04-10-2011 — “Lazarus”, by Rev. Bertie Pearson

So some scientists reduce life strictly to animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms, others admit prions and viruses, while others argue for life as a continuum of phenomena without concrete limits. In today’s Gospel, however, Jesus gives a very novel definition: Jesus says “I am life.”

Whatever we want to say about microorganisms, we tend to be at least pretty clear about human life. We can easily differentiate between the living and the dead, and it’s rare that funeral directors make big faux pas in this arena. Not only are we clearly living, but there seems to be something so precious, so immutably important about each human life, that each death seems like an injustice and a tragedy.

For the Greek Philosopher Epicurus, however, the death was no big deal. Why, he asked, do we go on and on agonizing about a state of affairs that we will never experience, i.e. the world existing without us. We don’t spend countless hours fretting about our non-existence before we were born, and yet, our whole lives are governed by avoiding this same state — the world deprived my presence — for as long as possible. Death, he wrote, “does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.”

So why all the fuss? Is an apple seized with anxiety as it begins to get overripe, do we shed tears when it begins to decompose, when it is buried and biodegrades? Of course this would be absurd, and yet to watch a friend grow old and die is horrific, to contemplate our own deaths can be terrifying.

When one passes away, there is a hole left in the fabric of our lives, someone who seemed so permanent, one of the fixed stars of our existence, is just gone, and we are left rudderless, adrift. There is something that, perhaps absurdly, seems so wrong, so jarring and so unjust about the cold fact of death.

Perhaps evolutionary psychologists would explain this away by saying that we have a biological imperative to stay alive, that we are hard wired to cling to life as long as possible, but this is simply stating the obvious, not giving us a reason. The fact that we are driven to propagate or to remain living may be a part of our nature, may help explain why we avoid death, but it doesn’t at all address why death seems so, alien, so strange, so jarring and so unfair.

In today’s Epistle, Paul hints at the cause of some of this strangeness, this horror. For Paul, we are a combination of Flesh and Spirit. The Greek word Paul uses is sarks, that doesn’t mean our moving, breathing, living bodies for which he would have used the greek word soma. Sarks or flesh, is simply or our pure physicality, just so much much meat and bones. The dead selves, the ripening apple selves, the parts of ourselves that can be cremated or buried, the raw matter of us.

Spirit, or in Greek, Pnuma, for Paul is not merely the immortal soul, or a metaphysical state that can be holy or sullied –  this Greek word Pnuma encompasses, our breath, our capacity to think, to feel, our frustrations, our desires, our fears, joys, hopes, our sense of humor, or capacity for compassion, our very life itself. All of our enliving, enkindling, thinking, feeling selves are caught up in this word Spirit. It’s like a combination of the ideas of mind, emotions and life itself.

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
Our Soma, our body is this strange cobbling together of that which is seemingly always in decay, in the process of changing and falling apart, and that which naturally seems to us like it should go on forever — the spirit, that part which is so much who we are. But why should it seem like it should go on forever, why does the self passing away seem so unthinkable, so tragic? What a strange thing to think. For Paul, it’s not that there’s a genetic imperative to stay alive, or a Freudian terror of death, it’s simply that the Spirit has seen God, met God, been touched and moved by God, and longs to remain in God’s conditions of Eternity. What’s more the spirit can make a permeant place for God, be consecrated to God’s presence through the indwelling Christ.
“But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”
It’s as if our Spirits have access to a one on one, intimate relationship with the source of all life, this idea that God maybe within as well as without, how could a Spirit who lived in this way with the eternal face the concept of death, of cessation  — of a fire of the self being extinguished or the apple of the self rotting? How could the disappearance of that spirit not seem utterly bizarre and wrong.

In today’s Gospel, we reencounter the family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Jesus’ close friends from Bethany. It was Mary who washed Jesus feet with her hair and tears, Martha to whom Jesus taught the value of contemplation. These three often seem to be closer to Jesus even than the disciples; these are his good friends. It is of this family that the 18th century Anglican preacher George Whitfield asked what could they possibly lack, what could possibly “make them miserable, who are so assured of Jesus’ love?” And yet, they are in worry, Lazarus has become gravely ill, is close to death. “So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, “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.” 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

“But surely,” continued Whitfield, “if Jesus loves this dear little family, the next news one might think we should hear, would be, that he went immediately and healed Lazarus; or at least cured him at a distance.” And yet, he does nothing. Because, he says, this sickness is not unto death.

But of course it is — for he dies! He is in the tomb four days, and as the King James Translation puts it, “Stinkith” If this, the decay of the flesh is not death, then what is it? What is it that we fear? If Lazarus’ suffering, if the sickness which leads to the death of the flesh is not sickness unto death, that what is?

For Kierkegaard, the Sickness Unto Death is the inability to reconcile the eternal and the passing away parts of ourselves, to reconcile the temporariness of the flesh and the potential eternity of the spirit. This conflict, this irreconcilliation is what we call sin.

To sin is to act out of fear. Fear of impermanence, fear of vulnerability, fear that all life is passing us by, here and now, that we have to take what we can for ourselves before it’s too late! As Hannah Arent points out in her essay The Banality of Evil, while Milton portrays Lucifer as a glamorous, intriguing figure, it is Dante who captures the reality of sin. Sin is not a thrilling exercise of freedom, sin is merely the selfishness that arises from a state of desperation. An existence lived out of fear and dissatisfaction with an imperfect, too quickly passing world.

In the words of Robert Barron: “Dante’s Lucifer stays helplessly in one place, mulls unproductively over past resentments and weeps unceasingly. Neither charming, nor seductive, the heart of darkness is, after all, rather pitiful and dull… in relatively superficial expression, sin can have a certain glamorous power, but sin itself, the source of moral evil is essentially empty, banal, impotent since it is nothing but an illusion, a false perception. Sins can be intriguing and captivating, sin is just sad.”

Sin is the investment in the flesh. But Christ says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Live even though we die? We begin the mass with the essence of Christ’s teaching: Love God with all your Heart, Mind and Strength and Love your neighbor as yourself. This is the definition of what it is to be Christlike. When we turn and follow Christ, seeking to love each person in line with us at the grocery store, each annoying member of our extended family, and not just feel some warm sentiment, but really love them, making sacrifices for them, doing anything we can to improve their lives, when we love each homeless person, each malnourished child, each really, really unpleasant boss, we take hold of this life. When we set aside time in our life to pray, to meditate, to read scripture, and philosophy and edifying novels and poetry that expand our souls, we take hold of this life. When we seek out a deep, life giving relationship with God in our hearts, in our places of worship, and around this altar in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, we cease hold of this life.

Eternal life is not heaven, and death is not what happens to us in the grave. Eternal life is here and now, death is here and now, and each moment, each choice, each act is an opportunity for resurrection and life. Amen.