5th Sunday of Lent Sermon

April 10, 2011

Fifth Sunday of Lent –A

 The Rev. Marguerite Alley

If only….I had not stayed up so late

If only I hadn’t gone to bed so early, I wouldn’t have missed

If only I had stayed with that diet

If only I had allowed myself a few pleasures from time to time

If only I hadn’t let myself get so out of shape

If only I hadn’t been so driven

If only I had taken that job

If only I hadn’t taken that job

If only I had waited

If only I had gone sooner

If only I had thought longer about it

If only I had gone with my gut

If only I had known

If only you had known

I think most of us have spent our lives re-visiting past decisions and circumstances, re-imagining how the outcome might be different had we decided differently, or how we could have made a better decision if we had more information, or a better sense of timing.

We spend our lives saying “if only”. If and only are two of the smallest, and yet most meaningful words in our language. “If” is full of hope and possiblility. It is full of imagination. It has no limits. If ______ then.   But “only”. The word “only” is limiting. It implies a smaller portion. I suggests less. It is lonely. Put the two words together and you have a conundrum. Change the order of the two and you get a slightly different twist. “Only if” suggests there is some hope. “Only if” says that under these specific  circumstances this will happen. But “If only” suggests something has been lost; something didn’t happen; something won’t or can’t happen.

Mary and Martha were close and dear friends of Jesus, as was their brother Lazarus. I recently read a fascinating commentary that suggested and presented some rather compelling evidence that Lazarus was “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, and that because Jesus raised him from death, he and Jesus shared a very unique and close bond that none of the other disciples would have been able to understand. But, that’s a lesson for another day!

Six days before Jesus goes to Jerusalem for the last time he spends more time with Lazarus and his sisters. Clearly, the sisters felt confortable enough with him to just let it rip when he finally shows up at their door. Try to put yourself for a moment in their shoes. Your close friend has an amazing gift for healing. Because you are good friends, he has pledged to always be there for you. So when your beloved brother is taken suddenly and dangerously ill, the first and best thing you can think of is to call your friend. You are immediately a little relieved. You have done something to make the situation a bit less scary, and help is on the way. But your brother dies anyway because your friend never shows up. You have the funeral. You are at home afterward grieving, trying to figure out what to do next. Your grieving is not just about the loss of your loved one though. You are also angry and grieving that your so- called best friend never showed up. He didn’t even care enough to come and try to save your brother. Now…4 days after you called, the day after the funeral, there is your friend standing in the driveway. It is little wonder that Martha dispenses with the usual formalities of greeting familiars and cuts right to the chase when she says very directly: “If only you had been here, this would not have happened”.

Every decision made for us and that we make for ourselves…from the day we are born shapes who we will become. “If only” doesn’t really matter because even if we could have a “do over”, we can never get back to the exact moment in time, in the exact place, with all the same considerations and make a different decision. We are where we are, because this is where we are supposed to be. We are who we are, because this is who we are supposed to be.

I could say that perhaps the lesson we gain from this story is that we should not fear death. But it is human nature to be afraid of the unknown. Since God made us humans, I think it safe to assume that human emotions are expected. I could say it is meant to make us believe in miracles. But there are plenty of miracles everyday that could do that. Ecosystems are miracles. Babies are miracles.  Medicine is a miracle.  The Red Sox winning the World Series was a miracle. There is no shortage of miracles to make us believe. I could say that the point of the story is to say that if you believe in Jesus, everything will be OK. Your loved one won’t die. But we know that is just not true. All of us I suspect have grieved at the death of someone we knew and loved or at least understand on some level that the death of the human body is a natural and expected occurrence. So maybe…we have to look a bit deeper to get what the real point of this story might be.

Maybe this story is about timing. Our sense of timing guides us…and when things don’t happen the way we think they should or when they should, we shake our fist at God and say “If you had been here”. Think of all the natural disasters that have occurred in the past 10 years. It would be quite easy for someone experiencing any one of those to shake their fist at God and say “if only you had been here”! But  maybe our understanding of time is so limited we can not really grasp God’s sense of time and so we can’t really understand at all why things happen the way they do…both for good or bad. Choosing to believe that things happen randomly is one way to go, but it raises too many obvious questions for me.

Maybe the story is about faith. Martha had absolutely no doubt that things would have been different if Jesus had been there. She never asks Jesus to change the outcome. She just makes a simple statement of faith. “If only you had been here, things would be different now”. We can make that same assertion. If Jesus were here now, things would be mightily different. If Jesus had been here yesterday, they would definitely be different today.

