Wednesday of 4 Lent

 

March 29, 2006

Central Cities Ministry Noon Lenten Worship

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Fargo

 

John 11.17-25 [32-45]

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Today, we come across a story that really speaks to us now in the depth of Lent.

 

We encounter a truly gruesome story in today’s Gospel reading—one we don’t want to face or think about.

 

The first thing to notice in the Gospel story for today is that when Jesus arrives, Lazarus had been lying in the tomb for four days.

 

This is important. It was the belief at the time that the body and the soul were finally separated three days after death.

 

After that point, there would have been no hope of Lazarus being raised.

 

Also, the physical damage that would have been done to Lazarus’ body would have been extensive.

 

Be aware—that in Jesus’ time, there was no embalming of bodies as we know it now.

 

The heat of that part of the world often sped up the process of decomposition.

 

So, we start out with some overwhelming facts.

 

What Jesus faces is his friend, Lazarus—the name means “God helps—Eleazar—who has been dead, four days.

 

His soul is gone for good, his body is returning rapidly to dust.

 

In the face of all of this, Jesus commands “Take the stone away!”

 

After he has raised Lazarus, he commands again, “”unbind him and let him go!”

 

As the layers of his shroud come off, Lazarus, who would have suffered much physical damage from the decomposition was made complete and whole.

 

He was revealed to be the person whom Jesus loved.

 

So, what does all of this say to us—here and now?

 

First of all, we need to face the facts that what happened to Lazarus was not  resurrection.

 

Resurrection, as we have come to define it and believe it as Christians, is the belief that we are raised into a new life with Christ—a full and complete life.

 

What happened to Lazarus is not that kind of raising.

 

After this encounter, we hear nothing more about Lazarus.

 

Jesus makes no demands on him to go forth and live a new life.

 

One day in the future, Lazarus would die again.

 

One day in the future, he would lie in the tomb again.

 

What we have here is a classic resuscitation.

 

But, this is good for those of us who are anxiously looking to this story with hope.

 

Let’s face it, when we hear this story, who do we relate to the most?

 

Some of us might say that we relate to Lazarus’ family, mourning and weeping at the side of the tomb.

 

After all, many of us know what it is like to stand at a grave and weep and mourn for someone we love and cherish.

 

Others might say they relate to the skeptics who are present.

 

It would take a lot for us to believe that anyone can raise another from the dead.

 

Even if we saw it with our own eyes, we might still not believe it. We might think to ourselves; “It’s a trick!”

 

But the one we should find ourselves relating to the most, is of course, Lazarus.

 

We are, after all, Lazarus.

 

We are Eleazar—God has helped us.

 

We all know what is like to be bound in the shrouds that bind us.

 

The shrouds in our life may be our own physical  or mental health.

 

It might be our physical limitations or even own psychological limitations.

 

Certainly those of us who have experienced either know how constricting and crippling illnesses of this sort can be.  

 

The shrouds that bind us might be an addiction of one sort or the other.

 

To put it bluntly, the shrouds that bind us are those things that prevent us from being completely and wholly who we are in the life God meant us to have.

 

When we fall short of ourselves, of one another and God, we find ourselves bound.

 

So, we understand what it is like to be Lazarus.

 

We have been in those moments in which we have felt wrapped up and swallowed inside the tombs of our lives.

 

Most of us know what it is like to be sealed off from everyone we love and care for by what feels like a huge stone.

 

That stone blocks out the light and we are left in a dark dankness, by ourselves, bound by our sense self-worthlessness.

 

In a sense, we know what it means to die—if not physically, at least spiritually and emotionally.

 

For most of us, this has happened more than once in our lives.

 

So, the fact is that we have been resuscitated many times in our lives as well.

 

Each and everyone of us knows what it means to be buried—to reach those low depths in which it felt, at times, like if we were not dead, we were very close to it.

 

And yet, despite it all, we have survived.

 

Jesus, the one who loves us as he loved Lazarus his friend, has come to us in that awful place.

 

In that place, Jesus has commanded—and we have heard the commandment—“Roll back the stone!”

