Jesus the Resurrection and the Life Wept

Transcription

1 John 11:1-46 March 15, 2015 Jesus the Resurrection and the Life Wept As I noted before we read the Scripture, the story of the raising of Lazarus is longer than most of the passages we read in worship on Sunday morning in fact, it s one of the longest stories in the New Testament. It s also one of the richest and most complex. In many ways this story serves as crossing point for all sorts of threads and themes that run through John s book about Jesus any of which could make a whole Lenten sermon series in its own right. This story contains one of the seven or eight, depending on how you count them I am sayings of Jesus, I am the resurrection and the life. A same time this is the story of one of the seven miracles or signs that play a central role in John. The raising of Lazarus is the last and greatest of them all. And, of course, this story also contains in the King James Version at least the shortest verse in the entire Bible, Jesus wept. A long and rich story like this poses a unique challenge for a preacher. There s way too much cover here in 15 minutes or so. And even if we were in an African church were a preacher might be expected to speak for an hour there s too much here for even that. One way that I approach any passage I m preaching on is to look for some feature in it that might serve as a doorway to lead us from our world and into the Bible s world and open up the passage to us. And so during the week I try listen for that one thing that stands out to me as 1

2 I study and ponder and pray, and then trust that that might be the door the Holy Spirit has led me to. This week, the thing that jumped out at me in this story is that when Jesus arrives in Bethany and meets first Martha and then Mary, the two sisters greet him with almost exactly the same words. They both say, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And a bit further on some of the mourners who go with him to Lazarus tomb, say practically the same thing. They ask, Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying? Jesus loved Lazarus, there s no question about that. He had healed countless others so why not now, why not this time? Some students of the story will make a case that Jesus never really had an opportunity to heal Lazarus. If you add up the time it took for the messengers to get to Jesus, plus the two days he waited, plus the time to walk to Bethany it s possible that Lazarus had already died by the time Jesus heard that he was ill. But given that this is Jesus we re talking about and not the local ambulance service, that may sound more like a well-intentioned attempt to excuse Jesus than it does a real reason for why he didn t at least come right away. So let s try looking at it another way: Since we know how the story ends, we know that from John s perspective these things happened so that a greater divine purpose could be served. This is all for God s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it. But what was that divine purpose, and what does it have to do with us? 2

3 We might dare to say that God allowed these things to happen in the lives of Lazarus, and Mary, and Martha, to reveal some life-changing and worldchanging things to them and to us. Near the end of the book John writes, Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31 NIV) So John remembered and wrote this story because it shows us something important about Jesus. And we can find the essence of that in the two most memorable verses in the story. The first of those verses is that famous shortest verse in the Bible Jesus wept. Sermons have been preached on it and treatises have been written about it, many of them struggling with this basic question, Why would Jesus weep if he knew how the story was going to turn out? Many think that the bystanders were missing the point when they said the obvious thing: See how he loved him! So they look for another answer for instance, that Jesus was weeping for those bystanders because if they had just recognized who he was they would have known how the story was going to end, too. Now it s true that people do miss the point in the gospels a lot. But Jesus might have actually wept because he loved Lazarus and was sad that he had died. He might have wept out of a great empathy for Lazarus sisters, sharing in their moment of grief. And that empathy may have extended beyond them to 3

4 everyone gathered there at the entrance of the tomb and even to us as Jesus felt the sorrow and pain that death brings into the world. At the beginning of the gospel, John announces that, The Word [the eternal Creator God] became flesh and made his dwelling among us. (John 1:14 NIV) And being flesh like us, Jesus felt everything that we feel, including grief and pain. In that moment when Jesus wept, we see as clearly as can be that the Lord we worship and serve isn t some distant, uninvolved heavenly clockmaker, impassive and unmoved by our pain. As Isaiah wrote, Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4, RSV). In that moment Jesus revealed something of God to us that no miracle could ever reveal. When we weep Jesus weeps with us. The second key verse is that I am saying-- "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and [so] everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. At the same time that he weeps with us, Jesus also knows that death doesn t have the last word. He knows that those who believe in him will live even if they die and that s what he means when he says that we will never die. He doesn t mean that we will never have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death he means that death isn t where the journey ends. It ends in resurrection it ends in life. And he is the one who makes that possible through his own death for the sins of the world and the resurrection we will celebrate three weeks from today on Easter. 4

5 When Jesus raises Lazarus after his body has been decaying in the ground for four days, it is to use John s favorite word a sign. It s a one-of-a kind event that points us to Jesus who has the power to overcome even death. It points us to a greater miracle of eternal life beyond death. Putting together these two things allows us to face the subject of death honestly and hopefully. We live in a culture that expends a lot of effort to deny the reality of death. People spend billions of dollars a year to try to hide from the fact that they are aging. Many will struggle on long after any meaningful medical treatment is available. We are hesitant to even use the words die and death in polite company. This denial makes sense in one way death is often accompanied by suffering and grief. But if we don t acknowledge that, we can deny ourselves the very resources Jesus the one who weeps with us offers us for that journey. About noon on Friday October 27, 1995 my sister Jeanne called. Our mother had gone into surgery that morning to have her gall bladder removed and had come out with a diagnosis of untreatable, end-stage cancer. I immediately called our faithful clerk of session, Francie, and asked her to find someone to cover for me on Sunday, and then I drove across the state to be there as we all came to terms with the news. A couple of days later when I walked into her hospital room, her pastor was there, and the gist of the conversation was that she should be happy that she was going to get to go to heaven soon. I didn t hear anything about her fears or pain. 5

6 She went home from the hospital a couple of days later, received good hospice care and support from members of her church. She died just threeand-a-half weeks later, just before Thanksgiving, and by God s grace her children were all there at her side. I m thankful for the help she received and thankful that Jesus wept with us at that bedside. And that Saturday he wept with us some more at the service where we celebrated the resurrection to eternal life and commended her to God s care. We may never fully know why Jesus didn t rush to Lazarus and heal him we may never fully know the why behind a lot of things we suffer. But we know that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and we know that Jesus wept. Amen. Rev. David Spaulding First Presbyterian Church, Dixon March 15,