At Easter it was not hard to think and to sing of the glory of God, was it? Not hard at all to imagine that God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world. Triumphant music played, pronouncements came forth about victory and power and honor to our God. It was not hard at Easter to dwell on the glory of a living God.
The lilies burst into bloom, the sun poured out its warmth, people filled the church, and everywhere there was an air of celebration and of expectation. At Easter we knew in a kind of euphoria the sounds and smells and sights of the glory of God.
With a little encouragement at the conclusion of last Sunday’s service I could even get you to say with me, Christ is risen, Alleluia, Christ is risen, Alleluia.
Today you say it, but it’s not quite the same. It doesn’t quite have the sparkle. But it could and it should. Because Easter is not a day; Easter is a season, a whole series of days. And in fact Easter is not just a season or a series of days, but Easter is a way of life. Easter is a way of believing, hoping, and thinking. Easter is a continuing doxology. We are the Easter people. We are those for whom the risen Christ is a continuing reality and a living presence. We are the Easter people.
And Easter people do more than go to church in a burst of enthusiasm once in a while. Easter people keep on seeing the glory of God.
Easter people do more than dress up in new clothes and hunt colored eggs and nibble the ears off chocolate rabbits, lots more. Easter people open light-filled eyes and see everywhere the glory of God. Easter people perk up alert ears and hear everywhere the glory of God. Easter people bring every experience, every thought, every activity into a framework that speaks to them of the glory of God.
What do I mean? What is this all about? I am saying that if you know who the risen Christ is and if you are living in fellowship with Him, then you can find in every human, experience, however painful, evidence of the goodness and the love of God. I am saying that behind every human experience, no matter how difficult or how demanding, there can be some way to know the bright shining glory of our God.
Now wait a minute ... isn’t that overstating if? Isn’t that going too far? Can it be true that the purpose and the greatness of God is visible in everything? Aren’t there some things so horrible and so final, so terrible and so destructive, that there is nothing in them that is positive, nothing that will lead us to perceive God? Aren’t there some things so thoroughly negative that God is completely obscured?
What about death, for example? What about that old ogre that keeps on stalking every last one of us, not resting until he has us in his grip? What about death? Can it be that even behind the experience of death we are going to see the glory of God? Can we really argue that this most awful fact of humanity is a window on to the greatness of our God? The glory of God? Where? .
Word came one day to Jesus about one of his friends, and it was not an encouraging word. It was, in fact, the kind of word every one of us knows will come one day, but we dread it, fear it, hope it will never arrive. Do you remember, as I do, when long distance phone calls were a rarity, something you did only in emergency situations, and the bell on that phone would ring lots longer than it did for just an ordinary call? And did you have scenes in your home like we did in mine when I was growing up: that long, long telephone ring, and everybody running from every part of the house, breathless? “Somebody has died, what’s happened?” It must have been something like that for Jesus ...
John 11:1-4: This is for the glory of God, but how? John 11:5-7, 17-21: Martha – my brother is dead, and where were you? Where is the glory in this? And then a little farther on, Mary, the sister, and she echoes the same thing, John 11:32. But now watch: where is the glory of God? Watch what Jesus feels and what He does. Catch the smell and the flavor, feel the atmosphere: John 11:33-44.
The key verses again: "Jesus said, ‘Take away the, stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ’Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?”’
And Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”
May I suggest to you this morning that before you see the glory of God in the experience of death a stone has to be removed? Before you can experience the glory of God, a stone must be rolled away. Something blocks us off, seals us off, from What God wants to do for us, and so a stone must be moved before we can experience God as glory.
Here at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus commands that the great heavy gravestone be moved. Gravestones served an important purpose. They kept out grave robbers. It was not so much in ancient times a matter of marking a grave and putting a name on it; no, it was more a matter of keeping the intruders out who would want to get to the keepsakes and the clothing and the jewelry that might have been buried.
And so the Lord of life commands that all the security systems be
defused. The Lord of life commands that all the things that protect us from seeing and dealing with the consequences of death, that those things be taken away so that he can work the work of life-giving without obstruction.
For you and for me this morning it isn’t a matter of gravestones as such. But we have erected some barriers too. We have erected some barriers and some protections. We have set up some stones that are going to have to be removed if we are going to experience all that God wants to do for us. .
For some of us the stone we have to remove is the stone of an unacknowledged grief. We are pretending that we are over it all. We are playacting that there isn’t any pain when we think of that one we have lost. We are posing as together and in good shape and all heated up, but the truth is that a great many of us live with unresolved grief, unacknowledged pain, and until we get hold of that and remove it, it is a stone which keeps us from finding the glory of God.
