The Holy Gospel of our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, according to John.
Mary
came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, “Master, if only
you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep
anger welled up within him. He said, “Where did you put him?”
“Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept.
The Jews said, “Look how deeply he loved him.”
Others among them said, “Well, if he loved him so much, why didn’t
he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a
blind man.”
Then Jesus, the anger again welling up within him, arrived at the
tomb. It was a simple cave in the hillside with a slab of stone laid against
it. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.”
The
sister of the dead man, Martha, said, “Master, by this time there’s a stench.
He’s been dead four days!”
Jesus looked her in the eye. “Didn’t I tell you that if you
believed, you would see the glory of God?”
Then, to the others, “Go ahead, take away the stone.”
They
removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, “Father, I’m
grateful that you have listened to me. I know you always do listen, but on
account of this crowd standing here I’ve spoken so that they might believe that
you sent me.”
Then he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus came out, a
cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a kerchief over his face.
Jesus
told them, “Unwrap him and let him loose.”
The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001,
2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
I’m sorry if I confused you this morning when I chose, in
the hour time stood still this morning, to change the version of the Gospel
text from our familiar New Revised Standard Version to The Message.
You see, a couple of weeks ago, the author of this version,
Presbyterian Pastor Eugene Peterson died.
For many people, Eugene Peterson’s The Message, provided a
more relatable version of the Bible. And
while I do not always agree with the way he interpreted all the stories from
scripture, the way he told today’s story uses words that might lead us to a
different understanding of grief and loss.
This is the story where we hear about how Jesus expresses
emotion at the loss of his dear friend.
It is where many of us have learned the shortest verse in the whole
Bible: Jesus wept.
What I like about the way Eugene Peterson tells this story
is that he sees the unfiltered humanity of Jesus. There is no sugar coating here. Jesus isn’t simply “disturbed.” He gets angry. Mary and Martha aren’t just “weeping,” they
are sobbing. Jesus does what any of us
might do in these same circumstances, he weeps over the loss of one of his best
friends. The people in the crowd don’t just
suggest that Jesus could have saved Lazarus, since Jesus made a blind man see,
they chastise him with the words, “If he loved him so much, why didn’t he do something.”
The words Eugene Peterson chose are strong. They are hard to hear. They are real.
When someone we love dies, we are more than disturbed. Grief is bigger than sadness and we often
struggle with finding the words to express the depth of our loss.
When another person has experienced a significant loss, we
often do not know how to help them navigate their own grief. (Here’s how:
look them in the eyes and honestly, meaningfully, and lovingly say “I am
so sorry.”)
So, I like this version.
Peterson names it. Anger. Sobbing.
Weeping. He calls Lazarus’ body a
cadaver. He describes the scene
vividly. Uncomfortably. Honestly.
It feels raw to me.
Grief, in so many ways, is the ripping off the façade of
strength and control and baring the pain and woundedness of our vulnerabilities.
Generally, we misunderstand grief. We place expectations around it. We think that grief is something that
requires a physical death, that it has a prescribed timeline, that it looks the
same for everyone. We want to be able to
check off the Kubler-Ross boxes of denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
acceptance and then move on.
But grief is so much more.
Grief is intertwined in living.
Grief comes with more than physical death, and we can misidentify—misdiagnose—misunderstand—miss
when we are grieving by calling it something else.
If you’ve ever lost an item, or a job, or you have retired;
or if you’ve miscarried a baby, had something surgically
removed from your body;
or if you’ve moved, had a relationship vanish, experienced
a divorce, had your children grow up and move away;
if you’ve been in an accident or had a stroke or you or
someone you love has had dementia or a brain injury or an addiction;
or if you’ve had a co-worker leave, had members of your
church leave, or have had a member of your clergy leave, without a proper good
bye;
if you’ve experienced any of these events, you have very
likely not have been able to identify the mix of emotions for what they
are: grief.
Instead, you may have thought you are experiencing a
whirlwind of mismatched emotions from sadness to anger, from betrayal to
satisfaction, from emptiness to joy, from frustration or fear to hope.
These are emotions that you can hold in tension with one another and not recognize them for
what they are: grief. Grief at the loss of something you have
valued in your life, or of an idea or dream of what you had hoped for in your, or
someone else’s, life. Grief, when something
or someone is alive but no longer a regular part of your life.
We can take all these emotions and package them in a box
labeled “grief.” But frequently, the box
those emotions get placed in is labeled “depression.” Unfortunately, we don’t always take the time
we need to take to evaluate the source of our emotions. That makes it easy to understand why grief is
frequently misdiagnosed as depression. I’m
going to say that one more time. Grief
is frequently misdiagnosed as depression.
As a society, we don’t like to accept that grief can come
in a variety of emotional packages. This
Gospel reading, particularly from The Message, gives us permission to use
language that exemplifies the complexity of grief.
People sobbed, which to me holds a much stronger image than
saying that they were weeping. Sobbing
is loud. Sobbing is messy. Sobbing is uncontrolled. Sobbing is “weeping
with a convulsing catching of the breath.”[1]
Jesus got angry. He
wasn’t behaving in some hard to pin down word, like “disturbed.” No. He
was angry. Mary, absorbed in her
own grief, accused him of not being there, of not caring enough to drop what he
was doing to save Lazarus from death.
She was honest about her pain and frustration and anger with Jesus, and
he responded with anger.
How human is that?
And then comes that short verse: he wept. He didn’t sob with the rest of them. He wept.
He didn’t join in the keening, the wailing, the howling that can happen
amongst women at the time of death, in the days following death. But he wept.
His eyes did not remain dry. He
showed emotion and the men gathered there knew that Jesus cared, deeply, about
Lazarus.
Those men then ridiculed him. “If he loved Lazarus so much why didn’t he do
anything…he made a blind man see…” They
needed to blame Jesus because they, too, grieved, and it was easier to blame Jesus
than to join in the sobbing.
We do that. We blame
others sometimes when we are ashamed of our own emotions, or when we don’t want
to acknowledge that we could have/should have done something differently. Maybe we blame others because in an
uncontrollable situation we want to have some control.
How did Jesus respond?
Jesus took control of this situation and gave those men something to
do. He had them remove the stone door from
Lazarus’ tomb, even though he knew the body… the cadaver … had laid there for
days and it would stink. Was that poetic
justice?
We might think so.
But no. This was a pivotal moment. This was Jesus standing firm in his authority
saying, “Trust me. In your grief,
in your despair, in your anger, fear, frustration…in your grief…trust
me, because I told you before, when it was easy to hear, and the stakes
were not too high, that I’ve got this. Now, when it’s hard, now, when you are in
pain, now, when it is easy to disregard, to forget all that I’ve taught you, trust
me.”
And with a prayer of thanksgiving… thanksgiving …to our Creator, to his Father, to the One who is
always present, who will always listen, Jesus calls Lazarus and, miraculously,
a linen wrapped cadaver emerges from the tomb, resurrected.
Even though we do not hear what comes next, we know that their
grief becomes joy. How could it not? What once was dead has found new life because
of Jesus.
This is what we hope
for. That from death, we will experience
new life. That grief will give way to
joy.
Let us pray.
Giver of Life, bringer
of joy, harbinger of hope, we thank you for being with us whenever and however we
travel the road of grief. Amen.