away the stone” that sealed the tomb. To me, this is the gospel lesson’s second expression of our baptismal vows. Do we dare to remove the stones that seal us and others in separation, fear and death? In the Name of Jesus, do we dare to set free up ourselves and others, separating us in fear and death? It is, after all, what we have promised to do in our Baptismal vows: namely, to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” and to “respect the dignity of every human being”4. What deadly barriers to our life with God and with one another do we need to roll away?
And of course, a third gospel issue at hand is about setting the entombed free from death’s grip. After four days in the tomb, Martha’s observation comes into play when she accurately says to Jesus (and I love the unsanitized phrasing of the “King James Version”) “Lord, by this time he stinketh.”5
This situation is also what can occur in situations where we seek to release those parts of us and others from death’s condemnation and fear. It quite often “stinketh” because we are so often addicted to death and its consequences that any attempts to make changes that point to new life are rejected – even violently denied. Indeed, “It stinketh”.
Yet, our baptismal vows speak of being made in God’s image and of renouncing all that rebels against “the creatures of God”. In this renunciation, we make room to adhere to the love and life of God that we see in Jesus.6
If the work of taking away that which keeps us and all God’s people entombed were easy…if it were easy, but of course it is not easy, which is the reason such life-giving work requires an awareness of God at the center.
So it is that Jesus and our Baptismal vows always require this instruction: “unbind him and let him go”7 -- no matter what!
Prior to Jesus’ decision to come to Bethany and be present to Martha and Mary and the grieving crowd, Jesus told his disciples that his reason for going to Lazarus was “to awake” him from his sleep. The Twelve collectively gulp and very literally say that “if Lazarus is asleep, he must need the rest; and in due time he will finish his nap. Let’s not get too involved.” But, of course, sleeping is not the real issue for Jesus nor for any of us who follow him. Rather, as Jesus says, he comes to Lazarus to “awaken him to” something more than the temptation to sleep-walk through life.
In the time we have been together (we are now in our tenth year!), I have tried to make it a clear point that “Awaken to” is what the word “resurrection” means: “Awaken to life on God’s terms”, which Jesus himself demonstrates in his own death and resurrection. And here's the most significant aspect of the Christian faith and, therefore, to what we are given to hold at our very soulful centers. Jesus did not resurrect Lazarus. After four days, Jesus resuscitated Lazarus, brought him back to life – to this life. Ironically he did what his sisters wanted. But the truth is that what the sisters and the world want is not enough. Lazarus will still have to face death and then truly be “awakened to” the larger life with God.
In this, I envy Lazarus. He had much more than a taste of the God-life. He got what everyone I know wants in the face of death: to return to life and avoid the pain of endings. In this regard, Lazarus is similar to those individuals who were pronounced medically dead and then revived. Many of them report the experience of a deeper sense of life and their place in it. It seems that Lazarus had a huge dose of this awareness; and I find it a telling point of interest that the Palestinian town of Bethany has held the Arabic title of “Al-Eizariya” ever since: a name that means “The place of Lazarus”. Do you think that place name indicates that something happened there that needed to be remembered and “awakened to”?
And that is what lies at the heart of our Baptisms and the promises we have made to God-in-Christ. In a real sense, we ourselves are called to be “the Place of Lazarus”. In Christ and as God’s saints, we are called to be living reflections of God’s life: a life that death cannot conquer and a life we continue to hold onto and work at receiving and sharing.
Sometime after next Tuesday, someone will be elected as our next President. If the polls are accurate, about half the voters will be heartbroken and deeply disappointed – even to the point of being enraged. In the sense of our country’s divisions and deeply held emotions, and all the hurt that has been said and done, there will be no “winner” of this election. We will still be a broken nation. So, the question for me both personally and as a spiritual leader is: Will we do the work to create a new fabric of justice and truth that all can trust?
For the followers of Jesus, that’s the work of Baptism and what the history of All Saints conveys. Amen.
1. Corinthians 13:13
2. Book of Common Prayer. p. 302
3. John 11:21-22
4. Book of Common Prayer. Baptismal Covenant, p. 305
5. John 11:39 – KJV
6. Book of Common Prayer. Holy Baptism: The Renunciations, . 302
7. John 11:44
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