Amanda McMillen, “Waiting for Resurrection, Waiting for God”

My toxic trait is that I hate being early. I will do everything I can to avoid the boredom of sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room for a single second if I can. The waiting is way more excruciating to me than is probably appropriate. But what this means, of course, is that I really struggle to be on time. I saw a comedian once talk about this with regard to his wife, who is also always late, while he is always on time - he says “we on-time people just hate you late people, you know why? Because it’s so easy to be on time”, he says, “all you have to do is be early, and early lasts for hours, while being on time is just one second, and then you’re late forever.” It makes all the sense in the world but I just can’t do it!

And sometimes this is a problem, sometimes timing really is everything. If you watched Ross and Rachel’s relationship play out on the hit 90’s sitcom Friends, then you know that romantically, timing really is everything. I watched 10 long seasons of Ross and Rachel missing each other by seconds at a time, they were together, then they weren’t, they were on a break, then they had a baby together, then she moved to Paris - it was astonishing how off they always were (until the end of the show, of course - sorry for the spoiler).

Timing is everything in humor of course, too. Right after this comedian I mentioned earlier was finishing this joke about being on time, a group of people walked into the comedy club late - “hi welcome, so glad you’re here, we were just talking about you” he says. The timing of that joke couldn’t have been more perfect.

Well in our reading for today about Lazarus, timing was everything, and Jesus really seemed to blow it. It’s Ross and Rachel all over again, but with much more dire consequences.

Lazarus, Jesus’ dear friend from Bethany, the brother to Martha and Mary, a family that is so close to Jesus’ heart, Lazarus is ill. This is that diagnosis that you fear. This is the phone call that you dread receiving. This is the loved one calling you from the doctor saying - they want to do more testing, but it doesn’t look good. That’s what Jesus hears when he hears from Martha and Mary that Lazarus, dear Lazarus whom you love, is ill.

And Jesus’ response is confusing - this illness does not lead to death, he says with confidence. Rather, Jesus says, this is for God’s glory, so that the Son of Man may be glorified. And instead of rushing to his dear friend’s side, he waits two more days before making the journey.

Finally, Jesus arrives in Bethany. But Lazarus has been dead for 4 days. He’s late. He’s not just late, he’s 4 days late. He’s so late it looks like he didn’t even care. 4 days of shock, 4 days of Martha and Mary mourning the loss of their brother, of burying him, alone. I gotta say I’m late for almost every doctor’s appointment I’ve ever had but I’ve never been 4 days late for one. And this was the death of his friend, whom he loved. Martha and Mary were furious - “Lord if you had been here, our brother would be alive. If you cared at all, Lazarus would not be dead.”

When it comes to horrible timing, to tragedy that feels as if it were completely preventable - one of the most understandable reactions we can have is anger at God. The one who holds the whole world in his hands, the only one who could have prevented loss - couldn’t God have prevented our heartbreak?

What is that heartbreak for you? It’s a big question I know. Our kind of spiritual/theological guide here at Christ Church, Dave’s dad Paul Zahl, says that there is one specific thing for each of us, one problem that we’re trying to solve - one thing that happened that irrevocably changed everything, a specific tragedy that we will spend the rest of our lives trying to recover from. Something that we long for God to have prevented, but it seems that God was too late to the scene.

Maybe it’s an illness, like Lazarus, physical or mental illness, or a life-altering diagnosis. A divorce - your parents, or your own. An addiction that took you from yourself, or took a loved one from you. Maybe it’s a trauma in childhood that has been an unwelcome ghost haunting you ever since. Or maybe it’s an ongoing relationship in your life that has just always been so inexplicably arduous. Why did that thing have to happen the way that it did?

Well as she faces her grief, Martha gives a statement of faith, despite everything, despite her loss and her anger and her great doubts of Jesus’ goodness after he chose not to prevent Lazarus’ death. From her grief she says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

I think the reason Martha had faith in the resurrection and the life, faith in Jesus, was because there was no other option for her. As Christians, we have faith in resurrection simply because sometimes at the lowest points we don’t know what else there is to have faith in. We have faith in resurrection because we’re desperate for it.

