My friends are my estate

The Rev. Linda Campbell
True Friendship
Lent VA

There are times when the scripture readings hit very close to home. If, like me, you’ve ever been through the gut wrenching trauma of divorce, or the death of a partner, or God forbid, the death of a child, if you’ve ever heard the doctor give no hope for recovery, then you know what it is like to wander aimlessly in the valley of death and bleached bones. You know what it means to be in the tomb with Lazarus, bound up in grave cloths and stinking of rot. For some of us, this is a place we know. And it isn’t a place we ever ever enter into willingly. People who are willing to accompany us into those places of death, are true companions in every sense of the word. It is in those death places, that one learns the utter truth of what Emily Dickenson said so simply – "My friends are my estate." Or what the Buddha said long ago – "the whole of a holy life is friendship." Or what Jesus said on the eve of his own sojourn in the valley of death, "You are no longer servants – I call you now, my friends."

Jesus and Lazarus were good friends – long time, comfortable companions. Jesus had spent many hours in Lazarus’ home, eating and drinking and resting with this brother and his two sisters. And then illness struck. Mortal illness. And death reached out it’s dry clawed hand and snatched Lazarus away.

I have been at several bedsides with people who are dying and as they drew their last breath. It is an awesome, undeniably spiritual experience – as the ruah of life leaves the body and returns to its source. You never see life the same way again. You know your own body as mortal – and all those you love as mortal. You and I will go down to the grave. We begin Lent at Ash Wednesday, with this reminder – we are dust and to dust we shall return. And that is the truth. When the breath departs, the body does not move any longer. It grows cold and begins to decay, to return to the earth. The spirit returns to God.

But friendship remains – our relatedness continues across that divide – that chasm between breath and no breath.

Mary and Martha chide their friend Jesus because he did not run to them in the hour of their need. He did not arrive urgently and with great haste and commotion to grasp Lazarus out of the clutches of this mortal illness and restore him to the full bloom of health. He tarried. He finished what he was doing. He prepared himself. Because going to Lazarus’ home, also meant going to Jerusalem, at a time in which he knew he would be arrested by the authorities and crucified. And so, he trusts his friend Lazarus to God. He trusts this friendship with confidence that all will be well, all manner of things will be well, and that, in friendship that is rooted and grounded in God’s timing and God’s presence, there is no need for panic.

Faith - Trust in God’s time - is the antidote to fretting and anxiety – and Jesus, ever the teacher, continued to his own dying day to teach this to his friends. When Mary and Martha complain at his absence, he turns them gently but firmly towards faith.

The Spirit turned Ezekiel towards faith. Ezekiel had walked into a valley filled with bones – a dry valley of death, in which not even a breath of fresh air stirred. You can almost feel the hot sun overheard, the departing cry of the buzzards as there was not even a shred of meat left on those long dried out bones, that valley of bleached possibility. Ezekiel thought it was a joke to be commanded to preach. But it was no joke. "Preach, mortal." The Spirit commanded. And so Ezekiel opened his mouth – stepped out into thin air with the word of life, trusting, without a shred of evidence, in God’s timing. And as he sputtered out the word, the Spirit moved, and lo and behold, sinews began forming. Breath returned. There was movement. Life began where there had been no life. There was air, Spirit, Ruah, where all had been desolate and ruined and dead.

This was a sign of course to the Hebrew exiles – having been taken far from their home by a conquering army, their hopes broken, their dreams of freedom and home, dead. This was sign, through Ezekiel, that all things are possible in God’s time – that it is possible for life to return to the dead, for dreams to resurrect and hopes to spring to life.

The resurrection of Jesus’ friend Lazarus, was a sign to the early Christian community – and to us – that there is no place of death and despair that is outside the reach of this primal, ancient friendship we have been offered with the Source of all Life.

"He will stink" – his sisters said. "Open the tomb," Jesus said. "Come out," Jesus commanded.

And he did. Though tightly bound, death released it’s grasp, and Lazarus breathed again.

Take a breath now. A deep breath. A deep full breath of good air into your lungs. Breathe in the fullness of God’s life. Let God breathe you. Sit, for a minute, in the graceful silence of this Sunday morning and let God breathe you. Sit in your own tomb, in your own valley of broken dreams and let God’s Spirit move ever so gently. Know that in God’s time, life returns. It’s a different kind of life, a resurrected life, a life that is no longer fearful of death.

How this happens, I don’t know. But I know that it does. How Lazarus knew it was possible to get up again, I don’t know. Mary and Martha didn’t know. Even Lazarus didn’t know. But when it was possible to move, he did. And so might you.

But to move freely, even after life returns, for this we need friends. Lazarus, even resurrected from the grave, was not able to unbind himself from his grave clothes, from the cloths wound around him, masking him from the dank earth for as long as possible.

For this, he needed his friends. "Unbind him," Jesus said. And his sisters and friends and companions went to work. Unwinding the cloth that masked their brother, not knowing what they might find, what work death may have already worked on his features, what decay may have already found it’s way into his flesh – they unbound him, in faith and in love – ready to accept whatever they found, whether he was beautiful or not, whether he stank of rot or not.

This is the church being the church. This is friendship that is rooted in God’s presence, in God’s time. It is easy to show one another our strengths, those places we feel best about. It is an entirely different matter to show our wounds – our weaknesses – those places where death and decay have entered in and done their destructive work. To be with one another in those places takes courage – courage comes from the word – cour – of the heart. True courage is based in the heart – and it is rarely “rational”. Without a heart of courage, Ezekiel would never have ventured into this god-forsaken valley of death. Without hearts of courage, no one would have rolled away the stone from Lazarus’ tomb, or reached out to roll away the cloth that bound him. Without hearts of courage, we are unable to bear our own wounds and weaknesses, much less be with one another in those places of utter vulnerability.

Where does that kind of courage come from? It comes from God’s spirit – God’s ruah, breathed into you. So, I invite you again to breathe. Breathe in God’s life, God’s heart. Hear God’s word to you- "Come out of your tomb." "Be a friend to those whom God puts into your path."

Amen.

Title from Emily Dickenson