A Fourth Church Sermon by John Wilkinson

March 21, 1999 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Resurrection Prelude

John Wilkinson
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

John 11:1–44

“. . . he cried with a loud voice, ’Lazarus, come out!. . .”

John 11:43

It is a bit of a cliché to begin a sermon with a dictionary quotation. Nonetheless, the good people at Random House define “resurrection” as “the act of rising again from the dead; the state of those risen from the dead; rising again—as from decay, disuse; revival.” These are technical understandings, helpful enough. My electronic thesaurus broadens the inquiry a bit: renaissance, reawakening, renewal, rebirth, rekindling, resurgence, resuscitation. Perhaps that takes us a bit closer to where we need to be, but not quite.

Let us try another source. “In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf. One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and—pop!—out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar. He started to look for some food. On Monday, he ate through one apple. But he was still hungry. On Tuesday. . . two pears. . . on Wednesday. . . three plums. . . on Thursday. . . four strawberries. . . on Friday. . . five oranges. . . on Saturday he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon. That night he had a stomachache! The next day was Sunday again. The caterpillar ate through one nice green leaf, and after that he felt much better. He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself. . .” (From Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, 1969)

Now we are even closer, perhaps as close as words can take us, to the premise of it all, God’s vision of resurrection, God’s agenda for new life. However we define it, and we can’t very well; however we understand it, and we don’t very well—we know this, we say this, we sense this and utter this and sing this and pray this—resurrection. New life. The word resurrection means several things in the Bible. It is to be distinguished from resuscitation or reanimation. It means, rather, complete transformation. That is the vision God imagines for us—complete transformation.

So here we are, but not quite. Today is a prelude. This is Lent, after all, and the old spiritual reminds us that you’ve got to go through Good Friday to get to Easter morning. And we know that to be true. We know the story of the hungry caterpillar all too well. It is our story. We know the realities of winter, the truth of the seasons of hibernation and shutting-down and cocoons. Such truth resounding in the lives of loved ones. Truth resounding in the lives of our communities, our neighborhoods, our cities. Truth resounding in our very own lives. The truth of the cocoon is all around us, and we know it to be true, for the very simple reason that in order for new life to arise, there must be old life, there must be death.

Early on, the voice of the narrator in John’s Gospel sets it all up for us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son; so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We know these words. They are good, important words, eternal words, resurrection words. We acknowledge the words. Yet we cling to the stories.

A man comes to Jesus in the dark of night, the cocoon of his tradition and his own self-doubt wrapped tightly around him. Jesus talks to him about being born again. A woman meets Jesus at the well. She is outcast in many ways, the cocoon of her own life and social and cultural ostracism shrouding her. And Jesus offers her living water. A blind man reaches out to Jesus for healing. The cocoon spun for him, to be sure, interweaves social rejection, religious banishment, physical hardship. And Jesus, the light of the world, brings new life. These stories move us beyond theological discourse to the world of redemption and renewal, the rhythm of cocoon and beyond cocoon. But not quite yet. This is all prelude, remember.

And then this. An extraordinary story. A man is ill. It is a story we know well. We wrestle with cancer, AIDS, illness. A man is sick. And his sisters, Lazarus’ sisters, the ones who seem to get all of this more faithfully than the disciples ever do, the sisters track Jesus down. Jesus, your friend Lazarus, our brother, is sick. Help, please, help. We have been there. Calling out for help with a kind of quiet desperation. An aging parent has slipped another notch. The treatment—the expensive and exhausting treatment—shows no sign of positive result. The addiction has tightened its noose just a bit. Maybe the cocoon has leapt from the one who is confined to the one offering care. We cry out.

And maybe we get the kind of response that Jesus seems to offer: a full-on dismissal. Lazarus is not all that sick, he says, and he stays where he is for two more days. The sisters must be beside themselves. Jesus thinks it over, engages in a bit of mystifying conversation with his followers about light and dark and night and day, foreshadows his own death, acknowledges the purveyors of death, the plotters of death lurking all around, the religious types that could not handle his extraordinary faithfulness. He reformulates his plan, and heads off to waken his friend. Every sort of question arises at this point—about Jesus, especially, about us, about those who are following him, about Lazarus. How will this happen?

But let us cling to the story a bit more. Jesus arrives. The cocoon is tight and dense, impenetrable as a mighty fortress. Lazarus is dead. And not only is Lazarus dead; dead, too, is the hope of his sisters, his loved ones, his community. All dead. The truth of this we know as well. By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus is buried. Jesus has even missed the funeral. We have been there.

