Grace in Life, Death, and Eternal Life: I Kings 17: 17-24; Selections John 11
[SLIDE 1] The other day, I was reading an article from Polly Green in a magazine about aging. [SLIDE 2] She took up surfing at the age of 50 and thoroughly enjoyed it. She recounts a conversation with a man on the beach while she was sipping her morning tea. He was an older gentleman looking at her in her surfing gear and asked, impolitely, how old she is. Her reply was 52. She writes, “His jaw dropped, and he said, ‘I thought you were seventy. You have really bad skin!’” She adds that this is not the first time this has happened. So instead of being bothered by it, she decided to start telling folks she was 85 so they think she’s doing incredibly well for her age.
[SLIDE 3] We have a bit of an obsession in society with looking and being young. It’s especially bad for women, but I’m starting to see the aging angst catch up with middle-aged men as well. I think, perhaps, that’s a wrong focus for us. Obsessing over youthfulness is not the direction we need to go as God’s faithful. Now you don’t have to have a praise break every time a new wrinkle or grey hair shows up, but God is a God of life, wisdom, and growth. We see in our lessons for today that God gives us grace and strength in life, death, and in eternal life.
[SLIDE 4] We read in I Kings that the widow who has helped Elisha loses her son to an illness. He was a young son, and as many would say, too young to die like that. The even greater unfairness of it is that he and his mom survived the famine in the land. It looks like God brought them through the famine just to cruelly snatch her child away with little explanation. But our God is a God of life, not of death, not of misery and suffering. We suffer and struggle in a broken world, but God is the presence of hope in spite of that. Though death doesn’t care about youth or agedness, God can bring life in any situation.
Here, God restored the widow’s son to life. Too often we focus on turning back the clock, forgetting that every minute is another gift of life from God. Do we fill up each moment of life with the goodness of God, or do we constantly search for the things in the past that have come and gone? God calls you to live life here and now, not meander back to places you’ve been already. If you live in a youth that has passed and time that is gone, you will miss all of the blessings and good work God has for you now, when you are wiser in life to do them.
[SLIDE 5] In our Gospel lesson, we read the heart-rending story of how Lazarus dies. This family is familiar in the gospels, providing us the stories of Mary and Martha, the anointing of Jesus’s feet, and here, the resurrection of Lazarus. Now Lazarus was not one of those who died for a split second then was revived. No, when Jesus came to town, Lazarus had been dead for four days. He was not just dead; he was very dead. And yet Jesus called him out of the tomb as if death was nothing at all and had no power whatsoever.
Martha and Mary, I’m sure, were a bit bothered by Jesus. Though Facebook and Instagram didn’t exist in those days, all sorts of news and gossip travelled faster than I would think is possible. So I am convinced that Mary and Martha knew Jesus delayed his journey to them allowing Lazarus to die. Perhaps that is why Mary stayed inside. Martha seems to have just been trying to make sense of it all. What they witnessed, though, was the greatest testament to God’s power to bring life from death in the whole of the Bible.
[SLIDE 6] It’s also a bit of a foreshadowing of Jesus’s work on earth. Some churches get a bit to hyper-focused on the cross and the crucifixion. Christ’s work here on earth was not to die, but to bring life and hope to a humanity that didn’t have that. The gift of grace we often hear about isn’t a bloodied instrument of torture, it’s an empty tomb where hope for humankind walked out alive and holy bringing life and the hope of eternal life to us.
So, the question to us is this: if God is a God of life and hope, then what do we do with our lives while we are here? Like Elisha, like Jesus, we are to bring life for those who feel stuck in the tomb, or hopeless. There are a few ways we can do this. First, when the widow’s young son died, Elisha advocated for him before God. I spent Friday at a small conference in Norcross. It was for advocates, clinicians, and professionals working to help those who have experienced family violence and domestic violence. One of the things we talked about was this idea of coercive control where an abuser exerts a form of mental control over the victim, which makes it hard for the victim to advocate for herself.
[SLIDE 7] Just like these advocates speak up for and help these women who are victimized by someone who should love them, we must be advocates in our own communities. Many struggle to speak for themselves, fight when needed, and stand up in difficult situations. Many may be too tired or sick. We have a calling to give a voice to those who are weary or voiceless, just like Elisha pleaded the widow’s cause before God until life was restored to the young boy.
[SLIDE 8] We must also be agents of healing and hope just as Jesus was in the Gospel lesson. There are many joy-filled parts of the job of a pastor. I love dedicating a child to God. I love baptisms, weddings. I especially love celebrating the Lord’s Supper each week with its powerful reminders. But my absolute favorite thing is visiting with folks and helping them feel comforted, or smile, or even laugh in tough situations. Sharing in a funny and uplifting story or reminder, can make the dreadful a little easier in life.
Each of us has the ability to minister and comfort or even bring hope in a dark situation when someone needs it. Some of that comes from our ability to be present here and now. If we live in the past and don’t look to the work of now and tomorrow, then we’ve gained all this wisdom for nothing. Both Jesus and Elisha made it a point to be present in the immediate moment with the widow and with the sisters when they were grieving and hurting. The widow was stuck in the past believing that God still intended to kill them all for past sins, and Martha looked too far into the future talking about the last day. In both instances God sent a prophet and a Savior to remind that God can work in the here and now to bring hope and life in dark places.
Our calling in life is to bring a little light and a little hope into someone’s life. But also, we must be willing to embrace the hope and life encouragement that others bring to us. In life we are sometimes the strong one lifting up and helping others, but sometimes we are the vulnerable ones who need an Elisha or Jesus to comfort and get our lives back on track.
[SLIDE 9] This week, I had the displeasure of…yet again…straining a tendon in my foot and heading back into the boot. Thursday night I was a bit miserable, but a good friend of mine, knowing how annoyed I was, came over and brought his two incredibly sweet dogs to visit. One hour of sitting at the dog park and playing with those two sweet, fluffy dogs made my struggle much, much lighter.
[SLIDE 10] Many of us cringe when we think of aging. The idea of wrinkles, grey hair, getting a bit slower, and all the jokes about age doesn’t exactly excite us. But as we live each day here on earth, we can find ways to build a closer, better relationship to the God who loves us through the Savior whose suffering and power over death gives us hope and life. As we grow, gain experience, and hopefully grow in wisdom, may we use what we gain to share that hope and life with others in our world. There are people all around us who are vulnerable. May we be the light of hope that they need to be made whole.
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