AtomHope at the Canyon’s Edge
John 11:1-6, 14-45
I’ll never forget the day or the phone call. I was home, healing from the surgery that had put my knee back together. It hurt a whole lot. But not nearly as much as the phone call did. It was my Dad and his voice broke even as he greeted me. No formalities. Right to the point. “Nathan is dead. A plane crash. Aunt Florence would like you to call.” My heart sank. Nathan was one of my New Mexico cousins. Twenty-one years old, he was the son my Aunt and Uncle had waited and prayed for. They had four daughters and still tried for a son. There was a miscarriage. There was a son who lived only a few days, and then there was Nathan, whose name means “gift” – Nathaniel, God’s gift. And he was a gift, much loved by his family, giving much love in return, a good student, active in school and community faithful in church attendance and groomed to one day inherit the family business.
Which was flying. My uncle is a pilot…80 years old now, he flies seldom…but in his day, he was a good one. And he built a business of fighting fires with refitted World War 2 bombers that dumped a slurry mix on forest fires. He had planes stationed all over the country during fire season on contract with the U.S. Forest Service. And Nathan was one of his pilots, personally trained by my uncle and good, already flying for the company. I had seen him not quite a year before at my brother’s wedding. He had come with his folks and his fiancé. In fact his own wedding was planned for October, just a few weeks after the day my Dad called. He was a fine, handsome, gentle young man just coming into his own. But his plane had gone down in one of those lonesome mountain canyons while fighting a fire – the result, my family knows of a misfired missile while he was working a fire in an Air Force test range. It was a tragedy that made no sense.
You can imagine the loss my uncle and aunt felt, and their whole family. It was a time of deep, deep despair – one of those times that author Max Lucado has referred to as “canyon times.” He describes it as,
“…the time when we stand at the edge of that deep canyon that regularly blocks our path and our joy – the canyon we call death…it is a place of desolation…the ground is dry and cracked. Tears burn and words come slowly when we stand before it. The bottom is invisible, the other side unreachable. And you can’t help but wonder what is hidden out there in the darkness…
Have you been there…lain awake at night listening to the machines pump air in and out of lungs, watched sickness gradually and inexorably draw life from someone that you love? Perhaps you have remained at the cemetery long after the others have gone, staring in disbelief at the metal casket, or at the freshly turned earth, still not able to believe that this one whom you have loved is gone.
This is the canyon’s edge. It is that place of disbelief where everything seems to be up for grabs. It is the place where it really doesn’t matter what your position or salary is, or what kind of car you drive or what side of town you live on. It is the place where all of us stand, humbled and in search of hope.” (God Came Near, p.67)
I believe this is the place where Mary stood in the reading from John’s gospel. She stood at the edge of the canyon of death, wondering what could be left, for her brother, Lazarus, who was somewhere out there beyond her reach and care? And for her and Martha, her sister. The whole thing had started with a cough that he couldn’t get rid of, a nagging thing that gradually got worse. And then the fever started and soon Lazarus was too weak even to stand on his won. They tried all the remedies their mother had taught them as they were growing up; they called for the “healers” in the village, but nothing seemed to help. They had even sent for Jesus – their best hope. But by then it had been too late. By the time the messenger could have reached him, Lazarus was gone…kind, gentle Lazarus, their joy and their hope, the younger brother born to their parents late in life, a handsome capable young man groomed to inherit the family business as sons were supposed to do. He was a brother beloved to his sisters and carefully raised by them when their parents died while Lazarus was yet a lad. What joy he brought to them, and in a practical sense, what security. For Mary and Martha knew that it was a man’s world they lived in, and without husbands of their own, they were quite dependant upon the livelihood that Lazarus brought in from the family business. To be sure, they did their part, working long hours beside him, but it had to be Lazarus’ business and they all benefited from it. All that really didn’t matter now, except when the prospect of an empty future intruded on her pain. What mattered was that Lazarus was gone. He was dead…buried four days now and she still couldn’t believe it.
If only Jesus had been closer. Mary knew in her heart that Jesus could have helped him. But he hadn’t been there. And he wasn’t here now – and Mary was struggling to understand that, too. Jesus had always been so good to Lazarus – had loved him like a brother. Mary could feel the despair begin to rise within her again, the urge to cry that never seemed to end, the bottomless sobs that continued to work themselves to the surface of her life until she wondered if she would ever be able to go on. Her shoulder hunched uncontrollably as she began once again to sob into her hands.
