I Am the Resurrection

Meditation on John 11:17-27

In Memory of Harriet Yost

October 8, 1931-September 19, 2024

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Pastor Karen Crawford

   Harriet Yost was a middle child before psychologists were talking about middle child syndrome—you know, the quiet child that is overlooked, excluded or neglected because of their birth order. That wasn’t Harriet! She might have been right smack in the middle of her siblings—4 brothers and 4 sisters—born to Harold & Edna Harman on Oct. 8, 1931. But she wasn’t shy or timid about telling her siblings what to do.

    She grew up with her large, closeknit family in an apartment in Queens. On Sundays, her family attended First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica. The little white, historic congregation traces its roots to 1662.

No wonder she felt right at home when she and her husband, Henry, moved to Hauppauge and found their new church family at First Presbyterian Church in Smithtown in 1965, when Rev. William Brown was pastor. The congregation, chartered in 1675, still gathers for worship in its little white 200-year-old sanctuary with a clock tower that looks an awful lot like the church in Jamaica.

     But I’m getting ahead of myself.

     You probably want to know how they met—Harriet and Henry. They met at a wedding. This is where it gets complicated. Harriet’s older brother, Fred, was marrying Henry’s younger sister, Irene, sometime around 1947. Henry, 8 years older than Harriet, had served in Italy with the United States Army Air Forces in World War II. He was also Catholic.

    He asked to date Harriet. She said, “No.” She was too young—only 16—and hadn’t yet graduated Jamaica High School.

    So, he waited a couple of years before asking her, again.

    Sometime after she graduated in 1948, they dated. They were married on September 14, 1952—in the Presbyterian Church in Jamaica. Henry became a Presbyterian. He wanted to make Harriet happy. They lived in Queens Village, Elmont, Hicksville, and finally Hauppauge for the last 60 years. They had three children—Cathy, Debbie, and Ken—and remained close with the rest of the family. There were family gatherings on Saturdays and Sunday dinners with Grandma.

    Henry worked for auto dealerships and later the IRS. Harriet didn’t work outside the home until her youngest was in high school—and then she worked for a bit in the accounting office at the dealership where her husband worked. Mostly, she enjoyed being home—being a wife and mother. She made good meatloaf, chicken cutlets, lasagna—both Italian and Hungarian-style food. And she sewed, something she had done since she was a child, growing up in a large family, without a great deal of money. She could sew anything! She sewed her daughters’ clothing when they were teens; she made drapes, shades, shower curtains, and bedspreads. She reupholstered furniture. One of her favorite pastimes was going to fabric stores to buy fabric. She also enjoyed making crafts and going to craft fairs, selling her wreathes, floral arrangements, Father Christmas items, angels, and miniature Christmas scenes.

      She and Henry remained active with the Presbyterian church in Smithtown. Harriet served as a deacon in the 1980s and attended Presbyterian Women’s circle meetings at night.

     But after Henry went home to be with the Lord on Oct. 14, 2015, she was lonely. She still liked being independent. She lived alone and watched police shows like Blue Bloods and mysteries, such as Father Brown and Midsomer Murders. She enjoyed Saturday lunches out with Ken and was still driving herself up until just before the pandemic.

     And then, four years after she lost Henry, she experienced another great loss—her daughter, Debbie, passed away in 2019 at the age of 63. It was almost too much to bear.

    When I met her, a little over two years ago, she had been in and out of the hospital and had suffered with COVID numerous times! Ken had moved back home, and a kind woman named Clover was helping with her care while he worked.

    In my first phone call with her, we talked about her health struggles and her concern for the church. She wasn’t sure about the new pastor, she said. A woman! She was worried that she wouldn’t be able to talk to the new pastor like she was able to talk to her other pastors. She missed the Rev. Jimmy Hulsey, who retired.

    At this point, she asked me who I was, once again. I told her that I was her new minister, calling to introduce myself. We had been talking for about a half hour on the phone and never seemed to run out of things to say!

    I would later meet her with carolers at her home at Christmastime in 2022 and 2023. We sang for her, Ken, Clover, and Harriet’s beloved cocker spaniel, Chloe. Another member of the church came with me in summer to celebrate Home Communion.

   The last time I saw her was at St. Catherine’s. She was miserable. Everything was out of her control! She didn’t want to eat. The food was disgusting, she said. “Please help me,” she said, as I held her hand and prayed for her healing. She was in pain. She wanted to go home. This was NOT the way her life was supposed to be.

    Ken told me later that she was missing Henry—and wanted to be with him.

    A strong, grieving woman like Harriet is featured in our reading in John 11. Martha, a friend of Jesus, had opened her home to him and his disciples and had prepared them meals, with not as much help as she would have liked from her younger sister, Mary. She is upset with Jesus—that he didn’t respond right away to her cry for help when her brother, Lazarus, was seriously ill. He waited before making his way to their village. By then, Lazarus had been in the tomb for days! The Jewish community had showed up to grieve with and comfort Mary and Martha. And where was Jesus? Out healing strangers, but why wasn’t he there when they needed him? When they wrote and begged him to come?

    Martha meets Jesus on the edge of town, and says, without so much as a greeting, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.But even now,” she goes on, “I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” She hasn’t given up hope!

    Jesus says to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

       She responds, before he raises her brother from the dead, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

      Here in John 11 is the passage where we find comfort in our Savior weeping, joining Mary and the community weeping for Lazarus, even when he knows that the dead man will be brought to life. We find reassurance in this passage that we are not alone in our suffering and anguish, when the world feels so out of our control—and it is.

     This is the day that we remember how our stories are interwoven with Harriet’s and Martha’s and Mary’s and with the one whom Jesus loved—Lazarus, whom he called forth from the tomb, still wrapped in grave clothes. We realize, once again, how we are all connected—united in our struggles and in Christ’s body as a great family in the faith, with the cloud of witnesses of believers in every time and place. They are surrounding us now, in this very place, and Harriet is with them—cheering us on, encouraging us to let go of anything that will hold us back from running the race of faith. We are all connected to the life of Jesus, our Savior, through the manger, cross, and empty tomb. His Spirit has come to live in and among us, guiding us as we walk through all the uncertainties and mysteries, joys and sorrows, surprises and challenges in the road ahead.

       It’s in his resurrection story, the Father’s grace and unconditional love, and the promise of eternity that we find our hope and purpose for every day. For THIS day.

     I leave you with the most important question—the words of Jesus to a strong woman whom he loved, a woman who felt out of control and let down by her good friend and wise teacher, the one who was and is “Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

     “I am the resurrection and the life,” he says. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

Amen.