Odyssey Down Broadway Sermon Series (La Cage Aux Folle)
November 11, 2001
Year C
Title: La Cage Aux Folle
Theme: We are called to listen to Christ calling to us in our graves, in our
moments of hopelessness—and what he is saying to us in those
moments is “Come Out!”
Actually, I’m glad that we’re ending on this musical, that we’re ending our
Odyssey Down Broadway Sermon Series on La Cage Aux Folle, a
musical most of us are familiar with, in one form or another—shoot, even
I am familiar with this story! But most of us have probably not seen the
musical, though we may be familiar with the music, like the piece the
choir sang for us tonight, but I guarantee most of us are familiar with the
American version of this early seventies French movie—The Birdcage
starring Nathan Lane and Robin Williams. When the French movie,
which was based on an earlier French play, came out, so to speak, in the
mid-seventies, it was a huge worldwide hit, and it eventually spawned a
Broadway musical that debuted in 1983 and ran for some 1700
performances. It was an incredibly different play, one of the few times
when gay people were given a human face—and it was probably one of
the first times we were even given children in any story. The play and
the movie and the musical and the American version of La Cage all
center around the antics of the two gay men who run a successful drag
nightclub and whose lives are severely complicated when their son
decides to marry the daughter of the local moral crusader. Most of us
know the story pretty well, especially the part where Albin feels pressure
to go back into the closest in order to hide the lifestyle of these two
nightclub owners. It’s a funny movie, but one that a lot of us can relate
to—you know, degaying the house before mom and dad come over and
making the guest bedroom look as if it really is your “roommate’s”
bedroom. Its hard work, isn’t it, pretending to be what you’re not? For a
lot of us, it feels like a grave, it feels hopeless, and it costs so much to
live your life in hiding. But one of the things that is great about this
musical is that it reminds us that we’re not meant to live our lives scared
and fearful, and that to live that way, to live in fear is to fail to recognize
the incredible life that we are created for—it is to fail to recognize that
eternal life begins now and not later, that it begins in the very moment
when we choose to hear the Christ calling to us in our closets of despair
and our graves of hopelessness. God can meet us in our despair and
broken heartedness and our hopelessness and give us resurrection,
eternal life, if we choose to listen to the voice of the one who speaks the
words of life to us here and now, the moment when eternity begins. This
story, this very special story, reminds us that we’re meant for life, not
death, hope, not despair, joy, not hopelessness.
And speaking of different stories, earlier this week, I mentioned to the
Lectio Divina Circle that the Gospel of John was very different from the
other three Gospels we have in the New Testament. John is very
different because of many reasons but one of the most glaring reasons
is the unique stories that only John tells and that Mathew, Mark, and
Luke leave out of their Gospels. The story we have before this morning
is one of those stories—it is only in John that we have this incredible
story of Lazarus’s resurrection, it is only in John that we see Christ so
completely immersed in human sorrow that we are told that he wept.
This is a powerful story, and because it is so powerful, the Gospel of
John spends a whole chapter on this one particular story, something you
rarely see done in the other three Gospels. There are wonderful details
that you just don’t hear in other stories in the Gospels—there are details
about Jesus’ emotions, about his relationship with others, even little
details like the cloth that Lazarus was wearing when he came out of the
tomb. So, as readers of this story we are offered a more intimate picture
of Jesus and those he loved than we are offered elsewhere—well, so
what? Why does John spend so much time on this story?—
a story that he and only he tells? Why are we as readers given such
loving details? Why are we given the gift of a glimpse into the inner
world of this One from Nazareth? Well, as much as this story is a story
that is meant to amaze us with the power that this Christ has, the very
power to bring the dead back to life again—I think the details ARE
THERE for a reason other than the pure shock value of this miracle.
The details, the intimate details that this story gives us are meant to tell
us more than the story of Lazarus’ resurrection—you see, I think this
story is meant to tell us the story of our own resurrection. John spends
time on this story because he knows that this story is really about what it
means to live the life of faith, about what it means to have a “broken-
hearted” faith, about what it means to hear your name being called out
when you think you are rotting away in your own grave. This is a story
about resurrection—a story about Lazarus’ resurrection, a story about
our own resurrection, a story about the resurrection of the whole world.
That is why the details are there, that is why John spends such loving
care with this story, because he knows that he is not ONLY telling his
readers the story of Lazarus’ resurrection, but that he is also telling us
the story of his resurrection and as he is telling us the story of his own
resurrection from the grave, he is helping us to tell the story of our own
resurrections.
The telling of this story by John, the telling of this story about Lazarus’
resurrection, about John’s resurrection, begins with the illness of Jesus’
close friend Lazarus, who sisters Mary and Martha we’ve met in other
passages of Scripture. Clearly this man Lazarus and his two sisters were
close friends of Jesus’, so close, in fact, that they had no qualms in
calling Jesus from his preaching and teaching duties to ask him to come
to Lazarus bedside. But Jesus chooses not to go and stays another two
days and says something mysterious about how this illness will be used
to glorify God. After saying something to his disciples about not living in
fear of one’s enemies, he says another mysterious thing—he tells them,
“Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going to awaken him.”
And as so often happens in this Gospel, the disciples take him too
literally and so he must eventually tell them clearly that their friend
Lazarus has died, though he doesn’t explain to them what he means by
waking Lazarus up. The next thing we know, we have Martha before us,
the one whom we remember from other stories, the one who worked in
the kitchen while Mary listened at Jesus feet, we have her before Jesus,
overcome with a broken-heart, overcome with a sense of loss that goes
beyond losing her brother. I think that what is breaking her heart is the
loss of something more than her brother—she is broken-hearted
because she is on the edge of losing her faith in this One from Nazareth
whom she had put all her hopes and fears into. Listen to her: “Lord, if
you had been here, my brother would not have died.” “Why weren’t you
here? Why didn’t you come when you knew what was happening to him,
to us? Why did you wait in some foreign place, only to show up when he
is rotting in his grave? Why weren’t you here?!?!” There’s anger there,
there is powerful disappointment, there is a broken-heart in Martha’s
words.
