It was a rainy Saturday in the March of my junior year of
high school, and I was at work. At the time, I was working as a tour guide at
Longhorn Cavern State Park, and I was the even-hour tour guide. This meant that
I was leading hour-and-a-half long tours through the cave that left at 10 am,
12 pm, 2 pm, and 4 pm. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon and I was walking
back up to the visitor’s center from the cave entrance. Now, it wasn’t
storming, but the rain was definitely coming down at more than a drizzle. I
walked through the rain, wet and a little cold, and I looked up and saw my dad
standing under the awning of the visitor’s center. He was watching me, and
waiting for me to get up to him and out of the rain.
Dad coming to the cave while I worked was an uncommon
occurrence, but every once and while he would drop by with lunch or with a soda
from Sonic, so I didn’t think much of it. But as I drew closer to him, I could
tell that something was wrong. He wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t look like
himself. I asked what was wrong, and he drew me aside to tell me that Colin
Clark, a freshman in our high school band and a good friend of my brother
Korey, had just been in an accident. It was his first time to drive behind the
wheel since he received his permit, and even though he had done nothing wrong,
a driver on the other side of the road had overcorrected and caused a head-on
collision with his car. His dad was in critical condition and his mom was
bruised pretty badly but had suffered no major wounds.
Colin, though, had died almost instantly.
Now, Colin and I had not been very close friends, but we ran
in the same circles. I was good friends with many of his good friends, and I
had spent a good deal of time with him in band. But the one thing that I can
say without a doubt about Colin was that he was a good soul. Everybody loved
him, and I don’t think he met a person that he was not immediately friends
with. Even though we were not extremely close, I liked him a lot, because he
always let me play his base drum during football games.
He was a great person, and his absence in Burnet High School
was a tragedy.
I got another tour guide to cover my shift for the rest of
the day, and I went home to check on my brother and everyone else. Korey was
with his friends, so I went to check on some of my friends from band. I found a
number of them sitting on the porch of Colin’s house. Since Mr. Clark was in
the ICU and Mrs. Clark was with him, the house was empty, and my friends were
just sitting on the porch… not saying anything… just sitting.
So I pulled up and joined them, and we all just sat there
together. Every once and while someone would say something, and we’d talk for a
few minutes. But mostly, we just… sat.
In our Gospel text this morning, we read of a time when
Jesus and those closest to him were mourning the loss of a good friend. Lazarus
was a brother to two of the most important women in the Gospel narratives, Mary
and Martha, and he was a dear friend to Jesus. The Gospel writer tells us that
when the sisters wrote to tell Jesus of their brother’s illness, they sent him
word, saying, “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.” Lazarus, this man who has
died, was a man people referred to as “the one Jesus loves.” Can you imagine
someone in your life whom might fit this description for you? Aside from
Jessica, there are only really a small handful of people that I can think of
who are so close to me that they could be known as “the one whom Wes loves.”
This guy is important in Jesus’ life. This is someone close enough to be a best
friend, to be like a brother to the Messiah.
And now he’s dead.
As Jesus arrives, he finds a house full of people, for as
Scripture attests, “Bethany was a little less than
two miles from Jerusalem. Many Jews had come to comfort Martha and Mary after
their brother’s death.” Now, this is an important moment in the story, one that
is easily overlooked because it does not directly involved Jesus. You see, this
comfort is not what we understand comfort to be. Mary and Martha are engaging
in an ancient Jewish practice called Sitting Shivah, in which mourners spend
the seven days after the death of a loved one grieving. “Shivah” is the Hebrew
word for seven, so this practice literally means “sitting for seven.” During
this time of grief, the mourner receives guests who come from the surrounding
area to comfort them. These guests, in this instance, all of these Jews from
Jerusalem and Bethany, sit in silence with the mourners. They do not exchange
pleasantries; they do not even speak a word of greeting.
They… just… sit…
Finally, when the person or persons sitting shivah decide
they are ready, they can open conversation, usually centered around the life of
the deceased and how much they will be missed. In our story, Mary and Martha as
the mourners sitting shivah would lead the conversation, speaking and listening
when they needed words of comfort, and sitting in silence when they needed
silence.
