No Exit, Thankfully

Text: Mark 13
Other text: Daniel 12:1-3
November 19, 2006

Robert Pirsig, in his classic book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, coins the term “gumption trap.” A gumption trap is where you find yourself when you have done everything you can and things still don’t work. It happens when you cannot figure out how to get that stupid bearing back in its seat or that rusted retainer off the bolt. But he means it to be more than a mechanic’s frustration. It is a kind of trap of the mind, where all roads seems to be dead ends, where you can’t find your way out of the mess you are in, where it seems that the forces are aligned against you, or at least out of your control. It feels like urgent, anxious desperation.

It is one thing if what you cannot get to fit is bearings and bolts. It is another altogether if it is your life that is not fitting. You can put down the tools and walk away. And sometimes you wish you could do the same with your life. Pack it up and move on. You wish for what some call “the geographic cure.” Escape by change in geography. Change of scene, leaving behind those things that you can’t figure out or repair, as much as you’ve tried. Get out of that troubled relationship. Quit that stupefying job. Change careers. Get off the fast track, or get on it. Flee those classes that you didn’t want to take and that dissertation that has no end. Stop fretting about money. Leave behind those closets and drawers and boxes and hard drives full of stuff. Leave behind the noisy neighbor, the ratty apartment. The unfulfilled ambitions. No place is perfect, but almost any place has got to be better than this place.

Whole nations and cultures and peoples can feel this way, and when they do, a kind of writing called “apocalyptic literature” appears. Stories and myths that are like a cosmic geographic cure. A major change of scene. Stories of whole worlds—of the world—being changed from the foundation up. The destruction of all that is familiar and in its place a new world. In the Bible, parts of the book of Daniel—such as the part we just heard—and much of the book of Revelation, and a few passages in each of the first three Gospels, including the one we just heard from Mark. The world is destroyed in anguish in preparation for a new world. All that hurts us is done away with.

Such stories come from people who live under inescapable oppression, like some of the early Christians under Roman rule. They grow out of endless weariness, when there seems no way out, all solutions exhausted. They are stories of an worn out and beleaguered people. Any place has got to be better than this place.

Some people read these stories as predictions of the end of the world. They see them as portraying a final, cleansing purge. The oppressed are finally vindicated. The good raised up to heaven. God the creator becomes the destroyer. The evil ones are finally punished as they deserve, in suffering, and the world destroyed in violence. The end of time.

But though born out of oppression and despair, apocalyptic stories are not mostly stories of revenge and devastation. They are mostly stories of hope. Hope not for the end of the world, but for a better world. In one sense, they are political stories, stories of liberation from occupying powers and freedom from tyranny. And in another sense, they are personal stories, stories of a new life lived as God intended all people to live, in joy and peace. They are less about the punishment of the wicked (though there is some of that, too) and more about the—at last!—happiness of the good. The hope is not for the end of life but for new life. Not that the people would be pulled out from Israel—that had already happened in the Exile and no one liked that—but that people of Israel would be free.

The heart of the message of the Bible is that God loves the world. Apocalyptic stories do not change that message. They are not stories of destruction but of redemption and restoration. God created the world and named it good. Not good for just a while, not good just until humans messed up or did something really bad. But a good creation.

God loved the world, we read in the Gospel of John. Into that world that God loves came Jesus, the incarnate child of God. God so loved the world, John writes, that God sent Jesus to be in the world. And it was right into the middle of a time of oppression, occupation, poverty, and violence in the world. God came to be with people.

The apocalyptic writers do hope for a big change. But the change is for a new world, not no world. A change here, not in some other geography. A new Jerusalem, one restored to greatness and obedience to God, not the end of Jerusalem. The pangs that Mark writes about (and Paul, too) come before the birth of the world—the world renewed—not ended. They appeal not to a punishing God, but a saving and healing God. They pray, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer, not to be whisked up to heaven before our time but for God’s kingdom on earth, God’s hopes to be fulfilled on earth, as they are in heaven, in our time.

We sing hymns today of plenty, of harvest, of goodness, of God’s gifts in this world. We sing today especially in anticipation of Thanksgiving, but we are always thankful for this earth and for our lives in it, and for God’s presence here among us, and God’s revealed interest in this little speck in the huge universe.

Yet even so, people suffer and people do evil things. And sometimes it causes us to become so weary we cannot stand it. And in those times, we have to think: what do we hope for? Do we hope to be taken out of life or do we want a better life? Are we impatient for the end of creation or a fulfillment of creation’s potential?

There are some who happily, eagerly, read these stories as final judgment and hope for the end of time in our time. It is an understandable reading, because it is born from weariness, frustration, and fear that we all feel. But it is not the hope of the people who wrote or first read these writings.

It is a gumption trap to so quickly conclude that there is no salvation, no solution. It is not what Christians proclaim. We are a people who proclaim that the world will be saved, that we will be healed, that even in the times of despair, Jesus promises new life ahead.