 

Light, like the life-giving light of Christ, came to us in that dark place with the rolling away of the stone.

 

And who did we see standing in that light but Jesus himself?

 

We know what it means to have life breathed back into us.

 

Those parts of ourselves that at one time seemed decayed and putrid have been renewed.

 

Hopefully, as we look back at those moments in our lives, we can see that even in the darkness and dankness of the tomb, we could still look up through the shrouds of our despair, and see the figure of Jesus standing at the open mouth of our own grave.

 

Hopefully we too could hear his words to us, to come forth from the darkness—from the clutching hold of the grave and to step forward into the light.

 

Most of us have heard preachers who talk about being born again.

 

And those people who have experienced this spiritual rebirth know how life-altering it can be.

 

What I’ve discovered, however, is that these born again experiences are not always a one-time deal.

 

Often times we are reborn again and again.

 

In a sense, we have died and been brought back again and again.

 

Hopefully, we too have heard the words of Jesus saying, “unbind this shroud and go forth.”

 

Jesus wants us to be renewed in those moments.

 

Jesus wants us to cast off the foul trappings of the grave and to go into the light complete and whole.

 

See, the story of Lazarus is our own story.

 

Like Lazarus, we are loved by Jesus. And, hopefully, like Lazarus as well, we love Jesus in return.

 

As one beloved by Jesus, remember that Jesus will do anything for you.

 

Jesus will come to you in that dark and terrible place in which you have been lying and will restore you.

 

This is the true message of Lent.

 

The tomb of Lazarus—our own tomb—will be replaced in just a few weeks by the tomb of the one we love and who loves us.

 

But there will be no resuscitation for him.

 

He will not be raised into a life like his old life.

 

He will be raised into a new glorious life—a life which he promises to us.

 

He leads the way.

 

Yes, we will die. Yes, we may be resuscitated. But, one day, we will be resurrected.

 

We will raise from the grave to never die again and we will be renewed, once and for all.

 

This is the message we can take away from this story today.

 

We, the beloved of Jesus, have a glorious future ahead of us, even though it might not seem like it when we are still in the tomb or even in the depths of this Lenten season.

 

We, the beloved of Jesus, will go forth on some day in our future, and the call we hear at the mouth of our own graves will be a call unlike any other we have heard.

 

When we leave that grave, we will never return to it or anything like it again.

 

We will be renewed—we will be whole and complete.

 

And we will live up fully to that name Eleazar—God helps.

 

The stony coldness of our former life will be warmed in the light of Christ and we will know only that love that we have longed for all our lives. 

 

 

3 Lent

 

March 19, 2006

 

John 2.13-22

 

 

“Take these things out here! Stop making my Father’s house  a marketplace!”

 

This cry is part of the very vivid picture we have of Jesus in this morning’s Gospel.

 

This is not the meek and humble Jesus some of us have come to know—this is not the gentle and compassionate Lord who called the little children to himself.

 

It is, rather, the Jesus who stands up to injustice.

 

It is the Jesus who, when provoked, comes forward and cleanses the Temple.

 

“Take these things out here!”

 

This image of the chaotic market place, with all of its sounds and smells, is one we can easily imagine, even today.

 

In this place, the people who came to the Temple to worship God were being cheated constantly.

 

Foreign coins (with their images of pagan gods and rulers) were not allowed in the Temple, so on the porch, they had to be exchanged (at a ridiculously high rate) for shekels.

 

These were then used to buy animals—usually lambs—that could be sacrificed by the Temple priests for the release of sins.

 

If people brought their own animals, they were often inspected and told they were not worthy to be sacrificed because of blemishes or defects and were often refused.

 

Yet, despite the unfairness of all of this, Jews were expected to come to the Temple and make sacrifice there.

 

So, what we find here is a people being abused by the religious leaders they trust.

 

You can see why Jesus gets so mad over the situation.

 

“Take these things out here! Stop making my Father’s house  a marketplace!”

 

These are pretty strong words from Jesus.

 

And his action of driving out not only the guilty money-changers, but the innocent animals as well says a lot to us.