There’s a stanza in a song I love by the Christian artist Andy Squyres. He writes of the tragedy of an untimely death. He says:

My best friend died of cancer, and at his funeral

I moaned a bitter moaning, then sang the sweetest song

With my disappointed people to our disappointing God

Our preacher gave no answers, for he had none to give

That is when we knew our precious Lord was in our midst.

Like Andy Squyres sings, this preacher can give no answers as to why - sometimes our God just disappoints us. How is it that that, as Andy sings, is when we know our precious Lord is in our midst? When there are no answers to give?

It’s because of the heart of our faith, the cross of Christ. The living, beating, resurrected heart of our faith is in the moment of its greatest tragedy, in the moment of death. That Jesus died tells us that in our deepest pain, our greatest loss, that thing for us that we might never fully recover from in this life, that we are always trying to solve - in that tragedy, when it feels like God is as far away as humanly possible - Jesus, from the cross, is somehow more present right there than anywhere else.

Because Jesus himself called out from the cross - my God, my God why have you forsaken me? Jesus was forsaken. God was late - 3 days late that time. Jesus was dead. This is the moment when there are no answers to give. No words that will console. The only thing that can do anything is an undoing of the tragedy itself.

During those three days in the tomb, as we say in the Nicene Creed, Jesus descended to the dead. There’s a fresco at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy. It’s of the harrowing of hell, this idea that Jesus descended to the dead and brought from there everyone who had died before Jesus himself had lived. And this fresco is of Jesus descending to the dead, and lifting Adam, the first man who, as the apostle Paul says in Romans, brought condemnation to all men through his sin - we see Jesus’ hand, marked by a bloody wound from the cross, has grabbed Adam by the wrist, and lifts him into resurrected life. Grabbing him and pulling him up. It’s an undoing of the death that had already come for him. And Jesus’ face in the fresco is strikingly somber - it’s as if, in his own death, he feels the pain of Adam’s death, and everyone else’s thereafter - he weeps with those he loves.

But what is most striking to me about this fresco, a friend pointed this out to me, is Jesus’ robe - the tail of it is blowing behind him, it’s lifted into the air, in a gesture that communicates the speed by which Jesus grabs Adam and pulls him from death into life. He does not wait for one second after descending to the dead before grabbing Adam in haste and lifting him up. He’s in a rush. After his death, Jesus is on a furious mission that cannot be stopped - the mission of forgiveness of sins and resurrection.

So why did Jesus wait four days for Lazarus? The only answer we really get is what scripture says here, which is that it was for God’s glory that Lazarus was resurrected. Our Old Testament reading today from Ezekiel is the vision of the valley of dry bones. These bones, like Lazarus, are long dead - they’re dry. There is no life left in them. And God takes the most dead thing, the dry bones, the four day dead Lazarus, and breathes new life into them.

The only explanation for such a miracle, of going from such inarguable death to resurrected life, is that God did it. For men that would be impossible, but not for God. There is no mistaking that it was God who brought about such a resurrection of dry bones and of four day dead Lazarus. And why does it matter that God gets the credit for resurrection? Simply because it’s not good for human beings to take credit for things that God has done - perhaps it’s less because God is jealous for the credit, and more because when we take credit for something we shouldn’t, we assume we have control over things that we don’t. And it’s not good for us to have faith in anything more than in God.

We don’t have control over the timing of resurrection in our lives. Only God can take what is dead and breathe new life into it, whether in this life or in the life to come.

Still, there isn’t really a satisfying answer as to why God does not prevent our heartbreak, why God’s timing can feel so off. And so our faith clings to what theologian Frederick Buechner says - "resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.”

The glory of God is before Martha and Mary as they roll away the stone and their dead brother walks out of the tomb. The tragedy was redeemed and the death was undone. Our hope in the face of our own deaths, and of those we love, is only and fully in the person of Jesus, who himself was forsaken - he is the resurrection and the life, who grabs you, your child, your spouse, your mother, your brother, by the wrist and does not tarry to pull you and them from death into resurrected life. Make it so, Lord, and give us faith.

Amen.