The geographic cure never works. It never works because you bring your life with you wherever you go. And because one place is much like another. And because it doesn’t match your hopes. What you hope for is not that all your enemies will die but that you will live. Not that your troubles will be vaporized but that they will have no more power over you. There are lots of reasons you might leave town—in Boston, there are the cold winters, hot muggy summers, crazy traffic with no road signs—but if in weariness you are looking for the geographic cure, you’d be better off staying here and chatting with God. Because when you are tempted to leave town, what you hope to find is not so much a new town as a new life.

Jesus Weeps

Text: John 11:32-44 November 5, 2006

It is one thing to make an example of your friend. It is another thing altogether to be there at his graveside.

There is a back-story to today’s reading in the Gospel of John. A couple of days earlier someone had brought a message to Jesus. His friend Lazarus was ill. Lazarus was the brother of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed Jesus with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair. The sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard about it, he said to his disciples, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” And therefore, John reports, although Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, he stayed two days longer before he left to see him.

By the time they arrived in Bethany, where Mary and Martha lived, Lazarus was dead. He had been in his tomb for four days. Jesus knew it. He had said earlier to the disciples, “Lazarus is dead.”

Now Jesus stands near the tomb. He is among his best friends, people whom he loves and who love him. It is a scene of death. Lazarus, his friend, is dead. It is a scene of sorrow. Mary and Martha grieve and weep in mourning, loud and wailing. They say to him, each one in the same words, first Martha, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Then Mary, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is unclear whether they are accusing Jesus. Or what they thought he might have done. Some people were heard to wonder: this Jesus made the blind see. Could not he have kept Lazarus from dying. Did Jesus think: They are right. I could have, and I didn’t.

Jesus wept. Not wailing, not like formal mourners at the graveside. The word John uses is different for Jesus. Mary and Martha wailed. Jesus wept quietly. He shed tears, we might say. He shed tears when he saw the sorrow of Mary and Martha and all the crowd, also, who had come to mourn. Who would not have wept?

For John, the Gospel writer, everything Jesus does points to the divine. John is not particularly interested in the humanity of Jesus. Unlike Mark, whom we have been hearing from this year, who loves the person of Jesus. John loves the God in Jesus. The first part of the Gospel of John is called by scholars the book of signs, signs that point to Jesus’ amazing godliness. And the second part is known as the book of glory, meaning the execution and resurrection of Jesus. For John, everything has another meaning.

But in spite of that, the human Jesus sometimes escapes the words of John and reveals the part of Jesus that we know is in him. He sneaks out from behind the curtain and shows himself. Jesus is about to raise Lazarus from death, a miracle if there ever was one, and a prequel to his own resurrection. It is a time of sign and of glory. Yet Jesus weeps silently.

Why does Jesus weep? Does he weep for his friends Martha and Mary in mourning? Does he weep for the loss of his friend Lazarus? Does he weep because he thinks he could have done something sooner? Does he weep because he is Jesus, who cannot put friends before duty? Who knows why he weeps? He weeps for all these things and more.

When someone you love dies, there is so much to weep for. For your loss, and for the sorrow of your friends who survive, and in regret for things you wished you had done—that call, that apology, that forgiveness, loving more, saying more—and in dismay in the ending of things that you cannot prevent.

Jesus weeps. But Jesus is also angry. Greatly disturbed in spirit, according to the reading. But “really ticked off” might be another way to say it. The word means angry. It comes from a word in Greek that sounds like the sound an angry horse makes. He is angry when he first sees Mary and the others. And again, when he stands in front of the tomb. This is not a moment of glory for Jesus, even though he is about to gloriously raise a man from the dead. This is not a moment Jesus seeks out, not something Jesus is thrilled about.

Lazarus is not an example, he is Jesus’ friend. John sees the death of Lazarus as a means to an end. Jesus sees death, just death.

It is right to be angry at death. There is nothing good about it. Perhaps we can see beyond death. To the rest it brings a tired and troubled soul. To the resurrection which we have been promised. To the returning of our bodies to the earth. But death itself? It is right to be angry.

God hates death. Though it is always risky to claim to know what God thinks, it seems to me that the life of Jesus, God in human flesh, shows us that God hates death. Why else come as Jesus to free us from the power of death? Death makes Jesus angry, makes God angry. Greatly disturbs God in the spirit. Agitates God.

Someday, we read in Isaiah and someday, we read in Revelation, there will be no more death. No death to greet with sorrow and anger. But at the moment death is with us. If I recall correctly, there is not a story in the Bible or tradition in which God keeps anyone from dying. Not even Jesus.

Death is serious business. In spite of Jesus’ knowledge of the ways of heaven and earth, he does not relish his own execution. In spite of the impending miracle of Lazarus brought back to life, Jesus is angry. In spite of our conviction of eternal life in God, we dread death.

Death is not nothing to Jesus. It is dreadful. God does not promise in the short term to take away death. But Jesus does promise that we need not fear it. We can cry in sorrow and anger at death. We would be crazy not to. Jesus does.

But we do not have to give ourselves up to its power to rule us through fear. Death is flimsy. Death does not have the last word.

The fact of death greatly disturbs us in spirit. But the power of death is weak. Jesus does not ask us to believe that death is insignificant. But in the face of God’s power and reach, care and compassion, and eternal friendship, it does not signify much.