Mediation on John 11:32–44 and Revelation 21:1-6a
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Pastor Karen Crawford
All Saints’ Sunday
November 3, 2024
On Halloween, we gave out candy to Trick-or-Treaters. Maybe we had about a dozen children come in costumes. Did anyone have more Trick-or-Treaters come to your door?
I always enjoy it when the children come. Since I have been in ministry, we have lived in places where no one knocks or rings our bell on October 31st—or maybe there’s one or two children and that’s it, so a dozen is definitely an improvement.
Halloween reminds me of my dad. He often helped me with homemade costumes. We used cardboard, magic markers, and tinfoil for my tooth fairy costume one year. No one could guess what I was. Another year, he had leaf raking on his mind, and he made me into a superhero, with a green lawn trash bag and cardboard initials on my shirt, dry leaves pasted on my body. Nobody guessed what I was that year, either. Mom always stayed home and gave out candy while my dad escorted my older brother and sister and me Trick-or-Treating. The quiet man who never dressed up for Halloween waited with a flashlight at the dark, narrow road while we tramped up the front walks of our neighbors’ houses. As we walked along the edge of Route 124 in our bulky costumes, cars sped by us. But I always felt safe with my dad and his flashlight. We always made it home.
Today, we remember all our loved ones—all the saints—from every time and place—who have made it safely home to be with God. We remember them, cherish our memories, talk about them, say their names, light candles of remembrance, and, for our church family, we ring bells and have a moment of silence. In the silence, we sit with our shared grief, and give thanks for the blessing of their lives and how knowing them has helped us to become who we are today.
These passages in Revelation 21 and John 11 always touch my heart because we have the
image of the God who weeps with us when we are grieving and will wipe every tear from our eyes, when, “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
The village scene with Mary and Martha in John 11 with the death of Lazarus, reveals the work of the community of faith in Bethany, caring for their neighbors. We are never alone in our grief! The community shows up for Mary and Martha, and they, too, are weeping for Lazarus and sharing the burden of loss.
Martha has already told Jesus at the edge of town, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Now Mary says it, kneeling at his feet, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” This is the same Mary who was kneeling at his feet when Jesus and his disciples came to dinner at Mary and Martha’s house. When Martha criticizes Mary for not helping her, Jesus praises her for choosing the better part when she chooses to stay with Jesus, hanging on his every word. But now Mary is brokenhearted. Jesus wasn’t there when she needed him. He doesn’t say anything to defend his delay in responding to their cry for help. He sees her weeping and the community weeping, and he is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” In verse 34, he asks, “Where have you laid him?” This foreshadows the scene in John 20, when Mary Magdalene is weeping and looking for him, arriving at the tomb before the morning light has broken. She mistakes the risen Christ for the gardener, saying, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
Now, in John 11, the Jewish community invites Jesus to where Lazarus has been laid. “Lord, come and see.” Then, in verse 3, “And Jesus begins to weep.”
This next part is so believable about the faith community. I can imagine—can you?—how some of them are stirred by his tears, seeing them as proof that Jesus truly loved Lazarus! Others are angry, disappointed that he didn’t come when Mary and Martha summoned him. Maybe they have begun to doubt his healing power and that he was sent from God. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” they grumble.
Jesus doesn’t immediately heal Lazarus. He pauses to pray out loud—not because God doesn’t hear his or our silent prayers, for that matter, but for the benefit of the grieving community and to all of us reading or hearing John’s gospel, the many generations whom John urges to believe.
It always intrigues me that Christ compels the faith community to do the final work of healing and restoration after Lazarus is raised from death to life. He could have done all the work by himself. But he wants us to be his Body for the world. “Unbind him,” Jesus says, “and let him go.”
On Friday night, I missed my dad and mourned my good friend, Erma, whose Celebration of Life was held at Ebenezer Presbyterian Church in Renville, MN, on Halloween. I watched a recording of the livestream of the service on Facebook yesterday.
My 104-year-old friend would have been pleased with the music—good old-fashioned hymns: Softly and Tenderly, Amazing Grace, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, How Great Thou Art, and It Is Well with My Soul. The pastor chose Scriptures from those Erma had written down or highlighted in her well-worn Bible. She read from Isaiah 41:10, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And from an earlier part of John 11, beginning at verse 25, when Jesus says to Martha, “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.”
As the organ plays, I am drawn to the photo of Erma resting on a wooden table draped with one of the blankets she crocheted from balls and bits of yarn family and friends would give her. Since 2007, Erma crocheted 550 prayer shawls and blankets to give away. More of them were on display in the Narthex on the day of the service.
Her daughter, Jan, shared her mother’s story with the gathered flock, beginning with how she was born in a snowstorm on Jan. 25, 1920, in an Iowa farmhouse. The doctor coming by horsedrawn carriage couldn’t make it there in time, so Erma’s father delivered her. She attended country school and graduated from high school in 1937. She went on to Iowa State Teacher’s College and completed the summer training program. She taught at a one room schoolhouse for 3 years before she married the Rev. Chester “Chet” Ahrens on June 5, 1941, at First Presbyterian Church in LeRoy, MN.
She served her family and partnered in ministry with her husband in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota. She also served as a Sunday school and summer Bible school teacher; was an active member of the Ladies Aid; and attended Women’s Circles and Bible studies for many years. Chet died in 1972, and Erma, a widow of 52, moved to Osage, Iowa, and found work as a nursing assistant at a hospital for 13 years. Her son, Ronald, died of a heart problem as a young adult.
She returned to Renville in 2001 to be closer to her family. I met her and we quickly became friends in 2011, when I arrived to serve the church there. We stayed in touch all these years. We called each other and sent cards, and Facebook helped keep us connected more regularly. She had received an IPAD for her 95th birthday and learned how to use it. She read my posts, clicked like on my sermons, and sent me newsy emails. One time, she surprised and called me on Facetime. She later confessed that it surprised her, too.
At the end of her Celebration of Life, the camera turned, and I recognized some of the faithful in the pews, now left behind to grieve with the family. Many of my former members at Ebenezer have gone home to be with God since I left. But the church continues to be strong because of the Spirit that dwells with them and their love for one another.
Remembering the Spirit with us and our love for one another after Erma’s service ended, I called the husband of Sue Nunziata, a beloved member whose life we celebrated in January. I had been thinking of him for a while and had sent him a few cards, but I wanted to hear his voice and know he is OK. I told him that we hadn’t forgotten Sue. And that we would be remembering her life today during our worship for All Saints by saying her name, lighting a candle, and ringing a bell. I apologized for letting so much time pass before calling. I assured him that we wouldn’t forget him, either. That I will be visiting soon. And that he is loved.
Dear friends, we are called to share the burden of grief for our church family, much like the village of Bethany did for Mary and Martha. Christ wants us to be His Body for the world, as when the community welcomes the risen Lazarus back into the fold, after Jesus says, “Unbind him and let him go!” When we grieve together and comfort one another, we show the love of our God who weeps with us, the God who, one day, will wipe all our tears away.
Let us pray.
Loving and merciful God, thank you for our families, friends, and our church family, who help to carry our burdens when we are grieving and aren’t sure how we can carry on. Thank you for the love that is shared here and beyond our church walls as our flock seeks to be your Son’s heart, hands, and feet. Thank you for all the saints in every time and place, who have made it safely home to be with you and continue to cheer us on, the Great Cloud of Witnesses, so that we keep on running the race of faith. Thank you, most of all, for being the God who weeps with us when we are grieving, the God who will one day, when we are face to face, wipe all our tears away. Amen.
Sharing God's Love and Grace 