3/9/08                                                                                         JOHN 11:1-44

“BINDING AND UNBINDING”

Rev. James Singleton

Another new book has just hit the bookstores to join the hundreds of other books that deal with the topic of happiness. This book, written by Sonja Lyubomirsky, is entitled “The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.”

There is no doubt about it, we all want happiness. In fact, we act as if happiness is one of our inalienable rights declared in the Declaration of Independence along with Life and Liberty. If we are not constantly happy, it’s as though we are not living up to the American Dream. But Jefferson knew too much about life to declare happiness to be a right. What he declared as a right was the “pursuit of happiness,” not the state of happiness.

A backlash has recently started to the happiness craze. Jerome Wakefield, a professor at New York University, has coauthored a new book entitled, “The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder.” His book explains that our society has become unrealistic in its so called pursuit of happiness and has mistaken normal grief and sadness for clinical illness.  

I see it all the time when those who are grieving complain to me that their friends and family members encourage them to “snap out of it” and get on with their life. We live in a death denying and grief avoiding culture.

We hate to be around people who are sad or depressed and we are afraid of such feelings when they appear in ourselves. If we are not in a state of happiness, we think we are sick. And if we are Christian, if we are not in a state of constant happiness we think we are faithless. 

The episode of Jesus and the death of Lazarus corrects our misperception of how life should always be. For within this story we encounter three people whom Jesus loved very much, but who each suffer in his and her own way nonetheless—including Jesus himself. And all of it is considered to be normal.

            To begin with, there is Lazarus. Lazarus was one of Jesus’ best friends and it is said that Jesus loved Lazarus. But Lazarus is ill. Something bad is happening to this good man. This seems rather shocking and affronts our sense of how faith works. If Jesus loves someone, why would he allow that someone to become ill?

What Christian hasn’t wondered at a time of sickness, or in a moment of tragedy or fear—how could Jesus allow this to happen to me? We want to believe that faith makes us immune from the diseases, heartaches, hardships and evils of this world. But it doesn’t. Even men and women of faith are still only men and women—mortals who are subject to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” 

 If Lazarus was not immune to trials and tribulations, what makes the rest of us think we will be? Unhappy things happen to us and no amount of pretending to be happy about it will change it or make it go away.

And then there’s Mary and Martha. Mary and Martha are Lazarus’s sisters and dear friends of Jesus. When their brother first became ill, they did what all good people of faith do—they sent word to Jesus to come and help. They prayed and believed and then waited for the answer to their prayer. Only Jesus never arrived. The clock ticked, Lazarus’s condition went from bad to worse and still no Jesus. The clocked ticked some more, they paced back and forth telling themselves that surely Jesus would arrive in time, but Lazarus went from sick to dead and still no Jesus.

Four days after Lazarus died Jesus finally shows up and Mary and Martha hit him with the same accusatory line: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” They are not happy, they are angry. They are angry at their God for not showing up on time to save their loved one.  

Who has not wondered where God was at? Who has not accused God of not caring, not showing up on time? If only you would have been here my son would not have died; my job would have been saved; my wife would not have gotten sick; my project would not have failed.  

Our will and God’s will are not always the same. God allows things to happen that we do not want to happen, and it makes us sad and angry and fills us with doubts and even fears. And that’s all perfectly normal. Jesus did not make an excuse for not doing what Mary and Martha wanted when they wanted it, he simply operates from His own will and by His own reasons. Jesus is God and we are not. God’s ways are not our ways. Even if we believe that, it doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it.

And then there is that great moment when they lead Jesus to Lazarus’ tomb and Jesus stands outside of it and weeps. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t tell jokes. He didn’t say, “Oh, come on people, lighten up! Don’t worry—be happy.” No. He wept. Why did he weep?

He wept because his friend had died. He wept because death is part of being human. He wept because the Kingdom of God is not here in fullness where death is no more. Death is a reality. Death is separation, no matter how blessed it might be. To deny the power of death, to pretend that we will not all die and that our deaths are of little consequence is to live in a dream world. Death staggers us and should stagger us. There should be no easy getting over death. Grief is normal. Grief is a long process that never fully ends so long as we remain in this world.  