And then Martha was there. Taking her by the arm, urging her to stand. “Come on,” she said gently, “Jesus is here. He’s at the grave.” Mary’s eyes opened wide and she quickly scrambled to her feet, and followed Martha from the house, hurrying now because Martha was already distancing herself from her, marching with that resolute purpose that seemed to define her life. “Why couldn’t I be more like Martha?” Mary thought as she followed after – Martha who always seemed so strong, so controlled, even now. Mary had seen her cheeks wet in the moments that followed Lazarus’ last heaving breath. But then she had dried her eyes and set her jaw and just taken care of things the way she always did. Mary knew her heart must be breaking, too. She knew how much Martha had loved Lazarus, even if she didn’t say much. But Martha just went on.
And then he was there…Jesus. Martha stopped when she reached him and Mary ran the last few steps and collapsed at his feet, bursting into tears again. “Jesus,” she sobbed, “If only you had been here. He would not have died.” And then she felt his strong hands grasp her arms and gently lift her to her feet. And she found her eyes looking into his – his eyes filled with pain, the pain she had seen in the eyes of all the others who had loved Lazarus. And his face was wet with tears. Truly he had loved Lazarus. Mary knew it. If only…
“Where have they laid him?” asked Jesus, his voice husky with emotion. And they led him to the tomb where they had laid Lazarus. He motioned to three of those who followed him. “Take the stone away.” Martha grabbed his arm. “Lord, he’s been in there four days. Are you sure?” And then, with an even determination in his voice that Mary had not heard before, he looked to Martha and said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you wold see the glory of God? Martha bowed her head and backed away.
And then Jesus prayed, “Father, I thank you for hearing me…and I pray that those standing here might believe because of what I am about to do.” And turning his face to the tomb he called into the dark crevice, “Lazarus, come out.” Mary could scarcely believe her ears, and certainly not her eyes, for as she looked disbelieving toward the tomb she saw the dark hole lighten and then the figure of a man appear wrapped in burial cloths. She heard Martha gasp even as she felt her knees give way beneath her. Could it be? Could it be? She looked up at Jesus and he looked down at her. Those eyes, so deep, so compassionate, so full, and she felt that she must be looking into the very eyes of God.
And then he was looking away, toward Lazarus. “Unbind him…let him go!” But Mary knew that he was already free from that which had bound him and so was she.
There was no miraculous raising of the dead the day that they laid my cousin Nathan in the ground, nor four days later for that matter. Only the promise that it would one day happen. And with the promise, on that day, an amazing thing. I wasn’t able to make the journey for the funeral because of my knee, but later I heard the story, and saw the pictures that someone took who just happened to be holding a camera.
As a part of the committal service at the cemetery, Nathan’s family decided to release three white doves, to free them as a sign of releasing Nathan’s spirit into the keeping of his heavenly Father. And so they did, opening the cage and chasing the birds up and out. Up and away they went, fleeing their captivity. But then, inexplicably, one of the doves turned back and flew to my cousin’s grieving family and lit there on the ground before my aunt and actually walked up toward her and toward the family, as if to bring a message from God, from beyond the canyon if you will, as if to say, “Be at peace; Nathan is with me. He is in good hands.” At least that is the way my family interpreted it. And then the dove was gone.
Some of you may have had a similar experience of hope. Most of us will not. But we have a far stronger thing in which we take hope today. It is a word in which my Aunt and Uncle find their ultimate hope, a word in which Lazarus would also find hope, for this raising in John’s gospel is but a temporary thing. One day the tomb would claim Lazarus again, and all those whom he loved. But it would not hold him – or them – because this Jesus who called into the dark tomb, entered the tomb himself and cast off the grave clothes for all of us. Jesus brings a word of hope today for all those who stand at the canyon’s edge, weeping, wondering, waiting.
He says, “I have been to the canyon, entered the darkness, gone into that place where you cannot see, and have made a way for you. Death could not hold me. It cannot hold you. It cannot hold those whom you love. I will take care of them, and I will take care of you, even as I took care of my friends, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. I will take care of you. For you, too, are my friends. Amen.
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