We hear about this in other parts of Scripture as well. The
most famous instance of someone sitting shivah is in the Book of Job. After Job
has lost his children, his house, his slaves, and all of his property, three of
his friends come to comfort him. Hear now this tale from Job 2:
“When Job’s three friends heard
about all this disaster that had happened to him, they came, each one from his
home—Eliphaz from Teman, Bildad from Shuah, and Zophar from Naamah. They agreed
to come so they could console and comfort him. When they looked up from a
distance and didn’t recognize him, they wept loudly. Each one tore his garment
and scattered dust above his head toward the sky. They sat with Job on the
ground seven days and seven nights, not speaking a word to him, for they saw
that he was in excruciating pain.”
While Job is sitting shiva, his
friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar sit with him. They see the pain that their
friend is undergoing, and they know that no words of their own will fix it. So
they sit with him in silence, waiting for him to speak the first word.
Wrapped up in this idea of sitting
shivah are two important lessons for us today. The first lesson is for when we
have lost a loved one. Whether you have just lost someone in your life, or
whether you have been holding onto your grief for years, hear this message: it
is good to mourn. Israelite custom used to be that after the death of a loved
one, you could not do anything else but
mourn. Sitting shivah was a vital part of life, because it gave those hurting
the freedom for grief, the freedom to confront their pain and work through it.
Only after this period of mourning were you allowed to go to work, to cook, to
integrate back into the community. In our society, sitting shivah for seven
days might be a little too much to ask, but we do need to be able to mourn, to realize that life will not and
cannot go on as before, and that life will
be different.
Even when Jesus knew he would be
raising Lazarus from the dead in a matter of minutes, he still grieved his
death. He still wept. Friends, it is healthy to mourn.
The second lesson is for when we
are comforting those who have lost someone. I think that there is something
important about being able to sit in silence with those who are hurting. We
don’t have to pretend to know what the magic words are that will fix the
problem. We don’t have to stumble through empathetic apologies or clichéd
phrases that might seem comforting on the surface but can actually cause more
pain. We can just sit with those who are hurting. We can just be with those in pain.
This is the lesson that I learned
almost eight years ago while sitting on the porch of the Clark’s house, and
this is one of the lessons that we learn from our text today.
But this is All Saints Sunday, and
we are a resurrection people! This can’t be the end of our story! If we ended
with sitting shivah, it would not be complete. You see, this is not just a
story of mourning; it is a story of hope! We believe in a God that turns our
weeping into dancing, and we see both in this story.
After Jesus speaks with Martha and
Mary, after Jesus mourns with them, he has the people of Jerusalem move the
stone away from Lazarus’ tomb. He prays to God, and then commands Lazarus to
come out of the tomb. And the man who was dead, who had been for four days,
comes out, still bound in his funeral clothes.
What was impossible, became possible.
What was dead, came to life. And with it, Mary and Martha’s mourning turned
into rejoicing.
As we remember today those people
in our lives who have died, let us remember that death is not the final word.
We have nothing to fear in death, for we have a God who has conquered death and
brought to us new life. We can and should mourn for those who are no longer
with us, but we can also stand firm on the hope of Christ, the hope that tells
us that we will see our loved ones again.
It was almost a year ago that my
Aunt Florene died of stage 4-pancreatic cancer. Though I still mourn her loss,
I know that I will see her again and I rejoice that she is experiencing life
eternal with God. On this All Saints Sunday, I especially remember her, and the
way that Christ used her to impact my life in such an amazing way. I miss her
dearly, and I still feel the pain of her loss like a fresh wound, but I know
that this is not the end.
I know that I will see her again,
and Colin again, and all of those near and dear to me who have passed away. I
will see them again, for Jesus Christ has conquered the grave and through him
we have been given eternal life.
Thanks be to God!
So on this All Saints Sunday, may you remember that it is
important to mourn. When we lose someone dear to us, it is important to grieve
that loss and take time to work through that pain. May you remember that when
others are mourning, sometimes the best thing we can do is just sit in silence
with them. Sometimes this is the best way possible to comfort those in grief.
And may you remember that our God is a living God and we are a resurrected
people, and because of this, even when we experience the pain of death, we have
hope that we will see our loved ones again. Amen.
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