8/26/12 Sermon on the Resurrection and the Life

John 11:17-27

Jesus the Resurrection and the Life

 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two milesaway, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said 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?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

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We're going to do a short survey this morning. You know the type, where they divide people into certain kind of groups. Some people say there are only three types of people in the world, those who can do math and those who can't do math—this is the same type of survey.

When you open your fridge and see a block of cheese with mold growing on it, how many of you immediately throw the entire block of cheese away?

How many of you slice the mold off and eat the rest?

Does anyone here just eat it anyway? If so, please see me after the service.

Moldy cheese is not good cheese. But, you can often just slice the mold off and still have an edible piece of cheese. Just because there is mold on one part doesn't mean the whole thing has to be thrown away, although I completely understand those of you who throw the entire block away. Mold is pretty nasty, and there's all sorts of concern about the mold you can't see that might be growing elsewhere on there.

But think about this—if you have a moldy block of cheese, and cut the mold off, then stick it back in the fridge, if you don't eat it soon, more mold is going to grow back. You haven't done anything but delay the inevitable.

The reason I'm talking about moldy cheese is because there is a big distinction that we need to make when we talk about Jesus raising anyone from the dead. It happens many times throughout the Bible—and Jesus isn't even always the one who does this. Elijah does it in the Old Testament and Peter does it in the New Testament. It's not exactly common, but it happens. The important thing to note is that these people will all die again. They are resusitated, brought back to life, but they will die. They are not resurrected. Resurrection, which is what happens to Jesus and what he promises to each and every one of us who believe in him, is something completely different on a whole other magnitude. Resurrection is transformation into something new, into something that cannot die. We're going to dive more into this later.

First, let's get a completely picture of the text. Mary and Martha, who are very close followers of Jesus, have a brother named Lazarus. Lazarus is even described as the one whom Jesus loved. Well, Lazarus is sick and so they send word to Jesus, knowing that Jesus can heal Lazarus. The way the timing of the story works, Lazarus actually dies on the same day the messenger is sent to Jesus. There's no way for the messenger to know this, but I believe Jesus knows, mostly because I believe Jesus knows everything. When Jesus hears the news that Lazarus is sick, Jesus says that the sickness does not lead to death, but is for God's glory. If this were a movie, this would be a major hint about what is to come.

But Jesus isn't in a big hurry. Jesus waits two more days before going to see Mary and Martha. Jesus waits.

When he finally does show up, Lazarus has been dead for four days. This is important because Jews believed that the soul lingered around the body for three days, and on the 4^th day the person was considered very dead, because the soul had departed. So Lazarus isn't just kind of dead, or mostly dead, as they would say in The Princess Bride, but he's all dead.

Martha, having heard that Jesus arrived, goes out to see Jesus. In Jewish tradition, people didn't leave their house for seven days after the death of a loved one, so Martha going out to see Jesus is out of protocol. But she's mad—she wants to know why Jesus didn't come to save Lazarus. She wants to know why her prayer wasn't answered.

Now, if we stop here for a moment, I think we can all identify with Martha. She must have prayed a thousand desperate prayers for the life of her brother. She loved God and knew that God could heal her brother. She had seen Jesus do miraculous things to other people, and yet when her brother, the one whom Jesus loved, lays there dying, there is no miracle for her. So she's angry.

She couches her anger though with a measure of great faith, which is an important lesson for us. She isn't angry and just casts off Jesus as being powerless or unloving. She says that even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him. Even though Lazarus has been dead for 4 days, even though she saw Lazarus dies and tradition says he is completely dead, she still has faith.

There is a lesson here for us. Even in the face of unanswered prayers, she still has faith. Jesus, too, is teaching us. Notice that he doesn't say that he didn't hear her prayer, that he doesn't know what her heart desperately wants. Jesus doesn't tell Martha that he missed a phone call and didn't know that Lazarus was sick. He waited two more days where he was before coming to see Martha, because he had a greater purpose in mind. He didn't answer her prayer because he had other methods, bigger plans than the ones Martha had.

The same is true for us—if our prayers go unanswered, it's not because God didn't hear them or he forgot to check his messages after a busy day. God hears every one of our prayers and he loves us deeply. The reason our prayers sometimes go unanswered is because God often has bigger plans than we can understand in the moment. I'm not going to pretend to know what those plans are for each of you, but I will say that I trust God with all my heart to bring us through the storms of life.

