This morning, on All Saints’ Sunday, I preached the fourth message in a series based on Debie Thomas’ new book A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity (Broadleaf, 2024). Today, we focused on paradox.
Sermon
My message, “Beyond Simple Answers” was based on Isaiah 25:6-9, Revelation 21:1-6a, and John 11:32-44.
Story
You can watch the sermon below or read the manuscript.
Excerpt
Presbyterian Pastor Richard Hansen captured how widespread paradox really is for people who seek to follow the Way of Jesus. He explains:
We see unseen things.
We conquer by yielding.
We find rest under a yoke.
We reign by serving . . .
We are exalted when we are humble.
We become wise by being fools for Christ’s sake . . .
We gain strength when we are weak . . .
We live by dying.
Many of us are less than comfortable with death. And, all of us have felt the pain of loss when someone near and dear to us passes from this life to life eternal. At such moments the last thing we need is a long line of people issuing trite tributes.
Rather than greeting card platitudes we long for genuine companionship – for people willing to come alongside us and to mourn with us.
Perhaps for people who listened to the Gospel reading and saw that Jesus was moved to tears. The shortest verse in the Bible is also one of the most powerful: Jesus wept.
Jesus’ initial response was marked not by words but by compassionate action. He came alongside Mary. He grieved and cried with her and with those who had gathered around her. It, however, was not his full or final response.
Since this is All Saints’ Sunday it’s the rare Sunday when you expect your pastor to talk frankly about death. Maybe you heard the Gospel reading anew as it was presented in a more dramatic manner than usual this morning. Perhaps it sunk in for you that in our lived experience dead people stay dead, but with Jesus that isn’t necessarily true.
The Jesus who we have been taught was himself a paradox – fully human while also fully divine – wanted to teach those present that day and those gathered here this day an important lesson. Put differently, our one God who we know in three persons, the Holy Paradox, is teaching us that death isn’t as final as we imagine it to be. Lazarus is simply an example. This is a profound lesson we need to be reminded of regularly. It is one that you all are teaching me.