5 Lent A April
2, 2017
Ez. 37:1-14 Ps. 130
Rom.6:16 -23 John 11:1-44
Just so you don't think that this sermon is pointless, here are four points. Babushka dolls, death and resuscitation, and resurrection.
Why Bubushka? Not because Russia is in the news but because they provide concentric layers to illustrate the layers of history. History is a story and the last story develops from all of the stories told before the latest story and includes traces of the past while being the next outer layer. The Bubushka doll or matryoshka doll like the layers of an onion provides a model for looking at the development of traditions and today we are looking at some specific Gospel traditions.
First,let's look at the Gospel tradition of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. These three do not appear in the Gospels Matthew and Mark. They do in the Gospels of Luke and John. Some scholar think that may mean that the writers of John's Gospel read Luke since John was the latest Gospel to come to writing. The story of the restoration of Lazarus back to life appears to be a story to prove the assertion found in the parable about Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Luke we do not know about Lazarus having two sisters because the Lazarus in Luke is a figure in one of the parables of Jesus: Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus was the leprous beggar who begged at the gate of the rich man who ignored him and didn't know that he was there. Both Lazarus and the rich man die; in the afterlife Lazarus dwells in paradise with Abraham and the rich man dwells in agony across an impassible canyon. His agony is intensified because he can see Lazarus and Abraham but cannot be with them. He implores father Abraham to send someone back from the dead to warn his brothers and family to amend their lives so that they don't have to arrive in Hades too. Abraham denies his request and said that if they did not follow Moses and the prophet, then neither would they believe even someone who came back from the dead.
Fast forward to the Gospel of John. Jesus arrives late to Bethany and Mary and Martha are in distress because their brother Lazarus has died and has been put in the tomb. Jesus has arrived late to show that he has power over death and he calls Lazarus from the tomb back to life. But what is the outcome of this marvelous event? This Lazarus returns from the dead and yet many of Jewish religious leaders still do not believe and they prophesy the necessity of the death of Jesus to save Israel. For the members of the community of John's Gospel, Lazarus had returned from dead and still many did not believe and many who knew about the Risen Christ still did not believe. So the Lazarus story was a commentary on the disbelief of many regarding the resurrection.
Let's look back at the Babushka doll. The earliest figure represents the events of Christ themselves, and we don't actually have full and actual video or audio recordings of these event. There was a range of stories that were passed in oral traditions about Jesus. We may think that the Gospels represent the next layers, but in fact in Christian writings, the writings of St. Paul were the first writings about Jesus that we have. The Gospel present the chronological logic of being the first writings about Jesus, but the writings of St. Paul pre-date the Gospel writings. The mysticism of Paul and the early disciples then determined how the narrative of the life of Jesus was to be presented in the Gospels.
Paul did not see Jesus. He did not witness his teachings. He wasn't a disciple who followed him from Galilee. He was not at the crucifixion and he was not privileged with the early post-resurrection appearances. He was a persecutor of those who said that Christ had risen. Paul was converted in a mystical experience in an encounter with the Risen Christ. Paul developed the theology of the death and resurrection of Christ which then became presented in the Gospel narratives.
Paul spiritualized everything. He believed that every thing needed to be interpreted from having an inner conversion. For Paul, death had two meanings; there was the death of the body and there was spiritual death. Sin was the condition of being in a deathly state. By taking a personal mystical identity with the death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul believed that one could pass from a state of death into a state of receiving new life, the life of knowing God's Holy Spirit. When this spiritual program of Paul was presented in the Gospel, the death of Lazarus represented the natural deathly state of living in alienation from God. Jesus came to weep over our alienation from God and call us forth to live lives unbound from the bands of the fear of death. We, like Lazarus, live until we die our natural physical death. We live as it were, spiritual resuscitated lives, until our bodies die. But when we die, then our resurrection bodies will take off like the butterfly from the lifeless cocoon. So, here we can see the distinction in the mysticism of the early church between resuscitation and resurrection. Like Lazarus, we can sense the freedom of living again, even though we know that our bodies will die. But in identity with Jesus as the resurrection and the life, we can live with the hope of a life that will be preserved in the greatness of God's memory.
