Easter Observed - Some Sunday Thoughts
April 5, 2009
In observation of Easter week, I am posting a talk that I gave to my church congregation last Easter, 2008.
At 5 o’clock on the morning of Monday, November 28th, 2005, I got a phone call that changed my life. About two years earlier, a very interesting couple had moved into our ward in San Francisco: Mike, the husband, was about to start business school at Berkeley after having founded an internet start-up in France where he had served his mission. Sema, the wife, was a Turkish Muslim whom Mike had met in France many years earlier and who he had recently married. They moved into San Francisco so she continue a career in finance while he attended school.
When they moved to the States, Sema’s English wasn’t very good, but she came to church with Mike to help her extreme loneliness and homesickness for Turkey. She attended a local mosque once in a while but she soon became close to several of the women in the Relief Society and became a regular attendee of our Enrichment and Sunday meetings. I was assigned to be Sema’s Visiting Teacher while she was still adjusting to American life, and although we were both busy working women with a language and cultural barrier, we quickly became close friends.
Sema and Mike were those kind of people who seem come straight out of a movie. His personality was larger than life and both of them knew more about European history and current events than I could ever hope to. I specifically remember going to dinner at their home one evening and being served homemade Turkish stew and baklava, while being regaled with stories of the 20th century Turkish history and some conflict with the Kurds. I was totally lost but just nodded my head, pretending to know what they were talking about because they were so glamorous and incredibly smart.
After Mike graduated from business school, he started a job at Wells Fargo and Sema quit work to be home with their new baby Lucas. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2005, Mike blessed baby Lucas in our ward with Sema and all of Mike’s family in attendance. The family posed for pictures outside the church building on top of a San Franciscan hill overlooking the bay. It was a perfect day for them.
That afternoon, after dropping off his family at the airport, Mike stopped off at his downtown office to pick up some materials he wanted to read for his new job. As he walked under the security camera into his deserted office, he dropped dead of a rare and undetected heart disease. He was 34 years old. Lucas, his son, was 4 months old.
The next morning, I received the call. I was immediately at Sema’s doorstep. I was the first person to arrive after she returned home from identifying Mike’s body at the police station. The effect of that morning was utterly shocking for me. It was the only time in my life when I have been a participant in completely naked, unbridled grief.
The bishop had called me not only because I was Sema’s closest friend in the ward, but also because I was Compassionate Service leader of the Relief Society at that time. I practically lived at Sema’s house over the next week, with dire consequences with my own boss at work! The Relief Society was amazing. We brought food. We tended Lucas. We brought over clothes Sema could wear to the funeral. We made the funeral program. We raised thousands of dollars to start an education fund for Lucas. I played the piano at Mike’s funeral, where hundreds of people flew in from around the world to honor him. All this, and Sema wasn’t even a member of the Church.
I share this story with you because it’s the closest thing I can muster to imagining the feelings of Mary and Martha at the death of their brother Lazarus, and at the Savior’s own feelings of sorrow when he wept with them. If any of you have lost a close friend or loved one, you know the feeling of disbelief and that intense but irrational desire to have that person just get up and be alive again. That’s what we felt in the days following Mike’s death. And that’s what Mary and Martha and other gathered friends must have felt as they gathered to mourn Lazarus. Imagine their joy and surprise when their irrational desires were actually met, and Lazarus walked out of his tomb a whole man. How I wish Mike’s body could have just walked out of the tomb like Lazarus!
Although Mike didn’t rise up again like Lazarus to live a full life with his family, the Savior’s promise to Martha resonated with all of us during those dark days: “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believe in me shall never die.” Mike’s death gave me the opportunity to develop a testimony of this principle in a real, literal way that I had never comprehended before. I have always felt a kinship with Martha -- she’s the one who busies herself in the kitchen and worries about the here and now. I have always felt close to her reasoned and logical faith. She exhibits these same characteristics at the death of Lazarus: she expresses faith in Christ’s theoretical role as Savior but she has a hard time comprehending that Lazarus might actually come back to life: “Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, ad the life: he that believeth in me, though he were  dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? (John 11: 21-26)
What’s particularly interesting is that Mary then approaches the Savior and says the very same thing to him: “Lord if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” But Mary gets a very different response from the Savior. Instead of a little sermon on His role as the Resurrector, Jesus responds to Mary with pure emotion and a literal demonstration of His power: He weeps and then He calls Lazarus forth out of the tomb. Was this a “better” response? Was Mary’s faith different than Martha’s? More profound? More literal? Perhaps, but I like to think that the Savior’s response to Martha was just as important. By raising Lazarus, He gave a gift just to the sisters. His response was unique to those specific circumstances. But by sharing His mini-sermon with Martha, He gave each of us a gift that still resonates with us today, in any place and in any situation. It is His promise, His gift of life and resurrection that we cling to today. Regardless of how impressive the raising of Lazarus actually was, it’s the Savior’s promise to raise us personally that we cherish most.
I was not the only one who cherished the Savior’s promise during those weeks and months following Mike’s death. Sema herself was pondering that promise in her heart. She struggled for several years as she tried to get her life in order, provide for Lucas and figure out her future. She took up heavy smoking again, struggled through a number of therapists, and went home to Istambul for six months. Then one day, about a year ago, I got another life-changing call. Sema had moved to Newport Beach, California, blocks away from Mike’s parents, and she had decided to join the Church. Thrilled but stunned by the news, I asked her why she was making this choice. I understood what a huge leap this was going to be for her from Islam, and I wanted to make sure she knew what she was getting in to. She answered simply, “I have to be with Mike again, and I know that if I join the Church we will always be together.” Elliot and I attended her baptism last summer. This simple faith in the atonement and resurrection cemented my own testimony in the Savior’s power to heal, to resurrect, and give life to that which is completely dead.
I have relied on this personal testimony over the past year and a half as I have struggled with being the only child of two terminally ill parents. On New Year’s Eve just this past January, Elliot and I drove home from a New Year’s Eve party. Our kids were home asleep at grandma’s, and as the clock neared midnight, I felt a pit in my stomach as I thought about what this year holds for us: finding a job, graduating from business school, moving to a new place, starting the girls in new schools, having a baby and dealing with dying parents. I literally felt sick. “How will we get through this year?” I asked Elliot as we talked in the dark of the car. With his usual ability to lighten the mood, he just threw his hands up and announced, “Help us, Jesus!”
But we both knew he was very very serious. We need Jesus’s help. We need his ability to give life to that which is failing, to heal that which is sick and to bring peace to turmoil. Over the past few months we have fervently asked Jesus to help us. And He has. Although none of our circumstances have changed since that New Year’s Eve, I no longer feel a pit in my stomach as I think about what lies ahead. I find myself on my knees at night overwhelmed by my blessings and by all the things that are going right in my life. And I know that the same Savior who raised Lazarus, and who will raise Mike and who taught Sema the power of the resurrection will also bring light and life to us this year as we confront our own burdens. I am grateful for His life-giving powers, His promise of resurrection and His the healing power I have felt in my own life.
