Highbury
Congregational Church
Congregational Church
A place to
share Christian friendship,
explore Christian faith and
enter into Christian mission
share Christian friendship,
explore Christian faith and
enter into Christian mission
John
A series of sermons preached between Christmas and Easter 2006 at Highbury by Richard Cleaves.
It was linked to the new visual Bible, The Gospel of John.
Matthew, Mark and Luke see Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.
As John opens with a celebration of the creative word of God and the larger than life Son of Man we are in the world of the third section of the Hebrew Scriptures ... That is the world of the wisdom literature.
The wisdom that is explored in the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and elsewhere in the so-called ‘wisdom literature’ of the Old Testament has been defined as ‘the ability to cope.
That’s the theme we have taken up in our series of sermons on John’s Gospel in the Spring of 2006.
1 Jan Wisdom and the abilitiy to cope John 1
8 Jan Coping with something new - John 2
15 Jan Coping with the Big Questions of the Meaning of life John 3
22 Jan Coping with differences in the church John 4
29 Jan Coping with the question of euthanasia John 5
5th Feb Coping with Religion
19th Feb Coping with our own frailty and weakness
John 7
26th Feb Coping with feelings of oppression John 8
5th March Coping with Growing Up - a Celebration of Baptism - John 9
12th March Parade Service
19th March Coping with Pastoral Care John 10 Psychiatrist, Kate Blazey reflects on Mental Health, Mental Illness and the church’s Pastoral Care
26th March Church weekend away - a visiting preacher
2nd April Coping with bereavement John 11
9th April Palm Sunday and a look
Forward to a major new series on the BBC for Easter about the miracles with David Waters who researched the programmes.
16th April Our Celebration of Easter
It was linked to the new visual Bible, The Gospel of John.
Matthew, Mark and Luke see Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.
As John opens with a celebration of the creative word of God and the larger than life Son of Man we are in the world of the third section of the Hebrew Scriptures ... That is the world of the wisdom literature.
The wisdom that is explored in the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and elsewhere in the so-
That’s the theme we have taken up in our series of sermons on John’s Gospel in the Spring of 2006.
1 Jan Wisdom and the abilitiy to cope John 1
8 Jan Coping with something new -
15 Jan Coping with the Big Questions of the Meaning of life John 3
22 Jan Coping with differences in the church John 4
29 Jan Coping with the question of euthanasia John 5
5th Feb Coping with Religion
19th Feb Coping with our own frailty and weakness
John 7
26th Feb Coping with feelings of oppression John 8
5th March Coping with Growing Up -
12th March Parade Service
19th March Coping with Pastoral Care John 10 Psychiatrist, Kate Blazey reflects on Mental Health, Mental Illness and the church’s Pastoral Care
26th March Church weekend away -
2nd April Coping with bereavement John 11
9th April Palm Sunday and a look
Forward to a major new series on the BBC for Easter about the miracles with David Waters who researched the programmes.
16th April Our Celebration of Easter
The Grieving of Martha and Mary
Coping with Bereavement
John 11
Today we arrive at the last of the signs in the first part of the Gospel according to St John … and it is the one with the greatest impact of all. It is perhaps no bad thing that we should arrive at this chapter of John’s Gospel a fortnight before Easter on the Sunday that is sometimes described as Passion Sunday.
Easter is still a fortnight off. And we cannot get to Easter without going through Holy Week, the Garden of Gethsemane, and Good Friday. It is a stark truth at the heart of the Christian faith that there’s no crown without a cross.
So I want to give John chapter 11 a different heading from the one we would usually associate with this chapter. We usually think of this chapter as telling the story of ‘the raising of Lazarus’.
I want to give it a different title and focus on the conversations that take up the bulk of the chapter. I would like to think of it as ‘the Grieving of Martha and Mary’.
The Grieving of Martha and Mary
If the significance of the sign is brought out in the conversation then this chapter has as much to do with grieving as it has to do with resurrection. Indeed, it seems to me that there are in this chapter some pointers that can help us to cope with bereavement.
DVD John’s Gospel – John 11:1-27
The last few chapters of John’s gospel have brought Jesus into conflict with the authorities … it is a conflict that has been deepening. As chapter 11 unfolds this is something dark and foreboding in the air.
