Jesus said to her, “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. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-27)
I
phoned my friend Jerry this past week. We met years ago at the Lutheran/Roman
Catholic Dialogue, and I’ve always known him to be a good dude. In fact, if you
looked up “good dude” in the dictionary there should be a picture of Jerry.
He’s a US Navy veteran, a retired Philadelphia police officer, and a retired
religion teacher at several of the high schools in the Catholic Diocese of
Philadelphia (he was even principal at one of these schools) and has been a
Roman Catholic Permanent Deacon for the last thirty years. Jerry always used to
come out and represent Saint Anselm’s Parish at our annual ecumenical Easter
Sunrise Service. He once told a family who requested I speak at their loved
one’s funeral, “I know Pastor Owen. He’s a good man. He’d make a good
Catholic.” I guess to Jerry that was high praise.
But
Jerry has cancer. He’s been fighting it for a long time. Now he’s seventy-nine
years of age and getting really tired. And his doctors tell him the cancer drug
has stopped working.
That
stinks.
I
think I know how his family feels. They’re probably praying a prayer similar to
the one Jesus hears in the Gospel Lesson the RCL gives us for Lent 5 (John
11:1-45): “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” I’ll bet they’re praying Jesus shows
up in time—not to raise a soul to heaven but to give a body a little more time
here on earth. I wish I had the power with my own prayers to grant that time to
Jerry.
But
Jerry, who has been a minister of sorts all his life, is resting rather
serenely in the promise I printed above. “Those who believe in me,” Jesus says,
“even though they die, will live.” He’s cool with that.
This
story from the eleventh chapter of Saint John’s gospel always has me thinking
about the way we handle grief and loss. Both of Lazarus’ sisters confront Jesus
with the statement, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have
died.” They both play the “if” game. It’s the same one we often play ourselves.
If such-and-such had happened, or if such-and-such had not
happened, the ending would be different. But Jesus has no time for ifs. He
changes the question to “do you believe?” And—really—that’s the most
important question of all.
Our
faith asks us to believe and trust that God can give new life to things we
think are already dead and stinking. We worry about the future of Christianity
in America as we witness the rise of the “nones” (those with no religious
affiliation) or watch as Christian Nationalist nitwits profane our faith and
alienate the young by preaching intolerance as virtue. We fret about the future
of our country as we see one bad decision following another made by a
government of uniquely unqualified, corrupt, and rapacious nincompoops. We are
right to lose sleep over a war and its collateral damage. We grow increasingly
uneasy about rising prices and dwindling financial resources, and we sniff the
stench of decay at times over relationships, aspirations, and our own physical
and emotional health.
And
yet, Jesus asks us, “Do you believe?”
Despair
is, as Luther told us, a great and serious sin. But, perhaps, when we’ve
reached the point of thinking something is dead and in the grave, that the
raven is croaking “Nevermore,” we have not seen what God has the power to do. Doubt
is a cousin to despair, but it still admits a sliver of daylight. Doubt comes
when the Lord says to us, “Mortal, can these bones live?” and we answer, “O
Lord God, you know,” because we certainly don’t know ourselves.
Nevertheless, we admit a possibility. If we can admit the possibility we can
move from despair to doubt and from doubt to hope. Hope says what we long for
may not be so, but we will press on anyway as if it is. If we can move from
doubt to hope, in time we may make it all the torturous way to belief.
Belief says “I can’t see it or prove it, but I know in my soul the Lord
God loves me and all God has made. I know with unshakable faith God is in
control and God will make things anew—perhaps not the way I imagine, but
beautiful all the same. God can and will—should I be willing—use me to
the furtherance of God’s glorious will. This moment is temporary. God is
eternal.
I
wish my friend Deacon Jerry were well and strong enough to join us at sunrise
on Easter this year, but even if he is not, I know that he will be with us in
spirit. And I know someday we will all be whooping it up together in
celebration of an Easter morning that has no end.
Keep
believing. I’m so glad you stopped by!
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