Sermon, by Pastor Joel
All Saints Sunday
November 3, 2024
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44
The context of this sermon is
100% written by a human
If you go online, you will find a lot of people talking about the will of God. They use it to explain away negative events – “Hurricane Milton was the will of God.” They use the will of God to justify their own intolerance. My prejudice or intolerance, they argue, is the will of God, as if they know. Or they acquiesce to evil in the world: “What can be done?” they say. “What happens next is the will of God.”
Ah, the will of God. How many times as a minister have I heard that phrase used to explain all kinds of events. Someone gets better from an illness, and they are told, it’s the will of God, as if they have a pipeline to God, and their neighbor who didn’t recover did not. Or they wait for rescue – from debt, or storm, or other calamity – because it’s all up to God’s will.
In a new show on Netflix, the main character, who is a rabbi, told a version of an old nugget in one of his sermons: about the guy on the roof, with the flood waters rising, who ignored his neighbor, the rescue boat, and the helicopter, and, upon arriving at the Pearly Gates demanded to know why God hadn’t saved him. “I sent you help three times,” God says.” “What more did you want?
Surely, we all see quickly, where that “will-of-God” argument falls down. We become complacent, witless, even blind to the gospel at work in our midst. What happens when the cure doesn’t come? What happens when the flood waters rise? What happens when lousy things happen despite our best prayers that they won’t? Is this also God’s will? Have we somehow let God down?
Let’s not kid ourselves. Lousy things, terrible things happen, and they are not by God’s design; they are not intended to build character. They are just lousy, terrible things. These events - illness, tragedy, misfortune - leave their mark: they destroy families; they leave people carrying deep, deep grief. You know I am no stranger to this in my own family, with the death of my brother. The accident that took his life was not God’s will. But I believe God willingly walked with my family through that valley and onto level ground again. God grieved with us; God wept with us. Our faith in God carried us.
This is all to lead into the famous story we hear today in the gospel: the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Jesus arrives to find his friend dead and placed in a tomb. His sister Mary is despondent: If only you had been here,” she tells Jesus, “Lazarus would have been okay. “
There is a version of that age-old question in Mary’s voice: If God cared enough, would our problems be solved? If God felt me worthy enough, all would be well. It’s hard not to ask that question: don’t we sit here each Sunday, hoping for a better life? Put it in this time, and it is easy to think that maybe we deserve it a little more than the next person.
But how quickly does that go astray? Once we think of God, not as guide, not as a source of strength and comfort, but as a puppet-master, we lose our free will; why should we do anything at all? Why should we strive to makes things better? Once we assume God intervenes, we begin to notice who gets God’s grace and who doesn’t, and suddenly we are ranking people. Maybe you’re thinking, “But that’s an old school understanding of God.” But it’s not that old, and it creeps into our conversations more than we think.
How does Jesus react to Lazarus’s death? The gospel suggests he is deeply shaken by this news. He grieves with Mary. Just as God grieves with us, when misfortune comes our way. And then what happens? Well, we can’t know for sure. We might call it a miracle, we might call it healing. Jesus does not lie in place, praying. He goes to the tomb of Lazarus, as the gospel depicts it, and has the stone pulled away. And then he calls Lazarus out. And Lazarus is unbound. Jesus credits the act to God; “Thank you for listening to me,” he says. But we know that it was not God alone: Jesus was there as well. Just as we are there. Just as we are part of our own stories.
To be our own stories, we must have faith, in God and in ourselves. Faith in our ability to handle life’s crappy times. Faith to know that we are not abandoned by God during them. From that faith comes strength and healing and connection. I have been witness to many families who have found that will - not of God, but from God - to carry them through great trials.
There is another point to all of this, perhaps the most important one for us to remember this day: we are the hands of God. We are the doers who make God’s will happen. We are not subject to God’s will; we are given new life because of it. God walks with us; but we make the journey on our own two feet. We send the neighbor and the rescue boat and helicopter to those in need, and God gives us the strength and resolve to do so.
Lousy things happen for no reason at all. God does not promise to spare us from the difficult parts of life. Just as God’s will is not the reason behind them. Putting our faith in a better way, our belief in a brighter path, the lessons of the gospel that teach resolve, patience, trust, forgiveness, and resurrection, are part of the divine package that makes miracles happen.
The gospel spares us from a sorrowful fate: to be alone. We are never alone. Sometimes that divine presence comes from those around us, and sometimes we feel the company of God - just as did Mary, who sat that day, grieving her brother’s death with Jesus. And always, when we empower ourselves, when we are guided by the gospel, God walks with us.
A deep and profound belief can be found on this All Saints’ Sunday as we remember the loss of a loved one. If we truly believe that we are never alone, then there is nothing that can keep us from experiencing the resurrection and being made free and whole and alive. Find the will - not of God, but from God - to roll away the stone and unbind yourself and others. Amen.
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