 

We no longer have to make these sacrifices.

 

Jesus becomes the ultimate Lamb—the one who was sacrificed once and for all on the altar of the Cross.

 

“Take these things out here! Stop making my Father’s house  a marketplace!”

 

This Temple that Jesus cleanses would not, for much longer, be God’s dwelling place.

 

Begun in about the year 20 B.C.. (or B.C.E.), it would be destroyed by the Romans about forty years after Jesus’ prediction.

 

More immediately, when Jesus talks about rebuilding the destroyed temple in three days, he is not talking about the building in which he stands at the moment.

 

Rather, he is referring to his own resurrection.

 

His body—a new and glorious Temple—would be destroyed,  yes, but in three days it would be rebuilt in a more glorious way than anyone could predict.

 

Still, we can’t quite ignore that resounding cry:

 

“Take these things out here! Stop making my Father’s house  a marketplace!”

 

To some extent, this is the rallying cry for all of us during these days of Lent.

 

The message for us—here and now—is not just about a building—or even this building in particular.

 

It is a message about the very temple of God that is our very body.

 

Now I’m going to mention something we Episcopalians shy away from in the pulpit—sin.

 

The fact is, we DO sin.

 

We are most profoundly aware of our own sins during this season of Lent, hopefully.

 

Sin is, to put it bluntly, a choice we make.

 

We choose to sin—we choose to turn away from what we know is right. That is, quite simply, what sin is.

 

We sin—we chose to do wrong—in many ways.

 

We sin against others, we sin against ourselves and we sin against God.

 

We sin against our bodies—that Temple in which God most profoundly dwells—in many ways.

 

We don’t exercise enough. We don’t eat right. We overindulge or we punish our bodies unnecessarily. We might drink a bit too much. We might eat too much. Or we might not eat enough.

 

We might have unhealthy and unrealistic self-images.

 

More than that, we are, at times, arrogant and conceited. We put ourselves first and foremost. In a sense, we make idols of our selves.

 

And we sin against each other.

 

We don’t respect those people who share our lives with us.

 

We backbite. We gossip. We turn away from others with a coldness and an indifference that distances us from those around us.

 

We don’t respect the worth and dignity of others.

 

The Quakers teach that doing wrong to others “wounds your own soul.”

 

And it does. How can we love ourselves with a holy and real love, if we don’t love others with that same love?

 

And, in turn, how can we love God with that same love if we don’t love others, or ourselves?

 

In a sense, we pollute our own temples with these thoughts and actions.

 

We commit sacrilege to our own temple—that very dwelling place of God—when we do these things.

 

This Lenten season is a time for us to recognize that it does not have to be this way.

 

It is a time for us to say to ourselves—see, I have fallen short in what I can do.

 

“Take these things out here! Stop making my Father’s house  a marketplace!”

 

We occasionally have to take a good, long look at ourselves and do some major housecleaning.

 

Like Jesus, we need to take up the rope and to start casting out from ourselves those things that make dirty our own sacredness.

 

But the message we can take away from this morning’s Gospel is that, sin as we may, turn away as we might, there is always a chance for cleansing and, in doing so, we can make right, in some way, the wrongs we have done.

 

The season of Lent isn’t a time for us to beat ourselves up over what we have done wrong.

 

It is a time for us to recognize our failures and to make an attempt to do better.

 

It is a time to take joy and delight in the fact that God dwells within each and every one of us.

 

This divine Presence within us is what ultimately renews us and makes us whole and holy.

 

It is what makes us tabernacles of the Most High.

 

It what makes each of us, like the Virgin Mary, a Theotokos, a God-bearer.

 

Like Mary, we too carry God within us.

 

And in doing so, God makes us holy.

 

So, be aware of uncleanliness of your actions and deeds.

 

Cast away your arrogance and your cold-heartedness.

 

Get angry, like Jesus, at the profanity that is being done within you.

 

And, like Jesus, cleanse the Temple of your self.

 

Let God dwell within you and shine through you with a brilliance that, no matter how hard you might try, you will not be able to hide.