This sermon is the first of the "Casual Sermons" Series, and was delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen (this time) to Unfinished Community on Sunday, March 19, 2023. It draws from the gospel of John, chapter 11, verses 1-44.
Friends, siblings in Christ, I have to tell you something. I say it with a heavy heart, a heart that has seen some things lately, but a heart full of love nonetheless.
My friends, I’m really worried about us. About the church.
Not one specific church, not even one specific denomination; though from the Catholics and their scandals, to the painful rending of the Methodists, the Baptists, and even our own denomination, there are definitely more than a few issues on that level.
No, I’m worried about the entire church. All of us.
You see, and I don’t want to scare you unnecessarily, but I think we might be dying.
And I think that might not necessarily be a bad thing.
This isn’t a new idea of course; I actually preached this exact sermon several years ago for the Classis of New Brunswick, but the story of Lazarus has been on my mind for a while now. But it came back into my mind, as it often does, when I stumbled across this one little line, from a random NPC sitting in a nondescript corner of an old game, and it really, properly got me thinking again.
“I know I’m going to die,” that character said while standing in the middle of an actual apocalypse, “but I just wanted a good death.” A good death. That one little line got me to thinking:
What is a good death? What does it mean to die well? What might it mean for a church to die well? What might it mean for the church to die well? As a preacher, my instinct is to try to answer these questions by going back to the Word. And, within the Word, it seems to me that, if we’re going to ask a question about what it might mean to die, then we ought to look for a situation where someone did just that. It may be a bit overused at times, but maybe the story of Lazarus can shed some light on this question.
I have to admit, I’ve always had a bit of a morbid fascination with looking at this story through the eyes of Lazarus himself. The story is written so that you can observe the glory of Jesus, but have you ever wondered what this whole encounter must have been like for Lazarus? His experience had to be phenomenally weird and, when you start looking at it from his perspective, the whole thing starts to get weird in a hurry.
This guy, Lazarus of Bethany, has a preexisting relationship with Jesus. A good relationship. When the word comes down that Lazarus is ill, the disciples don’t refer to him by name, they just say “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” And Jesus IMMEDIATELY knows who they’re talking about. Lazarus knows Jesus, and Jesus clearly loves him. No names required.
But…we don’t see Lazarus elsewhere in the text. Not in the book of John before this point, not in any of the other gospels; not at all. You’d think there’d be something, if they were that close. If Lazarus was such a big deal to Jesus, surely he’d be right up there with the rest of the disciples. Surely, he whom Jesus loves would have been by Jesus’ side the whole time.
Peter who, am I right?
But there’s no mention of Lazarus before this point. Not so much as a word. After, however, we see Lazarus in the next chapter…and that’s it. In fact, the last clear word in the Bible on Lazarus of Bethany is in John 12:10-11: “So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.”
Now, some of our Orthodox and Catholic siblings hold in their traditions that Lazarus managed to escape this death sentence, but the truth is that we have no real archeological or historical account of this. All we really have to work from is what we see in John.
Lazarus, who was super-duper close to Jesus but for some reason didn’t travel with him, work with him, or ever do anything of mention in the text up to this point, dies and is resurrected by Jesus. Then, shortly thereafter, the priests now want to kill not only Jesus but Lazarus too, and it’s all because OF HIM. Because of Lazarus. The Greek here is δι᾽ αὐτὸν, by the way. It doesn’t say they want Lazarus dead because of Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus specifically, nor does it specifically say that this is because he was restored to life, but just because of him. Lazarus. The individual, not necessarily the resurrective act.
So, in less than a chapter, Lazarus has gone from “Who?” to “Jesus’ bestie” to “marked for death on account of being a gigantic thorn in the side of the chief priests”
What happened to Lazarus that caused that kind of serious character development?
Well..to put it simply, he died.
Both historically and exegetical, we tend to hear Jesus’ words on the subject as intrinsically self-proving and self-defining. He says ““This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” and the lesson we all too often take away from this is that Lazarus’ death was so that Jesus could basically show off. Lazarus died to prove that Jesus is capable of bringing his butt right back to the mortal world where everyone could see it, physics be damned.
We read that this being “for God’s glory” means a demonstration of divine power. A show of strength.
But what if it is actually telling a different story?
What if Lazarus’ death isn’t proclaiming Jesus’ raw, unbridled power, but the necessity of death? What if God never intended to show power, but to show what happens when we find, even embrace, a good death in Christ?
Jesus says it right there in the middle of the passage, in a verse that is often quoted, but perhaps just as often misunderstood:
“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.”
