“If You Had Been Here”

At my church we are using a sermon series designed by fellow young clergywoman Carol Holbrook Prickett and this weeks topic was lament. I preached using her suggested scripture and another I added in. You can watch the sermon here or read the manuscript below.

Scripture: Psalm 42 and John 11:28-36

Sermon: “Lament”

Let us pray:

Patient teacher, we give you thanks for your constant presence with us, but know we don’t always feel you beside us. Sometimes we just notice suffering and hardship. Help us to remember how to be real with you in the most difficult moments. Through the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts teach us anew how to lament. Amen.

The last time I heard the scripture from the Gospel of John, I cried. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

I was sitting on the floor too early in the morning after a week of too little sleep, so it was perhaps not entirely for spiritual reasons that when a Brother of Taize read these words I began to cry. I had spent the week at Taize, a monastic community in rural southeastern France, with some colleagues with whom I had studied ecumenism. I had also used the week to try and work a little on my French by joining a French-speaking Bible study group, but I don’t think I cried when these words were first read in French. It was the English that got me. Mary of Bethany’s brother Lazarus has died of a mysterious illness. They were friends and followers of Jesus, but when Lazarus first got sick, Jesus did not rush to save him. And so Lazarus died.

I love this Bible story. I love the prominence of Lazarus’ sisters Mary and Martha within the story and their proclamations of faith. I love that Jesus weeps at the death of his friend. I love the King James version of John 11:39 when they protest opening Lazarus’ tomb because, after four days of being dead, “he stinketh.” And I love that Lazarus comes back to life, but that when he does, we are to “unbind him, and let him go.” But despite the fact that this text is often read at funerals, I never linked my own grief with Martha’s and Mary’s (they ask the same question).

If you had been here, Lord…

How many times have we wanted to claim God’s power for the healing of our bodies or those of our loved ones? How many times have we wanted to claim God’s power over failing marriages, or just to claim God’s power for good luck for someone who has struggled with hard things for too long? Sometimes we do make this claim…and the result still isn’t what we hoped for. So we stuff down our disappointment. Surely we can’t blame God. Surely we must continue to praise God and give thanks for something. But that’s not what scripture says. Scripture in the Psalms, in Lamentations, in stories about people like David and Rizpah and about events like the exile, and even in the Gospels- there are so many places in which our ancestors in faith are honest with God when they are grieving and facing terrible situations. When I was reminded of that truth, when I heard my own words echoed in Mary of Bethany’s, I felt great release in my own tears.

Which then also linked my grief to Jesus’. Jesus weeps in the gospel passage today. Now, please remember that the Gospel of John has what’s called a high Christology. That means that though we know that Jesus was fully human AND fully divine, the Gospel of John tends to focus on Jesus’ divinity. Jesus says over and over again in this Gospel, including when they urge him to go to Lazarus before he dies at the beginning of chapter 11, that healing is part of a bigger Plan to show God’s glory. He knows he’s going to resurrect Lazarus. But he still weeps.

There are a couple memes about this passage that I’ve seen before, and the one I wanted to share with you today, I couldn’t find the original author. But whoever it is writes:

He cried. He knew Lazarus was dead before he got the news, but still he cried. He knew Lazarus would be alive again in moments, but still he cried. He knew death here is not forever; he knew eternity and the kin*dom of God better than anyone else could. Yet he wept because this world is full of pain and regret and loss and depression and devastation. He wept because knowing the end of the story doesn’t mean that you can’t cry at the sad parts.

My tears at Taize felt like a release. I know that there are many good things in my life, much to give thanks for. But I can still cry at the sad parts. And so can you. Being able to cry, to join in Mary of Bethany’s lament, and later Jesus’ own lament, allowed me to let go of my need for control and fairness and just sit with God in a recognition of suffering. In the psalm we read today, tears nourish the lamenter, keep them going, even if barely. No one claims it is a good diet. But it is real. And as the psalmist cries, so God cries too, God’s tears turning to a storm over the water with thunder and waves.

Tears are holy. Honesty- about the pain and regret and loss and depression and devastation in the world- is holy. That feels strange to say, especially because the way we understand grief culturally and let it seep into our practice of Christianity is tells us that to be sad is sinful. It makes other people uncomfortable, it doesn’t recognize the gifts we do have. It means we aren’t “manifesting good things to happen to us.”

Do we need to be sad all the time? Of course not. But there is everything sacred about being honest about your feelings with the one who created you and knows how you feel whether or not you admit it. Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett, who developed this series on spiritual practices for resiliency, writes, “Lament does not try to answer the question of why we are hurting. It is not satisfied with pat answers like ‘it’s all in God’s will’ or ‘it’s for a greater purpose.’ Lament does not talk about God. Lament talks to God.” Biblical scholar Water Brueggeman says that in lament, “people speak unguardedly about life as it really is” (paraphrased in Denise Hopkins, Journey through the Psalms, 88).

What do you need to say to God unguardedly? What disappointments and suffering and pain do you need to bring to God?

However, I am making it sound like lament is just about getting stuff off your chest, but it is more than that. Scholar Kathleen O’Connor, who studies Jeremiah and Lamentations writes, “The very purpose of prayers of lament is to confess faith in the midst of doubt. Even when [we] speak to God accusingly, even [if we] verge toward hopelessness, [lament still] adheres to God with a fierce insistence” (Jeremiah: Pain and Promise, 81).

We are honest with God, wrestling with God in conversation, in relationship, and it becomes a proclamation of trust. You heard that in the psalm last week and in the psalm this week. Throughout Psalm 42, the psalmist is honest about their pain and fear and loneliness, but in the last verse, they direct their soul to [h]ope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

Mary knows what Jesus could have done if he were with Lazarus before he died, but notice that even in her anger and disappointment and grief, she kneels before Jesus. When her sister declares that Lazarus would be alive had Jesus been there earlier in the same chapter, she is the one who proclaims him to be the Messiah.And Jesus weeps. But that’s not the end of the story. Our laments never are. Our laments are ways to get us to take a breath and get through to the next part of the story. The practice of lament draws us into more honest and real relationships with God, that can teach us to trust God to get us through.

That’s why I think using Mary’s words as my lament felt like a release to me. Being honest with God allowed me to release my feelings of abandonment in a time of need and trust God that suffering is not the end of my story, or your story, or our story. My prayer for us all is that we can learn to better lament, in all its messiness, leaning on God as we do, with hearts open for what happens next.