March 22 ~ The Love that Releases Us from the Ambiguity of Grief

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Ezekiel 37:1-14

Psalm 130

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Sermon by Joel Crouse

Regret can be one of the most toxic choices in our lives. It is often the thing that brings people to my office, or comes up when I am sitting with them in their homes or on their death beds. Regrets about bad choices. Regrets about paths not taken. Regrets about an unkind word that will never be forgotten. No parent or partner – or pastor - gets through life without carrying a load of regrets, a situation they wish they’d handled better, kindness they didn’t offer when it was most needed, a hug they didn’t give the last time someone walked out the door. “If only I had done this,” we say to ourselves. If only I hadn’t said that. If only I could have been better. If only.

In our gospel today, we hear one of those “if only” moments.

Jesus learns that this friend Lazarus is ill. He is the brother of those feuding sisters: Martha – working busily in the kitchen, angry at her sister -- and Mary -- sitting at Jesus’s feet, listening to him. They get word to Jesus to come, but he doesn’t come right away. By the time he arrives, Lazarus, we learn has been in the tomb for four days. Martha, never shy about speaking her mind, approaches him and says, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

And eventually, Martha gets word to Mary, who also goes to Jesus, weeping at his feet, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Seeing how everyone is grieving, because Lazarus was much loved, Jesus himself begins to weep. And people whisper among themselves: “See how he loved him.” And a few others begin to level blame. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

If only Jesus had done differently, Lazarus might still live.

It is human nature, as we know, to want to find something or someone to blame. To solve the mystery. To have an answer upon which we might lay our grief. Our brains do not like ambiguity. We don’t enjoy uncertainty.

And yet, learning to live with grief is about learning to find a measure of certainty in the ambiguity. To know that it is okay to wonder, “if only,” while coming to accept that there will be no answer. To know that closure is really just a word we like to use to make ourselves feel better – especially when we are witnesses to grief. But grief itself never closes up and goes away. It just becomes something else. Eventually, that something else is new life.

In a way, our gospel gives us an easy way out – a secret door to dodge the journey upon which all people who grieve must travel. Jesus steps in, and brings Lazarus back to life. “Lazarus, come out!” he calls. And we are told that the “dead man comes out, his face wrapped in cloth.” And Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go.”

Now there is great space in this gospel for our own understanding to fit – and for us to find comfort there as we wish. But the line that leaps out at me, as someone who has grieved deeply, are those final words that Jesus says: “Unbind him and let him go.”

“Unbind [the one you say you love so much] and let them go.”

For such a sad story – where a man has died, and his sisters and friends are inconsolable – those are peaceful words. They do not choke off the grief as frivolous, as if the friends and family of Lazarus did not believe enough. Or that they should be dancing at his tomb, because he was now with God. Jesus himself, after all, shared in their sadness. They do not discard the “if onlys” – Jesus never addresses them – he only urges the sisters to have faith, and to trust in the love that they have for their brother and the love that God has for them. That eventually it will be okay, because while it feels as if their love for him has been ripped away, it hasn’t. Real love, like the love that God has for each one of us, never dies and cannot be separated from us by a grave. And it takes time to reach that space where we come to understand that those we have loved and lost are not so far from us, just as God is not so far from us. At the tomb, Jesus tells them to “let Lazarus go,” to untether him from the constraints of their grieving so that they can reach that space of understanding for themselves.

It the midst of all those “if onlys,” it is certainty that Jesus places into the ambiguity of their sorrow. The certainty that releases them from finding someone or something to blame. That allows them to tell the story in a way that helps them heal. That certainty, that eventually it will be okay and new life will be found, even as the grief itself never ends.

I know this certainty to be true. I have seen it in my own family with a brother whose body lies in the belly of the ocean and a mother who lost the battle against colon cancer. I have seen it in many of your lives through the grief and loss that you have had to work through. The ‘if only’ moments were plentiful. The ambiguity of grief was real. And yet new life was found. The greatest gift of faith is this certainty that Jesus places into the ambiguity of our grief.

The gospel is full of wisdom and truth and certainties. This story of Lazarus is one of those precious stories that are often watered down into paper pop-up diagrams for children, proving the miraculous power of Jesus. Do not overlook the ‘if only’ moments and the ambiguity in this story. Because if we do, we will never know the true miracle of honest certainty that Jesus has to offer.

Amen