Victory
Sermon by James W. Crawford
March 21, 1999
Fifth Sunday in Lent, Passion Sunday
"Unbind him. Let him go!" So speaks this Christ Jesus we encounter in the Gospel of John. We witness a dramatic confrontation of death with life. As Lazarus emerges from his tomb, John insists we meet a corpse, four days interred, long enough to decompose, to rot, to reek of decay. John paints this grim picture to close every loophole, to avoid every suspicion of Jesus resuscitating Lazarus before all life drains away. Our evangelist insists, we witness death—death—confronted by life.
What is John telling us? Why this vivid, fantastic story? John writes this narrative because he believes the very last resistance to love and life promised us by the living God in Jesus Christ, the last, formidable, decisive resistance, is death. He sees this event at Bethany not simply as a biological event, not simply as a heartbeat stopping, a brain closing down, a human body withering, flesh putrefying in a grave. He sees death as a metaphor for everything that fights, resists, diminishes, destroys life. He sees death as a metaphor for what subverts, sours, assaults and kills love. He sees death and its power as the implacable, final and ultimate threat to what a true Christ would bear to our world. He sees death as denial of wholeness, reconciliation, peace, community. We do not ask of this event, "Did it really happen? Is it on the record?" Hardly. The event points to an unalterable stance toward life that amid everything threatening its fullness, its joy, its abundance, its possibilities, its richness, amid all that would tear us apart, separate us from one another, do us in, defeat us, disrupt our relationships, over and through all this there presides One who hangs on to us through the worst life can do to us. John shows us One who opens for us, even amid circumstances we might describe as "death", One who opens for us a condition we can only label, "life eternal"—not a matter of longevity, not a chronological line stretching to infinity—no, a quality, a depth, a joy available to us now. You see, when John shows Jesus commanding Lazarus out of that tomb, he commands us metaphorically to come out of our tombs, to live triumphantly amid the onslaughts banging at us everyday, seemingly determined to do us in. He asserts the victory, and invites us to celebrate life and love through this shocking encounter of Jesus with Lazarus.
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Is living that victory of life and love possible for you? For me? Can we know this "life eternal" now? Against every "no" to life and love John's narrative screams, "Yes!" The promise is yours. It's mine.
Let me illustrate. And I hope you will excuse my reading to you an account of how John's promise of tenacious, indefatigable love and what we might call life abundant breaks into our own lives. This story comes from Anne Lamott. She offers what she calls "Thoughts on Faith" in a revealing, humorous, charming, little autobiographical reflection entitled, "Traveling Mercies." Ms. Lamott refers now and again to her experience in St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Marin County, California. This episode is right out of the Gospel of John. It illuminates again the reality behind Jesus commanding Lazarus from his tomb. It demonstrates "eternal life."
Lamott writes:
"One of our new members at church, a man named Ken Nelson, is dying of AIDS, disintegrating before our eyes. He came in here a year ago with a Jewish woman who comes every week to be with us, although she does not believe in Jesus. Shortly after the man with AIDS started coming, his partner died of the disease. A few weeks later Ken told us that right after Brandon died, Jesus had slid into the hole in his heart that Brandon's loss had left, and had been there ever since. Ken has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated, but when he smiles, he is radiant. He looks like God's crazy nephew Phil. He says that he would gladly pay any price for what he has now, which is Jesus and us.
"There is a woman in the choir named Ranola who is large and beautiful and jovial and black and as devout as can be, who has been a little standoffish toward Ken. She always looked at him with confusion, when she looks at him at all. Or she looks at him sideways, as if she would not quite have to see him if she did not look at him head on. She was raised in the South by Baptists who taught her that his way of life—that he—was an abomination. It is hard for her to break through this. I think she and a few other women at the church are, on the most visceral level, a little afraid of catching the disease. But Kenny has come to church almost every week for the last year and won almost everyone over. He finally missed a couple of Sundays when he got too weak, and then a month ago, he was back, weighing almost no pounds, his face even more lopsided, as if he had had a stroke. Still, during the prayers of the people, he talked joyously of his life and his decline, of grace and redemption, of how safe and happy he feels these days.
"So on this one particular Sunday, for the first hymn, the so-called 'morning hymn,' we sang 'Jacob's Ladder,' which goes, 'Every rung goes higher, higher,' while ironically Kenny couldn't even stand up. But he sang away, sitting down, with the hymnal in his lap. And when it came time for the second hymn, the 'fellowship hymn' we were to sing, 'His eye is on the Sparrow.' The pianist was playing and the whole congregation had risen—only Ken remained seated, holding the hymnal in his lap—and we began to sing, 'Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?' And Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went down to his side and bent down to lift him up—lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang—and it pierced me. . . Then both Ken and Ranola began to cry. Tears were pouring down their faces, and their noses were running like rivers, but as she held him up, she suddenly lay her black, weeping face against his feverish white one, put her face right up against his and let those spooky fluids, those tears of healing and joy, mingle. . ."
That is life eternal. . . life eternal; not time immemorial, not living forever, not existence to infinity—but a depth, a dynamism, a grace, a joy, a deep resonance, a gift for mutuality, reconciliation, barrier dissolution grounded in a never failing love, available, if you risk it, NOW!
So this morning, I beg you, risk it! Open to it! Receive it! Amid all that stifles, scares, threatens, diminishes, haunts you, take the step through the barrier, the pride, the fear, the memory, the circumstance hemming you in —killing you. Come alive, through it all, to that victorious promise thundering through the Gospel: "Lazarus,—JIM!—Sam, Mary, Carl, Ruth—whoever—come out of that tomb! Unbind him. Unbind her. Let them go!"
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