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Robert
Lyon is a retired clergyman who divides his time between
Guelph, Ontario and Melaque, Mexico. He taught high
school English, Latin, Greek and science, and served
as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve,
retiring in the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. His latest
book, Don't Throw Out Your Bible, is now
in print.
Listen to an audio version of this essay:
When
I was a young lad, the first thing I’d look at when
I picked up a newspaper was the comics, or as we called
them at home, the funnies. These days, the first thing I
look at is the obituaries. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes
(7:4) says, “The heart of the wise is in the house
of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth;”
so maybe that means I’m wiser than I used to be. Or
if not wiser, at least when more and more often the obits
have names of people I know, I’m grateful every time
I don’t find my own name there.
Except
that, one day about twenty years ago, I was reading the
obits in the Globe and Mail and, to my astonishment,
I did find my own name there! Not a recent death, either,
but an In Memoriam notice. It seems that back in 1833, in
the town of Perth, Ontario (or Pairth, as its founding Scots
would have called it) a foolish young twenty-year-old law
student by the name of Robert Lyon was the last person in
Canada to get himself killed in a duel. Adding insult to
injury, the girl married the other guy.
If
you’ve been reading obituaries for any length of time,
you’ll have noticed some changes over the years. Nobody
“dies” anymore; they just “pass away”.
And funerals have become “celebrations of life”.
Somehow those changes are supposed to blur the reality.
And you’ll often see a statement that, at the request
of the deceased, no service will be held. Or, Harry’s
friends will gather to remember him at such-and-such a date
and time at the nineteenth hole at such-and-such a country
club. Some years ago I attended a memorial gathering for
an atheist; on the back of the program there was a cross-word
puzzle that she had started but never finished, and the
gathering began with an announcement that if we were bored
with whatever else was going on there we could spend the
time finishing it for her.
As
our Western culture becomes more and more secular, we’re
seeing a shift in how people view death. There’s a
reluctant acceptance of death – because our sanity
demands such an acceptance. But, curiously, there’s
not much fear. Not because secular people feel at peace
with God, nor even because they think we’ll all “get
there”, whatever “there” may be. But simply
because they see death as The End – because they really
think there’s No One There. Certainly they feel grief
– people will always feel grief – but this is
a grief without hope; it’s the grief that follows
a loss that cannot and will not be repaired.
St
Paul calls that view of death “uninformed”.
“Brethren,” he says “we do not want you
to be uninformed about those who are asleep, so that you
may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since
we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, God
will bring with Jesus [when he returns] those who have fallen
asleep in him. The dead in Christ will rise first. Then
we who are alive. And so we shall be forever with the Lord.”
Paul describes Christians who have died as being “asleep
in Jesus” because the resurrection of Jesus means
that, though their lives have been interrupted, they are
not over. There is still more to come.
And because there is more to come, the loss that we grieve
when a person dies is not without repair. It will indeed
be repaired – when Jesus returns. So we grieve, but
we do not grieve like those who have no hope. Our hope is
that “we shall be forever with the Lord. Therefore,”
says Paul to those who are grieving, “comfort one
another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18).
What
Paul is doing here is grief counseling. It’s not just
“encourage one another”, as some of the modern
translations say, but “comfort one another.”
Paul is deliberately using the same word that the Greek
translation of the Old Testament uses at Isaiah 40:1, where
it says, Parakaleite, parakaleite, “Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, says your God. Speak comfortably to the heart
of Jerusalem and cry to her that her suffering has ended.”
The resurrection of Jesus, and the hope of believers’
participation in that resurrection, is the chief comfort
that God offers to those who are in grief at the loss of
a loved one.
Now,
what we get from Paul as a pastoral-theological statement,
we get from John as an actual event in the life of Jesus
and some friends, including a stinky corpse by the name
of Lazarus (John 11). They’re an interesting family
– Mary, Martha, and Lazarus – two sisters and
a brother, close friends of Jesus, living in Bethany near
Jerusalem. Jesus is off somewhere preaching, and the sisters
send word to him that their brother Lazarus is sick, but
while Jesus is on his way back, Lazarus dies.
When
Martha comes out to meet Jesus, she says, “If you
had been here, my brother would not have died.” When
Mary meets Jesus a while later, she says, “If you
had been here, my brother would not have died.” It’s
a curious combination of their faith in Jesus and also a
hint of reproach, and it’s not hard to figure out
what the sisters had been saying to one another at home.
