Midweek Lenten Sermon Series

Based on “Choruses from the Rock”

by T. S. Eliot

V

Wednesday, April 10, 2018 – John 11:1-16

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.
T. S. Eliot

Lazarus is dead.  The cycle of heaven is complete.  We get three score and ten cycles around the sun and by grace more or in tragedy less.

Lazarus is dead – his cycle is complete.  Jesus waited three days to make sure he was dead. 

We are dust.  We are indeed part of the cycles of the universe.  Our time on earth is less than a blink of the eye in the evolutionary cycles of 13.8 billion years.

Lazarus is dead.  That is also our death sentence.  We are dust and to dust we shall return.  We began this series by announcing that we dare to look square in the face of the human condition.  We live in that space between life and death.  We live between the ache and the awe.

Singer, song writer Paul Simon puts it well in his song:  Flowers Never Bend:

No matter if you're born
To play the King or pawn
For the line is thinly drawn 'tween joy and sorrow
So my fantasy
Becomes reality
And I must be what I must be and face tomorrow

So I'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall

This is something that we really do not want to be reminded of – yet the Christian faith faces the truth. We do not sugar coat the human condition.  We really do not ‘pass away.’  We die!

We look at death squarely in the face because of Christ.  Jesus did – he was direct.  He told his disciples that his dear friend, Lazarus, is dead.

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

Further from God and nearer to the Dust:

Far away – we go far away and when we lose a loved one, a brother like Lazarus dies, we rightly wonder: 

where is God?

Coming?

“Lord, had you been here my brother would not have died.”

Coming:

The Word becomes flesh.  God comes to us.  God dwells with us. 

We are far but God comes…comes into our world…our lives; is one of us:  sweaty…feels our pain and dies.

God comes and enters into 33 cycles of heaven.  Christ becomes dust like us and dies.  God enters the darkness and brings light.  Nailed to a cross – God dies. 

God is dead.

Imagine that!  Lent prepares us for the death of God.  We’ve all but forgotten that Jesus actually died on the cross.  It wasn’t a sleep or a dream.  It is not some theological proposition.

Jesus put his own name in the sentence.  Jesus is dead.

Lent confronts us with the death of God.

And now what…what happens when God dies?

Let’s leave that question in your mind tonight.  Jesus is in a tomb – dead.

Lazarus is dead – Jesus is dead.  What’s next?

Amen. 

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