April 10 Sermon: Weeping with the World
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Holy Covenant UMC
Dan Hart, preaching
John 11:1-45
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I love this story of Lazarus, or at least what we learn about both Jesus and God through this story.
I just love the characters, and the genuine feelings. The more I read it the more honest the story becomes for me.
First you have poor Lazarus. We have heard of him once before described in Luke through a parable as a beggar, with sores, laying at the gate of the rich, fighting off the dogs for the scraps left from the table of the rich. The picture perfect example of the least and the last…
In today’s story from John he is ill and eventually, as bluntly as Jesus has to lay out for the disciples, “dead”
You have Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus, calling upon Jesus whom they have enough faith in to believe he can change the outcome… yet also so lost in there distress that they question Jesus and Mary weeps…each reaction very real and honest…
Maybe you can see yourself in one of these reactions.
You have the people who go with Mary and Martha and question and weep with them, the disciples that do not understand what Jesus is planning to do, and you have Jesus who loves Lazarus and his sisters so much that he returns to a dangerous place to care for them. This is the quintessential picture of Christ who is fully divine and fully human.
I hear this story and I am drawn in. I find myself grabbing onto the emotion that Jesus, Martha and Mary are expressing. I cannot help but to think that I would be weeping too…I can’t help but to think we would all be weeping too.
If you have been there…in the depths of despair… you know what it is like.
The past five summers I was able to work for a summer camp back in Michigan. This camp is specifically designed to give opportunities to low income kids to receive a safe place to play, breakfast and lunch each day, and opportunities to learn they are loved and cared for.
Many of these kids have made the church there own space to claim, some probably by necessity. Many of these kids live in small apartments or houses with many siblings and other family members. They all live in the neighborhood behind the church that is generally known to be prone to violence, and most of the kids live in families that struggled to keep food on the table.
And yet, I got so used to seeing them everyday and seeing them able to let down and be kids that I often forgot what they had to go home to after the program ended each afternoon.
One kid that was too old to participate in the program asked me if he could come volunteer. I had gotten to know him well over the years and agreed to let him. He ended up helping almost all the days of the camp. He actually apologized for missing the days he spent with his friends. After his dedicated helping for the summer we surprised him with 125$ at the end of the summer for his hard work. He gave all of the staff huge hugs and politely listened as I lectured him on saving it for something important. I was thinking something like the drum kit he had been talking about or the fee to participate in Jazz band.
The next summer he came back to volunteer and the first thing I did was grill him about how he spent the money. He excitedly told me he had saved it for an important occasion. He had saved it for Christmas so he could buy his family presents. I was proud of this, but he was not done. He said he had not used it all on that but in the months after Christmas he had used the rest of it to help pay for dinner when his family had nothing left to eat.
He was proud he had saved it. I think he could tell that I was proud of him too by the forced grin on my face and pat on the back I gave him…but I was not grinning inside. He was only 13 when I had given him the money and he spent it on feeding his parents, his sister, and his brother. Why should any 13 year old ever have to do that?
I was hit with the craziest rush of emotion. I started to weep. I walked out of the room, found an empty classroom, and sat there lost in confused thought. I had never been without anything my whole life. I could not understand why this amazing, mature, loving young man should have to carry his family like this. What happened to him being a kid?
I was so angry. I was so sad. I did not know how to fix this. I wept and nothing changed. I eventually went back to help but could not shake the stoic feeling the rest of the day or most of the night. I am still angry that I got over it at all…
This text has become very important to me. I have a real connection to the story because I have felt what it is to weep with and for others. I have been so lost in a moment that I could not contain a very deep, deep, sadness.
Maybe you have been there too??
Even though I hated that feeling of sadness, I am even more frustrated with the way that our society tries to brush everything under the rug. How can we live in this world of oppression, and hunger, and injustice, and hate, and hurt, and destruction, and corruption…and pretend that none of it is happening?
My question is…
Why aren’t we weeping?
Why don’t we weep when we know that people are dying just for standing up for their own rights? Why don’t we weep when we know that every moment somebody is losing a loved one to violence or sickness? Why aren’t we weeping over the child that is starving?…Over the human wreckage from our bombings?…Over those that lack every basic necessity including water?
Why aren’t we weeping for them?
Why aren’t we weeping for those lost in depression? For a church that claims an open table yet tries to dictate the validity of the Call of the Spirit? For a world that still can’t see past the color of skin and the richness of culture? For a world where people are dying from AIDS because they can’t afford the treatment? For a world that still undervalues the power of women…
How are our eyes so dry?…Do we not see the world around us?
So we have this gut-wrenching scene. Jesus loves Lazarus, the one dying of disease, conquered by death, and Jesus weeps for him.
It is though his weeping. His emotion that he feels with those around him His raw feeling of hurt and empathy…that something greater seems to be taking place.
Jesus thanks God in the midst of his weeping.
Maybe he knows something the rest of have not figured out. Jesus never asks God to raise Lazarus. Jesus does not throw his hands up in fury and say, “fix this God”. Jesus never asks out loud for the new life Lazarus receives.
Jesus instead thanks God for hearing him…
Maybe Jesus is thanking God for hearing his weeping and the pain of all the people.
The Psalm that leads our opening response says “Out of the depths we cry to you oh’ lord…Hear our prayers.”
Anger, sadness, frustration, and confusion…all of these things that we might feel towards God…sometimes we can’t even put it into words. We just cry out.
Sometimes like Martha…WHY God WHY???
That is okay…we have spent this whole Lenten season remembering that this is okay.
Yet the story does not end with the weeping. Something would be terribly lost if this story ended with weeping. There has to be a change. Tears themselves are incomplete. We have to be part of the new life. We have to hear the cries and push back against the oppression. God recognizes the weeping. There is a response through Jesus and Lazarus is raised.
Out of the mourning and pain there is new life and new hope. We need to embrace the new creation that comes from our mourning. Embrace the weight and empowerment that comes from living with the world not just in it.
The story is incomplete if we only get to the weeping. Maybe we should be weeping with Jesus. Maybe we should be so moved by the pain around us that we just can’t hold back the tears.
We have to open our eyes and weep with those around us? If we are never able to see and feel the struggles of others we may never fully recognize those things holding us back and limiting our care for all of God’s creation.
From that recognition we can continue to seek God, Love all people, and change the world. We can continue as a body to feed the hungry, petition for necessary change, embrace our identity and find new ways of reaching out in solidarity with the least and last just as Christ did to Lazarus and Mary and Martha.
We must allow ourselves to weep with the world, but also to embrace the power of life that comes from hope for new creation.
Tags: Dan
April 17th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Loved this one . . . loved the story about the 13 yr old. You have had a heart for the whole world since you were just a little one . . . I am glad to know that you have not lost it . . . as you have grown . . . and as you have experiienced life in its many and varied stages and circumstances.
Your words are a blessing to this heart that has traveled with a family who unexpectedly lost their daughter at the beginning of Lent . . . perhaps . . . I too . . . had lost sight of hte glory of God . . . in the weeping.
Mom