And yet, and yet, somewhere within her, she brings the one bit of faith
she has left to her lips, one last cry, hoping that this world is meaningful,
that somehow that this Christ will change EVEN THIS loss, this loss of her
brother, this loss of her faith in him, into something new, into something
full of hope. Listen to her again, listen to her last ray of hope, “But even
now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of God.” I love those
words, the words “but even now I know…” because those are the words
of faith in the face of the horror of loss. “But even now I know…” Martha
says to Jesus. And in response to this anger and this last thread of faith,
this finger being pointed at him, both accusing him and welcoming him at
the same time, he says to her “Your brother will rise again.” He tells her
that this is NOT the end of the story, that there is more story to come,
and she responds by thinking that he means that Lazarus will one day in
the future be resurrected from the dead, that one day, at the end of time,
his new body and his spirit will one day become one once again, an idea
that both Jesus and the Pharisees of his day shared. But that is not
what he means, at least not in this instance, and so he says to her “I am
the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though
they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never
die. Do you believe this?” No, he says to her, I am not talking about that
resurrection, that resurrection that will happen at the end of time—I am
talking about a resurrection that is present even now, a resurrection I am
offering you even at this moment. I am what brings life from death, not
just after death, but during life—I am the life that you hunger for even
now in your pain and your broken-heartedness. I am offering you life in
your present death—Eternity begins now, Martha, it begins now do you
want that, Martha, do you believe me, Martha?” he asks her. And she
gives him a yes, a yes to a life that seems so far away in her pain, in her
sorrow. “Yes,” she says, “I want that life…you are who say you are…you
are the Messiah.”
And then Martha leaves Jesus and goes to her sister to tell her that
Jesus is asking for her and then next thing we know we witness the same
scene happening all over again, only it is Mary now at Jesus feet, saying
to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Like Martha, she too is experiencing almost inconsolable loss, she too
feels angry and hurt that the one who had the power to sustain life chose
to stay away when he was needed most. But unlike Mary, she does not
add a “But even now I know…” She doesn’t offer Jesus those words of
broken-hearted faith, she can’t pull any words of hope out of herself, and
so she gives Jesus what she can offer him—her grief, her pain, her
anger, her sense of being betrayed by this One whom she had so much
faith in. And so Jesus looks around and he sees all the pain all around
him, in the faces of the Jews who are there to mourn with Martha and
Mary, and the Scriptures say that he was “greatly disturbed in spirit and
deeply moved.” He wants to know where they have laid the body of his
friend Lazarus and maybe it is in the act of asking for the body that the
sadness and pain becomes too much for him, and we find him weeping
on his way to Lazarus’ grave. And when he arrives at the grave, he is
still disturbed, the Scriptures say, and he tells Martha to take away the
stone. Not surprisingly, she is flabbergasted at his request …”Look,”
she says, “he’s been in there for four days—his corpse is going to
stink.” But Jesus persists, “Mary, I told you that if you believed you would
see resurrection and that you would see new life. Mary, you are going to
see resurrection, you are going to see life.” And then he prays, and
then he says those words, those absurd words directed at a rotting
corpse in a grave. “Lazarus, come out!” Even more absurd than those
words is what happens next—Lazarus comes out of that grave, covered
from head to toe with strips of cloth and his face completely covered with
a burial cloth. The absurd happens—what was dead is alive! The man
who was buried and grieved over and dealt with is not dead, but alive
because Jesus has called him out of his grave, and somehow this corpse
heard the voice of Jesus and he came out.
But, of course, as I said at the beginning of this sermon, this is not really
a story about Lazarus—though, of course it is that too—this is a story
about Christ calling to us in our own graves, when we too are rotting in
our own graves, when we too are covered in our burial shrouds, ready to
spend the rest of eternity in the darkness and silence. Yes, this story is
about being called into new life at this moment—I am the resurrection
and the life NOW—Christ says. This Christ says to Lazarus, to Mary, to
Martha, to us—the time for resurrection is NOW, not later, but NOW.
Eternity begins not at the end of time, but right now, right here. What
grave are you in right now? What grave have you become comfortable
in, what grave is sucking the very life out of you at this moment? And
yes, you and I can become comfortable with graves and with crosses and
with closets. You and I, we are not meant for the grave…you and I were
meant to live into all that God has for us and what God has for you is
life…you and I, we are meant to be a sign of resurrection, our scars, the
hard stuff we’ve been through, are meant to be signs of our
resurrection—and it is not resurrection that begins at the end of time, but
begins now and culminates at the end of time. Hearing those words,
those challenging words, those scary words, “Lazarus, come out!”
hearing those words through all the pain and hurt and broken
heartedness, through all the grief—it seems almost impossible! But
those words are being said to us, to you, to me, at this very moment—
“Come out!” One thing we know for sure about the Christ and that is: the
grave cannot hold him, the one whom they have crucified.And the grave
cannot and will not hold us. It does not have that kind of power,
especially when the Christ says to us, “Come out!” What grave are you
in? “Come out!” Those are Christ’s words to you and me this evening.
Do you hear those words—Those words are being uttered, I promise
you, those words are being said to us. As sure as you are in your grave
at this moment, those words are being said to you. “Come out!” “Come
out!” “Come out!”
