All Saints Sunday, Year B

IN THE MIDST OF DEATH, JESUS IS MY LIFE

John 11:32-44
All Saints Sunday, Year B
Paul G. Theiss

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 for 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 upwards 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.”

“I step forth from the grave at Jesus’ call, to be a witness to his resurrection and mine.”

DIAGNOSIS: My Life Abandoned

Step 1-Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): Powerless
Sometimes I feel powerless as I’m swept along by life’s currents, like an individual bit of plankton in a vast turbulent sea. I’d like to be secure and in control, but that isn’t the world I live in.

Step 2-Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem): : Abandoned
Like Mary, I wonder and worry why God doesn’t show up when I need help. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” I too grieve. I too must die. I feel abandoned to  make my own way.

Step 3-Final Diagnosis (Ultimate Problem): Divine Absence?
God has left me in this mess. Is this really God’s world? Sometimes I live without a sense of God’s presence. Yet I believe that God knows where I am. If so, God, why don’t you intervene to make things right? Your absence is the hardest of all to bear – and perhaps for good reason.

PROGNOSIS: My Life is with Jesus, Always

Step 4-Initial Prognosis (Ultimate Solution): Christ in our Depths
But God does intervene. Jesus takes charge: first, by entering fully into my grief and fear. “He was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” Ready to breathe the stench of death – as he would on the cross – even now he sorrows with his friends, taking on their life experience. As God’s Beloved he commands the present moment, even the moments when his followers experience only his absence. “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” He knows Lazarus because he knows death. He calls Lazarus forth, back to life in a dangerous world. But it’s life unending that we get with him, starting now.

Step 5-Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution): Enlivened
Like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, God’s eternal life envelops me and raises me up in life and in death. I am rescued, resurrected by Jesus who knows my name and calls out to me.  Jesus knows where to find me, no matter where I am, even in grief and fear, even in the grave. No thing and no one is stronger than God’s love for me. I accept that love, and with it my future with him. My life becomes an adventure that has no end.

Step 6-Final Prognosis (External Solution): Bringing Life
I step forth from the grave at Jesus’ call, to be a witness to his resurrection and my own. With the courage of faith that Jesus gives me, I dive into a troubled world, part of God’s healing mission, giving my destiny over to God. I may feel as small as an individual plankton, but I swim in the ocean of God’s life in the world. Like tiny plankton, each one giving vital oxygen for others to breathe, I too am part of God’s vast web of life, guided personally by Jesus who knows my name. I am raised up to give life through him.