Let Loose to Live  -  A Sermon based on John 11. 1-45, preached on March 26, 2023 at                                                           Covenant Presbyterian Church, Scranton, PA

       There is a special place in my heart and soul for the story of the raising of Lazarus.  My very first attempt at a Sermon was based on this text.  It was the last week of July in the summer of 1973 in Oregon. I was two thirds of the way through my first job in ministry as Youth Director of the Brookings Presbyterian Church. The pastor, John Lacy, had been Student Assistant at my home church in New Jersey while he was in seminary.  He had been foolish enough to write to invite a 20 year-old rising college junior to drive across the country to direct an Adventurer’s Club for elementary kids, and youth groups for Junior High and High School students.

            By the time I stood in the pulpit on the last Sunday in July, I had been climbing a learning curve as steep as the mountains to the east of that lovely little town on the Oregon coast just above the California border.  I had scrapes and bruises from the times I slipped up and fell on my face repeatedly as I learned that doing ministry wasn’t as easy as it looked.  My missteps were sometimes well-intentioned. My wounds were often self-inflicted.  Looking back I count it as good fortune to have been mentored by a friend who knew from his own experience “nobody ever said it would be easy.” He had occasion to tell me that often.

            So there I was living on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific one year after my high school sweetheart told me to on a Cape Cod beach that it was time to part ways. There I was about four weeks from the moment I first laid eyes on a blue-eyed blond in bellbottom jeans and platform shoes, who fourteen months later would say “yes” when I asked her to be my wife.  In between had been a rocky rebound year with low-lights in attitude and behavior and poor decision making best summed up by the New Year’s afternoon when I stumbled down from my bedroom and my father offered me an antidote for having been over served the night before. He made me a mixed drink: Alka-Seltzer and water.  It was all uphill from there.

            Caring friends, old and new, those with whom I shared a house, and others who came along at just the right time, helped me move from what had been to what might be.  When John’s letter came inviting me West, I jumped at the chance.  Driving across the country in a Chevy Vega in those gas-shortage days, with the added danger of an extra one gallon can of gas tucked in the trunk, brought me to a place where a fresh set of adults in the Brookings church were waiting to help me learn and grow and discover what Frederick Buechner calls “a self to be.”[i]

            Perhaps that’s why, when I chose to preach on the raising of Lazarus my focus was on the ending, where the once dead man shuffles out of the tomb. Jesus directed those looking on to set him free from the grave clothes that bound him.  Some of those who let me loose, I’ve been able to thank…others are long gone…and the best I can do is to take my thanks to the Lord and ask him to pass them on.

I went down into the archives housed in our basement one day and pulled out the manuscript of that nearly fifty-year-old sermon.  Its pages are yellowed, some are tattered. The sermon bears marks of indecision in the age before computers and the blessed gifts called “cut and paste,” and “scalable fonts.”  Part of it is typewritten in all CAPITAL LETTERS, the unevenness of key strike on page is evident, as is the worn ribbon signature of the old typewriter that sat on the table in the furnace room that served as my office that summer.  The rest is handwritten in black felt-tipped ink.  My final edits are revealed by pages sliced on a paper cutter and scotch-taped together, one paragraph typed, the next two in my own flowing script.

            The first page was once page 10.  The first four lines are crossed out.  Three paragraphs follow recounting a message placed in a church bulletin by an Episcopal priest. It was a cute variation of the old frog kissed by a princess story. It reflected on what it must feel like to be a frog and recalled those times when anyone of us might feel like a frog: “slow, low, ugly, puffy, drooped, pooped.”[ii] Then it retold the frog in need of a kiss story complete with the princess who set the handsome prince free.  It ended with this: “So what is the task of the church? To kiss frogs of course.”

            My sermon went on to make a connection between the frogs all around us in need of a kiss and the direction by Jesus to unbind Lazarus and let him go.  I had quotes from mid-twentieth century pulpiteer Harry Emerson Fosdick and an unbinding story from the then noted and respected Presby-terian professor and author Robert McAffee Brown.  I added a story from one of my boyhood heroes who died the year before from ALS, then known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. 

