All Saints Day 2024

 Between seminary and my first call to serve a congregation, I was chaplain in the hospital for a

year. I got a lot of experience visiting patients and being part of the care team, caring for the

whole person. Since then, I have always felt very comfortable visiting at the hospital. I hope

you will let me know if you are hospitalized. It is an important part of my ministry to visit people

in the hospital and offer spiritual support.

People always told me that no matter how comfortable you are in the hospital, it will be very

different when you are there with your own family members. I found that to be true when my grandma went in for surgery at OHSU for her liver. Some of her ducts had come loose—I’m bringing my profound medical knowledge here. She had diagrams from the doctor showing what the problem was and what could be done, which she mailed to me with notes and circles to help me understand. It was a real blessing that her surgery was here in Portland, because I could go visit her. I think she was in the hospital 5 days or so. I went up to see her like I have with hundreds of patients over the years, but it was different because of the love we shared. We talked 45 minutes or so. Grandma and I could talk all day. There was always more to talk about. But I could see she was tired. So I told her she didn’t have to entertain me, that she could go ahead and rest. I read my book and sat quietly by her bed. And I’m so glad we had that time. I draw a lot of strength from having just sat there by her side.

When I visited her at her home, there were always a million distractions, yard work to be done,

pickles to can and her great grandkids to chase after. I don’t even think anyone from the medical team came in at the hospital. It was just quiet. It made me wonder the times when grandma sat quietly by my bed or crib and told me to get my rest. How many grandchildren did she watch their breathing change as they relaxed into sleep?

My grandma had about 11 more months. She went home and she continued her level of activity

for the most part. Steve Hiscoe wrote me a note a few months back. It says, Aimee=whirlwind.

If you think I am a whirlwind, you should have seen my grandma. I could never keep up.

It is different to sit vigil by someone with so many shared memories and experiences.  We all hold these kinds of memories of someone we loved who we sat with or regrets we didn’t get to be there. So many feelings come up in our grief. We feel sad. We feel regret at the “what ifs.” We feel mad, maybe at ourselves or someone else that didn’t show up or what might have been and isn’t. We feel relief. We may someday come to acceptance.

The people in today’s Gospel are no different. I’m sure that Jesus looked back on his previous visit with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, where Mary sat at his feet as a disciple and Martha grumped that her sister wasn’t helping. Certainly Jesus wanted to be there when his friend Lazarus was dying, but he couldn’t go. The timing wasn’t right for God’s glory to be revealed. So he waited, wanting to be there to comfort these three that were like family to him, but prevented from it. When he got there, he was met by Martha’s grief and anger. Why didn’t he come? Why didn’t he prevent this suffering for her and her brother?

The Judeans are also angry that Jesus is late. That he is too late to be of any help. They are doing what we all do when someone we love has died. They are going over it and over it to figure out what they could have done differently. What would have helped this situation? And they know the answer.  It is Jesus who could have made a difference. They are right about that. But Jesus didn’t come to prevent death and suffering. He came to go through death and suffering with us and to bring us to eternal, abundant life, to bring resurrection to our places of death and pain.

Jesus brings all his emotions, too. He weeps. And he is greatly disturbed in Spirit--he is hopping mad. We may be uncomfortable with Jesus being hopping mad, but he is and in one other place in the Gospel, when he clears the Temple of the money changers, which is one of his first acts in the Gospel of John. He gets baptized, gets temped, calls his disciples, turns water into wine, and is hopping mad clearing the money changers from the temple. For the other Gospels, Jesus clears the money changers out at the end of the Gospel, right before Jesus’ arrest. For John, it is the raising of Lazarus that is the last straw, that leads to Jesus’ arrest. For all the Gospel writers, Jesus is hopping mad as he nears Jerusalem.

What is he angry about? He is angry that people are hurting, that they are suffering. He is angry

that Lazarus has suffered and died, at the forces of death that hurt people, that his friends are hurting. We downplay our anger, sometimes. We don’t think it is Christian to be angry, but it is. Anger can be an amazing motivator to bring about change. Jesus was headed to the cross and I would guess his anger at the way this world hurts people helped him focus on the sacrifice he was to make, motivated him to keep his composure before Pilate, to hold strong when he could have taken himself down from the cross. He was motivated by anger, by compassion, to follow through with what needed to be done, to feel the full suffering of the people, and to give his life that we might all rise to new life.

                Jesus asks the crowd to roll the stone away, but Mary names the decay that surely has already happened.  This stinks.  It stinks on every level—that her brother suffered, that Jesus was delayed, that everyone is hurting.  We too are invited to name what stinks.  This election stinks.  The way people treat each other stinks.  The war in Gaza stinks.  That people are hungry and sleeping on the pavement outside stinks.  We are allowed to name it and feel the anger that will motivate us to be agents of change, to let Jesus work through us to make a difference.

It is not too late. We think that Jesus has dawdled, that he wasn’t here, but he has been here all along. He makes possible what we can barely hope to dream, what seems impossible—There will be no weeping or pain or sorrow or grief. Heaven and earth will be united. The nations will be healed and at peace. We are invited to be part of the miracle, the wiping of the tears and calling out of injustice, the tending of the wounded and sitting vigil with those who have no one, the unity of the table where all are fed. Jesus calls us from our grief and anger, joy and acceptance, from the tomb where we felt all was rotting away, to dream, to dance, to hope, to vote, to change, to act, to come forth.