John 11:32-44 All Saints’ Day
When is the last time you cried? What caused you to shed tears? We produce two different kinds of tears for our physical comfort. We also produce emotional tears. Our bodies produce tears of joy, and tears of sadness. Tears can come simply by being overwhelmed. What brings you to tears–The birth of a baby, the death of someone you love, or perhaps frustration? Emotional tears, unlike tears for physical comfort, contain protein-based hormones, including a natural painkiller that is released when a body is under stress. It’s physically healthy to cry because we discharge stress related proteins when we do.[1] Crying is cathartic. Women are biologically wired to shed more tears than men, since female tear glands are much smaller. Each tear’s appearance under a microscope is different, much like snowflakes.[2] Our readings today are full of tears.
There were many tears surrounding Lazarus’ death. Jesus watched Mary, Lazurus’ sister, weep. Then she voices her anger. “Jesus, why didn’t you come? You could have stopped him from dying. Why didn’t you do anything?” Those who had come out of love for this family were crying. And Jesus began to weep. When they rolled the stone away from the tomb, the stench of a rotting corpse filled the air. Lazarus wasn’t just dead, he was really, really dead.
At Jesus’ call, Lazarus came out of his tomb, but we know that Lazarus’ second chance at life will again end in human bodily death. His sisters and friends will be shedding tears again.
Today, as we observe All Saints’ Day, we know that too well. Every time there is a birthday, or an anniversary of some meaning, related to someone who has died, we shed tears again. Today, our hearts remember those whose lives on earth have ended, and our tears feel fresh. C.S. Lewis said that grief accumulates. We never “get over” someone’s death; we learn how to live differently without them.
I have a friend, Niki, whose daughter Rachel died of a heroin overdose. Niki is the one who found her body. Recently, she posted this on FaceBook:
I hope you all understand why I mention Rachel so often. I miss her. The grief will never go away. I have been able to put the pieces of my life back together and move on. That doesn’t mean my life is the same as it was before she died. I’m better, but there are still times when I get really sad. I’ve learned how to put one foot in front of the other. I cherish my life, my family and my friends. There are times when I’m happy. But I will never stop missing her. My life is just different now[3].
So maybe this story of Lazurus’ death is not really about the miracle of resuscitation. [It is resuscitation and not resurrection since Lazarus will die a physical death again.] Listen to the last verses of what we have read:
And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”
The strips of cloth that covered Lazarus were linen shrouds put on corpses before they were laid in their tombs. They held what was dead inside, binding it, holding it until it rotted and smelled really bad. The harmful things that we keep inside will do that to us. Being bound up doesn’t just keep us closed in to ourselves, it closes us off from community as well. It separates us from others and gets in the way of relationship. So maybe this story is about Jesus helping us to be open about death, and about those things that are killing us inside. Maybe this story is about Jesus’ tears for us and with us, and his presence in our suffering.
As Christians, at least as Lutheran Christians and not prosperity gospel Christians, we do not deny death, or grief. Even Jesus felt the pain of Mary’s anger and his friend’s death deeply. We do not deny our anger, our frailty, our brokenness, and our inability to control all things in our lives. They are part of being human, no matter how much we wish it were not so. Our culture encourages us to assert that we are in control, and that all is well. That is a view of life focused on self,–self-esteem and self-protection. This Theology of Glory glosses over Good Friday and jumps to Easter.
Lutherans do not subscribe to the Theology of Glory, but rather we hold to the Theology of the Cross. We acknowledge there is pain and suffering. Even Jesus wept. We know that God through Jesus Christ has gone before us, and is with us in all of our struggles. In our vulnerability, Jesus comes to carry us through a life that is full of deaths of all kinds. When we find our challenges more than we can bear, God is right there with us. We shed tears. That is not something of which we are to be ashamed of or to deny. Life can be hard.
This story is about more than Jesus’ presence with us in our suffering. Did you hear what Jesus told those who were surrounding Lazarus? “Unbind him and let him go. You do it.” Certainly Jesus could have done this, but he told the people who were there to mourn his death to do it. “Unbind him, Jesus tells them. “Remove whatever it is that is keeping Lazarus from participating in the life of this community, whether that is your judgment or condemnation of him, or his own feelings of unworthiness, pain, or sorrow. You be present with him as I was.”
For now, tears are part of our being human. Our readings from Isaiah and Revelation speak to a time when “The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,” These are words of both comfort and hope. God is aware of our tears, and wants to personally wipe them away. God’s promise is a promise that those things that bring grief and pain to our lives will be no more. It is a promise that is already and not yet, given to us in our baptism by joining us to Christ’s death and resurrection. In the meantime, on this All Saint’s Day, may you find comfort that the God who created us is with in Christ Jesus, and there is nothing we can do to change that.
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/pulse/why-do-we-cry-three-different-types-tears-and-their-physiology-331708 and http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-microscopic-structures-of-dried-human-tears-180947766/?no-ist
[2] For stunning microscopic views of tears with varying causes, see the work of Rose-lynn Fisher on-line at http://rose-lynnfisher.com/tears.html.
[3] Used with Niki’s permission.