Wrapping it all up, the sermon ended with an observation and a quote I still love to share:  “It is at the person-al level where the love that Christ has given us is to be passed on.  It has been said that “Christianity is like electricity: it can’t enter a person unless it can pass through.”[iii]

            Well, it is slightly less than fifty years later and a lot of life has happened in the meantime.  To focus on the end of the Lazarus story where the community is called upon to complete the work begun by Christ still holds up well.  That said, there is so much more in the story to help us live as followers of Jesus, who show our love for God by loving our neighbors..

            The story of Lazarus begins by mapping out a web of relationships. There was a man who was ill. His name was Lazarus. He had sisters you will recognize from stories in the other gospels, Martha and Mary.  Lazarus and his sisters knew Jesus and he knew them. We know this because of the message the sisters sent to Jesus when Lazarus fell ill: “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” The bond between Jesus, Lazarus and the sisters is underlined by the curious note about Jesus’ response to that news:  “…though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” (vv. 5-6).

            The delay of Jesus will be mentioned three more times in the course of the storytelling, indicating that it was a feature we ought to think about.  Much as we would like others to drop everything and run to be by our side in a time of crisis or sadness, there are often other commitments that get in the way, other responsibilities not easily shunted to the side. We may have to be understanding when it seems another is taking their sweet time.

            Scholars suggest there is something deeper to discover about the delay.  The late Fred Craddock noted that in the Gospel of John “Jesus acts according to his own time and not according to external pressures. For example, Jesus separates himself from his mother before acting at the wedding feast at Cana.”[iv]  We are often reminded of the difference between God’s timetable and our own. If nothing else, as one writer puts it, the incident “is instructive in the sense that even these beloved disciples cannot snap their fingers expectantly and have their wish fulfilled in the manner they desire.”[v] That is something for us to remember when we are storming God’s throne with our requests. That’s when we need to take a page from the Psalm 130:

“I wait for the Lord; my soul waits,

and in his word I hope.” (Ps. 130.5)

            How disappointing it must have been for Martha and Mary when Lazarus died before Jesus arrived. The one they trusted, the one who had helped others, the one they reached out to in their time of need didn’t get there in time. Their respect for and admiration of Jesus can’t hide their disappoint-ment when each sister greets Jesus:

            “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!  What we hear beneath their words is the very recognizable stage of grief where the human heart erupts in statements beginning with the words, “If only…”  “If only the cancer had been detected sooner.” “If only she had stayed off those icy roads that night.”  “If only we had taken his sadness seriously.” You get the picture. Mary and Martha had done their part. They sent for Jesus.  He hadn’t come in time. Now there was nothing he could do.

            Or was there?  Significantly, neither Martha nor Mary turn and walk away from Jesus.  Martha keeps the conversation going, even indicating she has a glimmer of hope he might be able to do some-thing. “Even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” This leads to talk of resur-rection and eternal life.  Martha talks about them as something the Pharisees taught happened in the future.Jesus insists they happen in the present, when a person places their trust in him.

            In God’s good time, Jesus gets on the road against the objections of his disciples. When he sets a course for Bethany, (which by the way, means “house of affliction”)[vi], the disciples recoil knowing it will put Jesus’ own life in jeopardy. After some deep and easily misunderstood dialogue about going to wake up his friend, Jesus goes anyway.  Joseph Dayam describes his choice this way:  “He resolutely sets his face toward Bethany to show his oneness with the suf-fering family, to share their tears, and thereby to bring about life.”[vii] Urged on by Thomas, the disciples go with Jesus to do the right thing.

Despite their fears, the disciples followed Jesus to Bethany. There they discovered they were not the only ones who had come to grieve and console the sisters on the loss of their brother.  Others had come to Bethany to sit with Martha and Mary in the time honored tradition that continues today.  The doorbell rings and a neighbor drops off a cake or a casserole. The visitation at the funeral home alter-nates between laughter and tears as stories are shared in the receiving line.  Well-chosen words are helpful but not necessary; being there means so much more. The ministry of presence is powerful even when not a word is spoken, or when most of what you do is listen.

            Read through the story again and notice the kindness of Jesus. He absorbs the questions and disappointment of the sisters in ways that respect their differing personalities.  There are lots of words as Martha’s faith seeks understanding. There’s a flood of tears, even from Jesus, as Mary’s broken heart is on full display.  We are seeing “the Word” who became flesh expressing the anger and emotion of his own breaking heart.

