I want to teach you a new
word today—it’s a Greek word— it’s a word that Luke uses in his gospel and it
only appears once in the entire bible ---the word is called lairos—Say it with
me “Lairos”— Say it again, “Lairos.”
Now the million dollar
question. Does anyone know what lairos means?
But before we get to that let me ask this question, Have anyone of you ever
swore in church? Be honest—we have confession in a few minutes.
Well, I am here to say
you can all put your hands up because you all just swore in church.
Lairos means garbage, rubbish
dribble, crap—and perhaps most accurately— it means:
Bull… Sh…
When the women returned
from the tomb and told their friends that Jesus had risen—that he was alive—the
men said lairos. When they said, “He is
risen— they said lairos. Jesus is alive-
lairos.
Lairos, lairos lairos! Garbage- Garbage-Garbage. Resurrection Can’t be— he’s dead --not possible
I loved the way we’ve sanitized Lairos and
translated it into English—Listen again to how it’s translated “But these words
seemed to them an idle tale,
and they did not believe them.
When the men hear about
the empty tomb they don’t say bless your heart scream lairos and they do not
believe.
How do we see
resurrection—do we look into the tomb and say Lairos—do we look at the
resurrection and say probably not.
I have to be honest when I stand at the tomb
peak in sometimes I wonder could this be lairos- a dead person coming back or I
look at a situation and say there is no way God could do anything here.
But sometimes when I look in to the tomb like
Peter—I see something amazing —I see a God who breathes life into death— the
God does his best work in the graveyards and tombs of our lives--who breathes
hope into despair who breathes joy into sadness.
In Jesus resurrection I
see A God who says there is not a single situation that I cannot redeem. The
resurrection says---There is nothing under sun that God cannot redeem that God
cannot transform.
Barbara Brown Taylor in
an Easter sermon she preached many years ago said this about the resurrection, “By
the light of this day, God has planted a seed of life in us that cannot be
killed, and if we remember [that] then there is nothing we cannot do: move
mountains, banish fear, love our enemies, change the world.” [1]
Lairos doesn’t change the
world! Lairos doesn’t banish fear! Lairos move mountains! Lairos doesn’t give
us the power to love our enemies. Resurrection does.
I’d like to end with the
story about the power of belief –
“On [the] 31st [of] July [in] 1941 a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. As a
reprisal the Gestapo selected ten men arbitrarily to die in a starvation
underground bunker. One of the men who was selected to die was a man was named
Francis Gajinisdek. And when Francis Gajinisdek was selected, he cried out: he
said, `Ah, my poor wife and my children. They'll never see me again.'
And at that moment, a
Polish man — very unimpressive-looking in many ways, with round glasses in wire
frames — stepped out, and he said, `Look, I'm a Catholic priest. I don't have a
wife and children.' He said, `I want to die instead of that man.' And to
everyone's amazement, his offer was accepted.
Maximilian Kolbe was the
name of the Catholic priest. He was 47 years old at the time. And he went with
the others to the starvation bunker. He was a remarkable man — he got them all
praying and singing hymns; it transformed the atmosphere, apparently, in that
bunker. And he was the last to die, actually — he was given a lethal injection
of carbolic acid on 14 August 1941.[2]”
Lairos didn’t give Father
Kolbe the will, to stand before the
Gestapo and raise and his hand and say I-will-take-his-place in the starvation
bunker--Lairos doesn’t enable the men to go to their deaths singing hymns of joy and pray prayers of hope. Resurrection does.
Is it lairos? Sometimes life
and our experience seems an awful lot like we are on our own or that there
can’t possibly be a loving God behind all this-- but sometimes a tiny sliver of resurrection
light creeps in and it washes away those
mountains of doubt- wash away those
moments where I want to scream lairos-- that’s enough for me.
All I need are Tiny
glimpses of a God who works in the tombs and graveyards of our lives. I don’t know that we get any more than Tiny
glimpses of resurrection on this side of life.
Lairos.
To that I have to join my voice to the voice
of the women returning frorm the tomb-- I have to say I have seen the Lord!
He is Risen!
Lairos—NO-NO-NO.
Alleluia, Christ is
Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed,
Alleluia!
AMEN
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