There was another time in Jesus’ ministry when he acted without regard to our concept of time. This was at the wedding of Cana. There, his mother had evidently already figured out that he was not your garden variety 30 yr old man. When she reports to him that the wine had given out, he says “What concern is that to us? My hour has not yet come.” She does not overtly ask him to do anything, just as Martha never says “fix this”.  But I expect that there was at least some understanding on the part of Jesus, that he was in fact expected to do something, whether or not he was ready. His response is  rather extraordinary when compared to what the situation calls for. He could have sent his disciples to get more wine. That would have saved the day as well. But instead he performs a remarkable miracle. Now let’s imagine for a second the whole array of possible miracles available to him. He could have put them into a deep sleep, and when they woke, they would  have no memory of running out of wine. They would remember the wedding and what a lovely time they had. The father of the bride would have been spared embarrassment and the day saved. But was that his goal? He could have taken over the reception, used it as his pulpit and given a lecture about the evils of alcohol. Everyone would have put down their drinks, and the day might have been saved. But was that his goal? You see my point. Here at the beginning of his ministry, he is making a very public statement about who he is and what his role is and will be. You may also note, that he doesn’t seem too happy about the circumstance. He seems in fact a bit cranky that his mother has brought this news to him; perhaps because this is the moment of truth for him. Perhaps this in when he fully understands himself and his relationship with God.

In today’s story he is at the end of his ministry and he mirrors the wedding feast miracle with something even greater. It is important to note that each of these miracles speak to people in a profound way. Each of them involves very human FEARS. The fear of embarrassment or humiliation is over turned when the wine appears from water. At the tomb of Lazarus the very human fear of death and the pain of grief is over turned. So, is the goal of these miracles to save the day? Does Jesus wander about singing that little ditty “Here I come to save the day”? Or is the goal of these amazing miracles something altogether different? I would suggest that his goal is NOT to save the day, not to save us from humiliation and death but rather to declare that we do not need to fear them.

Now I won’t try to convince you that Jesus did this as naturally as we want to believe. I think we would all like to see Jesus as a Superman of sorts. We’d like to think that raising Lazarus was a walk in the park; all in a days work.  But if you read the Gospel very carefully, you will see some very strong language that we don’t often see in the Gospels. The actual translation reads that he was “convulsed within by emotion”. And it says this twice. Clearly, the author is trying to relay something important. If he was just sad at the loss of his friend Lazarus, I don’t think the author would have chosen to tell us this in such strong language. Even when we hear the story of the money changers at the Temple a few days after this, we are only told that Jesus is angry and that he physically turns over the tables of the moneychangers. We are not told that he is crying in his rage, or that he is convulsed with emotion. So clearly we are meant to get something more from this.

So…why do you think Jesus is so emotional? Certainly he knows that he will be able to raise Lazarus. Why is he so upset? I think it is because he suddenly realizes that he will have to face this very thing as well, and it is coming faster and sooner than he wants. So this miracle for Lazarus and his sisters, is also in a sense, Jesus’ own very personal and very human struggle with death. You may or may not know…that the “agony in the garden” does not appear in this gospel. Some scholars have suggested that this is because this scene outside the tomb of Lazarus pretty much says it all.

The only other time Jesus cries in the Gospels is as he is entering Jerusalem for the last time and sees the destruction of the Temple. In this scene, he recognizes without doubt, what will become of him in the next few days. The story from the Gospel we will read next week tells it in great detail so I won’t go there today. But I do want to point out that even Jesus utters the phrase  “if only” as he is riding into Jerusalem. So this very human need to second- guess ourselves or someone else, the need to re-imagine the outcome is present even in the Son of Man. He has been preaching and teaching for 3 years or so and now the time is come for him to be “glorified” and he is shaking with fear. Perhaps for an instant he realizes, as a human, that our preoccupation with time, and God’s creation of time are naturally opposed.

We are bound by our sense of time…just as Lazarus was bound for burial. Jesus unbinds him and gives him life again. Is this just a metaphor or is it real? Does it matter? Is it any less powerful as a metaphor than as an actual occurrence? 

Next Sunday we begin Holy Week. We will re-enact Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem at our Palm Sunday liturgy and hear the first reading of the Passion Story. I would like you to remember some of what we have learned today as we begin that journey. The crowds will be gathered, shouting and cheering, not because we have come on our own to the understanding that Jesus is the Son of God. We will have gathered actually to see Lazarus…the one whom he has raised from death. We have come to see if it is really true. Does he look the same? Is he a ghost? Was he really dead or just asleep? By the end of the day, we will have run away in fear. Despite having seen one who has been raised, and the one who will completely conquer death, we will allow our fear to govern our behavior, our thinking and our hearts. And we will all walk out that door next week and say “if only I had known”.

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Today's lectionary: Ezekiel 37:1-14, Romans 8:6-11, Psalm 130, John 11:1-45