April 10, 2011

Geno Sisneros

Lent 5     John 11:1-45

I inherited my love of mysteries from my maternal grandmother. Over the years she has built up an impressive collection of mystery novels by all the great mystery writers including Agatha Christie, her all time favourite Ngaio Marsh and of course my all time favourite Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. No mystery collection is complete without him.

I remember being a 9-year-old checking out huge stacks of Sir Arthur’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries from the library. This was after I had watched a movie called The Hound of the Baskervilles the night before. I borrowed more books than 9-year-old me could possibly read in the course of the two-week borrowing limit. My eyes were bigger than my mind as is often the case with me.

It wasn’t even necessarily that I understood the stories I was reading. Sir Arthur of course was writing from his late 19th Century English context and I was reading from my 9-year-old 21st Century American context. Sir Arthur and I were ‘worlds apart’ in every sense of the term.

For me, it was the notion that these old books contained mysteries. Whether I understood them or not was beside the point. There was something exciting and mystical about them. Somehow having these books in my possession brought me closer to the mysteries they contained. That was an intriguing concept for me. It sparked a life long passion for reading and mysteries.

When I grew older, I was astonished to find out that Sir Arthur was a firm believer in the supernatural. After all, his most famous character Sherlock Holmes spent his career debunking the seemingly supernatural sources of his criminal investigations. Through logic, reason and forensic investigation, Holmes cases always led to a natural rather than supernatural solution. So I expected Sir Arthur would be the same.

Following an unfortunate series of family deaths in 1906 which included Sir Arthur’s wife Louisa, his son, his brother and two of his brothers-in-law, he sank into a deep depression of grief and hopelessness. It is in this context that he discovered what is known as the Spiritualist movement.

Spiritualism is a religion heavily grounded in the belief of life after death. It sprung up in New York in the 1840’s and spread quickly through the middle and upper classes in mostly English speaking countries. It was widely accepted in Spiritualism that the spirits of the dead could and did communicate with the living through mediums at séances.

Sir Arthur was also convinced that his friend the magician Harry Houdini possessed authentic supernatural powers. The two men eventually had a public falling out and parting of ways when Houdini failingly tried to convince Sir Arthur that his magic was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Sir Arthur would just not accept that Houdini was a master of illusion and not a master of the supernatural. He wanted so desperately to believe. Houdini was also sceptical of the Spiritualist movement. In the 1920’s he lead a campaign to ‘expose’ what he called the fraudulent mediums associated with the movement.

Sir Arthur is a good example in showing that nothing brings out the anxiety about our human-ess like grief. What happens to us when we die? Many of us can identify with Sir Arthur’s want to believe. We may even think as he did, that death is a mystery, indeed the ultimate mystery to be solved.

Unlike Sir Arthur’s loved ones, Lazarus had died, dare I say, at a very good time. I mean – if you have to die, having your beloved friend, the miracle worker Jesus of Nazareth nearby is as good as it gets. As far as miracle stories, it doesn’t get any more miraculous than the mysterious occurrence at Bethany.

The story of the raising of Lazarus is only told to us in John’s Gospel. Like the other Gospels, John is writing from and to a specific community of believers. John’s Christology is unrivalled when compared to the other Gospels. His Jesus is far more mysterious. He has not been miraculously conceived of the Holy Spirit and a virgin; he has existed from the beginning. He is God’s creative partner in creation. Everything that exists, or has existed or will exist is realised only through his existence. We are – because he is.

The very divine nature of this Gospel caused Clement of Alexandria to label it a “spiritual gospel”, different from the others. In spite of the emphasis on Jesus’ divine nature in John, John arguably offers the most compelling portrait of Jesus’ human-ess. Just outside of the small village of Bethany, Jesus realises that his beloved Lazarus has indeed truly died. He joins the other mourners in their grief. Unable to hold back any longer, he allows his sadness to consume him and his tears began to flow.

Sir Arthur so distraught and driven too by his own grief attempts to contact his dead loved ones. Jesus does the same. This is the human longing to solve the great mystery, no matter how impossible it may be, the yearning is still there. Suddenly our contexts have become closer. We share the experience of loss and the realisation that we all share in the mystery of death. Suddenly Sir Arthur and I, Jesus and I, do not seem so far apart. This mystery makes us more alike than different.

I believe that John’s Gospel was not meant to be understood in a literal sense or even a metaphorical sense. This Gospel was written for a community whose theology was embedded deeply in mystery, a community of mystics. A community who experienced Jesus in such a profound way, the language of life, death and resurrection was the only language they could describe it in. Did they believe in an afterlife? Absolutely! What does that mean? I don’t know. What I do know is that John’s Jesus wanted them to see that death was not the end of their story. That mystery keeps us believing, it keeps us hoping and it reminds us that it is in living we find death, it is dying that we find life.

In the year 1890 much to the horror of his fans, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his most beloved character by sending him over the Reichenbach Falls. Due to the very public outcry by his fans, Sir Arthur was compelled to resurrect Sherlock Holmes in 1901. In his memoirs Sir Arthur noted a comment by one of his loyal readers, “[Holmes] was never quite the same man.” Lazarus wouldn’t have been the same either. Resurrection is a mysterious process of transformation.

There is still no consensus among Biblical scholars as to whether or not Lazarus was a real person in history. In fact much of the historical accuracy of John is still debated. Out of the four Gospel writers, John wrote last. Some scholars think that even if John is not an entirely historical account, much of the content contained in it may be from far older traditions than the other Gospels.

The last we ever hear about Lazarus is that a short time after his resurrection, he hosts a dinner party with his sisters Mary and Martha for Jesus. From there, we only have legend. One legend has Lazarus fleeing to France with Mary Magdalene after the Crucifixion and becoming the first bishop of Marseilles.

The author of John identifies him or herself throughout the Gospel as the ‘Beloved Disciple’ and the ‘disciple whom Jesus most loved’. There are many who believe that the mysterious author of John may have been Lazarus himself. We may never know.

As for Sir Arthur, he eventually remarried. On 7th July 1930 at the age of 71 he died of a heart attack in his home in East Sussex. His last words to his wife were, “You are wonderful.” I pray Sir Arthur finally found what he was looking for, proof of life beyond death. I pray we all find what we are looking for…

I will leave you with this recent exchange I had with a dear doctor friend of mine on preparing this morning’s sermon. “Did a man named Jesus really raise a man named Lazarus from the dead that day in Bethany?” asked he. “No” I thought, “I don’t suppose he did” said I, “but I believe it is true” I continued. “What is this new logic?” demanded he. “Either it must be yes or it must be no but it cannot be both” said he. “If it is both yes and no than it is a fine unsolvable mystery you have entered your self into, an unsolvable mystery” he replied with laughter. I paused for a moment and replied calmly “exactly my dear Watson, it is a fine unsolvable mystery I have entered into… exactly”.

Amen.