New Testament reading for Sunday 28 April 2013

Revelation 21:1-6           I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

"See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them as their God;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away."

And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."

Reflection    Screaming from an enormous flat screen TV were images of a firefight and a paralyzed Watertown, Massachusetts. I passed by quickly as I was leaving a skilled nursing facility where I had just visited a dying woman. All this on the heals of the Marathon bombing. I could not get to the parking lot fast enough. I sat in my hot car and let the tears have their way. 

Tears are grief’s companion. They tug at the pit of emptiness. They seep into the places where words fail and sense is stunned. Tears and questions, that’s all I had. Where is God in all this darkness? When will the new heaven and new earth be realized? And what does that mean anyway? 

I believe the essence of the age to come, the new heaven and new earth, is this. Every person realizes that God is with her or him, no matter what. And, every person recognizes God’s caring and comforting presence in “the other.” There is no one with whom God is not. When we all truly realize this we will have no need to kill one another.

As I read the apostle John’s description of his vision I can almost hear Martin Luther King’s deep gravelly voice proclaiming,”The home of God is with you. Nothing... I say....nothing can seperate you from God. I can seeeeee the new Church. I can seeeee the new Church and it is you. You, the people of God. And I hear a loud voice from heaven saying, “Know me, know me the way the bride and the bridegroom know one another. Know that we are one. Know that no thing, no darkness, no bombings, no firefights, no evil, nothing can seperate you from me in all eternity. You are my people. In you I live and dwell, I Am. It is done.”

This is a mighty truth. The troubles of this time will pass away when we enter the bridal chamber, when we consent to our mystical union in God. God is our intimate companion, partner, beloved. And it is God, the bridegroom, who will wipe away our every tear. “These words are trustworthy and true.”

Gospel text for Feast of All Saints Sunday 4 November 2012

John 11.32-44

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

Reflection

We preach this gospel in Lent. We preach this gospel at funerals. One of the reasons we preach this gospel is because it speaks to our grieving hearts when we have lost our physical relationship with someone we love because of illness, change in life situation or death. We preach this gospel not only to affirm that loving and weeping are integral qualities of the human experience but also to proclaim  that loving and weeping are fundamental revelations of Divine Presence.

When Jesus saw Mary and the Jews weeping, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved,” and he too began to weep. Jesus, the Word made flesh, the revelation of God present with us and for us, is united with us, with all of humanity, in our quintessential experiences of love and grief. Jesus personally experienced both the fullness of love and the emptiness of grief and was “deeply moved” as he shared these experineces with Mary and the others who were present at Lazarus’ tomb. And so Jesus reveals to us three things about grief. It is personal. It is universal. It is Divine. 

The thing about grief is that it feels so lonely. Emptiness and loss abound. Other people’s words and presence seem hollow and pointless. It is as if we are floundering in an ocean with no land in sight. All that we can do is weep. And, it is in our weeping that we are united with all of humanity and with God. In the depths of our desolation there is an unexpected seed of consolation. Sometimes we recognize it in the teary eyes of a friend come to sit with us in our sorrow. Sometimes we hear it in the words of a prayer offered to God on our behalf. Sometimes we feel it in the warmth of hands laid on our shoulders. However we may glimpse it, when we allow ourselves to be “deeply moved” we are intimately connected with all of humanity and with God. And when in the midst of our grieving we believe God is indeed present with us then like Lazarus we too are unbound and set free from the tomb of our isolation.