A Vital Conversation About Death

John 11:1-44

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
April 24, 2022

As we approach the midlife years, we do the most awkward things. I decided I was going to try fishing. I was in my late 30’s and I finally took a fishing pole and went fishing with my brother in law as we visited Estes Park. Of course I fished on the fish pond that was well stocked with fish, even a person who is blind can catch a fish the first try at that place. I caught my fish and my brother in law cleaned it up and we had fish fry with the family.

Raines was the editorial page editor for New York Times, and author of Fly-fishing Through the Midlife Crisis. It is a book of beautiful stories of fly-fishing with his sons and his friends, and along the way he weaves into the stories how he wrestled with the meaning of life. When one of his close friends, Dick Blaylock called him from the Indian Springs hospital in intensive care unit in Vero Beach, Florida, barely able to speak, Howell Raines said that he began to face for the first time, “The Black Dog,” that is, the reality of his own mortality, that he himself was destined to die.

He said,” As I navigated through the final shoals, through the passage of middle age, I came to see that the acceptance of my immortality was the final and indispensable issue for me. And indeed it was hardly worth going through the trouble of having the midlife crisis if I was not able to be comfortable in the arms of death.” It was a big moment for him. He said he came to a moment of enlighten of how fearful he was about dying when he was watching this movie, he said it was sort of embarrassingly, he was watching the movie Moonstruck.

He said, “I remember feeling cheapish about finding a pearl of wisdom in a movie being promoted as an opportunity to regard Cher as a serious actress. But this was the first time I remember explicitly admitting to myself how profoundly fearful I was of dying, how intolerable I found it to contemplate ceasing to exist. The fear I felt was childish to me, but it was and it was real.”

When Howell said that he touched a nerve that human beings have had for a long time. Philosophers, religious thinkers along the way, have pointed to the impact of coming to terms with the fact that we are all going to die; it is a profound experience in our lives.

Martin Heidelberg says that we live with an unceasing anticipation of death.

Consequently, death looms over everything we do and drives much of what we do and effects everything that we do.

The writer of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament says in chapter three and verse eighteen and following,

I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other.

They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity

All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth? (Eccl. 3:18-21)

The writer in the Old Testament wrestles with the reality that we are mortal and we have to make sense of life in light of that. If fact the idea that we are all going to die robs life of meaning, what is the point of living anyway, some would think.

The writer of Hebrews in the New testament said,

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

This is what Howell Rains was struggling with being held as slavery by the fear of death and the writer of Hebrews said, “Jesus has responded to that.”

Your life and mine are constantly reminding us of the fear of death. We watch this on television, sometimes fictional, sometimes reality. We hear the reports of pandemics and the reports of war. We watch the generation ahead of us pass over the horizon and we know that our time is coming too. We have to deal with the fact that we have to die.

It’s sort of like looking into the sun, we can only do that for so long before we turn our eyes away and think about something else. We don’t want to think about the fact of our mortality, it’s the ultimate insult to us. So sometime around midlife, people in this death-denying culture we live in seem to lose their grip. With death maybe in the horizon there is a possibility we may be spared. So people work on their image, their body, they join the gym, they have affairs, they want to look younger and few people would admit that it is the fear of death that is driving us to do those kind of things. You know what, red corvettes, and gold chains and memberships at the gym can’t put it away. Its reality and the sad thing is that so many people die without ever coming to terms with what it means to live and that’s the tension that we face.

Howell Raines concluded “No one can fear death and truly live. The reality of our mortality is an issue we have to come to terms with in order to live and authentic life.

So here we are with no answer of our own. It’s not like we have to make up something that gives life meaning and how we deal with the fact of our own death. We can’t’ supply a solution. We need help with this one. If we are going to make sense of our lives and sense of death, we need to have a vital conversation about death.

And so Jesus enters, in John chapter eleven. He comes to a scene where the enemy death has already intruded, it has wreaked havoc in a community called Bethany. It wreaked havoc in the lives of friends of his, Mary and Martha, stolen the life of their brother Lazarus. Jesus friends and family have gathered to mourn and even as a reader coming to John chapter eleven, we know what it feels like to gather like this. Lazarus has died, his sisters are brokenhearted, his friends and community are missing someone who has been important to them. And Jesus walks on to that scene, stepping on to the field of this recent battle of the enemy. The enemy has come. One has been taken, many have been wounded as collateral damage. He steps through this smoking battlefield, he comes to demonstrate that death does not get the last word for those who follow him, that God is for us, even in the face of death and that we have a reason to live with hope.

So when Jesus arrives at Bethany, he’d been invited by Mary and Martha and friends. Word had been sent to him that his friend Lazarus is ill and Jesus waited two days before he gathered his disciples and made his way back to Bethany and when he got there, Lazarus had already died. He had been dead for four days. He has three vital conversations about death when we get there. The first one is with his activist friend, Martha. Martha, I think is the older sister of the pair and their brother Lazarus, he’s the one who has died. Martha is the one that in the story shows up and she is always reacting, she is busy doing something, and when she hears that Jesus has come to Bethany finally, she gets up and goes out to meet him. Mary stays at home. And when Martha gets there this is the first vital conversation about the nature of death and resurrection, about belief and faith in God.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”  Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (John 11:20-27)

Martha insists, “If you had been there, he would not have died. You go all over the land healing people.” Jesus said, “Your brother will rise again.” And Martha gives a Sunday School answer she learned at church: Yes, I know he will rise on the last day and that’s little hope when your brother is lying in the tomb.

