Sunday, November 04, 2018

Lord, If You Had Been Here - All Saints Sunday 2018

Isaiah 25:6-9; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Both Mary and Martha uttered these words to Jesus, words that perhaps we’ve found ourselves thinking in times of grief and loss. “Lord, if you had been here....” my brother would not have died, my child would not have died, the cancer would not have come back, I would not have lost my job, the country would not have descended into chaos, the church would not have strayed. Lord, if you had been here, we would not have suffered the loss of people, or relationships, or dreams, or hope. 

Of all the things that are awful about loss, one of the big ones is the feeling of being completely alone in our grief. Even if we’re grieving with others, our experience is uniquely our own. We might find comfort in the company of someone else who has suffered a similar loss, but in the end, they simply can’t feel what we’re feeling. Each of us enters our own land of grief. Each one of us will experience loss and grief in our lifetime, more than once, and each of us will feel as Mary and Martha did, even if only for a moment, “Lord, if you had been here,” my brother, my mother, my father, my child would not have died. We will feel alone, abandoned, lost at sea.

Have you ever been at sea? In a boat in the middle of the ocean with a giant circle of water all around that ends only where it meets the sky, far off at the horizon? It’s both expansive and overwhelming, and it makes us feel very, very small. It’s similar, actually to standing in the middle of the prairies, with the land stretching off into the distance. With a horizon out there, a place that logically you know you will cross if you keep travelling in one direction, but which, at the same time, seems uncrossable because we can never see past it. This is what grief can be like––expansive and overwhelming, with a horizon we can’t see past, leaving us feeling insignificant and powerless and alone.

Except that we are not alone. In this respect, death and grief lie to us. The truth is that we are not alone in our grief. We say, “Lord, if you had been here,” as if the Lord was not. But the Lord is. The Lord does not abandon us, not ever, not even for a second. I was reminded of this on Tuesday night, at the vigil for the victims of Pittsburgh’s synagogue murders, when Reverend John Pentland, from Hillhurst United Church here in Calgary, said that in the very moment when those eleven people died, “God was the first to weep.” At the moment of our loss, even before we realize what has just happened, God is there. God is the first to weep. Like a mother in the face of her child’s pain, God weeps for our loss, God weeps for us, God weeps for the grief we are about to endure.

We hear this in the story of Lazarus, “When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ... Jesus began to weep.” Jesus weeps with us in our loss, Jesus sits with us in the darkness, Jesus is there. Jesus is here. We are not alone in our grief.

More importantly, the One who keeps us company is one who has been through what we are going through. All the way through. This is the difference between Jesus Christ and the rest of us. While we might keep one another company in grief, not one of us has been all the way through this grief. We have not crossed the horizon. None of us has actually seen past death into new life. But Jesus has. This is our Easter proclamation, this is our baptismal story, that Jesus lived the life we have lived, and then Jesus died, crossing over that horizon, passing through death to new life. And then Jesus returned to walk with us as we move towards that horizon ourselves.

This is the promise we are given in Scripture. Throughout the Bible, from beginning to end, God promises that there is new life beyond the horizon. More than that, God promises to bring that new life over the horizon to us. Both Isaiah and the Book of Revelation tell us this––that God, after weeping with us, will reach out that divine hand and tenderly wipe our tears away. And they will be gone for good, never to return, because death and mourning will be no more.

Because God is bringing that new life from beyond the horizon into our midst. Did you notice that in our reading from Revelation? The holy city comes down out of heaven, down to us, and the home of God is among mortals. Because God knows that in this life, we will always be chasing that horizon and never actually crossing it, which you’ll know if you’ve ever driven on an endless prairie highway. And so God brings that new life to us. God sends God’s son, Jesus Christ, the Alpha and, more importantly, the Omega, the beginning and the end that is new life, to be with us. To bring new life to where we are. Into our midst.


“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” The Lord is here, and yes, death will still happen, but death is not the end. The sun/Son rises over the horizon and shines on us in our loss and our grief. This is, actually, one of the reasons we will light candles later this morning, in remembrance of our losses, as a gesture that we are trusting in the fuller light to come. We will light candles as a reminder that we are not alone in our grief because the Lord weeps with us. We will light candles as a defiant proclamation that Jesus Christ, the light that shines in the darkness, is here with us, no matter how dark things might feel. And we will light candles in thanks, for all of these things, and in gratitude to the one who brings to us the new life to come. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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