“Do You Believe This?”
Robert M. Thompson, Pastor
Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601
828.328.6196 corinthtoday.org
(© 2015 by Robert M. Thompson. Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible,
New International Version, Copyright 2011 by New York International Bible Society.)
When you know Jesus intimately, you trust him instinctively.
John 11:17-27
April 5, 2015
Why Lazarus
You might find it a little strange to come to church on Easter Sunday
and realize the sermon is about a man named Lazarus rising from the dead,
not Jesus.
There are two reasons for this. First, for most of this calendar year
we have been preaching on “the miracles of Jesus.” That sermon series will
end next week, with Jesus’ third fishing miracle, the only miracle recorded
after his resurrection. When I was outlining these sermons, I decided that
Jesus’ resurrection technically did not fit the series. It’s not a miracle Jesus
is responsible for. He was dead.
Second, the story of Lazarus rising from the dead is really about
Jesus, not Lazarus. The Lazarus story occupies all of chapter 11 in John’s
Gospel, plus 11 verses of chapter 12. Only three of those 68 verses are
needed to tell the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. The other 65 are
about Jesus. The pinnacle is John 11:25-26, when Jesus declares to Lazarus’
sister, “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?”
I can tell you that on this particular Easter Sunday, this is personal for
me. You have already heard me mention earlier in this service the death of
Ed Wiehrdt. Ed would have been 93 later this month, but he was a spry,
active, and beloved. One of the ladies putting out the Easter lilies yesterday
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asked, “Now who are we going to flirt with?” He is one of several beloved
members in their 70s, 80s, and 90s we have lost recently.
If you attend here regularly, you know that last Sunday we held a
funeral for 5-year-old Sienna “CC” Houck, who passed away after a 3-year
battle with leukemia. In life and in death she gave us so much reason to
believe. I’m wearing yellow, CC’s favorite color. As her mother Michelle
texted me yesterday, “Yellow is the new black.”
Even with its familiar customs, Easter feels different this year. I need
to believe.
The resurrection of the dead
Let’s unpack what Jesus is asking Martha to believe.
First, Jesus is asking Martha to believe that there such a thing as
resurrection. Don’t confuse this with mere life after death, or immortality
of the soul. The Apostles’ Creed says we believe in “the resurrection of the
body.” The more you understand about life, the more incredulous this
sounds. Laypersons like me think of death as when the heart stops beating
and the lungs stop breathing. There are approximately 37 trillion living cells
in a human body, according to National Geographic. Every one of those
cells is alive and in some way connected to and dependent on the others. It
takes only minutes for the brain cells to die without oxygen, but it takes
days before all the cells have individually died. As that happens, other life
forms, from bacteria we all have inside us while we’re living to insects and
other life forms, begin a very natural process of returning that living body
to dust, a process we increasingly hasten in our day with cremation.
When we speak of resurrection, we mean that a body that no longer
breathes air or circulates oxygen, a body where 37 trillion cells have either
died or are in process, where the parts of that body that have been
rendered completely unrecognizable through decomposition or cremation,
can be reconstituted, revivified, and reoccupied with a living, eternal soul.
Do you believe this?
Second, Jesus is asking Martha to believe that death as we know it is
an illusion. It’s not real. You see death. You feel death. But for the one
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who believes in Jesus, death as we experience it with our senses is only a
transition from one form of life to another.
CC’s parents wanted her funeral to be kid-friendly. One of the ways
we accomplished this was to have a children’s sermon. With the casket
sitting in front of the pulpit I gathered 20 or so children on the chancel
steps, and read to them a story titled “Water Bugs and Dragonflies.” It’s
about a community of water bugs who live in the mud on the bottom of a
pond. They don’t understand why one at a time their friends keep
disappearing up the lily stem. They’re sad and confused by the loss every
time.
The water bugs make a pact that the next one who crawls up the lily
stem will return to tell the others what happened. The water bug who
made that suggestion is the next one who finds himself crawling up the
stem. Before long he has been transformed into a dragonfly. He remembers
the deal and tries to dive down into the water to tell his friends how much
better his life is. But as a dragonfly he is unable to get into the water. He
realizes that his new life of flying through the air in the warmth of the sun is
so much better than what they know, but they’ll just have to wait until they
experience it.
Jesus is saying to Martha, “There’s life as you know it, and a better
life after that. Give up the idea that death is the end. Even if you die, it’s
not death.” The word “death” literally means “die off” or “pass away from.”
It means the end. Jesus says the death you see is not that. It only seems like
it. It’s a life-to-life transition. Do you believe this?
Third, Jesus is asking Martha to believe him when he says, “I am the
resurrection and the life.” He doesn’t say, “I provide the resurrection and
the life” or “I teach about the resurrection and the life.” No, he says, “I AM
the resurrection and the life.” That’s either arrogance or insanity, unless it’s
true. If Jesus really said this, he’s either the most pompous, egotistical jerk
who ever lived, the craziest lunatic who ever spoke, or he is who Martha
said he is: “the Christ, the Son of God, who came into our world.” Do you
believe this?
