Preached May 4, 2012
The Reverend Will Scott
Eva Ruth Webster was a believer. Like Martha in today’s gospel she had a close relationship with Jesus and an inquiring heart and mind, eager to be in touch with the living God. She was faithful, trusting in the goodness of the Lord even when life handed her challenges and disappointments. Every time I left Eva’s home in the Excelsior after a visit, I walked away with a deeper sense of gratitude and a stronger recognition of what resurrection faith looks like. As a devoted member of her neighborhood church St. Barnabas for 30 years, Eva believed in the importance of nurturing a family and community with spiritual wisdom, making sure her children and others attended Sunday School and participated in worship. The way she and her daughters describe the life of St. Barnabas Church --- there was profound neighborhood connectedness coming out of that gathering place. At St. Barnabas, African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Europeans, and White Americans all worshiped together regularly --- the kind of shared life that scripture tells us that God longs to see flourish, yet too often the outside world and institutional church find threatening. Though St. Barnabas closed in the 1990s, the witness of that diverse church has inspired the life of St. Cyprian’s here at Turk & Lyon, thanks to members like Eva Webster & Era King who joined this distinctive community bringing with them belief in the resurrection, and the wisdom of having been part of such a faithful multicultural neighborhood church. As a new member at St. Cyprian’s, Eva did not shy away from leadership --- she joined the choir, served on the Vestry & Bishop’s Committee, was a lay Eucharistic minister and as one member said the other day “never said no when her time or talents were requested.” Her husband Lepp, is remembered as someone the congregation could rely on when something was going wrong with the building. Oh, how we miss him today! In today’s gospel Martha is frustrated with Jesus. She says to him “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” For Mary & Martha, as single women in 1st century Palestine losing the one close male relative in their life would have been devastating and made them very vulnerable. As someone who has experienced my own frustrations and disappointments with Jesus --- I appreciate Martha’s confrontational attitude with Jesus, her brutal honesty, and rawness of emotion. I think this story reminds us that our journey of faith if we are really attentive to it, does not deny the reality of death, loss, confusion, disappointment or pain but helps give meaning and purpose to our lives and our deaths. This perplexing story tells us that those who were the closest to Jesus, his disciples and friends were often afraid, anxious, and disappointed -- and Jesus responds to their honest, blunt, and angry words with solidarity, compassion and care. Being close to Jesus means we can be real with him. The story of Martha questioning Jesus can help us discover the presence of Jesus, who raises the dead (just a little bit later in the story Martha’s brother Lazarus is raised), in the context of our actual daily lives --- not as an abstract, distant, far off, fancy concept but as a living reality rooted in the here and now, as part of a tangible community that breathes, weeps, cries, flexes its muscles, and rolls away stones together. Jesus’ raising Lazarus is a provocative sign that God’s concern is real life, life with all its joys and sorrows, struggles and confusion. Jesus, the incarnate word made flesh --- that presence at that tomb, those tears, transforms the boundaries between life and death. Christ’s presence in our lives, at our tombs, in our tears, transforms the world not just in abstract and philosophical ways but in concrete, tangible actions of compassion and solidarity. Being a follower of Jesus, means eventually showing up to the pain, oppression, sadness, disappointment, grief, complexity and confusion of our real lives wherever those dark places may be. As the saying goes there can be no Easter without Good Friday, there can be no transformation without pain, no true reconciliation without truth telling, no hope without grief. Being close to Jesus means we can be real with Jesus. Being a faithful community means we can be real with each other. Martha’s honesty, her raw vulnerability creates space for Christ to enter the picture and do holy transforming work in words, tears, and sweat. May we find the same courage to be ourselves, as Eva did throughout her life, to be real with Jesus and with each other. One last story. Two Easters ago --- Eva sat mid way down the aisle of this church --- she surprised me and her daughter’s by wanting to be in church to celebrate the resurrection. She had been homebound for a long time, due to vertigo. But one day things changed and she was ready to step out. Eva’s being with us was a gift, but the way she was with us, with tears streaming down her face, and prayers of thanksgiving coming from her lips --- meant there wasn’t a dry eye in this place. Eva was being real with us, inviting us to be real with one another --- letting the tears flow --- tears of sadness and tears of gratitude --- tears of joy in the resurrection, tears of gratitude for the presence of Christ in our lives and in all our diverse communities.
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