Todays lessons: click to read
Some years back, a friend told me of her mortification when her husband was quoted in a biking magazine as saying, "I own two motorbikes – because I can!" In Cobham, a great many of us have "more than a sufficiency" of what we need.
At this time of Lent we think about all that we have and the sacrifices we can make for others. We are made conscious of the value of living life in the Spirit; for as Paul says in his letter to the Romans (8: 5-8) the Spirit is active in Jesus Christ and through the Spirit we are promised ‘life and peace’.
The consequences of not living in the spirit are harsh: According to Paul, we are urged to “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, for to set the mind on the flesh is death”.
Why then did Jesus respond to Lazarus’ death by raising him to bodily life? As we heard in the gospel story this morning (John 11:1-45), Jesus restored Lazarus to life in the flesh, - living, breathing and no doubt dancing!
Jesus gives us the answer very clearly. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” And then later when Lazarus’ body had been in the tomb for four days, he talks about the importance of belief again: “If you believed, you would see the glory of God.”
We can, if only in literary terms, sense that the miracle is a small foretaste of the great miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ which we will celebrate on Easter Day.
Of Lazarus in the Gospel story, we learn surprisingly little. We can imagine what press reports would be like if this miracle were to happen now. We would be fed everything from Lazurus’ age, and address to the value of his house, the football team he supports and his favourite beer.
In this Gospel story, the focus is on Jesus’ response to his friend’s illness and death. Above all, we learn about the reality of Christ’s love and compassion. For what does Jesus do? When he saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” – he too began to weep.
In 1910, Henry Scott Holland, the Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral famously tried to offer comfort following Edward VII’s death by saying that: “Death is nothing at all”.
But death is not, ‘Nothing at all.’ Death is never pain free. Death brings us face to face with our own mortality. Death severs quite brutally the myriad threads that tie us. And after death we can never say, thank you, I love you or I’m sorry, or all the many things we would have liked to have said.
I can recall sitting behind a girl in the choir at my senior school. I occasionally untied her plait of waist length blond hair. She found it very irritating. I found it achingly funny and hard to stop. I was, if truth be known, trying to attract her attention, because she had a certain celebrity status. The press knew the value of her house. A small column in the newspaper this Christmas recorded in a matter of fact sort of way, that her parents would be spending Christmas alone, to remember and mourn the loss of their daughter, (and their precious grand- daughter) in the Tsunami.
They say that death is the great leveller - no one avoids it - and yet people are often left to cope with it on their own. But the outcome of isolation is that there can be no healing.
Jesus shows us in his love for Lazarus, that life and relationships are precious. He loved Lazarus so much that he brought him back to life. But He also showed that when we weep, He is not unmoved and unresponsive. He experienced our suffering – and He weeps with us.
Jesus' love of life and his compassion makes his preparedness to lose his own life all the more precious. - Jesus did not make any attempt to save his own life. His power lay not in shows of strength, but in weakness and the faith that made his miracles possible. Because of his sacrifice, we must cherish the gift of life; not life lived in the flesh, as Paul warns against, but true life, God breathed, and lived in the Spirit.
This sermon began with mention of a man with 2 motorbikes. The motorbikes remind me of another story of pride, recounted in a Christmas round robin. It told of success in the Sedgefield Leek competition, including a photo of the author sporting two enormous leeks round his neck and holding 2 even bigger silver cups, underwritten by the quip: “Winning Two First Prizes in the Sedgefield Leek Competition sits close to the birth of my daughter as a life changing event!”
Ah, God’s work in Creation! – so much more evident than in the story of two motorbikes! Indeed, it was the man with the leeks whose daughter’s pony created the manure that fed the massive leeks!
But God’s glory is revealed to us in unique ways. Early this year, the man with 2 motorbikes, and his family, were blessed with the gift of a little boy who, having been fostered for much of his 5 years of life, was looking for a permanent home. Now he has found one. It seems that the two motorbikes have a chance of being ridden at the same time and together – by father and son - albeit some years in the future!
Jesus loved life. He brought his friend Lazarus back to life, ‘because he could’ - through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Father. In belonging to Christ, we are indwelled by the same healing Spirit that was given by Christ to bring "new life and peace".
Through the resurrection, that spirit of life is given to us all, the Spirit of eternal life, born in weakness, born in submission to the will of the Father, born in compassion and Christ’s generous love. That surely calls for a response.
As the psalmist says (Ps 30:11-12):
“You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy;
So that my soul may praise you and not be silent;
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.”
Amen.
©Rosemary Durward 9th March 2008