Lazarus, come out!
Apr. 7th, 2014 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrishansenhomeThis sermon is special for me. It's my one-hundredth sermon. Most have been preached at St. John the Evangelist, Larcom Street. Some were preached at St. Matthew's, my own parish church. I believe that the first few were preached at St. Luke-in-the-Fields at Integrity/New York Eucharists, back in the bad old days of the late 1980's and early 1990's. So I've been preaching for a quarter of a century, on and off.
No matter how long I have been preaching, it astounds me that a sermon that I think is ordinary, or even less than ordinary, is appreciated and remembered by the congregation. This week's sermon was like that.
I often get some ideas for starters from a weekly mailing I get from sermons.com, a commercial outfit that sends out teasers of sermons to preachers, hoping that they will pay exhorbitant sums to get the entire sermon toplagiarise er, use as inspiration. The beginning of this sermon was one of those teasers. There was no theology in this teaser, just the story. And I thought, "You know, I haven't used a joke to begin a sermon for years. Maybe it's time." So that's what I did. But, I wasn't overly thrilled with it.
But, you know, sometimes it's in the delivery. I wasn't planning to do this, but when I got to the punchphrase at the end of the joke, I shot out my hand and pointed at the churchwarden in the back and shouted it. People took notice. Some even laughed. And afterwards, at coffee, around 5 people said to me, "Great sermon." I'm not ordained, but sometimes they call me "Father". Oddly enough, even though I am of the largest order in the Church, the laity, I take a bit of satisfaction out of that.
Now that I have 100 sermons on my hard drive, I'm thinking that I might put them together for my own reference. I haven't published them all here. But do I have the courage to self-publish?
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
Three friends were discussing death and one of them asked: "What would you like people to say about you at your funeral?"
The first of the friends said: I would like them to say, He was a great humanitarian, who cared about his community.
The second said: I want them to say: He was a great husband and father, who was an example for many to follow.
The third friend said, I would like them to say, "Look, he's moving!!"
Death and taxes. The two inevitable facts of life. We are born, we grow up to work and pay taxes, then we die. Benjamin Franklin was the first person to make that observation, but Jesus, of course, had something to say about both. The story of Lazarus is Jesus's teaching on death.
I must say that it's a riveting story. If any of you have seen the Last Temptation of Christ, this passage was beautifully recreated, with Jesus, weeping at the death of his friend, calling Lazarus out of the tomb. Suddenly, at the mouth of the tomb, Lazarus appears covered in cloths like a mummy, and his sisters along with the crowd gasp and scream with delight. He is unbound, and walks free. Look! He's moving!
Lazarus is mentioned once more in John's gospel, in passing, and then drops out of history.
But, of course, there are lots of traditions that have grown up around his later life. He is variously cited as a bishop in Cyprus or France, and his relics are scattered all over the Orthodox and Western Christian world.
But going back to the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ", we see that Saul (later to become Paul) kills Lazarus to demonstrate that Jesus's power over death is limited. The man whom Jesus raised will suffer death yet again.
Can you imagine how Lazarus might feel as he approached a second death? It is bad enough (although inevitable) that we will suffer death once. How awful it must have been to have suffered death, been raised from the dead back to life, then suffer death yet again? A Biblical moment like that in the movie "Groundhog Day", where not even death released the star from the duty to repeat Groundhog Day, every day, forever.
I am not able to tell you what will happen after death. No one alive can do that. As Lazarus was the only person who had ever been raised from the dead, tradition has it that he never again smiled, since the sight of the dead condemned to hell over the four days of his death haunted him for the rest of his life.
The first thought I take from this story is that there is nothing that is impossible with God. Recently, a man in the United States who had been pronounced dead and taken to the funeral home for embalming and burial was on the point of being heaved onto the embalmer's table when he sighed and started moving around. You can imagine the fright and alarm among the embalmers when this happened. It can only be surpassed by the fright of the man who was about to be cut open for embalming.
Was this a miracle? Perhaps. There are many people who fear that this will happen to them, and that they will wake in their tombs and find it impossible to escape. The founder of Christian Science had her own tomb provided with a telephone and a line running to the local telephone exchange. In the case of premature burial, she would be able to contact the outside world and get help.
Real life, however, is much different. The man who awoke on the embalming table returned to the hospital, and was cared for until he died for real a few weeks later. I'm certain that the doctors took much more care in pronouncing him dead the second time than they did the first time.
The second thought I have is that our core belief in eternal life comes from this passage. Jesus says that he is the resurrection and the life. Simply believing in him will grant eternal life to the believer even after death.
This is a hard belief. To those who are left behind death is final. Seeing your loved one in death does not necessarily bring hope for a future life for them, or for you. Jesus's words in this Gospel give us the hope that our experience of death denies us.
A question that we might ask ourselves is: Although we did not see Lazarus brought back to life, does the Gospel story move us enough that we live with the hope of eternal life?