Jesus is fully aware that his next journey into Jerusalem will bring him into far greater danger. His friends and disciples are only too aware of the danger. It may well lead to his death … it may well lead to their death as well.
It is against this background that news comes of the severe illness of a very close friend of Jesus – Lazarus.
Not responding to the request to visit immediately, Jesus is aware that Lazarus has died.
Notice the way Jesus thinks of death …
Death is a falling asleep ... Beyond which there is a waking up
“Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go and wake him up.”
Death is a falling asleep … beyond which there is a waking up.
I love that way of thinking of death. It’s taken up by Paul in one of his first comments about death and dying in I Thessalonians. It is a beautiful and helpful image: death is a falling asleep. But as with falling asleep there is a time to wake up so beyond dying there is a waking up. Here we have the beginnings of a way of thinking of death that has a lot of potential to be helpful.
His friends were not accustomed to this particular way of talking about death. They assumed Jesus meant he had simply fallen asleep. But we read that ‘Jesus meant that Lazarus had died. So Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead …’
This seems stark. Blunt. So matter of fact. But that maybe is no bad thing. In this story we are in the presence of death. And Jesus feels comfortable about that.
Death is a Part of Life
A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a training session as a school governor which the Echo and the Citizen billed as getting schools ready for the threat of terrorism. Nothing could have been further from the truth of the day. It was a day when the LEA was sharing guidelines with teachers from all over the County about how to deal with all emergency situations, not least when it involves the death of a pupil in school.
A third of the time was given over to one of the people who in the time I have been in Gloucestershire has been of one of those very remarkable and rare people who has transformed the lives of many people beyond recognition.
Julie Stokes is the inspiration behind Winston’s Wish, an organisation founded about ten years ago to provide support for children who experience bereavement in all sorts of settings. It really has been pioneering work that has left its mark on Gloucestershire and far beyond the county as well.
One of the very first points she made was that death and talk of death is still very much a taboo subject in our culture. She suggested that the culture of a school and its response to death and bereavement is important. Having a culture in which students and staff can talk about death and bereavement is important. ‘Making death part of life’ is crucial.
If Julie Stokes could say that of schools … how much we need to take her comments to heart.
Making death part of life … this is what we find as John chapter 11 opens up. Jesus is comfortable living with the prospect of his own death, he is comfortable speaking of death, because he knows it for what it is. A sleep beyond which there is a waking up.
By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany at the home of Martha and Mary their brother had been dead and buried for 4 days. The next significant thing in the story comes in verse 19.
In Bereavement people come ... they don’t stay away
‘Many Judaeans had come to see Martha and Mary to comfort them over their brother’s death.’
Many came … they didn’t stay away!
Many cultures have that kind of reaction built into them. And yet at the same time it can be one of the most difficult things to do. It was natural for folk from all around to come and share the grieving. One reaction people have is to keep away … they won’t want to talk about it.
Going to visit – how important it is not to stay away. Better to risk going, than by staying away risk that no one is there at all to talk to. Not just in the early days, but later on in the bereavement as well. Not left to the ‘expert’ something simply done.
But then as the story unfolds it is interesting to find within this story two people who are grieving in quite different ways. As Jesus joins those who have gone to comfort Martha and Mary he is sensitive to the needs of the two women he is visiting.
Martha wants to talk ... and Jesus has something to say
Martha wants to talk. Jesus enters into conversation with her. He is prepared to give her time.
Martha goes out to meet Jesus (verse 20), but Mary stayed at the house. There is an anger in Mary’s voice. There is also a longing.
The Question Why is not far from the surface.
The ‘if only …’ is all too painful!
If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died! [22]
How often grieving turns to anger, and to that kind of longing that says if only …
Martha has a hope in life beyond dying … but Jesus makes that hope as real as can be. Life beyond dying is in God’s hands – but that life beyond dying is to be seen more clearly than anywhere else in the person of Jesus Christ.
It is in this conversation that he makes that remarkable declaration.
I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me though they die shall live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. [25]
As we use those words in the light of Jesus’ death and resurrection they have taken on so much more meaning. They give pause for thought and grounds for hope indeed.
It is in her believing and in her faith that Martha finds the greatest strength. It is salutary for us as we read this story to realise that that sometimes does not come easily. Psalms like Psalm 13 come into their own at times as we ask how long God will forget us. It is not long now before we will see Jesus on the cross crying out in such pain and anguish, My God, my God why have you forsaken me.
