Sunday Sermon

April 8, 2018

2537 Lee Road “ Wept” Cleveland Heights, OH 44118‐4198 Telephone: 216‐321‐8880 :1‐6, 17‐37 Website: www.chsaviour.org Rev. Andy Call, Lead Pastor

“Jesus wept.” If, like me, you attended a Sunday School or Vacation School that rewarded kids for memorizing Bible verses, John 11:35 is well known. It is the shortest verse in all of scripture – just two words in the King James or Revised Standard Versions. That knowledge was passed down to me by older kids who had already used it themselves. It is the first memory verse I ever recited, for which I probably earned a Tootsie Roll. If your teacher bribed you with candy for memorizing Bible verses, you probably used it, too. Little did we know at the time just how profound that little verse is, how much theological depth is conveyed in just two words. Today begins a three‐week sermon series titled “Resurrection Faith – Resilient Hope,” focused on the story of the Raising of Lazarus found in the eleventh chapter of John. The passage in its entirety is provided in the announcement insert today for your reference, though you may want to mark your own Bible and refer to this passage over the next few weeks. This is a story about life, but first it is a story about death. Jesus and the disciples were east of the when they learned that Jesus’ friend Lazarus was seriously ill. Lazarus’ sisters, and Mary, sent word, requesting that Jesus come. But he waited two days, telling his disciples that Lazarus’ illness would not result in death but was for God’s glory. When Jesus finally went to , Lazarus was dead. He had died four days earlier. Martha and Mary each came to Jesus, at separate times, and both said the same thing: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Both expressed a belief that Jesus had the power to heal, but both also indicated that now that Lazarus was dead, it was too late. We can almost hear the pain and the conviction in their voices: “…if you had been here…” Martha was the first to encounter Jesus. She was the rational, hardworking sister, the one who took care of the house and her family. We imagine that she had assumed the role of matriarch after their mother died, looking after her brother and her free‐spirit sister. She was practical, responding to crisis with action. No wonder she was the first to encounter Jesus; she was probably looking for him long before he arrived. Even as she expressed sorrow and pain, her words were tinged with hope. “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’s response came from an intellectual faith. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” She affirmed what Pharisaic Jews believed about the resurrection of the dead at the end of time. Martha’s words are not unlike the words we use to comfort ourselves or others in time of death. We will meet again one day in heaven. But Jesus changed the equation. “ 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.” His statement, beginning with “I am” is reminiscent of the name God provided in response to Moses’ request at the burning bush. It is also a statement that places the power of resurrection in the present. Jesus did not say, “I will be the resurrection and the life,” but “I AM the resurrection and the life.” Jesus made clear that he was the present embodiment of God’s presence in the world, that the promise of God was not a far‐off notion for some point in the future, but a present reality, here and now. “Do you believe this?” he asked Martha. Martha responded, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” Those words were an incredible expression of her faith. And yet, as we discover later in the story, Martha