So here are the layers of the tradition. The event of Jesus. The memorial traces based upon the experience of St. Paul and his mysticism of the death and resurrection of Christ as an invitation for each of us to embark upon personal transformation. Then the mysticism of Paul written into the narratives of Jesus in the form of the Gospel writings. In the Lazarus tradition, we are taught that we can have our spirits resuscitated by God's Holy Spirit, not to deny the eventual deaths of our body, but to partake of the eternal aspect of our nature that will live on because of belief in God as the ultimate preserving agent of greatness.
We can live in fear, ignorance and greedy, grabbing feverishly all in life right now in fear that we cannot have all that we desire because we don't have enough time to collect and take all that we desire. This is represented by the rich man who neglected the poor beggar Lazarus. It was represented by those who denied the future of the afterlife. The Gospel of Christ is coming to a faithful wisdom guided by hope in a continuous future. Hope is the baptism and cleansing of our desire. In hope we know that if we don't finish all that we wished and dreamed about, we believe that the fullness of God still awaits us after we die.
Jesus came to deal with the alienation of the spiritual death represented by the sense of alienation from God in this life and the afterlife. St. Paul took the experience of the Risen Christ as a mystical identity with the death and resurrection of Jesus. He taught this identity as a method of spiritual transformation. The Gospel writers then reweaved the spiritual theology of Paul and the early disciples back into the stories of Jesus in the Gospel to preserve the teaching in accessible forms to as many people as possible. Today many people stay at the story level of the Gospels; they don't perceive the mystical theology hidden therein.
And you and I today are another babushka doll layer of the tradition of Jesus Christ. We have received and borrowed and studied and prayed and been converted by all of the remnants of this wonderful traditions that have come to us. We have attempted in our own personal ways to enter into this mystical experience of the Risen Christ being within us as our hope for a future beyond the bookend of our deaths.
Let us do all that we can to be a transitional layer of the traditions of the Risen Christ to those who are with us now and who will live after us. If we seek to identify with the Risen Christ and teach this mystical spiritual tradition well, we may be faithful conduits of God's grace to the next generation, the next layer of the Jesus tradition.
Remember we always live in the later days, because now is always the latest day. Let us take care to present the mystical tradition of the Risen Christ to everyone in the very best possible way. Amen.
Ez. 37:1-14 Ps. 130
Rom.
Just so you don't think that this sermon is pointless, here are four points. Babushka dolls, death and resuscitation, and resurrection.
Why Bubushka? Not because Russia is in the news but because they provide concentric layers to illustrate the layers of history. History is a story and the last story develops from all of the stories told before the latest story and includes traces of the past while being the next outer layer. The Bubushka doll or matryoshka doll like the layers of an onion provides a model for looking at the development of traditions and today we are looking at some specific Gospel traditions.
Fast forward to the Gospel of John. Jesus arrives late to Bethany and Mary and Martha are in distress because their brother Lazarus has died and has been put in the tomb. Jesus has arrived late to show that he has power over death and he calls Lazarus from the tomb back to life. But what is the outcome of this marvelous event? This Lazarus returns from the dead and yet many of Jewish religious leaders still do not believe and they prophesy the necessity of the death of Jesus to save Israel. For the members of the community of John's Gospel, Lazarus had returned from dead and still many did not believe and many who knew about the Risen Christ still did not believe. So the Lazarus story was a commentary on the disbelief of many regarding the resurrection.
Let's look back at the Babushka doll. The earliest figure represents the events of Christ themselves, and we don't actually have full and actual video or audio recordings of these event. There was a range of stories that were passed in oral traditions about Jesus. We may think that the Gospels represent the next layers, but in fact in Christian writings, the writings of St. Paul were the first writings about Jesus that we have. The Gospel present the chronological logic of being the first writings about Jesus, but the writings of St. Paul pre-date the Gospel writings. The mysticism of Paul and the early disciples then determined how the narrative of the life of Jesus was to be presented in the Gospels.
