Death be not proud

Seeing the world through Jesus’ eyes

 JOHN 11: 1-15

Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. So the sisters sent word to him saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?”  He…told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.” But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep. So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.”

            Do you know how many funerals we’ve had since I arrived here on December 1st?  There have been 15 funerals.  Now, that’s a lot of funerals!  Fr. Andrew has started calling me “The Boatman” (you know, the guy who guides people across the River Styx after they die?), but under his breath he secretly calls me “The Grim Reaper.”  May I respectfully mention the names of our beloved deceased?  They are: Myrna Wells, Eddie Christian, Kathleen Garner, Martine Anhalt, Angel Bravo, Bob Lindsay, Barbara Walker, Phillip Rogers, Betty Merrywell, Gloria Cortez, Lorene Komp, Isabelle Phillips, Erma Page, Doris Barber, and most recently, Bishop Andrew McDonald.

            Before a funeral begins, I always give the family a little advice.  I say, “Keep your eyes on Jesus.”  I explain further: “At this funeral there will be some light, happy moments where we’ll laugh, and some sad, heavy moments when we’ll cry, and some moments where you feel overwhelmed by your loss.  But in every moment, keep your eyes on Jesus and everything is going to be OK.”  What I really hope is that they will keep their eyes not only on Jesus, but peer closely and carefully into his eyes, and see the world reflected there.  Have you ever looked closely at someone’s eyes?  If you do, you can see your own reflection there.  Now, if you do that with Jesus, you begin to see the world reflected there, and even begin to see things THROUGH his eyes, and you even see death.  You start seeing things the way Jesus does. Peering through Jesus’ eyes, you see that everything is touched with grace and every moment is budding with glory, even the grim moment of death.

             In the gospel today, we see an example of how Jesus looks at death.  After Lazarus dies Jesus tells his disciples: “Our friend Lazarus is asleep but I am going to awaken him.”  Now, I am convinced that Jesus is NOT speaking metaphorically here.  For Jesus death really is sleep.  And to prove his point, he touches Lazarus to wake him up, just like you wake up your sleeping children for school in the morning.  Sometimes, when someone very dear dies, we comfort little children by telling them that the deceased is just sleep.  But we adults don’t really believe that; we are only saying that to comfort our children, who cannot handle the grim finality of death.  But maybe we adults are the ones who don’t see right; like the disciples, Jesus has to correct our vision of death and teach us that it really is sleep.  When you look through Jesus’ eyes death looks like sleep, and what Jesus sees is what things really are.

            I know all this talk about death can be a little depressing, so here’s a little joke.  A young boy was in church staring up at a large plaque. It was covered with names and small American flags mounted on either side of it. The pastor walked up, stood beside the little boy, and said quietly, "Good morning Alex." "Good morning Pastor," he replied, still focused on the plaque.  "Pastor, what is this?"  The pastor said, "Well son, it's a memorial to all the men and women who died in the service."  Soberly, they just stood together, staring at the large plaque.  Finally, little Alex's voice, barely a whisper, asked, "Which service, the 9:00 a.m. or the 10:30 a.m.?"  Try to see the world through Jesus eyes, but if you can’t manage that, look through a child’s eyes, that’s the next best thing.

             My friends, death is a great mystery and I don’t mean to make it sound simple to understand or easy to deal with.  The pain of losing someone, the enduring grief that lingers so long, the possible extinction of life as we know it, all converge to overwhelm us.  After all, even Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus; death is no small thing.  I don’t really have any answers or explanations to make the specter of death magically go away.  My only advice to you is: keep your eyes on Jesus, and look into Jesus’ eyes.  If you train your eyes to look intently into Jesus’ eyes, you’ll see the whole world reflected there, even death, and you’ll know everything is going to be OK.

            John Donne wrote a poem about how death looks through Jesus’ eyes, called “Death be not proud.”  Here’s a small snippet of that poem:

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

            Maybe it takes 15 funerals in 4 months to finally see death the way Jesus does, to get a glimpse that death is only a really long nap.   Because you see, in Jesus’ eyes everything is touched with grace and every moment is budding with glory, even the moment of death.

            Praised be Jesus Christ!