So Jesus and Martha have this dialogue about life, resurrection and death. Martha believes all of it, confessing that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God. It's an amazing confession—even in her heartbreak she still knows that Jesus is Lord, and she trusts that Lazarus is in God's hands and will rise again in the resurrection to come.

Jesus takes that faith in the resurrection to another level. He says that he IS the resurrection and the life, and that anyone who believes in him will never die. It's not just that there is a resurrection—Christ is that resurrection.

From here, he goes on to raise Lazarus from the dead. He does this, as he hinted at earlier, for God's glory, to prove that he is the Son of God and has power over death. But this isn't a resurrection for Lazarus—it is a demonstration of God's power over death, but it is merely a resusitation—Lazarus will die again. Lazarus isn't still hanging around somewhere, waiting for Christ to return. He hasn't been transformed like Jesus was when he was raised from the dead. Resurrection is something different, something bigger—we note that in many of the resurrection appearances, the disciples and those closest to Jesus didn't recognize him at first—something had changed. There was a resurrection, a transformation, a change. This is the resurrection that is extended to us.

This goes back to the reading in Romans 6, talking about baptism. It says that in our baptism, we are joined with Christ's life, death and resurrection. What's that mean?

It means that death has no power over us. It cannot break us. It cannot claim us as its own. We belong to Christ, and in him we have life, because of resurrection. Once you have been resurrected, you cannot die. Death is just a defeated shadow, an enemy that can still fight, but cannot win. We have no reason to fear death.

Let me put it like this:

It's been a very stressful week. Mostly, this is due to the concerted efforts of a few scam artists who are intent on getting money out of the church. From what I have read on the internets, this is an old scam in which they allege, by manipulating voice recordings, that you have agreed to pay the company $600 for online advertising. The Federal Trade Commission comes along and shuts them down, and then they spring up once again. They spend most of their time calling and harassing the church, claiming that they are sending their legal team after us and that we'll end up in court and that they will ruin my credit as well as the church's credit. It's what I would call frustrating. Every website and forum, as well as the FTC, says the best thing to do is ignore them and hope they'll go away, which is far easier said than done. I tend to brood over things, and I'll admit this is a topic that is more than frustrating and has consumed much of my energy this week. Even though I have been assured that they don't have any legal power, their constant harassment and threats of legal action leave you thinking, 'well, maybe they can do something' or 'maybe we should just pay them', which is exactly what their intimidation is supposed to do—threaten you into giving them money. They count on those of us without legal knowledge eventually breaking down and paying them out of fear. It's tempting, believe me.

On Thursday morning, it occurred to me that their tactics remind me exactly of death's tactics. The Online Yellow Pages have no legal power or ability to follow through on their threats, yet they trumpet themselves as able to wreck your entire life and bring everything crashing down around you, all because they can manipulate a recorded phone call and make it sound like you've agreed to something you haven't.

Death is no different—Scripture tells us that death has no power. In 1 Corinthians Paul is taunting death—Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Death has no ability to take our lives thanks to the resurrection of Jesus Christ—it has been defeated, and in him we have life, and life everlasting, that cannot be taken from us. Yet death is constantly harassing us, constantly bombarding us with messages that cause us to fear, and eventually it intimidates us enough that we start to wonder—maybe death does have some power, maybe I do need to be afraid of it. We find ourselves stressing out about death, thinking about it in the middle of the night, wondering if we're really going to be ok, if God will hold up his promises. Death doesn't have any power, but it barges into our thoughts and sets up camp, convincing us that we really do need to be afraid.

But death is a scam. If you are in Christ, it can't hurt you. Christ has absorbed death for you. He has suffered and died once and for all, and in Christ, we are new creations.

Does this mean we won't ever worry about death? Does this mean we won't fear death? No. Not at all. And it doesn't mean that we're sinners for being afraid of death. It just means that death's tricks are still working.

Let's just make sure our trust in Christ is bigger than our fear of death. Let's trust in him, keeping our eyes fixed upon him, and live as a resurrected people now.

Why wait until we have passed through death? Christ intends for us to live NOW as a transformed people, as a resurrected people. This is reality for all of us—in Christ, we are joined into his resurrection. As a baptized people, we can live this out now! New life has begun! We are freed from the shackles of death, and we can join Paul in taunting death! In Christ, we have life, and have it abundantly!

Let us pray