Preached at the Requiem Mass for Tracy Steen, Saturday, September 28, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Wisdom 3:1-5, 9
Psalm 139:1-12
Revelation 21:2-7
John 11:21-27
Jesus said to her, “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.”
I want five more minutes with my father. I just need five more minutes. Now, I am relieved to say that we really are at peace, me and my dad, following his death last November. My wish for five more minutes is not debilitating, not terrible. But I just want one more chance to say a few good things to my father. And while we’re on the topic of personal grief, I would need many more minutes to catch up with my mother, to meet her now, now that half of my own lifetime (and counting) has unfolded after her death. My mother never met Andrew. In certain important ways, she never met me.
Jesus does not directly speak comfort to me in these reflections of mine about my departed parents. Jesus doesn’t speak simple comfort to any of us who are grieving today for our departed brother in Christ, Tracy. Jesus simply but complicatedly says this to us: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” He does not say, “Oh, you’ll get your five minutes, and more, with your beloved dead.” And he certainly does not say, “Oh, there is no death; death is an illusion.” We Episcopalians say — and will say this very afternoon — that in death “life is changed, not ended,” but that’s as far as we’ll go on minimizing the sting of death.
It’s understandably not far enough for many people.
There is a poem that sometimes appears in our popular culture when someone dies. It is a favorite in funeral parlors, or on the back of memorial prayer cards. This poem was written nearly a century ago by Mary Elizabeth Frye, no doubt with the heartfelt intent to bring comfort to the grieving. It goes like this:
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!
I say this with true respect, but as a follower of Jesus, and as a leader of a spiritual community that follows Jesus together, I, and we, must set this poem aside, firmly, as outside our tradition. We must say No to these soft sentiments, however well-intentioned they may be, and we must assert that they carry in them a terrible falsehood, the notion that those we love but see no longer “did not die.” They did die.
Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from death, but not before Lazarus is confirmed to have died four days before. (Four days was understood in that culture to be one day beyond the soul’s ability to linger in the body of the deceased.) And whatever the condition of Lazarus at any point in the story, Jesus himself weeps in sorrow and in fury before the plainly factual triumph of the Power of Death, and the anguish Death causes in us. Jesus knows the bruising, piercing sting of death. And the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha — they would also have no time for Mary Elizabeth Frye’s reassurances. No.
“If you had been here, my brother would not have died!” Martha says. Later on, Mary says — Mary cries out — the same thing. This is a lament, but also a rebuke. And Jesus doesn’t defend himself in response to Martha. He does not deny either part of her complaint: she’s right — he wasn’t here; and she’s right — Lazarus did die. True, and true. He simply says, “Your brother will rise again.”
But Martha, brave Martha, good Martha, exemplary Martha, a saint who in my book is a patron of all who grieve: she misunderstands Jesus. “Your brother will rise again,” he says, and she assumes he’s talking about the far future; not about today, but about someday. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” she says, and in my hearing, she’s almost, almost rolling her eyes. (That’s just in my hearing! It’s just how I would say it.) “I know, I know, I know,” I might say, when I’m deeply upset about something, and a friend is reassuring me that it’ll all work out in the end. In our psychologically-minded age, we could hear Martha indirectly telling Jesus here that he’s just not validating her feelings; he’s not validating her perspective; he’s not validating her. “Your brother will rise again.” Okay, yeah, sure. Aren’t you just saying, Jesus, that I’m overreacting, that I need to calm down?
No. He’s not saying that at all. And however Martha felt in that moment, and whatever the motives of her misunderstanding, and if she was making the mistaken assumption that Jesus was just offering soft comfort in a hard time, like that old saccharine poem denying the reality and finality of death, Jesus responds to her “I know, I know” statement with this startling declaration: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.”
“Your brother will rise again.” “Sure sure, of course, he’ll rise again someday.” “No, Martha. I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” “Okay, well, that’s good to know. Thank you for your words. Thank you for coming to pay your respects.” “No, Martha. I AM the Resurrection and the Life.”
The Resurrection and the Life. Resurrection and Life are different things. “Resurrection and Life” is yet another biblical coupling of similar things or ideas, like “powers and principalities” or “your rod and your staff” or “patience and steadfastness.” Resurrection and Life: aren’t they the same thing? Yes and no.
Yes, Resurrection and Life flow into and out of one another: you could express them in one idea, like this: we are raised up in life by Jesus. But no, they are distinct. God in Jesus resurrects all creation to abide with God; but the abiding itself is what Jesus means when he calls himself “Life.”
Life, for us mortal humans — Life is abiding with Jesus. Lazarus is raised to life by Jesus the Resurrection. But then Lazarus rejoins his sisters and their community; he rejoins them in the Life of abiding with Jesus. We see Lazarus a bit later on, when a woman anoints Jesus with precious oil. We can imagine Lazarus among those, like the Beloved Disciple, like Mary Magdalene, who rested their head on the chest of Jesus, with astonishing intimacy.
Life is abiding with Jesus. “I AM Life,” Jesus says. (I momentarily clipped out “the Resurrection” from his statement so that we won’t lose “Life” in the glare of the vivid notion of Resurrection.) “I AM Life,” says Jesus. And Life is abiding with Jesus.
Our brother Tracy understands this. Tracy does not take his life for granted. He doesn’t take leading a life for granted, either. (It’s one thing to appreciate the simple gift of life, but it’s a separate blessing to lead that life, to embrace it, to seize it.) Tracy did this, and does this even now. Tracy cherished his life after he came so close to losing it in a shooting: he appreciated the fragility of life in this perilous world. But Tracy also savored life with his friends on this wondrous planet, a world chock full of fascinating cities and beautiful places and lovely people.
Tracy’s good friend Ruth remembers that Tracy would arrive early at St. Paul’s when we held a monthly community dinner for this neighborhood. He would do all the things volunteers did for that dinner: not just cook the meal, but dine with the guests; not just dine with the guests, but help with cleanup. Tracy understood the ethic of that ministry, which was grounded in the truth that Jesus did not feed the hungry, he ate with them. (He abided with them.) But Tracy took it all one step further: he arrived early to work in our labyrinth garden, collecting flowers for the dinner tables.
In all of this, Tracy abided with Jesus: Tracy rested his head in tender intimacy with Jesus, because Tracy cared for everyone Jesus loved. Tracy cared for the guests at the dinner, but also the cooks and servers and the cleanup crew. Tracy cared for everyone seated at the tables, delighting them with the beauty of flowers; but he also cared for everyone at St. Paul’s, all of us who say our prayers next to, and inside, this garden, right here.
And so we grieve. We grieve Tracy’s departure from our midst. Tracy has died. And in our grief we might want to cry out to Jesus, “If you had been here, our brother would not have died!” And if that is our lament, then in Jesus we have found a companion — The Companion — who understands our complaint even better than we understand it ourselves. “Tracy will rise again,” Jesus then says. And we’re tempted to reply, “Of course, of course, we know, we know.” Big deal. But then Jesus cuts across our dismissal, and says again, says always, in words that ring through the universe: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.”
“I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” Tracy has died, but even now Tracy abides with us in the Community of the Risen One. Even now our garden — trapped beneath a giant construction crane — our garden vibrates with the joy that Tracy cultivated there. Even now, this neighborhood is changed and gladdened by Tracy’s ministry, and by ours.
Jesus does not say, “Do not grieve.” Jesus is not such a heretic. We may grieve all we want. Our grief is just another color, just another fragrance, in this ever-growing garden of Resurrection and Life.