CLOSETS ARE FOR CLOTHES
A sermon preached by the
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Text: John 11:38-45
Closets are for clothes. This is one of the more clever sayings from the modern movement for the liberation of sexual minorities. More than one preacher before me has chosen as a text the words Jesus cries at the climax of this morning’s ancient word, “Lazarus, come out.” Is the tomb a metaphor for the closet? Is the closet a metaphor for the tomb? The answer is most likely, “Yes.” In either case, the tomb and the closet are both places in which life fails to flourish. In fact, in both arenas life ceases to unfold, beginning to decay and stink. Common vernacular uses “the closet” to describe the hiding of one’s sexual orientation from the public and even from oneself. However, it may also be a metaphor with more wide spread usefulness. Is there anyone here this morning, besides myself, who knows what it’s like to be closeted, to find yourself hiding in among the coats and hats and scarves and boots and other things that have been shoved aside? Of what have you been afraid? Is there any secret that immobilizes you? What might you be ashamed for people to know about you? Do you have any sense that this closet might not be the healthiest place to live, if you can truly call it living? Do you sometimes wish you, or someone, would open the door in order to let in a little light and fresh air and possibility for change?
I am not saying that there are no compelling reasons for people to enter closets and shut the door behind them. Fear, pain, ignorance, loneliness, abandonment, neglect, guilt, shame, punishment – the list might go on and on of those things we face that send us scurrying to closets, hoping that no one notices, believing no one will see, thinking we will be safe, at least for a time. And, often, we do find a kind of security that counts for something. No one should be forced to come out of any closet until they’re ready; coming out is always a process. But, ultimately, closets are not healthy places for people. Closets are for clothes, not for human habitation and the living of life.
I will never forget James Forbes preaching for the worship service of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists in the grand old Episcopal Cathedral in Indianapolis a few years ago. He shared with that large crowd his own personal experience of the closet. He told of how, as a small boy guilty of some minor mischief, his aunt would punish him by locking him in the closet. As he described a child’s terrifying experience, this powerful preacher began to crouch and move backward from that exalted pulpit. By the time he finished his story, he was huddled against the back wall of the chancel, a small black boy cringing in terror and tears. And his were not the only tears in the sanctuary at that moment. Ultimately, closets do something like that to us. They are dark and dank; they kill our hopes, destroy our potentiality and murder our spirits. Closets are for clothes, not for human habitation and the living of life.
The good news that James Forbes shared that day is the good news that Jesus brought to Bethany
on another day long ago. Closets are for clothes; open the door. Tombs are for the dead; “take
away the stone.” No one has to stay locked away ultimately; “Lazarus, Mary, Rick, Andrea, Jim, Thelma, Lynn, Dona, any of us, all of us, come out.” Hope is on the horizon. Resurrection is available. New life is possible.
The bridge I’d like to build to this morning’s text is that what Jesus does here is empower Lazarus to come out. There are real questions among biblical scholars about the facticity of this story, but there is little doubt about its power to draw us from our tombs or closets or wherever we find ourselves stuck, failing to thrive, to live life to its fullest, to be all that we can be. It invites us to move on toward resurrection, loving relationships and abundant life. This is an essential aspect of our journey through Lent to Easter.
More often than not, when we think of resurrection, we focus on the triumph of Easter - "Oh Death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?" "Christ the Lord is risen today, alleluia!" "Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness!" Or our thoughts turn to that sweet by and by when we, too, shall dwell on that beautiful shore, when we shall inhabit our own personal mansion just over the hilltop, the one that Christ has gone to prepare just for us. This may sound a little cynical, but we do live in times when it can be quite challenging to find easily the triumph of right over wrong, of good over evil, of life over death.
This morning's text gives us another perspective on resurrection, perhaps a less gloriously triumphant one, but a vital one, all the same. In some ways it is a wonderfully affirming text; in some ways it is troubling, as Jesus, in order to demonstrate God's power and his own deity, seems to toy with the lives of his friends. Still, what the passage does do is indicate clearly the strong bonds of love among Jesus, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. Earlier in the chapter, when Jesus is informed of Lazarus's illness - "Lord, he whom you love is ill" - his response seems at least curious to us, if not outright cruel. He announces, "This illness...is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." "Accordingly," the following verses tell us, "though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was." Is this any way to treat your friends? Does the demonstration of God's power necessitate the suffering and death of God's children? Where is the love here?
There is much in scripture that is baffling to me, with which I struggle, for which I cannot find personally satisfying explanations, and there are definitely elements of this story that fit those categories. Is this really Jesus speaking here? Or is John shaping the story to make a particular point about Jesus and his relationship to God? Are there times when this kind of affirmation of God's power and majesty are helpful? Can we confess, in faith, that we have trouble with what seems so arbitrary in this story? Mary, Martha, and the whole crowd chide Jesus for not showing up sooner. Both Martha and Mary, independently, greet him with the same line, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." The crowd murmurs to itself, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
These are questions without easy answers and I'm not going to try to answer them this morning.