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A town of misfits
Lazarus and his sisters lived in a town called Bethany. The temple
mount in Jerusalem was about 2400’ in elevation, rising above the City of
David. It was also the eastern edge of the city. From there to get to
Bethany, you drop 200’ into the Kidron Valley, then walk up 400’ in
elevation to the Mount of Olives. On the opposite slope, out of sight of the
temple, is Bethany. As the crow flies, it’s less than two miles.
Although there’s some dispute about the name, the best guess is that
Bethany means something like “House of Misery.” It wasn’t the place for
the popular people. It seems to have been a place for the poor, for lepers,
for Galilean pilgrims, all people who could live conveniently out of sight and
out of mind as far as the temple leaders were concerned. Here they found
community, they found acceptance, they found hope.
It shouldn’t surprise you that Jesus frequented Bethany. He was
drawn to the outsiders. During the final week of his life, when he was in the
temple courts every day, in the evening he walked down the southern stairs
out of the temple, through the Kidron Valley, up the Mount of Olives, and
over the crest to Bethany to eat and sleep. It was probably where he stayed
every time he came to Jerusalem from boyhood through his ministry, right
there in Palestine’s version of the Island of Misfit Toys.
Among those misfits lived three siblings Jesus dearly loved. We know
of at least two dinner parties Jesus attended in their home. They seemed to
be more prominent and wealthy than most other Bethanians. As far as we
know all three were unmarried, who probably felt as singles often feel
today – left out. Jesus was single too, and he seemed comfortable relaxing,
eating, and sleeping in their home as a guest. The best guess of their birth
order was Martha, the oldest and most responsible, then Mary, the middle
child and most relational. In both dinner parties Jesus attended in their
home, Martha is working in the kitchen and serving the food, while Mary is
just hanging out with Jesus. Lazarus was apparently their younger brother.
He gets little attention and we never hear of one thing he did or said. What
matters is that Jesus loved him. He may have been about Jesus’ age – in his
late 20s or early 30s. For Jesus, Lazarus’ death is personal.
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We don’t know exactly where Jesus is when Martha and Mary send
word their brother was sick, but he is apparently between two and four
days’ walk away. There is no “Come quick!” demand from the sisters to
their famous rabbi friend, but it still seems odd that Jesus delays two days.
He seems rather callous, taking his time and making puzzling statements
about “twelve hours of daylight” and how “Lazarus has fallen asleep” and
how he was glad he wasn’t there when Lazarus died because it would help
them believe. His disciples, meanwhile, recall that the last time they
accompanied Jesus to Judea he almost got stoned for blasphemy. Thomas
blurts out, “Whatever! Let’s go there and die with Lazarus.”
That apparent emotional detachment at a distance morphs into
something quite different when Jesus arrives at Bethany. The family is in
the fourth day of a seven-day period of intense mourning. Funeral
traditions of the day are rather well known. The body was first kept in the
home, but no one was to eat meat or drink wine or study Torah as long as
the body was present. The body was wrapped in simple cloths, and burial
followed as soon as it could be arranged. The focus was on people –
everybody who knew the deceased had a social obligation to show up.
Women led the procession to the tomb. People made impromptu
speeches. Everyone said how sorry they were, and the guests formed two
lines while the closest family walked between them. Then a meal was
served consisting of bread, hard-boiled eggs, and lentils. The round shape
of the eggs and lentils symbolized life rolling on.1
The next week was a time of intense mourning. Wailing and shrieking
were not only permitted; they were encouraged. Some families hired
professional mourners to raise the decibel level so that everyone would
know how much this person had been loved. The tradition was not to allow
close family members out of your sight. Don’t picture a scene with
respectful, hushed tones as mourners thoughtfully shared their memories
of good times with Lazarus. Picture a lot of noise, a frenzy of activity,
residents and relatives and out-of-towners moving in and out of intense
periods of sobbing.
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William Barclay provided most of this background in The Gospel of John, v. 2, 102-103.
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In day four of this seven-day period, Jesus enters Bethany with his
entourage of twelve anxious followers wondering if Jesus’ funeral – or
theirs – might be next in Grief Town.
Three times Jesus hears someone say that he could have prevented
this. First Martha and then Mary said, “Lord, if you had been here, my
brother would not have died.” Martha seems to have said it face to face, in
keeping with her reserved personality. Mary had first delayed but then ran
to Jesus and threw herself at his feet when she said it. Later in the story the
Jews (and John seems always to use this term of unbelieving, even cynical
religious Jews) said, “If he loved Lazarus so much and opened the eyes of
the blind, he could have stopped this if he wanted to.”
But again, my interest in this story – because I think it’s John’s
interest – is in Jesus. When he enters this chaotic scene of misery, he
himself becomes very emotionally expressive. It’s not that Jesus never cried
or got mad, but we get the sense that there is as much emotional intensity
with Jesus in this story as anywhere else in the gospels.
