A Reflection for Sunday after All
Saints Trinity Episcopal Church, Chocowinity, NC November 4,
2018 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher and Celebrant
Come Forth Lazarus
The Gospel lesson for today is about
the raising of Lazarus. What do we know about Lazarus?
Well, we know that he has two sisters,
Mary and Martha. We know from other stories that Mary and Martha
squabble with each other. Martha, the sensible one, fusses about all
the housework that needs to be done and sees Mary, pretty little
Mary, as a spoiled brat who fawns all over Jesus whenever he comes to
visit. I wonder if Lazarus lived with a lot of tension in his own
house? I wonder if he ever just longed for peace and quiet?
We know that Lazarus lives in Bethany,
not all that far from Jerusalem, but out of sight of the Temple
Mount. There is a scroll form Qumran that suggests that Bethany, out
of sight of the Temple Mount, may have been a place for the exile of
Lepers who needed to be out of sight of God's holiness. There is a
story in Luke about Simon the Leper who lived in Bethany and in whose
house a woman named Mary anointed Jesus at a dinner at Simon's house.
So we can guess that Bethany was a place with a lot of suffering by
the outcasts of society.
I remember when I was working in Macon,
Georgia when the Olympics came to Atlanta. The Leaders of the Atlanta
community, the Olympic Committee and the television networks were
annoyed that homeless people and beggars were not the kind of image
that Atlanta wanted to project, so they rounded all the riff-raft and
all the buses they could and loaded them with homeless people and
non-photogenic beggars and shipped them off to neighboring Georgia
cities. Macon, about an hour and a half away and out of camera range
of televised venues, was one of them. We already had plenty of our
own homeless people and beggars but the huge influx overwhelmed our
resources. I wonder if Bethany was like that when the big religious
festivals hit Jerusalem and citizens like Lazarus would be
overwhelmed by all the people lining up outside of his door;
especially when Jesus would show up? I would if Lazarus lived in a
lot of tension and resentment in his home town? I wonder if he ever
just longed for peace and quiet?
We know that Bethany was in territory
under the occupying forces of the Roman Empire and soldiers would
push their weight around as they searched for enemies and acted as if
they owned the place. There were two political parties who hated each
other with each other; the Herodians, who were collaborators with the
Roman occupiers for their own economic advantage, and the Zealots,
who considered the only good Roman was a dead Roman. Jesus in his
band of disciples had Matthew, a collaborating Tax collector, and
Simon a Zealot, I wonder what it was like when Jesus and his
disciples showed up with two enemies at tension with one another? I
wonder if Lazarus lived in a lot of tension and resentment? I wonder
if he ever just longed for peace and quiet?
Well Lazarus died, and we can assume
that he had plenty of peace and quiet in his little cave. There was
no more family tension, no community turmoil no political fights and
rivalry. Shakespeare has Hamlet long for an escape from the cruel
world:
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
Lazarus died and knew peace. Blessed Peace; but Jesus
comes and calls him out of the comfortable cave, biding that he come
forth, be unbound and let go to deal with all of the messiness of
life.
I retired from being a
Rector of a church six months and four days ago. I loved being a
Rector at that church for 15 years but I was seven plus months away
from the mandatory retirement age and I feared getting sloppy and
leaving that as my legacy. Not only did I stop working at the church
but I also stepped down for my volunteer chaplaincy work at our local
hospital, hospice, fire and police departments. I crawled into my
cave, read books, watched movies, visited friends and relatives,
turned off the television news anytime certain politicians, whose
names I will not utter, came on to spread their bombast, and quietly
walked on the beach. It was lovely not having any responsibilities
hanging over my head. I could no longer go to my own church during
the time they try to find a new Rector so I visited churches of
different denominations and became a guest with no responsibilities.
At the end of 90 days I thought I would go crazy and I was afraid
that my faith was dying. Faith is not about consent ot doctrines but
about real life lived faithfully to love God and neighbor.
For me the story of the
rising of Lazarus is, yes a story of a miracle two thousand years
ago, but also a metaphor for our lives today as we are called to
leave our caves of isolation and to become unbound of the cloths of
isolation and move faithfully back into life in the real world. I
think it took a gentle calling from Jesus, and a couple hurricanes
coming close, to tell me that life is to be lived fully and cannot be
avoided. We live to bring hope and care for a broken world. I am back
doing volunteer chaplaincy work, did a play, supported political
candidates, did supply work at some churches, helped my daughter out
when she got sick, contributed time, sweat and money to various
causes I think are important to a better society, and talked to
friends and neighbors who are going through rough times. I have
skills I can give, wisdom I can share, and love I can lavish.
Albert Einstein, who was
not a Christian but did understand how we are all connected as matter
in time creating energy, in a condolence letter to a friend wrote in
1950:
A
human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a
part limited in time and space. [One] experiences [oneself] . . . as
something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of
[one’s] consciousness. . . . Our task must be to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all
living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Jesus
was a Jewish prophet but he spoke to a deeper truth that all
religions acknowledge about coming out of our caves to live into this
world. The Buddha tried to get away from the illusions of rejecting
all of the world as a way of knowing peace after an early life of of
the illusion of conspicuous consumption of all those pleasures. He
found that both ways were unhelpful and that life was not about
thoughtless consumption or about escaping life but about a middle way
of being awake to the world in which we live. The very name of the
Buddha means the one who is awake.
I guess the point of all
this blathering at you is to say that if you find yourself longing
for the peace and quiet of a cave; it is alright to go in for a while
– but it is important that you come back out of the cave of comfort
and get back to work faithfully in your family, your church, your
community, your county, your district, your state, your nation, your
world, and your universe. Jesus calls us back to who we are, we are
the the ones who are formed from the stardust of the Big Bang of the
Universe 14 Billion years ago when God spoke to bring into Being by
having light come forth. We are connected to all of creation; even
the ones we are not all that fond of. Listen, ... listen, … listen;
our Lord is calling each of us to come forth to be part of God's
being.
Today we are celebrating
All Saints. A Saint is not someone who is perfect and perfectly good
but we are just dog faced people like all of us who listen and come
forth into God's Being.
Come
Forth Lazarus
Oh, it is nice in this cave, away
being from all the other noise
bothering quiet, killing poise,
now it is just ME holding sway.
I survey all of which I am the ruler. ,
Yes it's very small but it's all mine,
and everything remains just FINE,
where of things I'm only consumer.
Where an F means that I'm all F-'ed up,
I is for being insecure, filled with fear,
Neurotic wanting to hold control dear
and Egotism, the feast to deeply sup.
Yet, He's gently calling me to leave cave
of my own making for my soul to save.
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