Dying is Easy

In the musical Hamilton, George Washington tells a young Alexander Hamilton that "Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder." The way Jesus deals with the death of Lazarus shows that Jesus understood this all too well, and chose as the last sign before his death to reveal himself as the Lord of Life. 

Transcript

Grace, Mercy and peace be with you from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Some of you may be familiar with the modern retelling of some of the main events of the revolution in the United States of 1776 centred around Alexander Hamilton. Turned into a Musical to great success on Broadway. Hamilton was, in his own words, a young orphan from the Caribbean, with no prospects, who was trying to make his way in this new country. One way for somebody with no social standing and no money and no family in a new country to make their way was to join in the military. So true in both Canada and the United States today, which is one of the reasons why Canada has opened our military now to permanent residents. When the War of Rebellion started, Hamilton ended up fighting so well that he was called in by General George Washington, and Washington wanted to make him his secretary, which of course Hamilton had no interest in doing. Washington does his best in rapping song to convince Hamilton that this would be an OK thing to do. It's all right, He says to him.

You want to fight? You've got a hunger / I was just like you when I was younger / Head full of fantasies of dying like a martyr. / Dying is easy, young man living is harder. 

Jesus is told by Mary and Martha that his friend and their brother Lazarus is dying, and what kind of friend doesn't run to the hospital when they find out that their friend might be near death, whether they're in the ICU or a Hospice room. We drop everything, even to fly across the country to be with a close friend or sibling, or parent who's nearing the end of their time on earth. But Jesus doesn't run to his friend's hospital bed. Instead, he tells everybody, “I think I'll wait for the funeral.” Seems like a very odd thing to do, so why doesn't Jesus go? Why doesn't Jesus immediately drop everything and run to Lazarus’ side to heal him? To comfort Mary and Martha by taking this sickness away? This is in fact the crux, if you will, of John chapter 11 and we can't really understand what Jesus is trying to teach us unless we dwell on that question, “Why does Jesus wait?” 

The reason why he waits is simple. Healings only delay the ultimate problem. The ultimate problem, you see, is death, and the very thing that brings about death, which is sin. People are quite used to Jesus healing by now. They've seen a blind man restored to sight. They've seen a paralyzed man being able to walk. They've seen the deaf being able to hear, they've even seen young children and men who've died, raised from death by Jesus's word. But can Jesus deal with death itself permanently? That's the question. Because you and I all know the dying is easy. Living is harder. 

So Jesus tells the disciples that Lazarus has fallen asleep. It's the first time, by the way, that this phrase is used that came for many centuries until our modern time to be the line we always use when a Christian dies. Not that they've passed away, not that they've gone to heaven or anything like that, but that they have fallen asleep. Which is why the way Christians treat their dead is so different from the way the majority of the world deal with their dead. We bury them, in a bed. We even have a pillow and sheets that we draw up over them when we finally close their bed and lay it in the ground. We don't die, we Christians. We fall asleep, because that's what Jesus has taught us. 

But the disciples – and I'm going to include in that phrase Mary and Martha - still don't understand that Jesus is the Lord of life. He is the God that the people have long been waiting for. Who would come and destroy this ultimate enemy. And so when Jesus is ready to go to Lazarus, Thomas takes on the role of Alexander Hamilton:

As a kid in the Caribbean, I wished for a war. / I knew that I was poor. I knew it was the only way to rise up. / When they tell my story / I'm either going to die in the battlefield and glory or rise up. 

It's the way the musical puts it, but of course the way Thomas phrases it is a little bit less poetic: “Let us go that we may die with him.” This is of course the very same Thomas that we will hear of in three weeks, who will disbelieve that Jesus is actually resurrected. Dying, you see, is easy, Thomas. Believing is harder. 

One of our dear friends in Christ, Mike, fell asleep in Christ in the last few months. He was a member for most of his life of the same church that Deb was baptized in and confirmed in, and that we were both married in. In fact, the church through which I joined the Missouri Synod. He had to leave that church because of some issues with the pastor, who simply didn't understand what Christianity was all about. And so he, like many members of that church, drove to another congregation in Cincinnati, and their senior pastor, Tom Westra, faithfully ministered to Mike as he dealt with a horrendous cancer of the stomach. 

Six months before he fell asleep, he realized that no treatment was going to preserve his life in this world. He said it's time for me to go, and his pastor met with him. One of the last times he visited, Mike said to him, “I'm so happy to have a pastor like you as I'm near the end of my earthly life. Because you have done nothing for me but tell me of Christ crucified the forgiveness of my sins, and Christ raised from the tomb which is my own hope of resurrection.” We had a pastor, Mike related, who seemed to talk about everything but death. Everything but Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. Pastor Westra just looked at him and said. “I really feel that as a pastor, I have only one job. And that is to prepare you to die.” 

That's my job too. Because dying in some sense is easy in and of itself, the actual act of dying, the living through the process of dying, and for the people around the ones who fall asleep in Christ, that is so much harder. Ask Mary and Martha. In their mind, Lazarus chose the easy part. They were left with the difficult part, which was going on, living in the face of the death of their dear brother. Even Martha found it easy to say. Yes, Lord, he will rise again on the last day. I know our faith. I know that God has promised for us a last day of restoration when the creation will be restored, when sin will be no more when even death will be done away with, and the righteous will rise to live with Christ. The dying is easy, Jesus. Keeping the faith is harder. 

And that's why Jesus waited. It's precisely why Jesus waited to go and see his friend until he was not just quite dead or mostly dead, but entirely dead. Four days laid in the tomb, so long that when Jesus asked for the stone to be rolled away, Martha famously says. “But Lord, there will be an odor.” (Embalming techniques 2000 years ago were not what they are today.) Jesus waited to demonstrate that he not only has the power to heal the sick, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, but that he has come precisely to destroy once and for all our great enemy, the grave, that we no longer would go through life wondering what happens at death or after. Whether there is a God who holds life so dear that he is willing to make a plan to restore it. Jesus raises Lazarus precisely to demonstrate that power, that his ultimate victory will be over death. The solution of death, you see, is not to escape it, but to conquer and to defeat and to crush it. 

The Jewish authorities knew exactly what Jesus was doing. They knew exactly the threat that he posed. Jesus is not crucified primarily because of his moral teachings. He’s not crucified because he tells people to do unto others as they would have them do unto them. We know that teaching, it's in our conscience, no matter where we grew up in the world. Jesus is crucified because of his power to defeat death. What are we to do,” the authorities say, “For this man performs many signs, and if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him.” 

So how do we know that death has been defeated? Because of Lazarus, yes, but even more so because of Easter. Even though we did our best to take the Lord of Life and crucify him and put him in the grave, he could not stay there. He rises again, which we will celebrate with great acclamation on Easter. Jesus rises from death to pronounce peace between us and God. He does it to say that our deaths, our falling asleep, will not be the end. We will in fact wake up. Jesus comes to call us to trust him that he will give us eternal life. And he alone. Jesus rises again to proclaim that the new creation that is yet to come has in fact started already. Dying is easy, friends, Jesus says to us, rising is harder, but I will do it and I can do it for you, just as I did it for Lazarus. 

Salvation will not stop your walks through the valley of the shadow of death and it will not stop mine. But it does change where the journey ends. It does change what will be there at the end of that valley. And for those of us baptized into Christ it will not be death. It will be a falling asleep. It will conclude with us rising again. So brothers and sisters, we can say that dying is easy. But rising again in Christ, that’s even easier. 

Amen.