The Feast of All Saints B 15

Posted on 03 Nov 2015, Preacher: Kevin Maly
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Lazarus_Athens

Readings:
Isaiah 25.6-9
Revelation 21.1-6a
St. John 11.32-44

Consider Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead . . . . . consider Lazarus . . . awkward . . . seems there’s not really much of anything in Scripture to consider about Lazarus, except that he’s dead. But surely, he must have been good – after all Jesus loved Lazarus. At least, that’s what some of the bystanders say when they see Jesus weeping. But the bystanders are Judeans – and in John’s telling of the story, the Judeans are stand-ins for the local religious types and their leaders, and as John sees it, it’s the religious types that always get it wrong – so it could be argued that Jesus weeps because he identifies with the grief of Mary and Martha, friends of Jesus and sisters of the dead man. But let’s not get into too much speculation: given the text we hear today, all that we can really know about Lazarus, aside from his being dead, is what we hear from one of his sisters: “Yea, Lord, verily, he stinketh.”

Odd as first it may sound, on this Feast of All Saints when the distance between us and our beloved dead is made thin, it is indeed right and salutary to hear the story, not of some plaster-cast saint, all gussied up in glad-rag tales of virtue, visions, and piety; nor of someone beatified, canonized, and sprayed over with the cloying perfume of religious sanctimony; but of Lazarus who verily stinketh. It is indeed right and salutary on this Feast of All Saints to hear Jesus call forth from the grave not some pillar of virtue, but someone who stinketh, to hear the command of Jesus issued not to someone smelling sweetly of religious fame, but that it be putrid Lazarus who is to be unbound from his grave windings – and let us please note that Lazarus is not told to raise and unbind himself.

It is altogether fitting that today we be encountered by the One who raised a stinker from death; this is of course a story of the resurrection of all the Saints who on that farther shore now in glory shine – but too it is the story of the saints who here yet in darkness feebly, stinkingly struggle. Further, it is precisely the story of stinky Lazarus that breaks in upon us every time someone is baptized. In Holy Baptism the reality of the God who calls forth Lazarus, who calls forth the universe from a speck of dust becomes present at the font. There at the font, though we stinketh, God comes near to us and calls us stinkers forth by name, calls us to come forth from the deep waters where dwells the chaos monster of everlasting death – and there at the font with and like Lazarus, we are raised from death, not of our own accord or because of our own forever rank promises, but by the commanding promise of God that the priest is ordered by God to proclaim – and there at the font it is promised and proclaimed that we are freed from our grave windings – not by our own merit, but by God’s cosmos-creating command, and there, in God’s reality, the only reality that matters in the end, we are freed from our grave windings – our bondage to sin – sin being shorthand for our addictions to self, singly and collectively – our addictions to wanting money and stuff (to get it, to have it, to hold it); our addiction to power and control; our additions to alcohol, food, sex, and shopping; our addictions to moral preening and religion; our addiction to having to be right rather than kind; our addiction to needing to have our needs met; our addictions to self-actualization and to licking the wounds of our own hurt feelings; our addiction to making sure the rest of the world know just how good, kind, and caring we are. In God’s reality we are unbound from all those and the myriad other yards of putrid, rotten grave windings. Already. But for yet awhile, here on this dark planet – we also must live under the shadow of this world’s version of reality – or unreality – take your pick. But too the days of our walking through this valley of the shadow of death are numbered – and the day will come for each and every one of us when the Story of Lazarus made present in our Holy Baptism is perfected just as it has been perfected – that is to say, made whole and complete – for our beloved dead whom we remember this day as well as for those who have none to remember them.

Out there too, you will be sprinkled with the Story of Lazarus – a reminder that in Holy Baptism the Story of Lazarus has become your own.

No on this Feast of All Saints, we remember not a bunch of plaster statues, not those who had visions, not those canonized by religion, not even those who were especially good – in remembering our beloved dead, we remember real people whose failings we knew so well, we remember those who once did stinketh – those who now have been called fully forth from the tomb, who are now fully freed from bondage to all those things which in shorthand we call sin. And remembering our dead, we give thanks to our God – to the God who died and rose again so that we and all people know the reality of the God who loves stinkers to death, no matter how bad their stench. Today we remember and give thanks to the God who has called our beloved dead to come fully forth into light. In this Feast of All Saints we stand in the presence of the God who has commanded that our beloved dead be fully free from all that bound them to the unrealities of this shadowed planet.

In concluding the liturgy this morning, the liturgy – God’s work for us, God’s people – in concluding the liturgy, we will process from here to our urban grave yard and we will sprinkle the tombs that are there with the waters of Baptism – we will sprinkle the tombs there with the Story of Lazarus – a reminder for us that those who bore the names engraved on the grave stones are not there, not really. They who once did stinketh have been called forth from death and now do fully live in God’s reality – that which only is truly real. They have been fully unbound and now in glory shine. Out there too, you will be sprinkled with the Story of Lazarus – a reminder that in Holy Baptism the Story of Lazarus has become your own. And with that water the Promise is renewed: Thou that stinketh, even now thou art being called forth from the tomb, even now thou art being unbound, now in part, but then in full when God shall wipe away every tear from your eyes. Death shall be no more; mourning and crying and pain shall be no more for the unreal things shall have passed fully away.

And so we say: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.