Sainthood

All Saints Sunday – November 4, 2012

³²When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep. ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

³⁸Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴²I 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.” ⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The 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.”

-John 11:32-44 (NRSV)

Since we’re talking about saints today, I think we should have a definition to work with. Perhaps one you’re familiar with is that we are all made saints through baptism. Each of us is fully a sinner by our nature and fully a saint by God’s grace. That’s a good Lutheran definition, but Reformation Day was last week. Based on our readings today I’d like to focus on another aspect of sainthood. I wonder if we might define a saint as one who is acquainted with death.

Think of the names of the dead we will read in our prayers today as we observe All Saints Sunday. To some of you, they are just a list, names that refer to people you do not know. For others, one or more of those names represents perhaps a lifetime or at least a significant part of a lifetime of shared memories. Those names represent the pain of grief and the promise of God’s resurrection for us in a very real way. But even if we don’t know the names on the list probably most of us will think on someone dear to us who have died. Dear saints, I suspect that each of you is acquainted with death.

Each of us has to face death – the death of people we love, the signs of our own mortality – the reminders that we too one day will die. Though we were relatively spared in this part of Massachusetts, many of our neighbors on the East Coast have been devastated by Hurricane Sandy – a reminder that the things we hold dear and even our very lives are vulnerable to the power of nature. And we have to face all the little deaths along the way – disappointments and failures, things that are not as they ought to be. Some of us face in our own bodies or in the bodies of our loved ones prolonged illness that seems like death itself come to reside within us.

This is a heavy weight on us, but we are in good company in the communion of saints. In the gospel reading Lazarus has died and his family and friends have gathered to grieve. They called Jesus when Lazarus got sick and Jesus did not come. And now Lazarus has been dead for 4 days. According the customs of at least some of the Jewish people of the time, the soul remained near the body for 3 days. But at 4 days Lazarus is not just dead, he is the really lost-forever kind of dead.

Mary does not hold back the power of grief she is feeling; she does not try to hide her anger from Lord or phrase it in pious words. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother – my brother – would not have died.” This is not a lack of faith. This is the behavior of a saint who is all too familiar with death. She has come again to stare death in the face and her words are rightfully angry. If only Jesus had not taken so long… If Jesus had prioritized Lazarus’s illness on his understandably long to do list… She makes it known that she is not happy with Jesus for this. Call it grief talking if you want, but I think this is the life of a saint – facing death once again and crying out to God to make it stop.

If only you had been here, Jesus, the devastation from the hurricane would not have been so bad. If only you had been here, Jesus, this illness would not be eating away at me. If only you had been here Jesus, my brother, my sister, my friend would not have died. These are the cries of the saints.

But something very important happens here before the raising of Lazarus. Jesus becomes for a moment not the teacher but the disciple. He has come into the world to experience human life and experiencing the pain of death is a part of that. So he asks them to guide him in this very human experience, “Where have you laid him?” And Mary, and Martha, and the crowd, they become his teacher, “Lord, come and see.” And when Jesus faces it, he, too, begins to weep. He joins the company of saints who are acquainted with death. He stands at the side of the devastation caused by death of every kind, weeping.

If that was it, if that was all we had, it would be a profound and moving image of a God who stands alongside us in our pain. But that is not yet the end of the story. Because Jesus, through his tears, asks that the stone be rolled away. But these are saints, they are acquainted with death and they know that someone who has been dead four days smells really bad. If they are here to help Jesus learn about the pain of death, this is one of the important lessons.

But realizing they cannot reason with him, they roll the stone back becoming physically sick at the smell and experiencing once more the reality of death that they live with. But out of his firsthand experience as a grieving friend, Jesus raises his voice. “Lazarus, come out!”

Jesus calls him by name from the place of death. Jesus calls his name into a place from which he should not be able to hear it. With a loud and commanding voice he speaks the name of his friend.

But these words are not just for Lazarus, who does hear them and who does respond by coming forth from the tomb, still bound up in the graveclothes. These are words for all the saints who are acquainted with death. These are words shouted at the mourners grieving around the tomb. These are words shouted at all the times we have grieved for loved ones and have wondered about our own mortality. These are words of life for those acquainted with death. This is Jesus calling your name, “Come out and live!”

And that is what we do when we gather together as the people of God for worship. On this All Saints Sunday it will be particularly poignant as we call out the names of those who have died trusting that it is God’s voice who calls their names and brings them forth from the tomb. But we do this every Sunday when we call out names in our prayers, calling them forth from the graves of illness, grief, and fear. We do this every Sunday when we gather around the table united with the great communion of saints alive and dead, and there life is offered to us one by one. The body of Christ given for you. Come out from your tomb and live!

We still face moments of suffering as saints. We are people acquainted with death. And sometimes we dwell longer than we want with Mary in those grief-filled moments crying out to God. But God does not leave our side. And sometimes when we do finally hear our name called out it feels as if we have been dead four days and are still bound up in our graveclothes.

But all of you and all who are no longer with us for one reason or another – the great communion of saints is here to unbind us – to echo God’s calling out of our names. We are here together to remind each other that though we are well-acquainted with death, God’s call to us brings us to life again. To be a saint is to be acquainted with death, but it is also to be acquainted with the voice of the one who calls us forth from death into life. Thanks be to our God who came among us to learn our world of death and who called forth life from it again.

-Pastor Steven Wilco