Josh Bascom, “An Honest Day”
Today we’re celebrating All Saints’ Day. It’s one of my favorite days in the church calendar. I love the music, I love the way it rings in the season of Fall for me and sets the table for the next few months of Advent and Christmas, but it would be disingenuous to suggest that today is a day of pure joy and celebration. Today we remember that through the enduring grace of God we are still connected with the communion of saints and look forward to the day when we will be reunited with all our loved ones in Heaven—in the New Jerusalem. But today is undoubtedly a day of mourning as well. In a few moments we’ll read the list of names of those who’ve died in our parish over the last year, we’ll once again commend them to the mercy of God, tears will be shed and we’ll look with hope and faith upon the promise of God’s power and authority over sin and death. The power and beauty of All Saints’ Day is that it’s honest. It welcomes the truth about who we are, how we feel in the midst of life, the highs and the lows, and into that space, the space we might call reality, All Saints’ Day reminds us of the deeper reality of God’s power and presence among us.
And this is what we see from Jesus in John’s Gospel today, we see him enter into the reality of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, we see him embrace the situation and the people involved in a genuine and powerful way. Jesus arrives on the scene four days after Lazarus has died, and Mary and Martha, the dead man’s sisters are devastated. They’re not putting on a good face, they’re upset and they’re even mad at Jesus—where were you Jesus, Mary cries. She falls at his feet and says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Jesus enters into the middle of this scene and what he doesn’t do is almost as important as what he does do. Jesus doesn’t tell her everything happens for a reason, he doesn’t tell her everything is going to be ok, he doesn’t dismiss her emotions and grief by shoving a box of tissues in her face, in fact what he does is he cries himself. Jesus began to weep. And in doing so Jesus comes alongside them in their grief, like a parent loving an upset child, he gets on the ground next to them and says I’m so sorry, this is not ok, you’re right to be upset.
If you’ve ever experienced grief you know how powerful this can be. The last thing you want or need when you’re tearfully pouring out the details of a difficult day at work or the news of a dear friend’s death, what can hurt all the more is hearing some rationalization or platitude or dismissal of the tragedy you’re feeling. Instead, what Jesus offers is an affirmation of the reality that life is hard and we will experience grief and death. You’re not alone in this, because you’re not the only one who feels this way, but you’re also not left alone to your own devices when it comes to your grief.
There’s an illustration that comes to mind of what the opposite of Jesus’ presence in our grief looks like. About a decade ago there was a slogan plastered on the side of buses throughout London sponsored by a group called The New Atheists. The enormous signs became such a recognized thing around the city that it was simply referred to as the atheist bus, and it said this: “There’s probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Frances Spufford, the author of a fantastic book called Unapologetic, had this to say about the bus. “All right: which word here is the questionable one, the aggressive one, the one that parts company with recognizable human experience so fast it doesn’t even have time to wave goodbye? It isn’t the word “probably”. New Atheists aren’t claiming anything outrageous when they say that there probably isn’t a God… It’s as much of a guess for them as it is for me. No, the word that offends against realism here is “enjoy”. I’m sorry – enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion. To say that life is to be enjoyed (just enjoyed) is like saying that mountains should only have summits, or that all colours should be purple, or that all plays should be by Shakespeare…. The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren’t being ‘worried’ by us believers and our hellfire preaching. Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks?”
If you’ve ever experienced grief or difficulty, if you’ve ever experienced addiction, if you’ve ever been married or been a parent or been young and felt desperate for some direction or meaning in your life, if you’ve ever lived an honest and reflective moment in your life, then as Spufford says, being told to just stop worrying and enjoy your life is total bollocks.
And this is the beauty of All Saints’ Day. Today we aren’t offered some empty consolation that offends or steers clear of anything remotely close to what we’re actually experiencing. Instead, today we’re reminded of Jesus’ tears for us and for our loved ones. We’re reminded that God cares, and ultimately that God has acted.
Jesus joins Mary and Martha in their grief. This is no celebration of death, no celebration of life. Grief is appropriate and Jesus weeps. But death does not have the last word. Jesus has the last word. Jesus is the last word, and the last word is not, “be better”, it’s not get it together, or even something like pray more. Jesus is the last word and the last word is resurrection and eternal life. Jesus calls to Lazarus to come out of the tomb—and he does. Lazarus was dead. No doubt about it. For four days. His body began to smell. We can’t dismiss this with some explanation from modern medicine or psychology. He wasn’t in a comma, he was dead, and the dead man Lazarus in his grave hears the voice of the Son of God, the word of God, and he comes out.
He comes out of the tomb bound up and Jesus unbinds him. This is the power of the Gospel. This is the power of Jesus Christ. All of this grief that I’ve been talking about, among other things, leaves us feeling bound up by circumstances surrounding us as well as the mistakes choices we make ourselves. If we think that we’re all free, that we have free will to simply choose joy, like that bus suggests, then we’re bound to look at our families, our friends and the people around us, and even ourselves with constant judgement—why can’t he, why can’t she just get it together. If we think that we’re all already free then we make it our jobs to bind up our neighbors further with expectations and judgments. This isn’t what Jesus does. Jesus grieves with us and he acts for us, he unbinds us from our paralysis to sin and death, just as he did for Lazarus. He sees us for who we truly are, and despite everything he calls us saints, he calls you and me saints, and he calls us to eternal life with him.
We make a mistake in thinking that saints are special, that a saint is someone who had things figured out, who wasn’t bound up with any of the problems of the world like the unsaintly rest of us. What it means to be a saint is to be someone who just like Lazarus, in the midst of what can feel like death, what feels like a life bound up with all sorts of bollocks that we can’t perfectly break out of ourselves, in the midst of that a sinner hears the voice of Jesus to come out from their graves and to be unbound, to be forgiven and to be called a saint.
This is the power of the Gospel. This is the power of Jesus Christ. By calling us saints, by the power and authority of Jesus over death, Lazarus and his sisters, and we too, may be assured that the dead will be raised on the last day, and that in the meanwhile nothing can separate us from the love and the presence of Jesus Christ. His love is a love stronger than death. His grace is more lasting and has a stronger hold on us than any grave. Death may remain a painful reality for us all today, but the power and authority and love of Christ are also a reality, and in the end a more powerful reality. In Christ you have been unbound, and you too will rise again with all of God’s saints.
Happy All Saints’ Day
Amen
