All Saints Sunday 2006
The Rev. Canon Kathleen Kelly
So who was dead in this Gospel we just heard? The usual answer is Lazarus. He was the one in the tomb. He was the one whose body was sure to stink. But was it only Lazarus who was brought back to life in this story?
Now even though you might think it’s a pretty clear term, I checked my dictionary to see how it defines “dead.” It used words like: numb, unresponsive, extinguished. Who in this story was numb, unresponsive and suffering from the extinction of all hope, all breath of life, all that is sweet? Not Lazarus. By the time Jesus arrived in Bethany, Lazarus must have been ordering seconds at the Heavenly Banquet. He was “where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing but life everlasting.” But what about Mary and Martha? Their reality was the opposite. They were steeped in sorrow and pain, so much so that we might describe them as “numb and unresponsive.” They could not respond to Jesus’ arrival with anything but despair. Their hope, their sense of any joy in life was extinguished. They were spiritually dead. And they uttered the characteristic words of spiritual death, “If only…” “If only you had done what I wanted you to, I could have life; but you didn’t, and so I despair.” When we read this account, we are quick to assume that Jesus cried for Lazarus, but he might just as well have been crying for the hopelessness of Mary and Martha.
The King James Version of today’s Gospel says that when Jesus saw Mary and Martha and the others weeping, “He groaned in the Spirit and was troubled.” The word translated as “troubled”—tarásso—is the same word used to describe how Herod felt when he learned about the birth of Jesus. It is the same word used to describe how the disciples felt when they saw what they thought was a ghost walking toward them on the water. It means “stirred up with the greatest of consternation and dismay.” Can you hear Jesus thinking: Had Mary taken in nothing of what they discussed that famous day Martha spent in the kitchen?
Jesus brought Mary and Martha back to life, and he did it in a way that has profound meaning for us today. He implored them to take a reckless act of faith in the life of another: Roll back the stone and trust that your brother will not stink! Did you notice this in the story: Jesus does not wait for Lazarus to appear before he gives thanks to the Father. He gives thanks the minute Mary and Martha manage to put aside every thought about how crazy their friends might think they are, and roll back that stone. Immediately after, Jesus gives thanks. Mary and Martha are alive again. They have participated in the divine work of recklessly believing in the life of others. By the time they finished the work of unbinding Lazarus, they had seen the glory of God.
We are designed to bring each other into life, to call one another out of all that entombs us and keeps us dead, to unbind one another. I’ve been asking folks this week if they can recall a time when someone unbound them, when someone gave them life. Everyone I’ve spoken with has had a story to tell. One friend told of a time when he was so surrounded by political back-biting in his vocation that he lost all sense of joy in what he was doing. Only returning to a place where he could count on being surrounded by kindness brought him back to life. That’s a case of being bound by the conduct of others, but most of us are pretty good at finding ways to bind ourselves. Two very effective tools for that are guilt and secrets. If you use them together, you have a recipe that is sure to bind you up altogether. The guilt foments the keeping of more secrets, and the secrets foment more guilt, and you can be sure of being wound so tightly you will have no life at all.
Have you heard the stories this week about mega-church pastor Ted Haggard? He has been accused of meeting a male prostitute monthly over a three-year period of time. However this story plays out, it is a tragedy. Haggard has been working to convince people for whom abortion is a key issue that genocide in Darfur, and global warming, and extreme poverty ought to be high priorities as well for anyone preaching the sanctity of life. The story I saw about the accusations against Haggard had a ridiculous title: “Fall From Grace.” This scenario is not a fall from grace. There is no grace at the top of a pedestal. There’s no room to turn around, much less experience life-giving grace. But anytime we tumble off a pedestal, there is an opportunity to fall into grace. “Fall Into Grace” is a much better title for this story than “Fall From Grace.” We all need help realizing that we are much better than the worst thing we have ever done. We all need help knowing that God still has dreams for us that are much better than the worst thing we’ve ever done. And we all need help realizing that life is better than the worst thing that has ever befallen us. When we give and receive this kind of help, we unbind one another into life.
The saints we recall on this All Saints Sunday are people who were particularly good at unbinding others, so much so that we intuitively believe they must still be up to that work. And so we call upon them in our times of travail. I encourage us all to bring to mind those personal saints who have unbound us at key times of life, the saints who are known only to us. May we use those remembrances as inspiration to be about the work of unbinding others in this time and place. If we can do that, there might just be enough unbound hands, enough free hands, to pry open the Gates of Paradise and let the Kingdom of God flood all around us here and now. Amen.