Where Resurrection Lives

Sermon

I’m not ready for my brothers to die. I have two brothers, Kevin and Daniel. As I was preparing this sermon, I just thought about if either of them became gravely ill. What I could have done, should I have called them more. I don’t really think I’m ready for any of my loved ones to die—my parents, my wife, my wife’s family, cherished friends I’ve made along multiple places in life. I’m not even gonna speak about my kids. The pain just feels like too much.

Activist and writer Valarie Kaur writes, “Grief is the price of love. Loving someone means that one day, there will be grieving. They will leave you, or you will leave them. The more you love, the more you grieve.”

As a pastor, I have accompanied many people in grief. I’ve prayed holding shaking palms at hospital beds. I’ve hugged people at gravesites. Even outside of literal death, I’ve been with people grieving the ending of relationships, grieving huge change, grieving a life they never had because of family history or mistakes they’ve made. People have told me time and time again, in that grief, no one is really ready for these moments.

But what has gotten them through them is this: someone saw their pain. Someone connected with their own humanity and offered connection and empathy. Does that resonate with you?

Researcher and writer Brené Brown puts it this way. “In our saddest moments, we want to be held by or feel connected to someone who has known that same ache, even if what caused it is completely different.”

Our Bible story this morning offers one of the most profound theological depictions of the nature of the Divine. A Jesus who weeps. A Jesus who so deeply connects with the ache of the human beings around him that he lets down his guard and just feels it with them.

Notice where in the story Jesus declares himself the Resurrection and the Life. Not later, when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. But rather in the messy middle, when he is at the center of these grieving people gathering together, especially Martha and Mary, whom he loves.

There are many interpretations as to why Jesus timed his visit until after Lazarus died. But I wonder if one possibility is that Jesus’ power to resurrect comes from being in touch with his own sadness and grief, and being in touch with the sadness and grief of Mary and Martha and everyone around him.

We don’t have Jesus Resurrects without Jesus Weeps. We don’t have Jesus Resurrects without Jesus Weeps.

This is the center of my own personal faith—that there is a God who is not simply up there in the clouds, but who sees and knows and connects with our heartbreak, and that somehow influences how the Spirit moves in the world. Do you believe this?

This certainly feels like a leap of faith, especially with all the ache there is in this world. Brené Brown writes in her book Atlas of the Heart that related to loss is longing—an involuntary yearning for wholeness.

There can be many reactions to grief and pain that don’t point toward wholeness or resurrection. Think of any family fight over the estate after a funeral. Think of the phrase, hurt people hurt people. When we experience loss of all different kinds, we can react in fear and scarcity.

That is why it is worth dwelling on the Jesus who weeps. This sacred weeping is not one that leads to self-indulgence or reaction or denial, that jumps to what we think are resurrection solutions that are just trying to go back to a status quo, before our loved one left, before things changed, that run away from the messy middle of accepting the present or the needs of other people.

This is a weeping that is about connection. The Biblical image of Jesus weeping shows us it is a spiritual practice to connect with our own emotions and empathy, and when we do that, we connect with a deep, deep well that connects us to one another.

We don’t have Jesus Resurrects without Jesus Weeps. Here’s my invitation for reflection: What do you need to admit you are grieving? What messy middle are you trying to avoid? Who are you trying to fix rather than connect with them as a person? Where do you need to stop and be present—with yourself, with your own emotions, and with others?

We all need to tap the deep well of empathy, to have faith that Jesus weeps for you and Jesus weeps for the other. I believe through this, something like change can happen, something like resurrection can come.

Another quote from Valarie Kaur: “We come to know people when we grieve with them through stories and rituals. It is how we can build real solidarity, the kind that points us to the world we want to live in—and our role in fighting for it. First people grieved together. Then they organized together.”

I will never forget one of my first community organizing gatherings at my previous congregation, First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. It’s a mostly Black church, with over 30 nations represented. Organizers gathered people from our congregation, many young Black teenagers and Black men. This was years before Black Lives Matter became more accepted among white people, by the way. And the organizer in the room simply said as a prompt, name some stories of interactions you’ve had with the police.

And then, one after the other: a kid holding a backpack in the subway, and an officer saying he had to search it. A youth pastor just trying to get home after doing laundry, hearing the sirens and then having his whole car searched, including his clothing. Another youth worker, standing in line outside a movie theater, and then an officer feeling up his arms and legs. The camera tech guy sharing how he was walking from the library and then a cop shoved him up against the wall; the pastor driving five minutes from his house to the church and getting stopped once a week for suspicion of car theft.

That was a room of collective grief. But from that room came meetings with the NYPD commissioner for training and reform for new recruits. From that room came young people inspired to serve in that church’s youth ministry. From that room came energy to organize around interconnected issues affecting their neighborhoods, namely the lack of affordable housing.

And from that room, I took part of that spark and fire when I came here, with my own pastoral call. That led me and us to what you’re about to hear from Chenoa during the Minute for Mission, this project we are working on with the Presbytery and the Leaven Community Land and Housing Coalition to gift Presbyterian land to a coalition of Native American organizations, Future Generations Collaborative, to build a tiny-home village for unhoused indigenous families with children. An indigenous community, of course, that, especially if you were at the adult education class this morning with Chenoa, you know has had so much shared grief and pain and ache on their own. But in being in touch with their own ache, they’ve gathered and been resilient and given to the community.

Lent reminds us we are in the wilderness, the wilderness of the messy middle of our own lives, our pains and heartbreaks with people in our journey, the wilderness of this tumultuous, uncertain time of one crisis after another. And it is tempting to react and try to go back rather than acknowledge that things will never be the same again.

What if we cannot have collective resurrection unless we weep together like Jesus weeps for one of us? What if, before we went into the white savior complex to jump to quick fixes that just preserve the status quo of power or try to “go back,” we started with being in touch with our own humanity and hurt, which connects to that deep well of empathy where all our fates are tied up with one another?

The fate of the person grieving their divorce, tied with the parent enraged they can’t get medication for their child, tied with the asylum seeker who can’t access housing or a job, tied with the teenager agonizing over their mental health, tied with the elder grieving the death of legendary Portland drag queen Darcelle, tied with the veteran promised everything but left in the streets without a roof over his head, tied with the child of an immigrant grieving how they never belong anywhere, tied with all of us grieving years of pandemic and lockdowns and emergency.

There’s power in that deep well of empathy, that in this messy middle we are not alone. Collective grief and resurrection is why the authorities put Jesus to death.

But the only way out of this wilderness is together.

We don’t have Jesus Resurrects without Jesus Weeps.