In his magnificent book Brother to a Dragonfly, Will Campbell goes there for us. His brother Joe has died, and he writes: “I stood at the head of the grave in East Fork Cemetery. There was Joey, now sixteen and handsome. And Julie, lovely at thirteen, standing with complete composure beside her brother whose body shook with sobs. Carlyne, standing far in the background with casual acquaintances, dutifully permitting the present wife to claim the public grief. The tired, sad eyes of Lee Campbell, placing his firstborn son beside four generations of his flesh and blood. Mamma, staring in hopeless disbelief, asking out loud it if could be true that her favorite, most loyal and most doting child was gone.” (p. 264)

We have been there and we don’t always know what to do. Thank God Martha does. Martha gathers her courage—grief mingled with outrage, and confronts her teacher, confronts with hope. If you had been here, this would all be OK. But even now you can fix it. And we cling to the story because at this very moment it all comes into clear, sharp focus. “He will rise,“ he says. “I know he will in the resurrection,” she says. “I am the resurrection, and the life. Believe and live.”

Martha’s cocoon vanishes. This story is ever as much about the sisters and their cocoon as it is about the dead man. Mary remained bound. She confronts Jesus as well, and at this moment, Jesus’ tears serve as her instruments of redemption. And they go to the tomb. They go to the tomb, to roll the stone away, to unbind the dead man of his burial clothes, to unbind the sisters of their grief, to unbind the tradition that would not believe, to unbind all of it. To unbind us. To unbind the world. But not quite yet. This is yet prelude.

The gospel of John poses unique problems to biblical scholars. They know this story about Lazarus is important. They’re just not quite sure what to make of it. After exploring theories about composition and editing, about fact and myth, about symbol and reality, Moody Smith writes that “whatever one makes of the raising of Lazarus, it is John’s way of portraying in unmistakably realistic terms the fact that Jesus Christ gives life to the dead.” (The Theology of the Gospel of John, 1995, p. 35) Jesus Christ gives life to the dead. This is a sign, the late Raymond Brown wrote, a sign pointing to something else. “. . . Jesus has given physical life as a sign of his power to give eternal life.” (Anchor Bible Commentary on the Gospel of John, 1966, p. 437)

And it will get him in trouble, big time. The plotting begins, the back-room meetings. There is power in the ability to keep everything under wraps, to exercise control. There is power in death and death’s ways.

We know this through words; we know this more so through the stories of our lives. It happens in as many ways as there are people, in as many ways as experiences happen. Through the natural evolution of our lives, through the choices we make, through the forces all around us, cocoons close in. Perhaps in a relationship that demonstrates no signs of health. Perhaps in a job that offers little but despair or dissatisfaction. Perhaps the cocoon of doubt or anxiety envelops you, the cocoon of addiction ensnares someone you love.

And not simply who we are, but what we experience. The cocoon that must overwhelm you when you learn that a loved one was on the City of New Orleans, on that train. Johann Sebastian Bach, whose birth and music we celebrate today, left for a brief tour. Upon his return he discovered that his wife, the mother of his four children, had died and had been buried. Think of that, of the cocoon of numbness that overwhelms. We and the ones we love know these things.

But let us also remember another thing. Let us remember the Ezekiel story that serves as our backdrop this morning. Resurrection is for the community, for the people, not simply for a collection of individuals with a collection of individual deaths. Resurrection is for the people because cocoons build up around communities. The cocoon of hatred that allows for people to be killed because of the color of their skin or the orientation of their identity, dragged behind a truck or tied to a fence. The cocoon of cynicism that easily dismisses real problems as someone else’s concern, that allows us, encourages us, to shut down and drift away and forget, simply forget.

This is the world in which we live, the world in which the power of death does all that it an to maintain its death-grip. To this world comes the dream: “Dry bones, get up. I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.” To this world comes the story: “Lazarus, come out.” To this world comes the hope: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Last weekend at our Lenten retreat, we explored the ways in which the themes of Lent are expressed through the arts. We watched a bit of The Color Purple, the extraordinary film by Steven Spielberg of Alice Walker’s extraordinary novel. Over the past days, I could not help thinking about Selie, the central character, every time I thought about Lazarus. Selie’s cocoon is as deadly as it gets, tomb-like in every way. She is sexually abused and physically abused and verbally abused and economically abused and spiritually abused. Her “quote-unquote” father and her “quote-unquote” husband see her as nothing but chattel, cheap labor, her children taken from her, her beloved sister long-since disappeared. Selie perseveres, somehow, at times through her painfully honest conversations with God, at times through her friendship with Shug Avery. This is all prelude, of course.

In the end, Mr. Spielberg, who no doubt will take home more hardware this evening, creates a lovely portrait from Alice Walker’s powerful words. A car drives up a dusty road. Nettie, the long lost sister emerges. She runs to her sister Selie, her long purple African robes flowing beautifully, with strength, like these banners, Lenten purple, adorning our sanctuary. They embrace, joy beyond joy. Selie is reunited with her children whom she has never met. As the scene fades and the sun sets in the sky, the two grown sisters begin playing the games of their childhood. At that very moment, a butterfly flutters across a corner of the screen, once, twice, three times, in the shadows. Free from its cocoon.

This is the story to which we cling, dear friends, with all our heart and soul and strength. This is the promise that gives us life. But not quite yet. This day we hear the resurrection prelude. We await, with Lazarus, with his sisters, with all who wait, to hear the voice calling to us, to hear that long ago and ever-present symphony. Amen.