Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
There are very few places as frightening as a cemetery. I
don’t mean the faux set-up for Halloween, with Styrofoam tombstones and mounds
of dirt and plastic skeletons. I mean the real cemetery, the place where our
loved ones are laid to rest after they fall asleep in Christ and die. A
cemetery may be creepy late at night with owls hooting and coyotes howling, but
it becomes a truly frightening place when we stand in a cemetery and gather
around a casket or grave of a loved one who has died.
Have you noticed how our culture tries to avoid that word,
die? It shows up in lots of ways – relationships die, communities die, dreams
die. These all have elements of grief, a
sense of loss, but nothing like when a loved one dies. We have a whole list of
synonyms that are used, both in culture and in the funeral industry, words like
expire, depart, perish, decline, decease, disappear, wither, languish, wane,
sink, fade, decay, cease. It’s as if we think that by not saying “death,” we
don’t have to face death or the grave. I suspect it’s to try to soften what has
happened, sometimes to the point of being ridiculous. I once heard a funeral
director, while he looked at the body in the casket and admired his work of
preparation, boast to the widow, “Doesn’t he look lovely in repose?” “In
repose?”, she snapped, and then without flinching, stated, “No…he looks dead,
your makeup and hair gel will not change that.”
But, when you are standing in a cemetery at the casket or facing
the name of a loved one carved into cold, hard stone, death is very, very plain
and simple to understand.
I have lost track of the number of times I have stood at the
graveside, either as a pastor, friend, or member of the family. If I were to
guess, at least 70 times and maybe or more, officiating at most of those. I can
attest that there are very few places on earth that are as frightening as
standing at the foot of the grave of a loved one. I have that feeling, to a
greater or lesser degree, at every funeral. It’s a humbling moment and a
mixture of emotions – fear, pain, loss, grief, worry, sorrow – washes over the
living while the loved one is buried in the ground or vault. It also reminds us
of our own mortality.
For you who have stood there, and for all of us who, one
day, will stand there unless Jesus returns first, this morning’s Gospel lesson
offers three important things for you to remember as you walk through this life
in a journey through the valley of the shadow of death.
The first is that when you stand at the grave, almost
overwhelmed by what has happened and is happening, your Lord knows exactly what
you are experiencing. First-hand, He knew and experienced grief. He was not a stoic,
immovable, lacking any emption at all. Jesus was a man, a human, and He had the
feelings you and I have. He was hungry, He was thirsty, He was happy, He had
compassion – so much that, at times, His guts churned - and at Lazarus’ grave,
He was sad. He heard the sisters crying, and He was deeply moved and troubled.
The Greek text implies that He was angry, possibly at death itself. That makes sense – after all, death is God’s
enemy that robs God’s people of the life they were created to live. But when
Jesus was shown Lazarus’ grave, He cried – real, hot, human tears.
That’s important because sometimes well-intentioned
Christians say things like, “You don’t need to cry. Your loved one is with
Jesus.” True, the saint who dies in Christ is already with Him and experiencing
the joy of the beginning of eternity. But to dismiss your tears as somehow
inappropriate for a Christian isn’t fair. He wept. God-in-flesh wept. Don’t let
anyone tell you differently. Jesus’ tears sanctify your own tears; His sadness makes
your sadness holy; His pain at the loss of His friend validates your own loss.
The second thing to know is even if your prayers were not
answered as you had hoped, Jesus heard your prayers for your loved one. When Lazarus was sick and his sisters sent for
Jesus, remember, He delayed two days before He even set out on the journey to
Bethany. By the time He arrived, Lazarus had already been dead four days. His
seeming inaction, His seeming to not care for His friends begs the unasked
question, why? Jesus offers two answers: the first, so the Son of God may be
glorified; and second, so that they might believe. That’s relatively easy to
understand here, today, looking through the lens of the Bible into the story of
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. But, what does that mean when it’s us standing at
the grave?
It is a very humbling thing to sit with a loved one – a
spouse, a child, a parent, a grandchild – who is sick and suffering and knowing
you can do nothing to help besides be present. When the medication doesn’t
help, or seems to make things worse, and the doctors are at the end of their
physical capabilities, and no other answer seems possible, it seems that death
is winning the battle against life. Jesus’ words remind us that even sickness
and illness, even in terminal cases, are still under His authority. And, for
the child of God, it is not for eternal death.
That’s important to remember. The Bible speaks of death
three ways – temporal physical death, spiritual death, and eternal death.
