Br. Randy Greve, OHC
All Saints - Sunday, October 28, 2018
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44
To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.
“Jesus began to weep.” “God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
Sometimes everything just clicks. Sometimes there are moments when we are alive and happy in a way beyond the ordinary. I could list decades-worth of such moments from all over the world: certainly in this place, a beach in Texas, a bar in South Carolina, the side of a highway looking at Denali near Fairbanks, Alaska, a game park in Africa, over pasta in Assisi, a seminary chapel in Toronto…
The one thing they all have in common is that they were moments with people I love, in a beautiful place, with laughter and feasting, whether spiritual or physical. These moments were not just about the moment, they were glimpses of a home for which my soul longs. That’s why I didn’t want those times to end. I could have stayed forever. But they did end. We part ways, go back to ordinary reality. Sometimes we say we will keep in touch, but almost always we move on, lose contact.
Within the joy of the moment is already the sting of loss, waiting to remind me that it was only a moment. Communion in community begun and ended tells us something about what it is to be human. We were not made for goodbyes. Not originally. Goodbyes, whether in distance or death are not part of how the world was designed to work. It is tempting to rationalize our grief as inevitable, mask the reality of it with a shrug of the shoulder and an “oh, well.” But that is not the way we were designed to be, either.
We were designed for close, lasting, abiding communion – for moments that never have to come to an end. And so the reality of ending and distance and death forces upon us an alien experience that has invaded the Eden for which we were made and set us wandering into a foreign land.
The Bible is wonderfully honest and powerfully poetic about our plight. Within its narrative, we are caught between being kicked out of Paradise in one direction and the new Jerusalem of some scary apocalyptic future in the other. What to do? Do we bet everything on this life, cling to the tangible, to what seems secure or risk everything on a promise that sounds too good to be true? That is an important question in the Bible, but in the meantime, we are here.
The Bible’s answer to our present is to have us set up camp in the fierce and barren landscape of mortality and let it teach us about yearning and connection and grief and hope. If we dare do that, dare to encounter our present condition, at times we will weep. When our frailty and mortality are visited upon us and those we love, we let out all the contradiction and confusion through our eyes. Thus the Bible is loaded with weeping. From Hagar weeping for Ishmael, Abraham for Sarah, Jacob for Joseph lost and found again, Rachel for her children, Mary Magdalene at the feet of Jesus, and Jesus himself both here at the tomb of Lazarus and over Jerusalem as he enters on Palm Sunday, to name but a few.
“You have noted my lamentation; put my tears into your bottle; are they not recorded in your book?” Says the psalmist. We know, sometimes only vaguely and intuitively, but especially in times of pain and grief, that we were made for something more, some other home, and so, caught between Eden and new Jerusalem, we all stand and lift our lament at the tomb of all the mourning and crying and pain and death that has visited us. Perhaps God is saving our tears for something, recording their number for some future purpose. The story does not leave us disconsolate at the grave, of course, it beckons us home.
I don’t recommend interpreting the Revelation to John literally. It will lead to nothing but trouble, trust me. Rather, it is sufficient to say that God, in God’s own time and in God’s own way, will bring this world to a merciful and just end and usher in the kingdom of heaven on earth. As J.R.R. Tolkien has Frodo say in The Hobbit, “everything sad will come untrue.” The rest of the book you can do with whatever you like. And good luck.
Except the reading from chapter 21 we hear today. That is literal. Call me a fundamentalist, I don’t care, but it better be true, it better happen. I’ve staked my life on it being true. The truth declared in the reading is that of the moment when the kingdom is come, Satan is destroyed, God is among us, dwelling with us forever.
And what is the first thing that God does in this new dwelling-with-us world? Wipe every tear from our eyes! Of course. However my body is to be resurrected, I take my tears with me. My tears will go with me to the new Jerusalem. They are the way I am known. They are counted. They are the record of my willingness to live, even in the face of pain and death. And with my tears are most certainly my memories of where each came from, for whom each was shed, and then the joyful relief beyond words when I know that not one more will be added to my bottle, when we hear that every source of tears, every reason for the pain of separation and death, is gone forever.
Tears last as long as this world lasts, because as long as this world is, there will always be something to weep about. As the world is made new, so are our faces. There is no grander, bolder, more triumphant language in all the Bible than this – fitting for the greatest moment in the universe - to be finally and forever and perfectly home. And yet it is as intimate and tender as a teardrop on a grief- stained face.
The hints in Revelation and Hebrews point to something going on, which is what we celebrate today; that those who have gone before us in death are living witnesses of us and for us, and though in God’s presence and free from sin and pain and sorrow, still awaiting the end of tears just as we are. On that day, God, together with them, knowing every tear we have shed, wipes the last evidence of our earthly wandering, and then invites us all into a party, where with saints and heroes and family and friends and all who have welcomed the mercy of God, we enjoy at long last an endless moment – an endless alleluia of feasting, wine, laughter and memories tearlessly, painlessly, deathlessly, for ever and ever shared.
Amen.
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