Choose Life

5th Lent March 9, 2008
Preached by Rev. Deb Seles St. Hilary March 9 2008

Choices. Our lives are full of choices great and small—what job to take, who to marry, who to play with, what school to attend. Small choices—whether to have roast beef or a turkey sandwich, whether to take the expressway or the side roads. And sometimes our small choices can have great consequences. We might take the side roads and run into an icy patch. We could choke on a chicken bone.

All over scripture we hear about people being given choices—when God calls, whether to follow God or follow some idol. Jesus was faced with a choice when he heard his beloved friend was ill. And for some reason he chose to delay his journey to Bethany. Martha and Mary had choices about how they would receive their friend: did they greet him with anger and accusation?

We don’t often think about the dead having choices but clearly Lazarus did have a choice. If you’ve ever heard about people having near death experiences, often you hear how they are given a choice about whether to return to the land of the living or not.

Last week Pastor Terri talked about a baby she encountered that was experiencing ‘failure to thrive,’ and she talked about how both human beings and communities make a choice about whether to thrive or not. It’s a mystery, she said, about why some babies do not thrive despite being given food. So too it is a mystery about why some communities thrive and others do not.

Perhaps it has to do with how we see our vocation. Vocation—the word comes from the Latin—to be called. Not only priests and deacons are called but mothers are called, fathers are called, the compassionate are called—we are each, in our unique ways called to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb when he was good and dead. Now there is speculation that the reason Jesus delayed returning to Bethany was that the Jewish people believed that one’s soul hovered near the body for three days. Waiting till Lazarus was buried four days would have meant that any speculation about this being a revival of a not-quite dead person would be eliminated.

We can speculate and discuss why Jesus waited four days but we have the result that Lazarus answered Jesus’ call. And is that not our duty too—to answer Jesus call whomever and wherever we are. Both as individuals and as a Christian community, we are called to respond to God’s call to life.

What is wonderful about this grouping—Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—is that it looks very much like church. In church there are those people who serve, like Martha; those people who listen in quiet contemplation like Mary and those people who are ill or who are bound by something—like Lazarus. Maybe we are each of these characters at any one time.

You know in our discussion with Vicky Garvey, some of us saw anger in Martha’s accusation of Jesus—“Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.” And that’s a legitimate response after all to grief. Anger—Martha might very well have been angry. Just as there likely is some anger with Pastor Terri that she left this community. Likely that there is or will be some anger with me because I am not Pastor Terri. Maybe there is even some anger with yourselves and some thought—if only we’d have been ‘better’ Pastor Terri wouldn’t have left. Whatever you are feeling—it is legitimate.

Does Jesus tell the sisters that they shouldn’t be angry? No, then I will not do so either. In fact, we hear that twice in this passage, Jesus himself is angry. At what, we’re not told but there it is. Anger is an important part of grief. What we do with it is what matters.

And anger is not opposed to faith—in fact Martha gives the most complete confession of faith from anyone we’ve heard yet. “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him. You are the Messiah, the One coming into the world.” So anger and faith can exist side by side. In Martha and in Mary and at St. Hilary’s.

The vocation of this community in the coming months will be to listen to God’s voice and find out where Jesus is inviting us to break free of whatever binds us and keeps us in the land of the dead instead of the land of the living. And if we think that’s going to be neat, let’s go back to scripture.

When Jesus orders the stone rolled away from the tomb, Martha, ever the pragmatist says—but it’s been four days, there is already a stench. Sometimes, in order to have a resurrection, matters first appear foul and messy. Resurrections do not happen when all is sterile and clean and smelling like our favorite room deodorizer. Where things stink is exactly where resurrections can also occur!

Because now, the community needs to assist in the resurrection. "Unbind him, and let him go." There are some people yearning to live resurrection lives. There are some folks who have been born again; they have risen from the dead!

In these next months, we are being invited as a community to assist in resurrection. Just how a community can do this is brought to mind by a real life story of Dick Hughes and Bill McLaughlin. Three years ago, Bill McLaughlin’s wife was dying of Alzheimer’s. We know the horror of this illness and the isolation that can come about as a spouse takes care of an increasingly disoriented partner. Dick Hughes was an acquaintance of Bill’s from their church, St. Paul’s Episcopal in Chestnut Hill Pennsylvania. He took it upon himself to invite Bill to tour a Philadelphia museum and have a picnic lunch.

That began a friendship between the two men. In the course of three years, they have toured 203 Philadelphia museum and have written a guidebook to benefit their church. Dick Hughes describes how he felt it was his Christian duty to help Bill. And so their adventure began.

Resurrection happens when ordinary people follow their vocation to be people of God. You will recall that last week we spoke about and named the Samaritan woman who was called out of her old life and who became an evangelist for the gospel. She returned to her old community a changed person.

We need each other’s help. We need community. We need others. Often, it is the task of Christian community to complete the action of Resurrection. Jesus has called forth new life: Lazarus, come out!" But Lazarus still has burial clothes on.


Ask the group to sit in silence as you offer a few ideas.
Ask them to see themselves “bound” — tied-up — not free.
Ask them to notice what it is that is constraining them.
Tell them it is not about feeling guilty — just noticing what it is that is holding us back.
Then, imagine Jesus coming to us and telling us to untangle each other, free each other, let each other go.
Now, see yourself free of this strangling binding.

We pray: thank you God that you are now, today, in our very lives the resurrection and the life. Thank you for breathing new life into our dry bones. Thank you for calling us out to be the people, the community you would have us be.