This sermon was preached for the fifth Sunday of Lent, Sunday, March 26, 2023 at St. Mark's in East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Ezekiel 37:1-14, John 11:1-45, and Psalm 130.
“Lord, if you had been here…”
If only.
If only, Martha of Bethany says to Jesus. If only, says her sister Mary. If only you had been here, my brother would not have died.
The sisters had sent a message to Jesus - he had had enough time to come to heal their brother. The world in which Jesus had come in time, the world in which their brother had not died, was so close the sisters could almost taste it.
If only.
There’s a scene from one of my guilty pleasure romance films, 500 Days of Summer, in which the protagonist sets out to reconnect with the girl he loves. Tom walked to her apartment, the narrator intones, intoxicated by the promise of the evening. He believed that this time his expectations would align with reality. The screen suddenly splits - on one half we see a scene labeled “Expectations.” In it, Tom walks up to the girl’s apartment, she warmly welcomes him in. She is deeply touched by his gift for her, they are absorbed in deep conversation just the two of them all dinner, they sneak off to kiss. At the same time, simultaneously on the other half of the screen, we watch the scene labeled “Reality.” In “reality,” the girl gives him a perfunctory hug at the door. In reality, he gets stuck in a humiliating conversation with others. In reality, he ends up staring off into the distance by himself at the edge of the party and then he looks back and he sees it, the ring on her finger, she’s engaged to someone else. The “expectations” half of the scene fades away.
Two separate timelines: 1) If only. 2) And what actually happened.
Of all the emotions that are liable to keep one up at night, “if only” can be one of the most painful, the most gut wrenching. The imagined timeline of what could have been - what I could have done, what I should have done, what God should have done - gets a hold of us and won’t let us go. For some of us, there’s even a particular moment or event or choice at which our lives bifurcate, the screen splits in two and we can see the other life, perhaps even the life we expected, continuing on: better, happier, fuller. The one where we kept the job, the one where he survived, the one where she didn’t leave.
If only.
If only, the crowd mutters. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Notably, Mary of Bethany does not ask Jesus, Why didn’t you. I want her to ask him. Because I want to ask that of God all the time. Why didn’t you.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t answer the sisters’ unasked question, why didn’t you. He doesn’t defend his reasons for delaying to Mary or Martha directly, even though he offers cryptic explanations for his decision to the disciples and the crowd. This is Jesus’ direct response to the sisters: Your brother will rise again. This is his immediate response to the grieving, weeping women: Jesus was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. Jesus wept.
Jesus doesn’t let either his conviction that he did the right thing or his divine knowledge of what’s to come get in the way of deeply empathizing with the human before him. Jesus allows himself to be moved by his friends’ grief. He enters into their pain.
And yet, Jesus does not go back in time and change what he did, although he's God so I suppose he could have. Jesus does not pick everyone up and place them over there in that “if only” world, the one where Lazarus is still alive, although that’s probably what would have happened in a science fiction novel. Instead, Jesus continues the story before him. This story. This timeline. Lazarus ends up alive, yes, but he still dies first. That matters to the sisters' story. It matters to ours.
When Jesus says to Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” I imagine that her response, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” is said a bit…sarcastically. A bit huffily. Yes, yes, Jesus, I know that the story isn’t over. I know God has promised more. I can hear her thinking silently to herself, but he’s still dead right now. He’s still gone.
Here’s what else I hear from the way the rest of the dialogue goes: Jesus asks Martha if she trusts that he can still surprise her - if she can trust that this timeline has even more hope to offer her than she can imagine right now. Do you trust me? And she says, yes.
I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope.
Martha has a choice about where to place her hope, how to use her imagination. She can spend it imagining the world in which Jesus had done what she had wanted him to do - had expected him to do. She can get stuck in the if only. Or Martha can open her imagination to the unseen possibilities of this timeline, this story that still lies in front of her. She can place her hope in God.
Even as they hope, Martha and Mary are still given space to grieve. And not only given space, Jesus grieves with them. Fully and wholeheartedly. Both grief and hope can exist in the same body.
When Jesus resurrects Lazarus, he is not resetting the timeline. He is not undoing a death or unwinding time. This is no CNTRL + Z. That is so crucial for us to understand, especially as we head into Holy Week, and Good Friday, and Easter. Easter doesn’t undo what happened on the cross. It doesn’t make it all better. It doesn’t erase the pain and horror of the crucifixion, or any other death. It does something more powerful than that. It declares that there is always hope, a greater hope. There is always redemption, a greater ending to come, not by going backwards, but by going through.
Here’s what I’m not going to do: I’m not going to stand up here and tell you to stop lying awake at night wondering about what could have been. I am not going to tell you to stop yelling at God, why weren’t you there? I am not going to tell you to stop feeling disappointed when expectations crash down into reality. How can I when I have not for the life of me figured out how to stop doing those things myself? I’m not sure that’s what Jesus would focus on anyhow.
So here’s what I will do: I will point us to what Jesus says. Jesus says, trust me, for I am the resurrection and the life. Trust that this story, your story, holds more surprises ahead for you than you can imagine right now.
The bones that lie in the valley in the Book of Ezekiel - they were very many and they were very dry. Even after they are put back together, bone to bone, sinew on sinew, God’s people cry out, “Our hope is lost.” O my people, responds the Lord. O my people, I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.
There is more that is still possible in this timeline, more than our imaginations may allow us to see.
Our hope lies ahead, in this life, in this world, and beyond.
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