I had thought I was past my father’s death. So much had happened to me since his rather sudden decline and death, and I just thought I was on about the business of tackling a new job and adjusting to new circumstances and that I was doing just fine. All self-sufficiency and fixed up. But on Christmas morning a little over a year ago, I sat down in my chair at home and out of nowhere bawled like a baby. Three years after his death I finally got hold of the grief and the hunger that was in me, and let it happen, let the Spirit work in me and on me. And when that day was over, in some mysterious way I knew the grace and the glory of God. It was a stone and it had to be removed before I could see what God was doing and know His greatness. And His glory was and is for me all wrapped up in that verse that every Sunday School child learns right away, because it is the shortest one in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” There is the glory of God: that I can weep and not feel less than adequate, I can weep and know it’s OK to weep, because the very Son of God wept, because He who perceives and is in control of all things identifies with me and weeps. And there is the glory of God.
Or for someone else the stone might be anger, anger at God’s timing, anger at the injustice of death, anger that such bright promise was never fulfilled. Do you hear the touch of anger in Martha’s voice? If you had been here, my brother would not have died." Do you hear the searing pain in Martha’s echo? “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." For a good many of us the stumbling stone to be removed is anger, anger that God would allow this to happen, anger at a God who to us seems perpetually to be a day late and a dollar short.
On this Day of Remembrance I remember Douglas Greene, sitting with me one evening, speaking of his new faith, telling me all that he’d been through, lifting up possibilities, once he got past his illness. He would be back to work, he thought. He would be getting married, he knew, and with power and excitement he spoke of a Lord he had begun to know and of the things he might do for the Kingdom. And then a Sunday when a sick man came down this aisle to offer to a savior his faith and his love. But Doug was sick, and it didn’t seem a good idea to baptize him; and then Doug was in the hospital and we couldn’t … and then the word, Doug has gone. And my heart, I confess cried out, why now? Why now? Why not let the man complete what he has started out to do? Anger ... God, your timing is all wrong.
But that anger is a stone that had to be moved, and when it was, when we let go of our anger, then we beheld the glory of God as one, two, three, and more of Doug’s household came here and offered their faith and their commitment. Lazarus, come forth ... Lazarus, come forth, to new life and glorify God. The stone removed, the glory of God revealed.
But there’s something else too. Before the glory of God can be seen, even in death, not only are there stones which must be removed, but there is also a stink to be endured. If you want to see the glory of God, then you have in one way or another to face the stench of death and brave it, else you will not know God’s overcoming glory.
Simply put, death stinks. Oh, I am not getting into the business of biology here. I’m making a pronouncement about death itself. It stinks. It’s terrible. It seems unfair. It doesn’t seem right that after all those years of effort it would all end that way. Death stinks. Death is cruel. And the worst of it is that for a time it looks as though we have to do without God. When you are in the throes of death, it seems as though God has taken a most inconvenient vacation, and where is He when you need him?
Listen: Jesus said, ’Take away the stone’ ... and Martha said, Lord, by this time ...after four days, there will be an odor.’ The old King James Bible is much more direct; it says, Lord, after four days he stinketh. Ugh. But Lord, more than that, didn’t you hear me say, “If you had been here this would not have happened.” The stench of death is worsened by our feeling that God is gone, God just isn’t there when we need Him? My God, why have You forsaken me?
But Jesus said, “Believe and you will see the glory of God.” Believe and you will see the glory of God.
Before we do see the glory of God we have to reckon with the harsh reality of death and we have to learn from its injustice. The undertakers undertake to make bodies look good, denying death to a degree. We in our fastidiousness don’t even want to say "die". We say, “He passed” or we “She’s gone.” At the hospital they will hardly look you in the eye and tell you the truth. They hedge it around until you guess it, and we try every way we can to deny it. Death stinks and we don’t want to see that, don’t want to admit its harshness.
Death stinks because it deprives the world of those who have grown to the level of care that the world needs. A Jonathan Eugene, giving himself to young people, counseling, teaching, advising, giving scholarship support … that’s not easily replaceable. Why, Lord, must we lose that?
A Mary Susan Humphries, healing the sick, caring for the wounded, laboring on the psychiatric ward among the disturbed and the lonely … why, Lord, must we lose her?
Death stinks. And it seems as though God is absent … but, but … the last word is not yet. There is more. LAZARUS COME FORTH! Lazarus come forth; when we see how death cheats us of so much and so many that we value, we are then ready to see what God wants to give back to us, and how great is his love, and how glorious is his power.
Lazarus, come forth! That is a word not only for Lazarus, but for others too. The day will come when the glory of God will be shining again: Douglas come forth ... Jonathan come forth … Mary Susan come forth. I cannot put a date on it, I cannot tell you when or how, but on this I stake my life and my death: that such a day is coming, when death shall be no more, neither sorrow nor weeping, and the glory of God shall be revealed, and all flesh shall se it together.
First the stone, then the stink, but then at last, the glory of God. Christ is risen, alleluia.