            Then, when his tears are dried, Jesus shows Martha what he meant when he said “I am the resurrection and the life.”  Lazarus is called forth, and must participate in his own resurrection. Lazarus is not, on that day at least, ushered into the many-roomed house of God on high. He’s enabled to live again that day, and the next, which is what the here-and-now gift of eternal life is really all about.

            Twenty-five years ago I bought the purple stole I am wearing in a little gift shop a few steps down the street from the entrance to the tomb of Lazarus in Bethany. Only minutes before I had viewed the place from which Lazarus wiggled his way out when the Good Shepherd called his name.

            It is a small space, and being none too fond of confined places, I chose not to take my turn and limbo my way into the cave.  On another day, Barbara Brown Taylor visited the same spot and descended into the hole from which Lazarus emerged.  She describes climbing out like this: “There is only one way to do it: head first, with your upper body already out while your feet are still finding the three small steps—looking up as you straighten up, trying not to scrape your back.”[viii]

            Reflecting on the experience in a sermon, Taylor said: “If it really is Lazarus’s tomb, then he did not come out of it like a man walking out of prison. He came out of it like a baby being born again—first his poor wrapped face, then his bandaged hands, and finally his feet.”[ix]

            “Like a baby being born again!” Hmm! A couple of years before Jesus told Nicodemus “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus came to Jesus at night at-tracted by the light of the world.  As Jesus calls Lazarus out of darkness and into the light, we are allowed to witness what being born from above looks like, not only in Lazarus, but in his sisters, and in those who came to believe in him that day.

            What we also see is that being born from above, like being born the first time, is not easy.  It is a life-changing event that is more than a little messy, comes with no small amount of pain, and puts a strain on relationships as everyone adjusts to what is new.  And as in the case of the child emerging from the womb, who is cared for by physician, nurse, midwife or dula, those who receive the new life in Christ require assistance.

            So, we are back to the part of the story I focused on in Oregon fifty years ago. Veronice Miles writes eloquently of our frog-kissing, bandage unwrapping responsibility toward those Jesus brings back to life.  She says:

            “Resurrected women, men and children today also require caring communities that are willing to nurture and strengthen them until they are able to walk alone; to remove the grave clothes of self-doubt, social isolation, marginalization, and oppression; to tear away the fear, anxiety, loss and grief, so that unbound women, men and children might walk in dignity and become creative agents in the world.”[x]

            Jesus still calls the dead from their living deaths.

 Jesus still calls on those nearby to help finish the job.

A refugee family lands in a strange city in a new country and church folk provide a roof over their heads, food to eat, a table to serve it on, & help to learn a new language.

One called from the tomb of substance abuse is helped along by the others who sip strong coffee in the give and  take of the circle of support provided by 12-step program.

            A young person brought low by shattered dreams and destructive decisions, is let loose to live by people of faith who offer encouragement and guidance in response to the command of Jesus.

            What a gift it is to proclaim with the Psalmist:

People of God “hope in the Lord!

For with the Lord there is steadfast love,

and with him is great power to redeem

[i] Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey, (New York, HarperSanFrancisco, 1982) p. 72
[ii] Apologies…the book from which this was taken…was lost in the 2011 flood of the Susquehanna River. The frog story was widely used in the early 70’s. Thinking it came from one of the Word Publishing books of that era by one of the “Faith at Work” authors.
[iii] No clue where that one came from…do your own Google search!
[iv] Fred B. Craddock, “A Twofold Death and Resurrection (Jn. 11. 25-26) The Christian Century, March 21-28, p. 299, copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission.
[v] Stephen P. Bauman, Feasting on the Gospels, John, Vol. 2, Chapters 10-21, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), p. 42
[vi] Joseph Prabhakar Dayam, Feasting on the Gospels, John, Vol. 2, Chapters 10-21, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), p. 42
[vii] ibid. p. 44
[viii] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Dress Rehearsal,” God in Pain, Teaching Sermons on Suffering, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Pres, 1998), p. 66
[ix] ibid.
[x] Veronice Miles, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p. 144

Notes from Night School and Beyond – A Sermon based on John 3. 1-17 – preached on March 3, 2023 at First Presbyterian Church, Clarks Summit, PA 

       I stand before you as a recovering Pharisee. My name is Nicodemus.  I was a teacher in Jerusalem, and took pride in my ability to understand and interpret the Word of God as it came to us  in the scrolls of the Torah, the Prophets, and the Books of Wisdom.  I was well versed in the teachings of the rabbis who debated the proper ways to live faithfully. Even so, I was always ready to discover new truths, and hungry to fill an emptiness all my learning failed to satisfy.

