Believing (All Saints Sunday)

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Last Sunday, three of our Confirmands read their Faith Statements during worship.  And each year, as we prepare for Confirmation, we ask all of our Confirmands to write a statement about their faith.  What is faith?  What does it mean to believe?  And how do I actually live that faith in my life?

For each confirmand, and indeed, for each one of us, those questions are answered a little bit differently.  And that’s because for each of us, faith has to be more than a warm, fuzzy feeling.  And believing has to be more than an idea in our heads. At least, faith and believing have to be more than that if we’re actually going to have a real, living experience of God in our lives. 

And Confirmation Sunday always precedes All Saints Sunday – a Sunday in which we continue to reflect on the lives of the saints – and our call to be saints in our own time and place.  And really, that means continuing to think about what it means to be people who believe in Jesus and live that faith in our daily lives.  What does faith really mean?  And how does believing help us “to see the glory of God”, as Jesus promises Martha in today’s Gospel reading?

“To see the glory of God” – that is, to experience the power and presence of God in my life right now.  That’s not always an easy thing, and it certainly wasn’t for Mary and Martha in this story.  Lazarus, their brother, had died a few days before.  Things were a mess in their lives. They were still in mourning. And the power and presence of God seemed far from them. 

So what did “believing” look like for them?  At least from this story, it seems to me that there are at least three things about believing that are essential to these two saints:

• They have a deep enough relationship with Jesus that they’re willing get mad at him!  Sometimes, we read the words “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died” as though Jesus came as fast as he could, but just didn’t arrive in time.  But that’s not the case!  Mary and Martha sent word a week ago, and Jesus intentionally stayed put where he was for three more days after he heard.  They’re ticked!  But in being mad at Jesus, they follow an ancient and venerable tradition of people in the Bible who had argued with God and been mad when God seemed to have forgotten about them or let bad things happen to them … And yet, God never gets mad at these people!  And Jesus doesn’t get upset at Mary and Martha.  Ironically, their willingness to really tell Jesus how they feel shows that they’re deeply enough connected to Jesus to be in a position to experience what God is doing through him … (which is the essence of Martha’s rejoinder a few verses earlier…)

• They’re open to what else Jesus might do, even if they have no idea what that might be.  It’s always a mistake to read stories like this and think that the people involved know the end of the story like we do.  They don’t.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus has never raised anybody from the dead, and there’s no reason for Mary or Martha to think that’s what Jesus will do.  But they don’t tell Jesus to go away, because if he really cared he would have been here.  Instead, they’re willing to continue to listen, to watch and to see what comes next.  And that’s not always an easy thing to do …

• They’re willing to do things differently than expected – even doing things that made no intuitive sense at the time.  “Take away the stone”, say Jesus.  And indeed, you would move the stone about a year later to collect the bones.  But not now.  This is not the way things are done.  Martha literally tells Jesus, “He stinks!” – but they do it anyway.  And faith, if it’s real, always involves acting and living differently.  And Mary and Martha are willing to do that…

For each one of us, “believing” comes about differently, and may not look like somebody else’s faith experience.  But Mary and Martha have always struck me as good examples, because their “faith statement” shows us that, in one way or another, seeing and experiencing God’s presence and power in our own lives is more likely when we also are willing to:

• Nurture and deepen our relationship with Jesus – we’re not entirely sure of the back-story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus with Jesus, but it clearly had been going on for a while.  In fact, while in the Gospel of John it’s emphasized that Jesus loves all his disciples, it’s only Mary, Martha and Lazarus who are particularly called out as individuals whom Jesus “loves.”  Relationships like that take time and effort.  And so often, people I know who can really sense God’s presence are the people who make the time, perhaps through prayer, worship or meditation, to deepen their relationship with Jesus.  When Bishop Ortiz was installed a couple of years ago, she said that there’s a difference between knowing Jesus and knowing ABOUT Jesus.  She’s right about that.  And often, like Mary and Martha, knowing Jesus, instead of just knowing stuff about Jesus, is what makes believing possible…

• Be open to new possibilities in times when it doesn’t seem like hope is possible.  Sometimes, when you’re in the midst of grief and tragedy, it’s hard to even hope that there is new life and possibility beyond this moment.  Martha and Mary may not have been able to see what that possibility was, but they were open to what Jesus had to show them, not just at the end of time but in the immediate future…  That’s important for us to remember as well, especially in times like we’re going through when life around us seems so messy and dysfunctional … (I read a poll the other day that said something like 80% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track; of course, the reasons for that differ depending upon your political outlook!)  Still, when things are a mess, it’s often hard to see how things can get better.  But sometimes, being open to watching for what Jesus is showing you helps you begin to get to that place…

• Do things in new ways, or in ways that just seem odd.  You don’t open a tomb 4 days after an un-embalmed body has been placed there.  But this time, it was what had to happen.  And in our lives lately, we’ve been having to try a lot of new things, and new ways of doing things, that a couple of years ago would have seemed just as strange as opening a tomb.  And it’s not always clear exactly which of these things might be God’s direction in our lives.  But being willing to try – and to take the risk (even the risk of faith) – is often what makes it possible for us to catch a glimpse of God’s presence and power in our lives.  And often, that’s the thing that most positions us to experience what God is doing in our lives and the world around us…

Jesus promised Mary and Martha that if they believed they would see the glory of God in their lives.  And that’s Jesus’ promise to all of us. But for Mary and Martha, believing wasn’t a one time thing.  It wasn’t pledging allegiance to a theological idea.  And it wasn’t nurturing a warm, fuzzy hope that in heaven everything would be OK.

Instead, believing for them, and for us, is about a constant nurturing of our relationship with the risen and living Jesus.  Believing, for them and for us, is about looking for what God is doing right now, even and especially when things look bleak.  And believing, for them and for us, is about being willing to act in new and different ways so that we actually participate in the new life that God is bringing about among us.

Amen.