Jesus responds, Martha, you don’t understand, I am the resurrection and the life.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.[a] Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

She was telling her that her brother had met the enemy of death but the enemy had not won. Sometimes death is understood in our culture, and has been for many centuries as a friend who comes to suffering people and relieves them of the suffering. At least they are not suffering anymore. We almost treat death as a friend. That’s the way Greek philosophy looked at death.

When Socrates was condemned to death and he was to drink the cup of hemlock, the poison that would end his life, he calmly delivers a speech and drink the hemlock and early opponents to Christianity used to point to that story and contrasted to Jesus in the garden, wrestling with the cup and saying, “Father, if there is any way for this cup to pass from me, take it away, nevertheless not my will, but your will be done.”

It’s because biblically in the Old Testament and the New Testament, death is not a friend. In the Greek philosophy, death was a friend to free the spirit from the prison house of the body. But not so, in Biblical thinking, death is the enemy and always will be and Jesus is face to face where the enemy has done its worse.

When someone suffers for a long time and they finally die, it’s not that their friend death has come and freed them from the suffering. The enemy death had begun the suffering a long time before. It is at that moment when a person breathes their last breath, it is Jesus who is the savior, the resurrection and the life who steps in and takes he enemy and dismisses him. He who believes in me will never die, Jesus said. Jesus conquers the enemy and he tells that to Martha.

His remark to Martha has two parts to it, both which are really important. The first thing is “I’m the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me even though they die, will live.

Physical death has lost its claim. Consider this word from Paul:

For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end,[a] when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die,[a] but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?

    Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:21-26; 51-57).

Death is an enemy that Christ will overcome and that’s what he tells Martha. The enemy has not won. Keep your faith. Hold on to your hope because the enemy has not won this battle.

Then he says to him, “Those who believe in me will never die. I am the resurrection and the life. He says to her, “Knowing that death is defeated, we can come to terms with life.”

What that means, I think, is that in light of Jesus victory over death, we are free to live, you and I. We are free to live fully. We don’t have to establish ourselves, we don’t have to vie for power and position and prestige and possessions. All these futile attempts that we make to prove that we’ve been here on planet earth, are not necessary now, because we’re living forever. We don’t have to struggle with all those things. All those expressions of the fear of dying or fear of not having lived can be relinquished. All of our white-knuckled grip on our lives can be relaxed with the gift of eternal life we no longer have to fret death and dying. We are free, simply to follow Jesus, serve him in this world and know that our lives last forever. That’s the meaning of “I am the resurrection and the life,” we can cease striving to prove any longer. He’s defeated our enemy.

The second part of this vital conversation is with Mary and Jesus. Mary the contemplative; every time we see Mary, she is meditating and sitting at the feet of Jesus as he teaches the Word.

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. (John 11:32-35)

Mary asks, “Where were you?” And Jesus’ response is not an explanation, but it is his presence. He stands with her and feels the pain of loss and emptiness and confusion and he weeps. Jesus comes along the wounded and offers hope. He says, we can endure.

Paul reminds us in Romans chapter 8 that we are more than conquerors:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

The third conversation about death is with his friend, Lazarus.

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”

Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone.

And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.”

When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (John 11:38-44).

Death gave up and released the man. This was not resurrection, this was resuscitation, Lazarus would someday die and have his funeral.

1.           Martha: We can live life meaningfully because death is defeated.

2.           Mary: When we have to endure this life, even with the loss of others, even in the midst of death Jesus will comfort us and will be present with us.

3.           Lazarus: We can live with hope because one day our name will be spoken and we will rise again.

Howell Raines had a boss that would embarrassed him but never spoke with anyone. But his fear of death affected how he treated others. Upset with others, including his boss.

He said he came across a phrase from a Cherokee warrior; It’s a good day to die and he wrote this on a sticky note and placed this on his computer.

When his boss would come into his room angry and he felt like responding in kind, he would look at the little piece of paper: It is a good day to die. In other words, why lose the beauty of this day, I may not live through this day and I don’t want to be angry and ruin my day because of my boss.

The statement “It is a good day to die” were not words of fatality, but freedom. These words infused in his life a new existence and a desire to live in the goodness of love.

He tells about returning to the canyon where he and his son Jeffrey had fish many, many times together. And he said, “I fished alone from morning until great chars of black shadows lay across the walls and the river became opaque, indifferent and a little dangerous looking. Beside those waters, the death song of the Cheyenne entered me, filled me up and I thought, ‘It would be a good day to die’ and I understood on the stroke of that moment the cry of the dog soldier, “it is a good day to die.” It is not about fatality, but it is about freedom.” It sets us free from the fear of death and we come to terms with the reality of our mortality.

Jesus did not give us empty promises, but freedom. Demonstrated the power of truth. Take away the sting of death. He is for us, the one who infuses his very existence into us and gives us a reason to live and to live with the presence of God in the goodness of love and the freedom to serve.

These are good questions to ask whether we are young, in midlife or sunset year, “Am I ready to die? Am I ready to live? Do I know the resurrection?”