The times I recall the deepest emotion were deaths and funerals. I
remember a man named Tom who had been physically and emotionally
abused by his mother, and had in his adult life a failed marriage, a broken
relationship with his only child, a life of promiscuity and a long term
partnership with a man who then died. He had poured out his story to only
a few people in life, and I was one of them. He once handed me a book that
documented one of the worst cases of child abuse in California’s history. He
told me, “That’s my story.” He said he felt loved by me and by our church
staff and members. When I preached Tom’s funeral, I could not control my
emotions.
The timing of my emotions occasionally surprises me. Two days
before CC died, when her parents had been told she had 12-24 hours, I felt
“deeply moved and agitated” (33), and said out loud, “God I do not want to
do this!” Linda and I were with CC’s parents and family for five hours the
night she died, but I didn’t seem to have tears. I went home and slept a
couple hours, got up the next morning and wept as I read Facebook posts. I
mostly made it through her funeral, but the next morning when I re-read
my funeral message in private I cried all the way through it.
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There’s something about being experiencing death personally or
vicariously that takes you to a different place emotionally, and it’s not
always predictable. Watch how Jesus’ emotions emerge in the Lazarus
story. When John says that “Jesus wept” in Bethany, he uses a word that
suggests actual tears. I don’t picture him wailing, but I do picture his
shoulders heaving and tears streaming down his face.
There’s another word in this passage, used twice, which taps even
more into the emotional Jesus. Most scholars think it’s way understated in
most English versions, including the New International Version. In verse 33,
John says that Jesus was “deeply moved and troubled.” Verse 38 repeats
the Greek word translated “deeply moved.” But that just sounds like
another way of saying he was feeling emotional.
It’s much more. This word was used to describe a horse snorting. It’s
a word that implies indignation and anger – but it doesn’t necessarily
require words. You don’t have to say anything for people around you to
know you are livid – it comes through in the clench of your face and the
tension of your body and in a groan or grunt or snarl. That’s the way Jesus
is pictured here.
But why? What made Jesus so angry and agitated and emotional?
Some say he was just being human – the loss of his good friend and
perhaps the awareness that his own death would soon follow. Some see
him empathizing with the sisters, whom he also loved. Some say he was
angry at death itself as a consequence of sin. Some insist he was angry at
unbelief.
What I notice is that in both cases it’s a reaction to mourners. It’s not
the genuine grief of Martha and Mary, nor their honest struggles with faith.
He’s angry at the mourners who don’t get it. John calls them “Jews,” but it’s
not about race or even religion. In verse 33 he’s indignant at those who trail
Mary as she goes to Jesus. They’re weeping, but it seems like they’re
insincere – just putting on a show. A funeral is no place to make an
appearance and go through the ritual of showing you care. It ticks Jesus off.
The second time he gets mad it’s over the comment from the Jews
that if he loved Lazarus so much he could have kept this from happening.
Again, there is a wide gap between Martha and Mary who struggle honestly
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and those whose hearts are hardened my unbelief and simply voice their
cynicism at a funeral. That’s not OK with Jesus. It prompts a deep groan of
exasperation.
It’s personal
I began this sermon by saying that the resurrection of Lazarus is not
about Lazarus. It’s about Jesus. Let me say something that might startle you
a bit. The resurrection of Jesus is ultimately not about Jesus. It’s about you.
It’s about CC. It’s about Ed. It’s about Nell and Evelyn and Bob and Kent and
Mary and Sara and Tracy and Frances and Joe and Madge and Jake and
Elinor and Cacky and Helen and Bill. It’s about whoever else you know who
has died in Jesus. Do you believe this?
Did you notice how Martha answered when Jesus asked her, “Do you
believe this?” She said plainly, “Yes, Lord,” and then added, “I believe that
you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
Martha has already said she believes in the idea of resurrection, but her
words at this point are personal. She’s looking at a man she has known as a
family friend, as a guest in her home. She’s baked bread for him and
watched him enjoy it. She’s changed the sheets on his bed and washed the
dishes he ate from. She’s laundered his clothes. She’s seen him love the
poor, embrace the misfits, and teach the Word of God.
Now her baby brother lies in a tomb carved into rock in the side of a
hill. Jesus, fully aware that his own limp body will soon be entombed in
darkness and coldness as a stone is rolled over the entrance, says, “I am the
resurrection and the life… do you believe this?” And she answers, “I believe
you.”
She didn’t understand him at that moment. She didn’t understand his
delay. She didn’t know what he was getting ready to do. She hadn’t seen
him die and rise again. But she had enough experience with him to trust
him. And so she made it personal: “I believe you are the Christ, the Son of
God.” All her previous experiences with him had led her to trust him in her
greatest moment of confusion, grief, and weakness. He was enough.
When you know Jesus intimately, you trust him instinctively. When
you spend time with him, when you invest in the life of a community of
believers, when you open up to him and to them with your joys and
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struggles, he becomes more believable. That’s what I want for you. This
Jesus, he’s just as alive today as he was when he stood talking to Martha.
He knows your tears, your anger, your losses, your frustrations, your
questions. He knows your sins, and he gave himself completely on the cross
to forgive every one of them. He wants you to trust him in the middle of
whatever you’re facing. He wants to be personal... with you. Today.
Because He’s risen. He’s risen indeed. Amen.
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