1 did not expect their situation to change. She believed Jesus was the Messiah, but her hope was still cast on the distant future, not on the present. Martha’s exchange with Jesus reflected her rational faith. By contrast, Mary was emotional and impulsive. When she saw Jesus, she fell at Jesus’ feet and, like Martha, said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” The text tells us that when Jesus saw her weeping and the others with her, he was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” That sounds very compassionate. But the translators have softened Jesus’ reaction from the way the text was originally written in Greek. It is a more accurate rendering to say Jesus became agitated and was filled with utter indignation, that he snorted with rage, like the sound a horse makes. Jesus was angry. Was he angry at their lack of faith? Maybe. I suspect, however, that Jesus’ reaction was not directed at a grieving Mary or the community around her, but at the source of grief itself – the death of his friend and the pain it caused Martha and Mary, their neighbors, and even Jesus himself. Jesus asked where Lazarus had been placed. They responded, “Come and see.” It was at this moment that Jesus wept. Modern translations read, “Jesus began to weep.” But something is missing in that wording. “Began to weep” implies that he started to become emotional, but that he might have composed himself. Here the wording of the old translations still captures it best. Jesus did not simply tear up. Jesus wept. What caused Jesus to weep? Was it the finality of seeing the tomb? Did the emotions of the moment finally well up to the point of overflowing? Or was there something else? Jesus was invited to “Come and see.” That phrase is noteworthy, because it appears in only six places in the whole of scripture, four of them in John. The first two are in the calling of the disciples who were beckoned to “come and see” the one who invited them to follow. The third is the woman at the well, who witnessed to her encounter with Jesus by urging the villagers to “come and see” this man who could be the Messiah. The fourth is here at the tomb of Lazarus. Did those words remind Jesus of his mission? Did the sight of the tomb point to the fate that awaited him in ? The verbs “come” and “see” appear together two other places in John: at the foot of the cross and at the . Whatever the cause, Jesus’ tears did not escape the attention of those nearby: “See how much he loved him!” The events that day in Bethany speak directly to our experience today. All of us have experienced loss and death. Death is a part of life. God knows we have experienced our share of death in this congregation and in this community. Loss is painful. We do not understand why those we love are gone from us too soon, why children must grow up without mothers, why people seemingly in the prime of life are snatched away. We may be angry that death robs us of those we love. We may be angry at the injustice of death or at the reactions of others or at nothing in particular. Anger is a natural reaction to death. Jesus himself was angry when his friend died, and he did not try to hide it or bury it. Grief also makes us sad. At times the pain we feel may seem like too much to bear. But we might think that as people of faith we should not be sad; we believe in resurrection, after all. And yet, this story reminds us that Jesus wept. Jesus, the Son of God, even God himself, cried at the loss of his friend. It is entirely natural and completely appropriate to be sad. But this story is about much more than Jesus’ solidarity with our human emotions of anger and sadness. If it were just about our shared humanity, the story could end right here; there would be no need for Lazarus to be raised. And yet, he was. So, what is this story about? We gather here as Easter people. We believe in Resurrection. We just celebrated that faith in worship a week ago. And yet, like Martha, our faith in resurrection is typically directed at some point in the future, a distant hope. We do not expect to experience resurrection here and now. That is why Jesus’ message is so important to us. “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” Jesus knew what it was to suffer human loss; he lived the pain of that experience. But in him was the power of God to overcome human limitations, even to break the power of death itself. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus was not referring to physical death – all of us will physically die sometime. But it is not enough to say that Jesus was referring to spiritual life in the way we often oversimplify it, that his message is about getting to heaven. John was not only concerned with the distant future, but the here and now. The present reality of the kingdom of God is the central message of the and why this story is so prominent in it. 2

Martha and Mary thought hope had ended. Even Martha’s confession that God would grant Jesus whatever he asked was qualified by the present reality of loss: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” But this was not the end. Jesus’ raising of Lazarus was neither about resuscitating him for a family reunion nor a far‐off vision of heaven. So why was he raised? It is not as if Lazarus would live forever; he died again of something else. We still have to deal with the painful realities of death in this life. But the raising of Lazarus was a clear and unequivocal demonstration that God’s power in Christ cannot be stopped, not even by death. This is about God’s inbreaking power here and now, a power that overcomes human limitations, a peace that passes understanding, a promise that we are not alone. Lazarus would eventually die again, but part of him would never die. He would live on in the memory of Martha and Mary, in the love in which they held one another, and in the relationship that forever shaped their lives. But the raising of Lazarus points to a deeper reality of ongoing life in God. Lazarus was part of God’s story. His life in God could not be broken, not even by death. That same promise is offered to all of us. Our days need not be reckoned by the inevitable power of death, but by the irrevocable promise of life with God. The physical reality of death is denied power over our life with God.1 The raising of Lazarus was a demonstration of the power of God to defeat every obstacle. It is this hope in God’s limitless love that was so eloquently described by the Paul in his letter to the Romans: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor , nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38‐39)

Do you know that hope today? Do you live today and every day with the assurance that there is more to life than what we see, that our lives are forever bound up in God? Do you know in your heart that your story is part of God’s story, and that God’s story is eternal? We will all experience death – of friends, loved ones, even ourselves. But the promise of Jesus is that death is not the end. Death will not defeat our hope, for our lives are in God. That is the promise Christ offers to each of us today. The events that day in Bethany displayed God’s power and foreshadowed another stone that would be rolled away, another empty tomb, when Christ’s victory over sin and death would be complete and everlasting. People of Resurrection Faith, hear the Good News. In Christ, God showed us the way of life. “I AM the resurrection and the life.” We believe in resurrection even though we cannot fully understand it. Our hope is in Christ. That is not just a faint hope for a distant future, but a hope we can know here and now. Thanks be to God. Amen.

1 NIB IX, 694. 3