“Lazarus is dead,” Jesus tells the disciples.
It’s
not hard to imagine the questions that might be running through the
minds of the disciples and the hearts of Mary and Martha. They are the
same kind of questions I have heard being asked and I have asked myself
over the last several weeks as this parish and our surrounding community
endured tragic accidents, deaths, and funerals that came way too soon.
They are the same kind of questions we ask ourselves and each other
whenever life is interrupted and changed in ways we do not want. They
are the same kind of questions we ask when circumstances show us just
how difficult, fragile, and beautiful life really is.
Why?
How could this happen? What’s next for me? Is this an ending or a
beginning? Could it be both? How do I move forward? How do I make sense
of what has happened? What will life be like now? Why didn’t it work out
the way I wanted? What could or should I have done differently? Is
there life after this? Why didn’t God do something? Every one of you
could add to this list. We all have our questions, thousands of them.
The
ultimate question, the one that lies behind and grounds all our other
questions, is the one God asks Ezekiel. “Mortal, can these bones live
again?” That’s what we are really asking. That’s what I want to know.
Don’t you? That question is the valley that cuts through the center of
our lives. And yet, it’s not a simple yes or no kind of question.
Neither is it answered once and for all. It’s a question we live with
and ask over and over.
What
is the valley that cuts through center of your life? What questions did
you ask when the Lazarus of your life died? What questions are you
asking today?
Every
time life sets before me those kind of questions I am reminded, once
again, that I live with more questions than answers, and the answers I
do have no longer seem to carry the weight and authority they once did.
Our lives are filled with unanswered questions.
My
experience is that the unanswered questions of life tend to leave us
disappointed; disappointed in life itself, in ourselves, in another, or
sometimes in God. Disappointment is wrapped up in and bound by our unmet
expectations. That’s where Mary and Martha are in today’s gospel (
John 11:1-45).
They are disappointed. “Lord, if you have been here, my brother would
not have died,” they both say separately to Jesus. Even the crowd that
follows Mary is disappointed. “Could not he who
opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” they ask.
I
know that disappointment and I’ll bet you do too. We want answers,
explanations, and understanding. But maybe there aren’t any; at least,
not the kind most of us want. Maybe life itself is an unanswered
question and maybe that’s how we are to live it.
Jesus
does not offer answers or explanations to Mary and Maratha, or to us.
Instead, he uses our disappointment as “an agency for transformation”
(David Whyte, Consolations, p.63). Jesus seems to know that
disappointment is inescapable, necessary, and even a faithful response
to life’s circumstances. He neither criticizes nor ridicules Martha and
Mary for their disappointment. Instead, he uses it as an opening and
entry point into their lives.
There’s
something honest, heartfelt, and real about Mary and Martha’s words of
disappointment to Jesus. They are offering and making themselves
available to him. They rethink what they know about life, death, and
resurrection. They risk smelling the stench of death. They are walking
in that valley that cuts through the center of their lives.
To
attempt to insulate ourselves from disappointment and demand once and
for all kind of answers to life’s questions is to close ourselves to the
vulnerabilities that make possible real life, love, intimacy, and
relationships with God or with another. It limits what we are willing to
risk giving or receiving. It leaves the stone in place over Lazarus’
tomb, and refuses to consider God’s question to Ezekiel.
While
we might want to escape our disappointments, life wants to use them.
Life will not waste our disappointments, and Jesus always stands in the
middle of life. Disappointment calls into question our assumptions about
life, ourselves, each other, and God.
Disappointment
asks us to reassess ourselves and our inner world. It is the first step
in freeing us from misguided assumptions. It breaks old patterns of
seeing and relating that have become hardened and less than life
sustaining. It opens our eyes to a deeper way of seeing. Jesus uses our
disappointment in the unanswered questions of life to invite us to a
“larger foundational reality” than what we create for ourselves and
project onto the world (Whyte, p. 63).
Isn’t
that what he’s doing with Mary and Martha? “I am the resurrection and
life.” “Take away the stone.” “Did I not tell you that you that if you
believed, you would see the glory of God?” “Lazarus come out.” “Unbind
him and let him go.” With those words Jesus is holding before Martha and
Mary the valley that cuts through the center of their lives. “Mortal,
can these bones live again?”
The
great question before us (and Mary and Martha) is whether we experience
our disappointment as an opportunity for seeing and engaging our lives
and world in new, different, and life-giving ways “or whether we
experience it only as a wound that makes us retreat from further
participation” (Whyte, p. 64-65). It’s a question we answer every day.
It’s a question Jesus answered throughout his life.
Don’t
think that Jesus did not know disappointment. He surely did. He knew
disappointment in the death of Lazarus, the crucifixion, Peter’s drawn
sword and violence, Judas’ betrayal, the disciples sleeping in the
garden, the way his Father’s house had been turned into a den of
robbers, his disciples arguing about who was the greatest, the
disciples’ misunderstanding of who he is, the world’s refusal to receive
him, and in a myriad of other ways.
Every
disappointment held before him, as it does for us, the choice between
engaging or retreating from the world and our lives. He refused to be
stopped by his disappointments. Instead, he used them as entry points
into our lives. They became points of identification with us. His every
disappointment become one more step deeper into the valley that cuts
through the center of our lives.
So
let me ask you again. What is the valley that cuts through the center
of your life? Whatever it is it’s a place through which Jesus has walked
and shown the way forward. It is not the dark place we often think it
is. It’s an aperture into the light, a path that opens to new life, a
clearer way of seeing, a truer sense of ourselves, and a deeper
experience of Christ. It becomes the place of our unbinding and being
let go.
In
this valley “the question mark of life becomes God’s exclamation point”
(D.S.): the exclamation point of love, the exclamation point of life
and light, the exclamation point of mercy and forgiveness, the
exclamation point of wisdom, beauty, and generosity, the exclamation
point of hope, healing, and compassion, and ultimately, the exclamation
point of God’s “yes” to you and your life.
“Mortal,
can these bones live again?” The answer to that question echoes
throughout the valley that cuts through the center of your life. Yes
they can! Yes they do! Yes they will!
*Portions of this sermon were inspired and guided by David Whyte’s writing on disappointment in his book Consolations (Langley, WA: Many Rivers Press, 2016), 63-65.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment