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The people of Micronesia, in the western Pacific Ocean, are getting fat from eating Spam and potato chips and turkey tails. They are turning from Micronesians into what might be called "MACRO-nesians," and the change is killing them. Perhaps you're not surprised that these islanders are dying young. You know that life is often brutal and short in The Third World. But the Micronesians dropping dead in their 50s are not dying for reasons commonly associated with the developing world. There is no famine here, and little evidence of the diseases that cut life short in places such as Africa. The big killer, according to The Atlantic Monthly, is what some epidemiologists are now calling "New World Syndrome" -- a group of maladies brought on not by viruses or microbes or parasites, but by the assault of rapid Westernization on traditional cultures. It's not the problems of poverty that are killing them, but instead the scourges of AFFLUENCE. They are just now beginning to face the diseases that knock us off here in the United States: Diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. They are facing these problems because they have been introduced to our fatty, sweet and salty foods: Spam and corned beef and Vienna sausages, cake and muffin mixes, soda and beer and candy bars and potato chips. Go into a Micronesian grocery store, and you can find plenty of unhealthy imported food, but you can't buy fresh bananas, papayas, breadfruit, coconut, or mangoes. Apart from a fish shack or two, and a few stands hawking bags of the island's famous green tangerines, there is nowhere to buy local produce. A visitor was told that most islanders once grew fruits and vegetables on family plots, and pulled tuna and other fish from the sea. But the majority of modern residents don't have time or energy to farm or fish -- they are too busy with their office jobs. (Ellen Ruppel Shell, "New World Syndrome," The Atlantic Monthly, June 2001, 50). Welcome to the New World -- the Promised Land of diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. When I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil, last week, I saw an exhibit on Pele -- a Brazilian hero and one of the greatest athletes of all time. Do you think this exhibit was sponsored by a health food company? No way. The sponsor was Coca-Cola. New World Syndrome. Not that our problems in the New World are purely physical. Our spiritual diet is bad for us as well, and it is hurting us at younger ages all the time. We're victims of our own brand of New World Syndrome, getting sick from all the junk that we ingest in our rapid-fire, multi-tasking, point-and-click, individualistic, consumer-oriented culture. Do you need some evidence? Church membership is declining, and a shrinking number of people are eating the fruits of traditional religious culture. At the same time, a hunger for personal spirituality -- cut off from religious institutions -- has been soaring. Americans are feeling spiritually dead, like Lazarus in the tomb, and they are searching for life in online chatrooms, in exotic religions, and in the self-help sections of shopping mall bookstores. Check out The Prayer of Jabez -- it's selling by the millions. What's missing in all this is what Jesus proposes for us. In John 11:25, Jesus prescribes what might be called an "R and L Antidote" to spiritual death: "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live." This is not too salty, sweet, or fatty, and it provides us the spiritual nourishment we need for abundant life, now and forever. Are you feeling sick from your own strain of New World Syndrome? Try the R and L Antidote: Resurrection and Life. To grasp the full significance of this suggestion, we need to take a careful look at the story of the raising of Lazarus, and gain a deeper understanding of just how Jesus confronts -- and then conquers -- the powers of sickness and death. You might be in for a surprise. For starters, it is clear that Jesus is not untouched or unmoved by physical and spiritual destruction. He takes fatal illness seriously, and personally. Going to the tomb of his dead friend Lazarus, Jesus encounters the sisters Martha and Mary, and when Jesus sees Mary weeping, he is greatly disturbed in spirit and is deeply moved. He begins to weep himself, prompting some onlookers to say, "See how he loved him!" (v. 36). What a powerful image this is: God's own Son, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, so overcome by grief over the loss of his friend, and by anger over the destructive power of death, that he breaks down in tears. Death is not a minor annoyance for Jesus. It is something that affects him so profoundly that he is overwhelmed by emotion and he cries. And just as he weeps over Lazarus, he weeps over physical deaths in Micronesia and spiritual deaths in our country. But then, suddenly, another group of onlookers in the story speaks up and makes a less sympathetic observation: "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man [Lazarus] from dying?" (v. 37). That sounds rather heartless and cutting, doesn't it? But don't dismiss it too quickly. It's a question that a great many people ask every day. Think about it. Why DOESN'T the universe-creating God create miraculous cures for little children with cancer? Why doesn't the death-conquering Christ beat the heart disease of our elderly church members? Why doesn't the infinitely powerful Spirit of God eliminate the pain of the suffering poor people I encountered in Brazil last week? This is not a disrespectful or unfaithful thing to wonder. In fact, it's something that all of us are bound to ask at one time or another. Just why DO innocent people suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why doesn't God protect us from violence and illness and death? Within the church, we know that answers come only when we join together and dig deeply into God's Word, only when we are open to its new and surprising forms of nourishment. In today's passage, Martha admits that she expects a straightforward healing miracle when she says to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (v. 21). She is confident that Jesus holds power over illness, and she believes that he would have chosen to use his power to help her brother Lazarus. But then Jesus says something very interesting, and very unexpected. Instead of explaining to Martha that he is going to raise Lazarus in just a few minutes, he says, "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?" (v. 25) This is not a straightforward healing. It's the R and L Antidote. Resurrection and Life. Rather than promising Martha a miracle, he invites her to trust him to work for new life. There's a big difference between these two. Instead of saying, "I'm going to step in and make everything okay," Jesus says, "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live." He promises that the dead will rise, but he doesn't predict just how. So what does Martha do, in response to this invitation? She says yes. She believes. She proclaims, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world" (v. 27). She believes, like the young people of First Presbyterian Church in Natal, Brazil, who invite their friends to turn to Jesus, instead of turning to drugs. She believes, like the Praise Band of New Life Presbyterian Church in Sao Paulo, who invite children from the slums to join them every Saturday morning for breakfast, praise songs, and Bible study. The very same invitation is extended to us today. Jesus says to us, in the midst of our physical and spiritual illnesses: "I am the resurrection and the life .... Do you believe this?" Do you believe that I am working for radical new life? Do you believe that I am the resurrection, the one who conquers death? Do you believe that I am leading you, right now, in so many unexpected ways, from dying to rising? It's impossible to predict what form this new life will take. But we can believe it will come ... it will surely come. Sarah Hinlicky is studying for her Master of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary. She recently spent time visiting with her dying grandfather, a time of sadness and grief that was complicated by the fact that her grandfather was a pastor who really didn't approve of women in the ministry. On her last visit, she offered to pray with him, and then began to cry. "He opened his arms," she reports, and "I threw myself down on his chest ... and he wrapped those dying arms around me. I gripped them. There was something miraculous about them. They were so unlovable, objectively speaking, so ugly and powerless. They looked like death. They pointed to death. They even called out for death. But to me, they were the embodiment of love, love right in the middle of death. ... "His yellow hands stroked my hair, and I started to pray, not very well, not very eloquently, not very coherently. He prayed too, calmly, quietly, humorously even. ... "But then, a confession and an admission. He prayed, 'Lord, I didn't know what to think of this business of letting women be ordained pastors. But I see that you have called my granddaughter into it, so I think it must be a good thing after all.' And there it was, at the very end: the man who had baptized me was now blessing me to carry on his work in the world." (Sarah Hinlicky, "The great reunion beyond," Christianity Today, February 3, 2001, 53) When we face physical or spiritual death, there is only one antidote: Resurrection and life. It comes to us through believing in Jesus, and through trusting him to be at work for unexpected new life in every time, place and situation. Although once dead, we are now alive. Call it New Life Syndrome. Amen. |