Lent 6A:  Isaiah 50:4-9a, Matthew 21:1-11  “A Beautiful Death”

I believe it was right here at Wild Rose Church that I coined the words “Rollercoaster Week” for Holy Week, the time between the triumphal entry and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  I will always think of it this way.  As you know, the crowds that followed Jesus hoped that he would be the Messiah, the one to redeem Israel.  How compelling was his love and the miraculous things it could make happen!

If you would like to imagine how the disciples and other followers felt by the end of the week following the triumphal entry, imagine that the person you would like to have become the next president of the United States would die a terrible death before next Sunday.  I know my grief would be almost insurmountable.

Today we will speak of death.  Jesus was trying yet again to persuade his followers that we are not just flesh and bones when, in last week’s gospel passage, he brought his friend Lazarus back to life.  In that last week we took the opportunity to celebrate the role of the early Congregationalists in the Amistad incident in early American history, I would like to revisit the lesson about Lazarus today.

The story of Lazarus is found in the book of John, which is my favorite of the four gospels.  The other three tell much the same story, in a type of narrative account, but the Gospel of John is more mystical and loving, I find.  In the story that three of our members read last week, Jesus has received word that his dear friend Lazarus is ill.  Lazarus’ sisters, also beloved friends of Jesus, send word to him.  Jesus elects to stay in the town where he has been, and Lazarus dies.  The sisters are wild with grief, and as so often happens in hospices and hospitals even today, they lash out at those whom they expected to prevent the death of their loved one.  They berate Jesus when he does arrive, saying, “If you had been here my brother would not have died.”

My heart goes out to Mary and Martha, the sisters.  I have seen people lash out in fear and grief.  I have been such a person.  John O’Donohue, recently deceased poet and philosopher from Ireland, says, “Death is a lonely visitor.  After it visits your home, nothing is ever the same again.  There is an empty place at the table; there is an absence in the house.  Having someone close to you die is an incredibly strange and desolate experience.  Something breaks within you then that will never come together again… The death of a loved one is bitterly lonely.”

Jesus meets these grieving women with the statement that Lazarus will rise again.  They reply that they know this will happen at the resurrection.  Jesus gives them a surprising response.  He tells them that he is the resurrection, that everyone who believes in him, though they die, will live.  I once tried to tell this story to a friend of mine who was Jewish.  You see, the idea that people can come to God only through Jesus is the way that fundamentalist Christians have utilized this scripture passage.  I told my friend Marvin as lovingly as I could what I feel this passage means, and how it points us to recognizing our identity in God and steers us away from living only in “this world.”

Christians believe that Jesus was fully human and fully divine.  The story in John shows both sides.  Jesus was “greatly disturbed in spirit and greatly moved” by tears of his disciple, Mary, at the death of his brother.  He himself began to weep, a very human response.  Those about him taunted him and suggested that whereas he had recently opened the eyes of a blind man, could he not bring his friend back from the dead?  This seems to me like a bit of an exercise in futility, for Lazarus would die again at a later date.  But the scripture tells us that Jesus did it in order to bring more people to God.

I think Jesus wanted so desperately to show us that we, too, are born of flesh and spirit.  Few of us will ever understand this spirit part until we die.  There was a wonderful woman mystic who lived hundreds of years ago.  Her name was Julian of Norwich.  She said, “our nature which is the higher part is joined to God in its creation, and God is joined to our nature, which is the lower part taking flesh.  And so in Christ our two natures are united.”  The apostle Paul says it this way:  “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

Jesus had fully accepted his divine nature and calls on us to do the same.  When we do, miracles happen.  This story has a bit of a circus side show aspect to it to me, what with Lazarus coming out of the smelly tomb, four days dead, but it was perhaps God bending down to say “All things are possible for those who believe they are also human and divine.”  A key part of the story for me is Jesus claiming to be the resurrection.  I once saw some incredible footage of a woman who was dying, yet already resurrected.  She was the pure distillation of love.  Let me tell you the story.

The founder of a Zen hospice in San Francisco was approached by a film crew with a request to offer them a hospice patient to talk about that person’s impending death.  Frank, the founder, was appalled at their request.  His mission was to gather the dying from seedy hotels and missions and give them a clean, loving and sacred space in which to make their passage.  The film crew’s request seemed terribly intrusive.  Yet one of his intake workers told him of a most remarkable woman who was checking in.  She was more than willing to speak of her process.

She was an immigrant from Asia.  She had had cancer for 7 years and was accepting that she would not overcome it.  She had been a practicing Buddhist for 12 years, but had more recently been influenced by Christianity.  One of the things she talked about was forgiveness.  It seems that she had been disowned by her family of origin both on the telephone and by letter.  She had lived with a man who was abusive.  She had been a street person for several years.  She had found the life of Christ to be transforming for her.  I am sure she identified with his crucifixion.  The part that amazed her so were his words, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  She felt that if Jesus could forgive the atrocious and unfair cruelty surrounding his own death that she could, too.  She said, “I just wanted to love again.”  A Course in Miracles tells us that our only function in this life is to forgive.  I saw the fruits of that function in this radiant woman.  I was so humbled to have shared in her beautiful death.

Sometimes my heart grows guarded when I think of all the people Steve and I have lost over the past decade: My mother, my father, Steve’s mother, Steve’s cousin Dave, our dear Jewish friend Marv, our generous-to-fault eccentric friend David, Harriet Dresser.  We had to face the fact that we could lose our daughter to anorexia.  I have learned to surrender tomorrow to God.  It is not always easy.  I close with this beautiful poem from Anam Cara, which is Gaelic for “soul friend.” 

A Blessing for Death

I pray that you will have the blessing of being consoled and sure about your own death.

May you know in your soul that there is no need to be afraid.

When your time comes, may you be given every blessing and shelter that you need.

May there be a beautiful welcome for you in the home that you are going to.

You are not going somewhere strange.  You are going back to the home that you never left.

May you have a wonderful urgency to live your life to the full.

May you live compassionately and creatively and transfigure everything that is negative within you and about you.

When you come to die may it be after a long life.

May you be peaceful and happy and in the presence of those who really care about you.

May your going be sheltered and your welcome assured.

May your soul smile in the embrace of your anam cara, (your soul friend.)  Amen

written by John O’Donohue, parentheses mine.

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