Our Gospel lesson today leads us in an ostensibly somber direction this All Saints’ Sunday. We are thrust into the sad a grieving household of Mary and Martha of Bethany whose brother Lazarus has just died. It is difficult, if not nearly impossible; to convey in words the experience of the profound loss of someone you are very close to and love very much. Those of us who have been compelled to journey this dark path can feel genuine empathy with Mary and Martha as they greet Jesus. Grieving is an exhausting, confusing jumble of emotions not to be analyzed or explained and confounding even the most rational and stable persons among us.
Lazarus was Jesus’ friend, as were Mary and Martha; so their accusation to him that their brother would not have died had Jesus come earlier, affected him deeply. In one of the most poignant scenes in the Bible we see the Son of God weep. Jesus loved Lazarus and he weeps at the grave of his friend. Yes, this is understandable in Jesus’ humanity, but if anyone believed in the resurrection, it would have been Jesus. “Jesus wept.” This shows that grief is not unchristian.
Christ wept at the death of his friend. We too weep over the graves of those we love. On this All Saints’ Sunday as we remember not just the great Saints of the Church, but also the saints in our own lives, and we remember those we love who have died. The remembrance is bittersweet, full of the joy of the memories and the sorrow for the empty place in our lives from the loss. It is a sorrow that does not go away. Grief is bitter and traumatic and eventually it grows into mourning, but it is real and stays with you. The loss remains and so does the sorrow. We pray for the unbearable sense of loss to be changed into a sorrow and mourning we can at least bear. In this, as Christians, we are significantly aided by the truth of the resurrection.
Just prior to where our lesson from St. John’s Gospel begins Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus knew people would continue to die; the mortality rate is 100%. He taught that not only do we find death in the midst of life, but we find life in the midst of death. There really is no death, only passage to new wonders. Or to quote James Barrie’s Peter Pan, “To die will be such an awfully big adventure!” This is why Christians praise God even at the graveside of a beloved.
Still, this is not to deny the pain of separation. But we praise a God who truly knows our pain and our grief. We praise a God present in Jesus Christ who himself experienced loss and grief, who himself wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus, even knowing full well he was going to raise him. Death was no stranger to Jesus who also lost his father Joseph, and undoubtedly many others he knew, as we all have. In becoming human, God was and is with us in Jesus in a way that caused him to experience the depths of human emotions, especially pain and loss. Through my own experience I have come to recognize that grief and love are close companions and that grief is the measure of your love: if you didn’t love deeply, then you wouldn’t grieve deeply. It is a difficult price to pay, but one that is worth paying, because love is our greatest gift from the Creator. If God is love as Scripture tells us, then God knows grief.
God is not distant and reserved – God is close, caring, and compassionate. We are told in Scripture that the time is coming when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and the world will be so transformed that we will never have to live through physical death and grief. Yet in the here and now there are many tragedies, personal, and national, and international which may cause people to question their faith. In these cases people may plead, “Where is God?” The answer is, “With us.” God is there in the midst of suffering, present with those in pain, as one who learned the depths of human suffering while living among us. Realizing that Christ knows how it feels to experience the death of a loved one, we can perhaps realize that we have an empathetic God.
Jesus calls, “Come out!” Come out from the grave. Grief is real, but loss is not the end. Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go” to those around Lazarus, and he says the same to us. We are to be unbound, set free from the power of death. This is why All Saints’ Day is a joyful celebration with white vestments, triumphant music, and splendid prayers. The Saints we honor this day, that vast, innumerable, great cloud of witnesses were people of joy who acknowledged death but knew death had no power over them. They aren’t afraid to live with both the tragic and the glorious. They are not embarrassed to struggle with the dichotomy of life and death, good and evil, heaven and hell. The Saints are those who accept an adventuresome risk and know the great therapy for fear: to take God seriously. They are called forth into the dark unknown to reach a triumphant goal, the place of delight, free from fear’s control. Perhaps you have known some saints. Perhaps you know some now. Perhaps you are one of these saints, dwelling at least in part in that world of peaceful delight.
On this Feast of All Saints’ we remember those who have gone before and pray that we may be blessed to follow them. The Saints assembled in their glorious ranks are a promise of our happy return home, with hearts glad and eyes open to the wonder of God – and that is indeed something to celebrate, today and always!
Amen.
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