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“Jesus wept” (John
11:35).
Pastor David Koch and his
wife Ruth were dear friends of my parents.
Their voices and laughter were familiar ones in my childhood home. When he was at Hope Lutheran in Milwaukee, I shadowed
him one day as a sophomore in High School to get a better idea of what the
pastoral ministry was about. And
when I was first ordained in St. Louis, he
was also in St. Louis,
and he became a sort of mentor. We’d
get together for lunch and I’d have a list of questions for him and could
always count on insightful, pastoral answers. And I’ll never forget when one of our
kids was at Children’s Hospital; late one night Pastor Koch came into the
emergency room, soaking wet because of a cold storm. And a welcome sight he was! He and my father were especially close,
and in their later years, when both were ill; they reminded each other each
other they were praying for each other.
I was always struck by that . . . two sweet, elderly men, the
opposite of grumpy old men, praying for each other every night before bed.
Pastor Koch died this past
autumn. I was golfing when I got the
call and ducked my head into the bushes, as if looking for balls . . . and wept.
His wife Ruth, a gifted woman, wrote a beautiful note a couple of
weeks following his death. “I’ve
been crying a lot lately” she writes.
“The trouble with tears is that you never know when they will ambush
you. The other day, feeling
reasonably ‘normal,’ I stopped for a cup of tea. When I tried to speak my order, all that
came out was sobs. Imagine my
surprise, imagine the server’s surprise!
For someone who is grieving, tears are just under the surface
waiting to emerge.”
And so it was with Jesus when
Lazarus died. “Jesus wept.” It is, of course, the shortest verse in
the Bible, but it packs a powerful punch.
The second person of the Trinity experienced grief when a friend, a
human, suffered the wages of sin.
The one who could control leprosy and blindness, the one who could
control demons and the wind and the waves, could not control his
grief. Think about that a
minute. Jesus is approaching
Lazarus’ tomb with full knowledge that he’s going to raise his friend from
the dead. Why then the tears? Maybe the tomb in the garden is too
graphic a reminder of Eden
gone to seed. Of Paradise
lost. And maybe it points him to the
brutal death he will have to suffer to undo the damage of that fall. In any case, it is remarkable that our plight
could trouble his spirit; that our pain could summon his tears. “Jesus wept.” The loss of a friend, the reminder of the
brevity and fragility of all human life, the reminder that God’s good
creation is broken with sin, it was enough to make a grown man cry.
When Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, the sisters of Lazarus, Martha
and Mary, were wondering what took him so long. They were very good
friends, the four of them. There is
an easy familiarity between Jesus and the two women. Yet when Jesus heard of Lazarus’s
illness, he waited several days before departing for Bethany, the home of Lazarus. When he arrives, Lazarus is already
dead. In fact, Jesus missed the illness,
missed the death and missed the funeral. Lazarus has been in the tomb already
for four days. Both Martha and Mary are
careful to measure their words, but you can sense their exasperation. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother
would not have died.” Translate
that: What could be so important
that you didn’t take time to help him . . . or me? The mourners, friends of the family are
also wondering about the delay. If Jesus
truly has this power to heal, why on earth didn’t he exercise some of it on
behalf of his friend?
Jesus responds with most
memorable words, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even
though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Every
time we’re at the cemetery, we read those words. It’s a bold claim in the presence of all
those tombstones, as much today as when those words were first spoken. We cannot ignore them or brush them
aside. We must come to terms with
them. Jesus is claiming the power to
give eternal life.
Now, you know some would like to say Jesus was a
good man, a prophet of sorts, a teacher worth listening to, but they stop
short of confessing him all the way.
So what they are doing, in fact, is belittling the one who says he
is God’s Son, Savior. But with words
like these, Jesus forces us to take him seriously. One who says something like this, one who
claims that whoever lives and believes in him will never die, is either a
lunatic, a liar, or the Lord of heaven and earth. There’s not much other
wiggle room . . . so none of that patronizing nonsense about Jesus being a good
teacher.
What happens next? In his grief, his eyes still wet from
tears, Jesus orders the stone to be rolled away. Martha, always practical, is fussing,
objecting to the nitty-gritty of it all.
“But Lord, he’s already been in the tomb for four days.” “Oxsei” she says. In German, “Er stinkt schon” From the King James Version, “He
stinketh.” Jesus, again, insists on
being taken seriously: “Did I not already tell you, Martha, that if you
believed you would see the glory of God?”
Moments later, Jesus is shouting into the open grave, a cave in the
hillside. “Lazarus, come out of
there!” Without comment, the story
concludes: “The dead man came out,
his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in
cloth. “Unbind him” Jesus says, “and
let him go.”