It is a great gift, this hope of eternal life. In the Gospel Jesus offers us that hope, that even when we die, we shall live.
Therefore to the One who has shown us the hope of eternal life by raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus Christ, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
No matter how long I have been preaching, it astounds me that a sermon that I think is ordinary, or even less than ordinary, is appreciated and remembered by the congregation. This week's sermon was like that.
I often get some ideas for starters from a weekly mailing I get from sermons.com, a commercial outfit that sends out teasers of sermons to preachers, hoping that they will pay exhorbitant sums to get the entire sermon to
But, you know, sometimes it's in the delivery. I wasn't planning to do this, but when I got to the punchphrase at the end of the joke, I shot out my hand and pointed at the churchwarden in the back and shouted it. People took notice. Some even laughed. And afterwards, at coffee, around 5 people said to me, "Great sermon." I'm not ordained, but sometimes they call me "Father". Oddly enough, even though I am of the largest order in the Church, the laity, I take a bit of satisfaction out of that.
Now that I have 100 sermons on my hard drive, I'm thinking that I might put them together for my own reference. I haven't published them all here. But do I have the courage to self-publish?
April 6, 2014 Fifth Sunday of Lent
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10AM.
First Reading: Ezekiel 37:12-14
Epistle: Romans 8:8-11
Gospel: John 11:3-7,17,20-27,33-45
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10AM.
First Reading: Ezekiel 37:12-14
Epistle: Romans 8:8-11
Gospel: John 11:3-7,17,20-27,33-45
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
Three friends were discussing death and one of them asked: "What would you like people to say about you at your funeral?"
The first of the friends said: I would like them to say, He was a great humanitarian, who cared about his community.
The second said: I want them to say: He was a great husband and father, who was an example for many to follow.
The third friend said, I would like them to say, "Look, he's moving!!"
Death and taxes. The two inevitable facts of life. We are born, we grow up to work and pay taxes, then we die. Benjamin Franklin was the first person to make that observation, but Jesus, of course, had something to say about both. The story of Lazarus is Jesus's teaching on death.
I must say that it's a riveting story. If any of you have seen the Last Temptation of Christ, this passage was beautifully recreated, with Jesus, weeping at the death of his friend, calling Lazarus out of the tomb. Suddenly, at the mouth of the tomb, Lazarus appears covered in cloths like a mummy, and his sisters along with the crowd gasp and scream with delight. He is unbound, and walks free. Look! He's moving!
Lazarus is mentioned once more in John's gospel, in passing, and then drops out of history.
But, of course, there are lots of traditions that have grown up around his later life. He is variously cited as a bishop in Cyprus or France, and his relics are scattered all over the Orthodox and Western Christian world.
But going back to the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ", we see that Saul (later to become Paul) kills Lazarus to demonstrate that Jesus's power over death is limited. The man whom Jesus raised will suffer death yet again.
Can you imagine how Lazarus might feel as he approached a second death? It is bad enough (although inevitable) that we will suffer death once. How awful it must have been to have suffered death, been raised from the dead back to life, then suffer death yet again? A Biblical moment like that in the movie "Groundhog Day", where not even death released the star from the duty to repeat Groundhog Day, every day, forever.
I am not able to tell you what will happen after death. No one alive can do that. As Lazarus was the only person who had ever been raised from the dead, tradition has it that he never again smiled, since the sight of the dead condemned to hell over the four days of his death haunted him for the rest of his life.
The first thought I take from this story is that there is nothing that is impossible with God. Recently, a man in the United States who had been pronounced dead and taken to the funeral home for embalming and burial was on the point of being heaved onto the embalmer's table when he sighed and started moving around. You can imagine the fright and alarm among the embalmers when this happened. It can only be surpassed by the fright of the man who was about to be cut open for embalming.
Was this a miracle? Perhaps. There are many people who fear that this will happen to them, and that they will wake in their tombs and find it impossible to escape. The founder of Christian Science had her own tomb provided with a telephone and a line running to the local telephone exchange. In the case of premature burial, she would be able to contact the outside world and get help.
Real life, however, is much different. The man who awoke on the embalming table returned to the hospital, and was cared for until he died for real a few weeks later. I'm certain that the doctors took much more care in pronouncing him dead the second time than they did the first time.
The second thought I have is that our core belief in eternal life comes from this passage. Jesus says that he is the resurrection and the life. Simply believing in him will grant eternal life to the believer even after death.
This is a hard belief. To those who are left behind death is final. Seeing your loved one in death does not necessarily bring hope for a future life for them, or for you. Jesus's words in this Gospel give us the hope that our experience of death denies us.
A question that we might ask ourselves is: Although we did not see Lazarus brought back to life, does the Gospel story move us enough that we live with the hope of eternal life?
It is a great gift, this hope of eternal life. In the Gospel Jesus offers us that hope, that even when we die, we shall live.
Therefore to the One who has shown us the hope of eternal life by raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus Christ, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
