The Sacrament of Tears

Transcription

1 The Sacrament of Tears Bob Setzer, Jr. Pastor Knollwood Baptist Church Winston-Salem, North Carolina April 6, 2014 John 11:32-35, For several weeks, under his teacher's patient guidance, a preschooler worked hard to make a ceramic vase for his parents. When the treasured gift was finally done, the little boy could hardly wait to present it. That day, as school ended, the boy saw his parents coming down the hall. Unable to contain his enthusiasm, he ran to meet them, his coat clutched in one hand, the precious vase bobbing up and down in the other. Just before he reached his mother's open arms, his charging legs got tangled up in his coat and he tumbled to the floor. The vase went flying, landed with a crash, and shattered in all directions. The little boy lay sprawled on the floor in stunned silence. Then he began to sob and wail. His father, thinking to comfort him, knelt and murmured: "It's all right, son. There's no need to cry. It was nothing, really. But his mother, far wiser in the affairs of the heart, swept the wailing child up in her arms and said, "Oh no! It was something. It was something very special," and she wept with her son. When another s loss is searing and profound, there is nothing more precious we can offer than the sacrament of tears. Which is just what Jesus offers when he shows up at the

2 grave of his beloved friend, Lazarus: he comes bearing tears. Granted, this is no way for a selfrespecting god figure to act. The gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon would never stoop so low. But it s as though Jesus can t help himself. The wellspring of his love and devotion for Lazarus and Mary and Martha runs so deep he can t keep his grief tapped down, all prim and proper. It rises to the surface unbidden, in an offering of tears. It happened to me once, when presiding at the funeral of a dear friend. That s one of the hard parts about being a pastor. Stay at it long enough, and you re not just burying church members, or even beloved members of one s church family; you re burying friends. On this particular occasion, I had done my best to step into my pastoral role, reminding myself I was not in the pulpit to process my own feelings but to help others acknowledge and wrestle with their own. But as I stood there recalling my friend s wry humor, his moral courage, and the safe place he offered me and so many with his honest, welcoming love, the enormity of my loss overwhelmed me and I burst out crying from the pulpit, suddenly transformed into a fountain of tears. I think something like that happened to Jesus in the cemetery outside Bethany. Earlier in the story, he appears all calm, cool, and collected. The two frantic sisters send word, Lord, (the one) whom you love is ill. But instead of hightailing it over to Bethany to save Lazarus, Jesus lingers two more days where he is. Solemnly, he observes, This illness (and death are) for God s glory. Which, pardon me, sounds an awful lot like the insipid stuff we say to the bereaved standing in the receiving line at the funeral home: It s for the best, Time heals all our wounds, or worst of all, God needed another angel. But when Jesus finally arrives at Bethany after taking his sweet time to get there--a few extra days that are forever in the experience of those forlorn sisters--we see that Jesus absence is costly for him too. Mary and Martha, each in turn, level the same angry accusation: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Which is exactly what we feel, 2

3 and if we are gutsy enough, is exactly what we say when Jesus fails to show up in our own desperate hour of need: This didn t have to happen. Where were you when I needed you most?! But John s gospel reveals Jesus is deeply moved by our anguish. Upon hearing Mary and Martha s pointed questions--and our questions too--and seeing the tears glistening in their eyes, Jesus groans in spirit. And when Mary and Martha lead Jesus to Lazarus tomb, ground zero of their agonizing disappointment in him, tears start coursing down Jesus own cheeks. Jesus wept, says the austere King James English. And suddenly, we realize that Jesus, and the God who draws near in Jesus, are not above the fray, as we thought. No, Jesus and his heavenly Abba are broken-hearted for and with us. Seeing the Son of God sniveling and dabbing his eyes by a grave side, we are left gaping in wonder at such a savior--and such a God--as this. In his spiritual autobiography, Now and Then, Frederick Buechner writes of teaching comparative religion at an Ivy League boy's school up east. His students were some of the best and brightest of their generation. But lest these budding scholars settle too quickly for the glib assumption that all great religions are saying the same thing, Buechner invited them to put Christ and Buddha, side by side. Buddha, says Buechner, sits in the lotus position: His lips are faintly parted in the smile of one who has passed beyond every power in earth or heaven to touch him. He who loves fifty has fifty woes, he who loves ten has ten woes, he who loves none has no woes, he has said. His eyes are closed. By contrast, Christ stands in the Garden of Gethsemane, his posture slumped from the weight of the world on his shoulders. His face is lost in shadows so that you can't even see his lips and before all the powers in earth or heaven he is powerless. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you, he has said. His eyes are also closed. 3