Physical death is when the body ceases working. Spiritual death is when faith
dies. One can be physically alive but spiritually dead. But if one is
spiritually dead and then dies, physically, that then becomes eternal death, a
euphemism for the eternal torture of hell. For the child of God, even if
illness would lead to physical death, we are preserved from eternal death by
the mercy and grace of God in Christ Jesus. When Jesus speaks of the glory of
God in Christ, and to continue to believe in Him, it is to trust this very thing:
that death and the grave is not the end. Make no mistake – death is our enemy,
no matter how the funeral industry tries to neuter that truth. God even places
death under His control and He uses this terrible thing of death as a vehicle
to deliver us from this life on earth – yes, even with its joys and pleasures
as well as its heartaches and pains – He uses it to deliver us from this life
to life in eternity with Him.
That is easy to say now, but it’s tough to cling to when
dying is suddenly a very real possibility, like when it is your loved one who
receives a difficult diagnosis, or who isn’t responding to the treatments, or
who is taking a final breath, or who lies in the casket.
As a student pastor, I was making a funeral home visit with
an older, experienced pastor. The widower, Steve, was there to see his wife for
the first time in the casket. I was quiet, observing and listening to what this
veteran pastor would say. What do you say in a time like that? My mind said to
tell the man “There, there, it’s going to be OK,” but I knew that was as hollow
as a toilet paper tube, an empty platitude more for me than him. Something is
better than nothing, they say, but sometimes they are wrong. The senior pastor stood next to the man for a
minute and then offered one of the most powerful words of hope (!) and comfort.
“Just remember, Steve, Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’”
Instead of platitudes, the pastor turned the grieving
Christian back to the promises of Jesus. That’s the third thing I want you to
remember: the promise of Jesus. When Martha met Jesus with the news that
Lazarus had died and challenged Him, in faith, that had He been there, Lazarus
wouldn’t have died, Jesus promised that her brother would rise again. Again, in
faith, Martha agreed, confessing that she believed there would be a
resurrection on the last day. Then, Jesus spoke those words of promise that we
know well: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though
he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall
never die.” Jesus is the savior from sin and also the antidote to death and the
destroyer of the grave. Even though His own death and resurrection are still on
the horizon, He is already declaring His victory over death, our enemy. His
declaration is a prelude to His own resurrection victory.
Earlier, I said it is OK to cry. It’s also OK to grieve. We
grieve our loss and, in our tears, Jesus stands with us. But, we do not grieve
as those who have no hope (!). In Christ, there is the hope and promise of a
resurrection reunion – first of all, with our Lord and Savior, who loved us
enough to die for us and rise for us and promise us space in His father’s
mansion; and second, with those whom we love who also died in the faith in
Christ Jesus. Our hope (!) is in Christ Jesus, and in Him, we have the confident
promise that nothing, neither death nor live, angels nor demons, powers, nor
anything else, can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
So, when you – like Steve, or Mary, or Martha – are standing
at the foot of the grave of your loved one, let Jesus’ words ring in your ears.
Remember: Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in
me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in Me
shall never die.” Immediately, He turned to Martha and asked, “Do you believe
this?” The echo of that question echoes through the centuries and it
reverberates across cemeteries, and into hospital rooms, and into funeral
homes, and into the homes where our loved ones once lived. “Do you believe
this, that I am the resurrection and the life?” By God’s grace, filled with the
Holy Spirit, knowing that the One who asked is the One who has conquered death
with His own glorious resurrection, you are able to answer. It may be a squeak,
or a whisper, or a mumble, or a full-throated declaration, but you are able to
answer along with Martha, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the
Son of God, who is coming into the world.”
Christians call the place where we bury our dead, “cemeteries.”
We don’t call them “resting places,” or “memorial gardens,” or even “burial
grounds.” We call them cemeteries. It’s the English word that is derived from
the Greek word, “koimeterion” which means “sleeping place.” In Christ,
cemeteries are nothing more than sleeping places for our beloved who have died
in the Lord. We confessed it a few minutes ago, “I believe in…the resurrection
of the body and the life everlasting.” That name, cemetery, is physical
statement of our Christian confession that Jesus isn’t yet done with the body
of our loved one who is buried there. It is at rest even as the soul lives with
Christ. I said cemeteries are frightening places. They are because they humble
us, and remind us of our loss, and our own unknown future. But, in the
cemetery, in the sleeping place, for the faithful Christians who mourn their
faithful departed, the cemetery itself provides hope in the midst of sadness,
grief and loss. There is more to come, something greater to come! Remember, He is the resurrection and the
life, and He will raise your beloved’s body, made whole and holy, from a
temporary sleep to eternal joy when He returns.
Do you believe this?
Amen.
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