Paul did not see Jesus. He did not witness his teachings. He wasn't a disciple who followed him from Galilee. He was not at the crucifixion and he was not privileged with the early post-resurrection appearances. He was a persecutor of those who said that Christ had risen. Paul was converted in a mystical experience in an encounter with the Risen Christ. Paul developed the theology of the death and resurrection of Christ which then became presented in the Gospel narratives.
Paul spiritualized everything. He believed that every thing needed to be interpreted from having an inner conversion. For Paul, death had two meanings; there was the death of the body and there was spiritual death. Sin was the condition of being in a deathly state. By taking a personal mystical identity with the death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul believed that one could pass from a state of death into a state of receiving new life, the life of knowing God's Holy Spirit. When this spiritual program of Paul was presented in the Gospel, the death of Lazarus represented the natural deathly state of living in alienation from God. Jesus came to weep over our alienation from God and call us forth to live lives unbound from the bands of the fear of death. We, like Lazarus, live until we die our natural physical death. We live as it were, spiritual resuscitated lives, until our bodies die. But when we die, then our resurrection bodies will take off like the butterfly from the lifeless cocoon. So, here we can see the distinction in the mysticism of the early church between resuscitation and resurrection. Like Lazarus, we can sense the freedom of living again, even though we know that our bodies will die. But in identity with Jesus as the resurrection and the life, we can live with the hope of a life that will be preserved in the greatness of God's memory.
So here are the layers of the tradition. The event of Jesus. The memorial traces based upon the experience of St. Paul and his mysticism of the death and resurrection of Christ as an invitation for each of us to embark upon personal transformation. Then the mysticism of Paul written into the narratives of Jesus in the form of the Gospel writings. In the Lazarus tradition, we are taught that we can have our spirits resuscitated by God's Holy Spirit, not to deny the eventual deaths of our body, but to partake of the eternal aspect of our nature that will live on because of belief in God as the ultimate preserving agent of greatness.
We can live in fear, ignorance and greedy, grabbing feverishly all in life right now in fear that we cannot have all that we desire because we don't have enough time to collect and take all that we desire. This is represented by the rich man who neglected the poor beggar Lazarus. It was represented by those who denied the future of the afterlife. The Gospel of Christ is coming to a faithful wisdom guided by hope in a continuous future. Hope is the baptism and cleansing of our desire. In hope we know that if we don't finish all that we wished and dreamed about, we believe that the fullness of God still awaits us after we die.
Jesus came to deal with the alienation of the spiritual death represented by the sense of alienation from God in this life and the afterlife. St. Paul took the experience of the Risen Christ as a mystical identity with the death and resurrection of Jesus. He taught this identity as a method of spiritual transformation. The Gospel writers then reweaved the spiritual theology of Paul and the early disciples back into the stories of Jesus in the Gospel to preserve the teaching in accessible forms to as many people as possible. Today many people stay at the story level of the Gospels; they don't perceive the mystical theology hidden therein.
And you and I today are another babushka doll layer of the tradition of Jesus Christ. We have received and borrowed and studied and prayed and been converted by all of the remnants of this wonderful traditions that have come to us. We have attempted in our own personal ways to enter into this mystical experience of the Risen Christ being within us as our hope for a future beyond the bookend of our deaths.
Let us do all that we can to be a transitional layer of the traditions of the Risen Christ to those who are with us now and who will live after us. If we seek to identify with the Risen Christ and teach this mystical spiritual tradition well, we may be faithful conduits of God's grace to the next generation, the next layer of the Jesus tradition.
Remember we always live in the later days, because now is always the latest day. Let us take care to present the mystical tradition of the Risen Christ to everyone in the very best possible way. Amen.
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