Summer, or at least spring, has arrived. And Easter is around the corner, and many are stocking up lamb and ham, Peeps and chocolate bunnies. In church, though, our Scripture readings today take us to graveyards, scenes of despair and crying, working through the unimaginable.
Life goes on. Tomorrow’s another day. Put one foot in front of the other. It sounds simple, but life can be challenging. What about the person locked in depression, who doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed and face another day? Or the woman who received the feared medical diagnosis? What about the man, heartbroken by grief, unable to imagine a future now? Or the friend whose body has been ruined by addiction?
What is a way to peace, to a sustainable economy, towards civility and faithfulness? What about veterans agonized by post-traumatic stress syndrome? Or the lives of those changed by random or even domestic violence?
The Scripture texts here talk about a real world where the Israelites are in exile and far from home, with their dreams dashed, where a friend has died. “Our bones are dried up,” they cry. “Our hope is lost. We are completely cut off.” The psalmist in the pit of despair. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Hear my voice.”
Martha’s response to Jesus—is it a prayer, of pain, grief, and helplessness? “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
In the godforsaken moments when God seems silent, we can learn how quickly life can change forever. To make it through shattering loss, we depend upon God’s presence and the care of others.
Perhaps you have had your unimaginable experience: a divorce, the death of a parent, an accident or bankruptcy. We often go through grief as something that is experienced in stages; complete stage one, then move to the next. But grief ebbs and flows. And grief is not always related to death but is experienced in a variety of circumstances.
What we need is an opportunity to express our grief, sometimes through weeping, sometimes in anger, sometimes in questioning why. Brene Brown, in her book Atlas of the Heart, writes about emotions and how they are the language of human experience. Brene writes: “Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.”
It seems at times that the whole world is depressed with fractured community, rising poverty, and economic insecurity, when we see abuse and hate as the status quo.
In the musical Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton’s affair has become public, bringing humiliation upon his wife, Eliza. And their beloved son, Philip, has died in a duel. Hamilton and Eliza are overwhelmed by grief and loss. In the song, “It’s Quiet Uptown,” Alexander Hamilton sings: “There are moments that the words don’t reach / There is suffering too terrible to name / You hold your child as tight as you can / And push away the unimaginable.”
In column Journey With Jesus, Debie Thomas, a seminarian in Berkeley, writes: “Yes, we are in death right now, but we serve a God who calls us to life. Our journey is not to the grave, but through it. The Lord who weeps is also the Lord who resurrects. So we mourn in hope.”
From the valley of dry bones, God asks the mortal the unimaginable question: Can these bones live? And then we see a scene of resurrection. Bones come together. Breath revives the bones. The graves open. A vast multitude stands up. And in God, there is hope. Life goes on.
Preaching in the fourth century, Augustine, preached about tree people who Jesus raised to life: the daughter of the synagogue leader, the widow’s son and Lazarus. Augustine preached in his sermon: “It may be that even now I am speaking to such folk as Lazarus, buried under the unyielding stone of habit and who are dead four days and stinking. Yet not even they must despair: they are dead, in the depths; but Christ is on high. He knows, by crying out with a loud voice, how to destroy these heavy loads; he know how, through himself, to raise the soul within to life, giving it to his disciples to loose. . . . So let those who are living, live; and those who are dead, in whichever of these three deaths they find themselves, let them act at once, to rise here and now from the dead.”
“Lazarus, come out,” Jesus says. Poet Maya Spector talks about “spring as a time to break out — time to punch our way out of the dark winter prison. . . Stop shutting eyes and gritting teeth, curling fingers into fists, hunching shoulders. . . Why make a cell your home when the door is unlocked, and the garden is waiting for you?”
In the musical Hamilton, Alexander and Eliza are working through the unimaginable and the musical has these words: “There are moments that the words don’t reach / There is grace too powerful to name / We push away what we can never understand / We push away the unimaginable / They are standing in the garden / Alexander by Eliza’s side / She takes his hand / Forgiveness / Can you imagine.”
At Easter, we proclaim the unimaginable — that God promises new life. Life goes on, and there is forgiveness. And there is new possibilities or unimagined healing. And there is hope even as we walk through the graveyards. Can you imagine walking in faith?