What I do want to affirm is that, today, and in all times, we can at least avow the bonds of love that exist among the actors in this tale. Mary, Martha, and those assembled at their house turn to Jesus in loving expectation. Even in her frustration, Martha defers to Jesus' wisdom. She is quick to assert, "But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.” When Jesus finally does arrive, he is deeply moved by the grief of the group and he himself weeps, one scholar says groans. These are not crocodile tears. Even the skeptical crowd is moved to exclaim, "See how he loved him!"
It seems to me that the healing, the act of real resurrection, in this story is the practice of love and care among friends and neighbors - Jesus included. This story is ultimately a celebration of the power of God's loving presence active among God's people, not of God's domineering power over them. Perhaps even Jesus learns a lesson here about the miracles, large and small, which can be worked when love is present and shared. This is the kind of environment in which the possibility of coming out is enhanced, in which closet doors creak open and tombstones are rolled back. This is a tale of the practice of resurrection.
As creatures we all live in what Melanie May has called the tensive drama of Holy Saturday, somewhere between the agony of Good Friday and the triumph of Easter. We are only able, and we are clearly called, to practice resurrection. May says, "I figure my fear of being fully alive, my fear of new life abundant is founded in the transitoriness of life itself, a fear fueled by the traditions into which I was born. These traditions did not and do not tolerate the ambiguity attendant to the mysterious and often tragic cycle of birth and death at the heart of life itself" (Melanie May, A Body Knows: A Theopoetics of Death and Resurrection, pp. 18-9.) Do these traditions sound familiar, perhaps a little like closets? Sometimes we hide in fear and we lash out in frustration; we focus on our own needs and wants to the exclusion of others; we objectify our sisters and brothers and treat them as if they existed for our amusement and then are disposable.
May goes on to say, "I practice resurrection, for God, who came to be with us in the One who went to the cross, [who] went down to hell, and then to glory, is the God of surprises by human reckoning. Amid the mysterious and often tragic mingling of grief and ecstasy, dying and rising, God brings down the mighty and lifts up the lowly" (May, p. 19.)
My friend Dan shared these thoughts about his own coming out process: "I realized after coming out the first few years that I had been hoping that the rest of my family would change their ideas and accept me, but they hadn't. I realized that my whole definition of family changed. I came to realize that they were not really family because they did not accept me. I realized that other people were my family because they were in my life. They offered support. I stopped wasting my time worrying about whether my aunts and uncles could be in my life. It was like 'I can't worry about this anymore, but I have to build my life.' It took a long time to realize that my real family are those who are in my life who accept and understand" (in an interview for Larry Kent Graham, Discovering Images of God: Narratives of Care Among Lesbians and Gays, p. 97.)
Even with our fears and limitations, we can be a supportive community that helps people come out of their closets, whatever the origin, and build their lives. We can be real family to one another and to “whosoever will come.” We follow one who claimed as his family of choice "whoever does the will of God in Heaven." And what is the will of God except to love God and to love our neighbors. For an understanding of who our neighbors are I refer you to the stories of Jesus, including ones about a good Samaritan, a prodigal son, a woman caught in adultery, overly busy Martha, little children, lost coins and lost lambs, as well as the one we read this morning. We can't pull back now. More than ever we need to be a community of lovers, rooted and grounded in a deep belief in Whose we are.
God's power is the power of love, the power which energizes life, the power which gives the courage to move on when we feel laid low by nature or by evil. May, in practicing resurrection, asserts, "I will not let go. I will still wrestle to bring hope and faith back into the world....I cannot predict an ending....But I will not let go. Not until God's glory and neighbor's good are radiant and flourishing upon the earth our home. Not until we, each and every one of us, find places to stand together in hope and faith on holy ground" (May, pp. 108-9.)
The truth is God has no hands or hearts but ours to do the work of love. The raising of Lazarus, the resurrection of Jesus, mean nothing if they do not foreshadow resurrection for all. Only if we fail to be that community of lovers, if we neglect to practice resurrection wherever people are dying, where they are stumbling along in the hopelessness of living death, will creation be lost. It is awesome, but true, that whether or not there is enough love to go around depends on how we, each of us individually and as a community of faith, respond to God's powerful call and creation's deep need. If some of us fall or struggle, as we surely will, there are others to bear the burden. If no one tries to play God and shoulder the entire burden, if we don't end up fighting over who will sit on the right and who on the left when Christ comes to glory, if we stick together, in the face of our limits and in spite of evil, we may yet turn the world right side up in love. That, my friends, is why we are here. Let us hide and mourn for a while, if we need to. Then let us joyfully step from whatever closets hold us to shoulder the welcome burden of loving God with all that we are and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, sure that this practice of resurrection will indeed lead us home. Amen.