            And so it was that I found myself one night seeking out a new rabbi who showed up in the city just before the Passover.  Believe you me, he made quite a scene when he entered the temple.  He marched right in like he owned the place. He went to the spot where animals were sold for sacrifice. Grabbing some strands of rope, he cracked them above the sheep and cattle, and without touching their flesh sent them stampeding into the street.

            Coins clanged on the stones as he turned over the tables of the money changers. Pigeons and doves flew the coop.  In the quiet after all the commotion he shouted: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

            Someone stood up to challenge him: “What sign can you give for doing this?” Said he: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”

What an audacious claim!  Our Temple rebuilding project was in its forty-sixth year. Thousands of workers had labored to build this monument of praise to God.  There was no way one man could build it in a mere 3 days!

            For the rest of the week we kept our eye on him. We watched what he did. We listened to what he said. There was power behind his words. There was love displayed in the way he touched people. It was as if everything he did and said pointed beyond himself to God.

            Into the mix stories were poured of his teaching in synagogues up north.  “He doesn’t mince words,” someone said. Another added: “No hiding behind a wall of quotations for him.” He had been so bold as to claim that he had “come to fulfill the law.”

            We also heard reports of water turned to wine at a wedding at Cana, and healings per-formed along the way: A crazed man he’d spoken to became a model citizen. Lepers were left without lesions, blind eyes took in the sights, deaf ears let in the sound, and some who were lame no longer limped along.

            It was all quite puzzling. Everything about him became a subject for debate among us.  Was he a force to be reckoned with, or just another bright light that would fizzle out?  Should we celebrate him as a prophet who came from God, or denounce him as a fraud who did not?

            I was curious to know more. It felt like he had the piece I was missing …that something I hungered for.  So, I went to see him at night. Many of my colleagues were al-ready convinced he was a trouble-maker who needed to be silenced, so I had to be cautious about my curiosity.

            I greeted the teacher respectfully. What I couldn’t say in public, I said to him in private. Addressing him as his disciples did, I said.  “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent by God. No one could perform the miracles you are doing unless God were with him.”

            I was totally unprepared for his response. Yet the more I think back on it, I realize he cut through the fluff and got right to the heart of the matter.  What I wanted deep down was to gain entrance to this kingdom he talked about.  He told me what was necessary, but the way he said it was very much like a riddle. He said: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

            The curious thing about the word Jesus used about being born is that it can mean “from above,” or it can mean “again or anew.”  He meant it one way; I took it the other. Had anyone witnessed our discussion they would have said we were talking past each other.

            I know now he was saying the kingdom of God can’t be experienced without being “born from above.” That is, access to God is a gift that comes only to those who are open and receptive to a new beginning initiated by God. At the time, all I could hear was “No one can see the king-dom of God without being born again.” How preposterous. What a physical impossibility. As any infant would tell you if it could, one trip through the birth canal is plenty!

            When I pointed this out to him, my misunderstanding became an opportunity for the teacher to teach.  My protest led to a deeper explanation, the meaning of which I did not get at the time. As a teacher of Israel I should have remembered how often  God met impossible situ-ations with new possibilities. Think of Abraham and Sarah outfitting a nursery for Isaac, young David swinging a stone at Goliath, or Ezekiel encouraging exiles with a vision of a valley of dry bones brought to life by the breath of God.

            When I asked, “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” His answer was this: “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.” That went right over my head. Now, long after his death and resurrection, I know he was talking about the waters of baptism and the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

              Have you noticed that some truths, like seeds, have to sink in, take root, and grow slowly before the heart and mind are ready to accept them?  He was telling me to be born from above has everything to do with the miraculous new start that comes as one accepts—all at once or gradually over time—that Jesus is the Son of God sent in love “not to condemn the world,” but to save it.

