Sunday, March 9, 2008

05 Lent A 08

March 9, 2008

Psalms 130:1-8 (NRSV)

John 11:1-45 (NRSV)

Come Out

One of the things that sometimes rattles me is the remembrance of running when I was eight years old. Do you remember what it was like to run like the wind? I can remember a particular time when we went to a mall. Malls were kind of new in those days. This would have been the mid-sixties. It was an amazing place, this great indoor shopping area that went on and on. I remember vividly just filling up with unaccountable joy and wanting to run. I asked my mom if it was okay, and she said yes. That was a different time then. Parents didn’t worry about kids getting out of their sight for a few minutes.

I ran like the wind, I ran like I would never, ever grow old or die. I ran and all I was doing was running and I could feel my heart beating happily and everything worked perfectly and I was the fastest thing alive.

It rattles me to remember this, because I will never feel that way again. That moment is gone forever.

Jesus wept.

Jesus wept not because Lazarus had died, but because human beings persist in allowing themselves to be made slaves of their own mortality. God doesn’t want me to live in mourning for what is daily slipping away. Nor does he want my coming death to hang over me like a threat.
Everyone dies, but not everyone lives.

The world uses death and all the losses associated with it to dominate and exploit people. People use the fear of death and violence to make slaves of each other. In fact, as Max Weber has said, even normal political power is simply the power of violence. We all agree bad people need to be stopped from hurting good people. For this reason we organize governments and we grant them the right to use violence to keep us safe. This isn’t evil itself, but it’s necessary because of evil.

This is why, way back in the first sermon on the temptation of Jesus, we said that the devil, at least for now, continues to rule most of the world. If it wasn’t for the evil, we wouldn’t need to use violence. As long as he is active, we still have to dance to his tune to some degree.

Just because this is a legitimate and necessary reality does not mean that it fulfills God’s will. Nor does it mean that God works the same way. Power in the world works on the principle of threat. Step out of line and you will be punished. Ultimately, the power of the world is the power of death. But God doesn’t work that way.

So many churches build all their buildings and fill up all their pews with a simple dynamic. First they say, “you are going to die, and not only will you die, but when you die, you will be tormented forever in terrible pain.” If you believe this, they then will tell you how you can avoid this fate. What is usually entailed is being a good citizen and giving a lot of money and time to the church. I don’t believe this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe this is living in a tomb with your hands and feet tied.

Is there such a thing as an afterlife? I believe there is. But can it really be that God is threatening us all in this way?

Of course, there are lesser versions of the same gospel. "Damnation Lite," you might call it. The message is that you will be unhappy without God in your life or you won’t get what you want if you don’t have God in your life or you won’t be able to cope without God in your life.

These things are true, I suppose, for some people and in some ways. But it is a terrible reduction of the whole gospel message. Such a reduction, I really wonder if it’s good news at all. Because really it amounts to the same thing: God is threatening you with a terrible life if you don’t do what he asks.

Richard Hoefler tells about two young children visiting their grandparents for the summer. We’ll call them Dick and Jane. Dick had just gotten a slingshot and was really anxious to play with it, so he was running around out back shooting at this and that. Now his grandmother, whom he loved very much, had a pet duck named Fred. She really was crazy about that duck.

Well, at one point, he sighted on the duck and on an impulse shot at it, and sure enough, he hit it dead on. Killed it.

The boy was horror-stricken. “Oh, my God,” he thought, “I didn’t mean to kill Grandma’s favorite pet!”

Dick looked around but didn’t think anyone saw him. So he scooped up the poor duck and carried it off into the woods and covered it up with some leaves.

Well, when he got back in the house, Jane was waiting for him.

“I saw what you did.”

Well, it was about dinner time, and grandma asked Jane to set the table. “Grandma,” Jane said, “Dick said he’d like to set the table.” And she whispered to Dick, “Remember the duck.” And Dick jumped right up and set the table, because he couldn’t bear the thought of his grandma finding out.

After dinner, Grandma said, “Jane, would you help me wash the dishes?” Well, you know what happened.

“Grandma,” Jane said, “Dick said he’d really like to wash the dishes.” And she whispered to Dick, “Remember the duck.”

Dick jumped right up and did the dishes.

But during the dishwashing, being just a little boy and all, Dick broke down crying. And Grandma said, “Child, what in the world is wrong?”

“I’m so sorry, I was playing with the slingshot and I shot the duck by accident and now it’s dead and I’m so sorry!”

And Grandma said, “Honey, I know you killed the duck. I saw the whole thing happen through the window. And I decided to forgive you right away. I was just waiting to see how long you’d let your sister make a slave out of you.”

Jane’s way is the way of the world, and the way of the devil. It’s also the normal way. It’s the way most people actually live. We all live under a threat. We do most of what we do because we have to. We have no real choice.

When Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb, he is eliminating that threat.

We began Lent by talking about “Spring Training,” the message of Matthew’s story of Jesus’ temptation, that discipleship is a skill that must be learned and practiced and tested. This seems like it might be bad news, huh?

We went on to hear four stories from John, and each story had to do with making difficult changes in the way we think and feel and live.

In the story of Nicodemus, the word of God asked us to think of ourselves not merely as being born in this or that time from this or that family in this or that nation, but as being born from above. This seems difficult doesn’t it? It requires work. Is this the good news?

What about the story of the Samaritan woman at the well? There Jesus challenged us to let go of stale traditions and come into a personal relationship with him, even at the risk of allowing God to see deeply into everything we’ve ever done. Again, work, difficult, trying and a little scary.

And then last week we heard the powerful story of the man born blind. In this story we are asked to let go of our desire to control the future and to follow Christ with the blindness of faith, to open ourselves to the unlimited and unknowable future God is bringing. Oh, this is difficult as well. Where is the good news here?

Today, my friends, we are finally given to see what the discipline of faith yields us.

Life. Real and abundant life. Life that is free of threat and worry. Life that pours into us with such abundance that it overflows into the world.

The power of the world and the devil is the power of death. The power of God is the power of life.

Jesus says, “come out.”

Amen.

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