A friend of mine studied Buddhism with masters throughout Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Thailand. He met a monk who had been ill for a quite a while and had not been able to participate in the life of his temple or to teach. But this great and respected master decided to give one final dharma talk or sermon as a way of saying farewell to the community. It was a greatly anticipated event and the temple was packed with people for this special service. When the moment finally came for the dharma talk, everyone settled down onto their cushions, getting ready for their beloved teacher’s final words of wisdom. The monk began: “You are all going to die,” he said, “SOON!” Then he bowed to them. The talk was over. That was his last teaching. The truth of these last words basically sums up the reason that Molly and I have decided to talk about death – Ars Moriendi, the Art of Dying – for three Sundays in a row in the high heat of August. Because the human lifespan is short and whether it’s later this afternoon or a hundred years from now, death will arrive for all of us – SOON! Ars Moriendi was a 15th century text that came out of the devastation of Europe’s Black Death. The priestly classes who had attended so many deathbeds had been particularly devastated by the plague and there arose a need for a DIY guidebook to having a good death. But, I think, to be most effective, training in the Art of Dying needs to begin before our deathbed. In order to live well, to really understand what this life is, what it’s made for, and what we are capable of, we all have to come to terms with death. John’s telling of the Raising of Lazarus, which we just heard, is a teaching about resurrection, right? Clearly, there is a resurrection in there, but I wonder if these events are more about death and the absolute necessity of our facing it – before we are dying – in order to truly live. Have you been down in Lazarus’ tomb, the way that Jesus went to it – to truly deal with death? There’s a story about the Buddha that got me thinking about this aspect of the Lazarus story. There was a woman, named Kisa Gautami, from a well-to-do family who was married to a successful merchant. She had a young son who became suddenly sick and died. Grief stricken, Kisa Gautami carried her son throughout her village begging for help, seeking out medicine, trying to find someone who could bring the child back to life. A villager told her she should go to visit the powerful teacher who was in town and Kisa brought her son’s body to the Buddha and asked for his help. Buddha told her that only one thing would solve her problem and asked her to bring him a grain of mustard seed from a home in the village BUT that it had to be from a home which had never known death. Kisa Gautami leapt up and went from house to house, knocking on doors, asking her neighbors if this was a house that had never known death. The reply kept coming back, “no, my daughter died here, we lost our father here, my grandparents passed here.” Before long, the realization dawned on her that there is no home, no person, who has not known death. Death is inevitable and universal. She stopped looking for the mustard seed, buried her son, and returned to the Buddha to become his follower. The first teachings Buddha gave her before Kisa could embrace her new life as a nun were teachings about death and its absolute connection to life. In fact, Buddhist traditions record that the Buddha taught 40 different subjects of meditation to calm the mind and seek out truth. 10 of them were corpse meditations. The recommended corpse meditations are meditations on the bloated corpse, the bluish discolored corpse, the festering corpse, the cut-up corpse, the gnawed corpse, the scattered corpse, the hacked and scattered corpse, the blood-stained corpse, the worm-infested corpse, and the skeleton. Buddhist monks have been known throughout history to sit in meditation in graveyards – which were not always so neat and orderly as our modern graveyards – and gaze upon the decaying bodies there in order to know death. I know, it’s all pretty macabre, but isn’t Lazarus’ story also a little gory and gross? If you look at the picture on the front of your bulletin, you can get a feel for it. The Raising of Lazarus was painted by artist Nicolas Froment around the same time that the Ars Moriendi was written. This is a resurrection of a corpse that has been in the ground for four days. Martha on the left there swoons from the smell that she warned Jesus about. Lazarus rises stiffly. His face is still held by his death rigor. No one looks particularly overjoyed that he’s back. It’s a ghastly scene – as much a meditation on death as it is a meditation on resurrection. Kisa Gautami, like Mary and Martha, was looking for a resurrection. Instead, she was confronted full on with the truth that death is a part of life and it shaped her future and her spiritual journey moving forward. Death led her toward Enlightenment. Kisa’s story got me thinking about Jesus in the Lazarus story. The way John tells it suggests that maybe even Jesus at first, like Kisa, was in denial about having to encounter death. When Jesus gets the message from Lazarus’ family saying that he is ill, Jesus says that the illness will not lead to death, but to Glory instead. But was it only resurrection and glory that Jesus, Lazarus, and all those mourners experienced or was it first and foremost, just like it was for Kisa Gautami, an intimate encounter with death? Is Jesus, as we often do when it comes to death, having a moment of denial? When Jesus decides to leave for Bethany to see Lazarus, at first, he can’t even say to the disciples that the Lazarus has died. He says he has fallen asleep. Was it some discomfort that made Jesus use a euphemism that confused all of the disciples? Jesus even says that he is glad that he wasn’t there at Lazarus’ death – so that you may believe, he tells disciples. But I wonder if Jesus, like any of us might be, was wary of facing death. Perhaps Jesus, like any of us, knew that in facing the death of his friend he would also be facing his own death. The disciples seem to understand that this is what Jesus is going through. They tell him not go – because attempts have been made on Jesus’ life already in that area. Stay safe, they tell him, don’t face death. But Jesus tells them that he is determined – he is seeking the light and will not stumble. And like good friends, the disciples go too – that we may die with him also, says Thomas. They know that Jesus, in some way, is going to face his death. Maybe that’s why Jesus delayed for two days before heading to Bethany. Jesus seems to tell himself that he was giving Lazarus time to die so that he could perform the resurrection when he finally showed up. But after a two-day delay, Jesus arrives in Bethany to learn that Lazarus has been in the grave for four days. No delay was necessary. Could it have been that Jesus needed that time for himself to overcome his fear of the truth he would find in that tomb? Could Jesus have arrived in time? Could he have saved Lazarus? The mourners’ ask the same doubting question, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Why face death when you can perform miracles to prevent it? Certainly Jesus has performed many great healings and saved many from death demonstrating that he had the power to heal Lazarus, yet in this situation, it seems that even Jesus, the miracle worker and healer, must truly meet death – just like any of us. When Martha runs out to meet Jesus she says to him, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Jesus doesn’t confirm this but replies to her confidently that Lazarus will rise again and that he, Jesus, is the resurrection and the life. Next, Mary runs out to meet Jesus and she says to him, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” This time Jesus’ response is very different. The text says that Jesus was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He begins to weep. It is only now that he is ready to go down to the tomb, to roll away the stone, to face the stench, and to call Lazarus out and meet death – and the glory beyond it. What’s the benefit of all of this facing death? Why should we meditate now on this smelly, disturbing reality? Is it just because we are all going to die – soon? Or are there benefits to living life now with the kind of enlightenment and glory that may be found on the other side of death? And do I really need to hang out with corpses to get these benefits? What is your corpse meditation? Where might there be a tomb in your life that you could visit? When I was 14-years old, I broke my back. One of my vertebrae was so severely collapsed that the doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital told me they had never seen a spine so damaged that had not severed the spinal column. My spinal cord was squeezed down to ¼ of its normal width, my spine itself was twisted so badly inside of me that you could see the hump through my back. The doctors told me they would do their best but that it was a serious operation to put me back together again and there were no guarantees. I needed to be prepared to wake up from the surgery paralyzed from the chest down and, of course, I knew I needed to be prepared to not wake up from surgery at all. Anything could happen. Obviously things turned out pretty well for me. I woke up from surgery, my spinal cord was saved, my spine was screwed and grafted back into a mostly normal configuration, and I was walking around within days. Now, some days have been better than others, but since the operations I have had to live with a lot of pain. Sometimes I barely notice it, other times it is absolutely debilitating. As I was trying to write this sermon last night, it just so happened, I was having wracking back pain. This pain has been my corpse meditation, my trip down to the tomb for the last 20 years of my life. When it comes, in big nauseating waves, I remember my own mortality – that anything could happen. And every time I go for a hike, or take a bike ride, or touch my toes, the little aches and pains up and down my torso seem to me like the Glory of God. This morning, after a night of back spasms, I woke up like a dead man stiffly raising himself up to the light and I remembered that after we face death anything can happen. That’s good news and it’s a good way to live. AMEN.