That’s that. But we have difficulties with
that. Experience says things like that
usually don’t happen. Dead people
stay dead. Some reject it. Others wrestle with it and tease
themselves endlessly with doubts, thereby keeping God at a safe
distance. Still others believe the
second person of the Trinity can do whatever he wants to do, including
breaking every biological and physiological rule in the book. After all, is it really too difficult for
the one who gave Lazarus life in the first place to give him life a second
time? I think not. But that really isn’t the point. Death is
our enemy, and with the raising of Lazarus, Jesus is giving Death a warning
shot over the bow. The great battle
between Jesus and Death is about to begin, and we can already see who’s
going to win that one.
But let’s not move too quickly. In fact, let’s go back to that short
verse: “Jesus wept.” Was Lazarus’ death the first experience
Jesus had with the loss of an adult?
Typically, not always, but typically, we sail through the first two
or three decades of life; we may lose our grandparents along the way, but
typically, it’s the fourth decade when our lives crash into the reality of
death. It’s the fourth decade when
those we dearly love, our parents, begin to die. That kind of death reverberates in our
lives every day thereafter; life is never quite the same. The world is never so innocent again,
never so gentle and compliant. Sin
and its wages are right in our face; death will not be ignored. And so that kind of death has an impact
on our faith. It can go one way or
the other, but it’s not going to stay static. Before my dad’s death, I never paid much
attention to the conclusion of the creed, those words: “I believe in the
communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.” Truth be
told, before dad’s death, I probably mouthed those words more than I
confessed them. Today, I savor
them. I try to milk them for all
their worth. They go by too
quickly. It’s no arcane exercise. Today
those words speak of Jesus having undone sin and its wages, not just for
himself, but for dad and for Pastor Koch and for me and for you. “All who believe in me will live, even
though he dies.” It means those who
have died in the faith are not lost forever, are not lost to you, and, in
fact, are not lost at all.
And so death seasons our faith, gives it a
certain tenaciousness and grit. Clergy
know that you don’t really become a pastor until you’ve picked up a few personal
wounds along the way. You can’t
really help people through the valley of the shadow of death until you’ve
been through it yourself, and you’re not really interesting in the pulpit
until there’s something eating away at you. Death is a great teacher in this way. It teaches us to look to him for hope. If we look inward, we’re lost . . . without
hope.
Death also teaches us how very precious the gift
of life is, how very good it is to be alive. Death teaches us to make every day count.
(You think meetings are long now.
Imagine how long they would be if there were no death!) Death teaches us not to be wasteful. And death teaches us never to be content
to be a victim, to stop whining and blaming other people for our problems
and to take responsibility for our lives.
It also teaches us to not let the knuckleheads ruin our days; life
is too short for that. Death is a great teacher.
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice” the psalmist
wrote. It is the cry every one of us
utters sooner or later. Even our children
have to come to terms with death.
We want to make their world safe and secure, so we
enact laws about the construction of cribs and car seats and calories at
lunch time. Lutheran schools also
place a high emphasis on their health and safety. We have policies and procedures in case
of a fire, tornado or other emergency.
During the school day, we lock all the doors but one. Yet, at the same time, we know we are not
able to legislate ourselves into a perfectly safe little covey. Even in the best of situations, we still
live in a sinful and fallen world, an insecure world. We teach that to our children here. Life teaches that to our children. Even in the best of situations, the
kindergarten student will feel insecure the first day of school, and the
eighth grader will feel insecure about his or her standing among
peers. In spite of all precautions
we take, we still live in a world broken by sin, and so marriages break,
lines of communication break, standard rules of decent behavior break. We live in insecure times. And so we teach children here that true
safety, true security, doesn’t come with locked doors, or with that three
ringed binder of policies and procedures.
True security comes with Jesus, who said, “I am the resurrection and
the life. He who believes in me will
live, even though he dies.” That is,
we teach children here that no matter what happens in the future, come what
may, they are perfectly safe in the arms of Jesus. This is where Lutheran schools are at
their best. This is where our
teachers can say things no one else can or will. God has a security plan for our insecure
world. It was already in place from before time and it culminates with the
death of God’s own Son on a cross.
That’s where the victory was won.
The cross is what enables us to confess that last sentence in the
creed: I believe in the communion of
saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life
everlasting.
And so Ruth
Koch concludes her letter with a confession of faith in the one whom she
knows loves her, and loves her husband still. She writes, “When words fail, tears are
the messenger.” And then, in
reference to our text, she writes, “And who’s to say which is more
incredible – a man who raises the dead . . . or a God who weeps?” (Quote
from Ken Gire, Incredible Moments with the Savior.” Ruth signed off with, “Praise and honor
to the God who weeps.” Amen.
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