            He wasn’t talking about starting over from the beginning. He was talking about making a fresh start with the help of God’s Spirit.  He was talking about being open and trusting toward God.  My friend Mark helped me under-stand this. He told me about a day when some people tried to bring children to Jesus so he could bless them.  The disciples tried to head the kids off, but Jesus welcomed them and said, “I assure you that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”

            A child is a marvelous creation. In its innocence a child learns to trust those who provide its care. Unencumbered by the so-called “laws of nature,” the child believes stories filled with impossible happenings and learn useful lessons.

            Instead of a story, Jesus spoke of the wind to teach me the ways of the Spirit.  You absolutely cannot see the wind. You can see the leaves of a tree shaken by it, you can hear the sound of it passing as it roars through its branches, but you can’t see the wind. You can’t see where it comes from or where it stops. All you can see is the evidence of its presence. It is the same with the Spirit. We can’t see it, but we can feel it and see the evidence of its presence.

            Truth be told, I was still in the dark as Jesus laid this lesson on me. “How can these things be?” I asked. To his credit Jesus did not dismiss me in disgust. Like many a wise teacher, he knew that even if I didn’t put it all together in one night’s class, time and reflection would allow his teaching to take hold.  The older I get, the more I have come to appreciate how often my “new” insights are the result of bits of learning pieced together over time.

            Reading my eyes to see I was still lost, Jesus switched to storytelling. He told a story he knew I would know from the time of Moses.  In the wilderness, the recently freed Hebrew slaves were in one of their “what has God done for us lately” moods. They accused Moses and God of bringing them out into the desert to die. Tired of their murmuring, God brought forth poisonous snakes to nip at their ankles and put an end to their complaining.

            Repenting of their short memory of God’s gracious gift of bread from heaven, some Israelites approached Moses confessing their sin. Moses prayed to God and God provided an antidote to the snake bites. The One who had forbidden Israel to make images of anything, commanded Moses to make a bronze snake, stick it on a pole, and lift it up where the people could see it.  Anyone bitten was told to look up at the snake. Despite the poison coursing through their bodies, they would live.

            Even though I knew the story, what Jesus said about it next made no sense to me at the time. He said “…just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Who could have guessed what he meant. But on the day he died, when Joseph of Arimethea and I came to claim the body of Jesus, I looked up at the cross and chills ran up  my spine.

            I’ve thought about his words and that moment a lot. His words start me thinking about where or to whom I look for help and guidance. The people who inhabited the land before us looked up the hilltops where they built shrines to the various gods they worshiped. From cradle to cross and beyond, Jesus sets our sights higher, as did the psalmist who wrote: “Our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121. 2)

            The Hebrews who looked up at the serpent were given the gift of life.  As we know now, those who look up at the cross of Jesus and believe him to be the Son God sent to save, are given what Jesus called “eternal life.” Jesus spoke of it the night I visited him. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

            Some people claim that “eternal life” starts after you die. But that doesn’t fit with a lot of what Jesus taught. He spoke of eternal life as beginning when you first believe. He said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” He never said you have to wait for it. Eternal life is about more than life after death. It is about is living in the presence of God here and now, now and always—even when it doesn’t seem to be so.

            There are days when my faith is as strong as the walls of Jerusalem; but there are others when it is as fragile as a clay pot.  Some nights, after a full day of surprise blessings, I think to myself, ‘no way I’ll ever forget this.’ Comes the next day, full of unexpected challenges, and you would think I’d never heard of God or Jesus or the Spirit’s helpful presence.  But strong or weak, confident or confused, what I learned that night holds true: God is for us, not against us.  As Jesus told me that night, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

            Just like Jesus took time to lead me from curiosity toward commitment, God is patient about allowing us the time to receive his Word, take it into our hearts, and choose to live in the ways he taught us to. 

Being born from above brings no exemption from life’s trials, but it does guarantee help for those who seek it. There are times when I still ask for God’s help to get through a dark passage. Yet not a day goes by when I am not thankful for the gift of eternal life. And how would I describe this most wonderful of gifts? God’s presence is with us always.  My own words don’t quite do it justice, so I’ll borrow words from one of David’s psalms. Speaking about what God does for the faithful, David captures what makes me treasure this gift:

The Lord will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

The Lord will keep your going out

and your coming in

from this time on and forever more.

(Psalm 121. 7-8)

Amen!