The life we have through Jesus comes on the other side of death. We believe, but we still die. Our faith leads to death, our path goes through there. We can’t avoid it. To follow Jesus is to walk directly into death, but to somehow come out the other side. Like Lazarus, we come back out the other side changed; not the inexplicably beloved unknowns who were sick unto death, but the followers who stand with Jesus to the point where we are invited to a shared space on the cross, our pursuit of God’s justice putting us directly beneath the powers that oppress and oppose.
When we believe in Jesus, even though we die, we still live. And everyone who lives and believes in Jesus, can hear Jesus’ words calling us to a new life on the other side of that death.
What is perhaps to me the most striking thing in the resurrection of Lazarus, what really seals this for me, is Jesus’ command itself. Whenever he heals, Jesus tends to use a lot of passive expressions: καθαρίσθητι, for example, in Matthew 8: “be made clean.” Not really speaking to one person in particular, simply commanding a thing to be.
The interesting thing about passive commands like this is that they don’t require agency. A passive command is Jesus commanding forces of healing itself; the person being healed is immaterial. Their agency isn’t a factor, because Jesus is commanding the healing to take place.
But with Lazarus, he doesn’t say “be resurrected!” Instead, he says “δεῦρο;” a straight up, active voice command directed to Lazarus himself.
This, to me, is huge. Unlike other targets of the healing, who were passive subjects of healing, Lazurus has the agency of choice in this situation. The resurrection here doesn’t hinge on powerful forces that only Jesus controls, but on whether or not Lazarus chooses to come out at all.
Lazarus gets to choose to leave behind the things of death. Lazarus has the choice to listen to the call of Jesus, set aside his grave clothes, and step out into the sunlight as a resurrected, renewed person, ready to follow Jesus. Or, to stay behind, in a grave built upon all the things he used to be.
I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to anyone in this room when I say that the church is dying. Not our church specifically, or even our denomination, in particular, but the entire church as a whole. Fewer and fewer people are coming in our doors, Christian nationalism in America has all but eliminated any shred of social credibility we might once have had, and more and more people are looking to the church and realizing that whatever it is that we are now, they can do without. Every day, more and more churches close their doors. Youth programs that used to number in the dozens are now lucky to see one or two even show up. Our congregations age, budgets tighten, and the sickness is following us all unto death.
Just like Lazarus we, who Jesus loves, are ill.
And the grave is our destination.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us, not really. We all know it, we’ve all seen writing on the walls; Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin. God has numbered the days of our kingdom, and brought it to its end.
But unlike Belshazzar, we walk in the footsteps of Christ.
Our death doesn’t come like the Chaldean king of old. Like that unnamed character in the corner of that digital sanctuary, ours can be a good death. In Christ, we can choose to be resurrected. To listen to the command of Christ, and hear the word of God calling us to come out.
We can’t avoid the death that’s coming. But our path goes through death, not to it. Our faith extends beyond death, overcomes death, becomes stronger in death. Our lesson from Lazarus, not just as individuals, but as leaders in the church, is that we need to face the death that’s coming. Not try to avoid it, not build up programs to be a bulwark against decline, not go out in search of that innocuous peace that is the absence of conflict, rather than the presence of justice. We are not called to seek mealymouthed compromise or avoid involving ourselves in God’s work of justice in the world out of the risk that it might offend people. We will never be able stave off death through good marketing, or broad demographic appeal, recasting Jesus with a skateboard and a backward hat rather than a whip of cords.
For the church we are, the church we have become, there is nothing before us but death.
Instead, we need to reckon with the fact that our Christmas season ends at the cross; following Jesus must lead to death. The death of all those things in us, of us, and about us that aren’t of Jesus.
And once we’ve followed Jesus to the grave, after the last bell has ring, after the last door has closed, after the last aged donor has taken their money and left, and the lights have gone out in the sanctuary for the last time; in that last, lingering moment of silence, listen then for the word of the Lord, like the whisper after the storm, calling us to leave behind the things of the grave. Calling us to leave behind the sickness that brought us to this place. Calling us to leave behind our, pettiness, our bitterness, and our fear. Calling us to leave behind our misogyny, misgendering, misgivings, and misrepresentation of the gospel that calls for all of us to be free, not just those on one side of a border.
Listen for the word of the Lord, calling us to leave behind the graveclothes of indifference and neglect, borne of our own fear; to leave behind the questions of “what if no one comes to church,” and to a start asking what would happen if we really and truly came ourselves.
Listen to the silence. The silence of the voices that used to be among us; our black siblings, our LGBTQIA siblings, our foreign siblings, our refugee siblings, and all the rest of God’s children who walked away from us because they couldn’t stand the pain of being torn between the love of God and the oppressive silence of the well-meaning yet fearful church.
Listen to the silence, dark and forbidding as the grave, and hear the word of the Lord, calling to us in love, and excitement at the work to come.
“Come out” Let’s get to work.
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