But I think Jesus delayed his return deliberately. When
he first learned that Lazarus was sick, he said, “This
sickness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of
God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
So it seems that Jesus intended to use Lazarus’ death
as a sign.
But
it’s important to recognize that this sign is not
something Jesus staged to create a teaching moment. This
is a real family, they’re friends of Jesus, their
grief is real, and Jesus feels that grief so personally
that John tells us, in the shortest verse of the Bible,
“Jesus wept” (11:35). Now, there are some critics
who suggest that the Lazarus story never really happened,
but that John invented it. But the relationships and emotions
here are too authentic, too poignant, for a made-up story;
and some of John’s details are so off-theme that a
writer would not have included them unless they had actually
happened. It’s in the thick of these relationships,
emotions, and irrelevant details that Jesus is going to
perform this last sign.
So
Jesus assures Martha, “Your brother will rise again.”
But to Martha, that’s not news. A whole lot of Jews
in the first-century believed that; among the Pharisees
it was standard doctrine. So Martha says, “Well, yeah,
I know that he’ll rise again in the resurrection on
the last day.” And that’s when Jesus drops the
real news: “I am the resurrection and the life.”
Now,
Martha has been around Jesus long enough to know the correct
response: “Yes,” she says, “I believe
that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who is supposed
to come into the world.” John reports Martha’s
statement because it is correct, but Martha herself does
not yet fully understand it. How do I know that? Because
when they go to the tomb, and Jesus says, “Roll away
the stone,” Martha protests, “Oh, I don’t
think that’s such a good idea. He’s been in
there four days already, and (as the King James version
says quaintly) by now he stinketh.” To which Jesus
replies, “Didn’t I tell you that if you’d
just believe me you’d see the glory of God?”
That’s when Jesus calls Lazarus to “Come out”,
and some of the onlookers have to unwrap him and set him
free. And John tells us that many of the Jews who had come
with Mary and saw what Jesus did, believed in him.
Now,
that was all very well for Mary and Martha and Lazarus.
If we were there, we would have been supremely happy for
them. But John says that the raising of Lazarus was a sign.
A sign of what? Of Jesus’ compassion? OK. Of his power
over the natural world? OK. Perhaps an intimation of his
divinity? OK. But he had already sufficiently demonstrated
all those things. Well, you might say, perhaps it foretells
his own resurrection. But he doesn’t have any need
to foretell it; in just a few more days he’s actually
going to do it. So how is the raising of Lazarus a sign?
Or to ask the question a better way: What is it a sign of
?
That
question niggled at me for years. And then one day, the
penny dropped. Go back to Paul’s first letter to Thessaloniki,
where he says: “We do not want you to be uninformed
about those who are asleep, so that you may not grieve as
others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus
died and rose again, even so, God will bring with Jesus
[when he returns] those who have fallen asleep in him. The
dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive.
And so we shall be forever with the Lord.” So the
raising of Lazarus is a sign about us at our Lord’s
Second Coming.
Jesus
raised his friend Lazarus to illustrate what he will do
for us who believe in him, when he returns at the end of
the world’s history. “Whoever believes in me,
though he die, yet shall he live, and every living person
who believes in me shall never die.” “And so,”
says Paul, “we shall be forever with the Lord. Therefore
comfort one another with these words.” But for some
folks, that’s where coping with grief gets tough,
because we’re asked to believe in a future for which
we have no schedule. Sometimes it feels like we’re
characters in that Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot,
where Godot never comes.
The
apostle Peter writes about this problem in one of his letters
(2 Peter 3) where he quotes people who say, “Where
is the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell
asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning.”
And Peter assures those who feel that frustration, that
“the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise; he’s
just being patient.” But Peter says we have to remember
that, for God, “a day is like a thousand years and
a thousand years is like a day.” God has, you might
say, all the time in the world, so we have to accept that
he operates on his schedule, not on ours.
When
we’re experiencing grief, as inevitably we all will,
let me suggest four things that may be helpful to remember.
First, the raising of Lazarus demonstrates, in a way that
we can visualize, that Jesus will one day restore to life
everyone who believes in him. Second, Jesus’ promise
– “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever
believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live”
– is our assurance that he will do so. Third, Jesus’
own resurrection, an actual historical event in time and
space, is the objective basis of our hope. And fourth –
but really first – all this comes from the heart of
God himself, of whom Psalm 116 says: “Precious in
the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
Therefore,
my brothers and sisters, “comfort one another with
these words.”
