30th October 2021
All Saints
Whaley Bridge Parish
The clocks have turned back, there’s a chill in the air, and there are plastic pumpkins in all the shop windows. It’s that very particular time in late autumn.
Today is secular Halloween, the commercial celebration of all things spooky. The word Halloween comes from Hallows Eve, the Eve of All Hallows Day, or All Saints Day as we call it, which is followed 24 hours later by All Souls Day. For Christians All Saints and All Souls have been days when we can reflect on our life – and the churches life – in the light of God’s eternity.
We held our Service of Light for those who have died over the last year or two last Sunday. It was a moving service when the simple act of praying for those who have died by name, and lighting a candle for them, touches the hearts of those who mourn. These days Halloween is purely about commercialism, but I guess it originated in people’s desire to confront their fear of death and dying by mocking death, having a laugh at its expense. And of course, having a laugh at things that scare us is harmless enough, but it doesn’t get us very far. The beauty of the grace of God in Jesus Christ is that he offers us a way of living - and dying – that deals with our fears of that unknown quantity that is our death, and what comes after it. “I am the resurrection and the life”, says Jesus.
Today as we celebrate All Saints’ Day, I want to explore what it is like for us as Christian people to live in the knowledge that we will die one day – something of course we share with every human being – and how trusting in the God who meets us in Jesus helps us with that.
If we take at look at our Gospel reading, we see that there is a highly-charged emotional scene taking place around the tomb. There are tears, reproaches, an anger. Mary and Martha are shedding tears for their brother, there are other mourners who are crying, and Jesus, begins to weep for his friend.
There’s something very tender and moving in this scene: we are seeing Jesus at his most human, mourning the loss of someone he loves just as you or I would.
John in this prologue to his Gospel tells us the Jesus is the Word made flesh, and we see that very clearly in this passage. Jesus is not a divine robot but a man of flesh and blood and tears.
It’s interesting how similar the words “humour” and “human” are. Humour means wetness, or moisture, and there’s a sense in which the wetness of our tears give us our humanity.
I take encouragement from this story. It’s not tidy, it’s messy and complicated and for that reason it is recognisably like real life. All of us know how hard it is coping with illness and disability and loss – whether it’s in ourselves in someone we are close to. We pray for healing and wholeness, but we struggle with the actuality of what we are facing up to. The Gospel message is that the God who becomes human alongside us is no stranger to the struggles of being human. He has known what it’s like to feel love and pain and loss, and by his spirit he is utterly with us as we experience these things.
The raising of Lazarus story forms the climax of the first part of John’s Gospel. All the way along we’ve had miraculous “signs” performed by Jesus, along with “I am” statement I am the true vine, I am the good shepherd, etc) Now here we have the seventh and greatest sign, as Jesus rolls aside the tombstone and commands the dead man to come out of the tomb. It’s a vivid illustration of his final “I am “statement, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
So the raising of Lazarus is a the final sign, the foretelling of Jesus’s own resurrection. It is a sign that points to Christ’s own nature: that he and he alone is the bringer of life and new life, through God at work in him. The resuscitation of Lazarus is quite different from what happens on the third day after the crucifixion – remember, Lazarus is a mortal human being, he will die one day as we all will – while the resurrection of Christ is in a category all its own. The raising of Lazarus is a bit like the future breaking into the present, giving us a glimpse of what God’s future is going to be like.
When we think – if we do think – about the divine reality Christ makes possible for us in after our earthly life we tend to talk about “heaven” – “going to heaven”. In the New Testament heaven is another way of talking about God. So while Mark the gospel writer talks about the Kingdom of God, Matthew talks about the Kingdom of Heaven. They both mean the same thing. Heaven is best understood as being in the presence of God.
Yet Jesus’s word to us in the gospel is not phrased in in the language of heaven, so much as the language of resurrection. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever trusts in me shall live, even though he dies.” Earlier in John’s gospel we have the promise of Jesus “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.” It’s important to notice that eternal life is not merely a future reality. Jesus is saying it that eternal life begins in the here and now, with the simple action of sharing in the bread that is his body given for love of his world. This is an extraordinary promise. A life-changing promise.
Earlier this year our friend Carsten who lives in Berlin was gravely ill on a ventilator for ten weeks and close to death, and I was praying for his healing, supported by some of you here in the parish. Again and again I slowly prayed the words “Lord Jesus Christ, by your cross and resurrection, bring wholeness, bring healing.” In my mind I was placing Carsten in the presence of the Risen Jesus. As I prayed I realised that, even if God were to grant healing, one day Carsten would die – simply because we all do. As Lazarus does. And through my prayer, I became somehow reconciled to that reality.
And through my prayer also, I had a real sense of closeness to Carsten within the communion of saints. There was a powerful sense that our common faith in Christ crucified and risen binds us together in this life and beyond this life. We are sharers in the bread that Jesus gives and sharers in the promise that we will be raised with him.
After ten difficult weeks we got a WhatsApp message through with a picture of someone sitting up in a hospital bed and smiling. His hair was long, his face was thin, and he had aged fifteen years - but it was Carsten, and he was alive. I passed the phone over to Steve. “Is that Carsten?” he said. “Well, I guess Lazarus didn’t look at his best when he stepped out of the tomb….” I replied. Praise God, our prayers were answered.
Coming out of a coma is a complicated thing, and Carsten is still having psychological help to help his adjust to the effect Covid 19 has had on his life. But he hopes to return to his work in the hospice in the New Year – where he is a chaplain, working everyday with people who are facing their lives ending.
There everyday he witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ – not so much by what he says, as by being the person who he is: a bearer of hope.
St Paul writes that there are three things that last forever, faith hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. What I wanted to say is that hope comes a pretty close second. As Christian people we live in resurrection hope. We may not feel hopeful, but, as Archbishop Tutu said, we are prisoners of hope.
Or As Bishop David Jenkins said, when asked to summarise the Christian faith in one sentence: God is – and he is as he is in Jesus - so therefore, we have hope.