4 In lyric prose, Buechner presses his point home: The difference seems to me this. The suffering that Buddha's eyes close out is the suffering of the world that Christ's eyes close in and hallow. It is an extraordinary difference, and even in a bare classroom in Exeter, New Hampshire, I think it was as apparent to everyone as it was to me that before you're done, you have to make a crucial and extraordinary choice. The Servant Song of Isaiah makes the stunning claim that ours is a God acquainted with grief, the God who, in the poignant words of the Psalmist, keeps all our tears in a bottle. Which means those tears, and the anguish they represent, matter to God, are precious to God, and are felt by God. Yes, for reasons lost to us in the larger mystery of God, sometimes our prayers are not answered in the way we hoped. Sometimes, for us as for Mary and Martha, our loved one is lost, despite our earnest, ardent pleadings. Sometimes, hard times leave us feeling betrayed because if Jesus really cared, he should have shown up to spare so severe a heartbreak. But the salty tears of Jesus mean those delays and heartbreaks are as costly to God, as to us. So when a Malaysian airliner goes down in an unforgiving ocean, or a mudslide snatches our home or loved ones away, or two little girls are found locked up in unspeakable squalor right here in Winston-Salem, the first tear to fall, falls upon the face of God. How astonishing that our loving, compassionate God also offers... the sacrament of tears. But thank God our tears, and even God s tears, are not all there is! Thank God Jesus doesn t just promise us God s empathy, as precious as that is. No, Jesus promises new life on the far side of every death: I am the resurrection and the life, he tells Martha. The one who believes in me, though she dies, yet she shall live. And the one who lives and believes in me shall never die. Meaning we may not get the deliverance we hoped for, but some kind of resurrection, some kind of new life, is yet possible. And this is not just cheap talk from Jesus. Because to make good on his promise, Jesus must participate fully, not just in our bewilderment and pain, but in our death and dying too. In 4

5 order to call Lazarus from his tomb, Jesus knows a rendezvous with his own tomb is drawing near. Maybe that s why as Jesus steps ever closer to Lazarus tomb, he is again greatly disturbed in spirit. Yes, Jesus is groaning at death s claim on Lazarus; but Jesus is also groaning at death s claim on himself. Yet Jesus love won t let him stop short of giving all he has. Even though he knows that raising Lazarus will bring the religious Gestapo down around his head; even though Martha tries to stop him from making a spectacle of himself: Lord, he s been dead four days! There s already a stench. This is hopeless! Even though everyone present is willing to settle for resurrection on the last day, in the sweet bye and bye, Jesus won t give up. No, despite all the disbelief and dashed expectations, settling like a low-hanging cloud over that moment, Jesus demands that the stone sealing the tomb be rolled away. Then Jesus looks into heaven and utters a prayer aloud so everyone present will know what is about to happen is God s doing, not his. Then he lowers his gaze to peer steadily into the cold, barren darkness of Lazarus tomb. His loud cry pierces the stillness, Lazarus! Come out! There is a long, pregnant silence. Then a rustling, a stirring, a scraping, and then a mummified man staggers from the grave to the gasping astonishment of the crowd. Seeing Lazarus yet bound by his grave clothes, Jesus offers his final, liberating word. Unbind him, says the master. And let him go. This is good news for Lazarus, to be sure, and for Mary and Martha and all who love him. But the raising of Lazarus is good news for us also. Because in the sign language of John s gospel, the raising of Lazarus means that with Jesus, there is always the possibility of resurrection now. Not just someday, but now. I am the resurrection and the life, says Jesus. Not will be,... am. The movie Shadowlands tells the story of an ornery English bachelor and academic, C. S. Lewis, who fell for a free-spirited American woman, Joy Davidman. After a brief, loving marriage, Davidman died much too young of cancer. 5

6 In the final scene of the movie, Lewis is sitting with Davidman's young son, Douglas, now in his care. They are sitting before the wardrobe in the attic that in Lewis fantasy novels provides the passageway into an unseen world. Devastated by the loss of his mother, Douglas says to Lewis, "I thought prayer would save her. But it doesn't work." "No, it doesn't work," says Lewis. "I don't care!" the boy says defiantly. Lewis searches for words: "I loved your mother very much," he ventures. "Perhaps I loved her too much. It doesn't seem fair, does it? "Jack," says the boy, using Lewis' nickname, "Do you believe in heaven? There is a long pause as Lewis searches his heart: "Yes I do, he answers. In a broken voice, the boy confesses, "I don't believe in heaven. "That's okay," says Lewis. "I sure would like to see her again," says Douglas. Eyes brimming with tears, Lewis begins to sob, something he hasn't done since losing his own mother as a boy. "Me too," he wails. Then he clutches the boy and they cry together, their grief baptized in a sacrament of tears. That scene symbolizes the resurrection of C. S. Lewis, transformed from an unfeeling, hardened cynic into a sensitive, loving man by the pain of loss. The movie closes with his reminiscence: "Why love if loving hurts so much? I have only the life I've lived. Two times I've had that choice, as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety. The man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal. Yes, this side of eternity, that s the deal. Someday, the Bible promises, God will wipe all the tears from our eyes. But for now, Mary and Martha get their loved one back, while we do not, at least not for a long time that feels like forever. What we get instead is the presence of a broken-hearted God who grieves for us, and with us. And a crucified and risen Lord who draws near to call us out of the tombs where we went to die and meant to stay. 6

7 I am the resurrection and the life, says Jesus. Do you believe this? he asks Martha, asks us. That s when we have to decide if the tears are all there is, or if maybe, those tears are meant to clear our eyes so we can see the new life God is trying to give. Bob Setzer, Jr. Pastor bob@knollwood.org Knollwood Baptist Church Winston-Salem, North Carolina 7