Perhaps Martha reaches this affirmation of faith precisely because she has got the anger, the bargaining out of her system … and Jesus has given her the opportunity to put into words what was troubling her.
Mary’s reaction is quite different.
Mary weeps ... and Jesus weeps too
Words don’t seem appropriate. Weeping takes the place of words for Mary. When she at last leaves the house those with her assume she is on the way to the grave where the weeping will continue.
She falls at Jesus’ feet. There is very little space for conversation. Through the tears she makes the same accusation … Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”
What an accusation that is. How often it is echoed.
What is Jesus’ response?
Reading: John 11:32-35.
Jesus wept.
I want to finish the story there. For those two words, the shortest verse in the Bible, say more than the rest of the Bible put together.
Mary weeps.
The question why is still there not far from the surface.
If only … is as significant for her as for Martha.
But still Mary weeps.
Jesus weeps with her.
That shortest verse is so precious.
Jesus wept.
In personal circumstances … in times of great tragedy too. The sculpture we have been looking at is part of the Oaklahoma City National Memorial. It marks that tragic day on 19th April 1995 when 168 people lost their lives in an act of domestic terrorism on American soil … how poignant that statue must continue to be in Oaklahoma now in the wake of the hurricane too.
There is a time for words … and Jesus shared with Martha the words that meant the world to her.
There is a time for weeping … and with Mary Jesus simply shared the tears.
Jesus wept.
And there are times when Jesus weeps with us.
Let me finish by sharing two insights that I have found very helpful.
A Picture of Bereavement
First, the magnitude of grieving. Jesus knew the scale of grief and how real it is. If Jesus wept so can we … so must we.
It was ten years ago as Winston’s Wish was getting under way that I first heard Julie Stokes. She shared something I have found very helpful in coming to terms with some of the difficult bereavements I have experience in my family in the time I have been in Cheltenham.
Many people believe, she suggested that Grief is like a ball that completely fills a bucket. When death happens the bereavement fills up all the space in your life. But people suppose, time is a great healer. And over time so they think, the grief will get less and the ball will get smaller, and smaller … until it is quite tiny.
Julie Stokes suggested that’s quite the wrong way to think of grieving.
She started with a ball filling a bucket and suggested that grieving was like the ball – it filled all the space available. Time does have a healing effect, but not in the way you might expect. She suggested that the ball remains the same size – it is never going to get any smaller. What happens over time is that our lives do move on, our experiences do get bigger … and so the bucket is replaced by a larger container, and a larger one still.
The bereavement remains the same … and always will. But life does go on and so the place around the bereavement gets bigger and bigger.
I found that helpful.
The Grieving Process
And the other thing I have always found helpful is the insight that there is a whole mix of emotions, some say a process to go through in grieving.
The grieving process is helpfully described on the Cruse website in a leaflet I have printed off.
It was something that became important to us at the time we were making a video of the Passion Play.
Wendy who played the part of Mary the mother of Jesus acted the grief of a mother at the crucifixion most movingly. Within a matter of days her husband Keith died quite unexpectedly. She experienced grieving herself in a way she had not expected at all. Movingly she tells on the video how comforting it was to discover the impact the Passion Play in its presentation of the death and resurrection of Jesus had had on her husband Keith who felt that it had meant the world to him.
A year on I well remember hesitating to ask Wendy to take part in a creative writing workshop we held in order to put together some prayer meditations based on the Passion Play. She came along to what turned out to be a most moving evening. David Lyle, who had played the part of one of the disciples, was part of the group. He is the GP who serves the Sue Ryder home, the hospice.
The poetry that emerged from that group was based around the steps of the grieving process. It is doubly moving as an ashen faced Wendy very reluctantly and very courageously read the words of the meditation.
With David’s guiding hand the creative writing group explored the grieving process – these are phrases I took from a very helpful page on the Cruse web site.
I can’t believe it – I feel nothing – Why did it have to happen? – I feel such pain – I go over it again and again – If only – Anger – It’s going on – Sadness
Grieving - Acceptance
Grieving -
Jesus forever the same. - the fourth prayer meditation from the video of the Cheltenham Passion Play, Jesus: Today, Tomorrow, Forever? [Go to www.jesusforever.co.uk and click on ‘forever’. Then click on the fourth meditation ‘death’.]