No matter how sure we are of God’s promises and how strong our hopes are, God’s people will still be moved to tears. Weeping and grief are not signs of faith’s absence or of little faith—they are signs of being human.

If life moves Jesus to tears and not us, then something is wrong with us.

When Jesus called Lazarus to come out of the tomb, we are told that Lazarus was bound with strips of burial cloth. The world binds us in it cloths of sadness, grief, fear, heartache, pain, sickness and death. To be human is to be bound in the world’s burial strips. It is natural. It is the way God has designed the world. To be in a constant state of happiness is either to ignore the reality of life or to be so drugged and numbed that we no longer care.

Life is not meant to be a constant state of happiness—not even for Christians. But there is a difference between people who get sad, who become angry with God, who have periods of doubts and fears because of events that have taken place in life and people who live in a constant state of hopelessness and despair.

If the world binds us in its burial cloths, notice that Jesus calls for our unbinding. “Unbind him, and let him go” he said to the bystanders who witnessed the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. How does God unbind us from the world’s binding in pain and suffering?

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live, and everyone who believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” This is what Jesus asked of Martha amidst her sobbing. He asked her if she could live by a promise and from a faith, even though the results were not yet visible.  

Christianity asks us to accept that death, as real as it is, is not the final reality. It is not the final reality physically or spiritually. There is always the power of resurrection to follow for those who have not given up hope.  

Maybe Martha said it best when she said, “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.” She made it clear that she was not happy about how things had gone, but she was not in despair either.

Her faith told her that “even now” God could do amazing things. It was never too late with this Jesus. It was never too difficult for the Jesus. Something could be done—even now.

·        Even though I didn’t get what I hoped for, even now I believe that God will still find a way to bless me. Do you believe this?

·        Even though the news was not what I wanted to hear, even now I believe good news shall yet come. Do you believe this?

·        Even though my loved one died despite my prayers, even now I believe that God has raised my loved one up into eternal life and someday we will be together again. Do you believe this?

·        Even though I have failed a thousand times to live up to expectations, even now I believe I am still forgiven and still loved. Do you believe this?

·        Even though I don’t understand where God has been or how God could have allowed all of these bad things to happen, even now I still believe that all things can work for the good for those who are in Christ Jesus. Do you believe this?

Martha and Mary both said, “Lord, if you had been here…” But the point is—he was there. He may not have operated on their time table, but he was there in the end. He was there with power to do amazing things that no one else could do. Martha, Mary and Lazarus may have had to wait for a time, but eventually their prayers were answered and their lives restored.

In the book Fresh Packet of Sower’s Seeds, Brian Cavanaugh recounts a little story about a snail who, on one raw, windy day in spring, started to climb a cherry tree. Some birds in a nearby tree ridiculed him chirping, “Hey, you dumb snail, where do you think you’re going?” Others squawked, “Why are you climbing that tree? There’s no cherries on it.” But the snail, undeterred, simply replied, “There will be some by the time I get there.”

Christians do not live in a constant state of happiness, but neither do we live in a constant state of despair. We creep along our pursuit of happiness because we believe that one day, as slow as it may be, we will arrive at the fruit of God’s Kingdom where every tear will be wiped away because mourning, crying, pain and death will be no more (Revelation 21).  

The world binds us in strips of earthly grief, sadness, fear, anger, pain, sorrow, disease and death. But Jesus unbinds us through faith that no darkness is permanent, no sorrow is forever, and though we may feel alone at times—we never are.   

Don’t feel guilty about your unhappy feelings. Don’t chastise yourself over your sadness and grief, melancholy and doubts. That’s part of being a frail human being. But also, don’t give up on the pursuit of happiness. 

 Keep moving along, even if it’s at a snail’s pace, by believing that even now Jesus is with you; even now he is the resurrection and the life; even now he may call out your name to come forth and give the order to unbind you from whatever is making you unhappy and, even now, set you free.

                                                                                                AMEN.