"Completed Beauty" (Isaiah 65:17-25)

Sunday, November 17, 2019

          “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” says the Lord in Isaiah 65.  A new heaven?  A new, better, cleaner, earth that’s more just?  Who wouldn’t want that?

          I’ll tell you who would want and want it right now: you, the people of our church family.  Last week, the sermon was about resurrection.  At the back door as people were leaving, one worshiper stopped to tell me there were times she felt “homesick for heaven.”  Anyone who’s read Philippians knows Paul felt the same way.  Then midweek, I was talking with another church member who said to me, “I would love it if Jesus came, the sooner, the better.”

          Life can be a real struggle.  That’s why so many of us long to be close to Jesus and relieved of the daily pressures that make it hard for us to thrive.  God’s Isaiah 65 promise to make all things new in some ways is a return to the ideal of Eden before Adam and Eve disobeyed God.  New creation is this fallen world remade, made new.

          In his book Rumors of Another World, Philip Yancey paints a picture of struggle as he observes giant leatherback turtles laying their eggs on the beach in Costa Rica. 

The turtle reached down in the soft sand, one muscular flipper at a time, to scoop out and then fling the sand behind her.  As she worked her way down, each scoop required more and more effort.  The sand got wet and heavy, and she had to fling it above the rim of the hole she was digging.  Eventually she reached a depth of three feet, her body fully submerged in the sand.  Now, each fling of sand thrust her whole body to the side, and despite her best efforts much of the sand still fell back in the trench.  She scooped it up again and flung it toward the surface. 

Finally, after an hour’s hard labor, the trench satisfied her and she began to drop shiny white eggs the size of billiard balls. 

Her task completed, the leatherback clambered slowly out of the nest and began a forty-five minute process of filling it in with sand.  … Exhausted, she lumbered off, dragging herself toward the sea.  She would never see the result of her efforts.  When the 60 or so eggs hatch, the baby turtles burrow to the surface and make a mad dash to the sea, with only a third surviving the onslaught of coyotes, raccoons, and sea gulls.[i]

          Predators.  Two steps back for every three steps forward.  Limited success.  Fruit for which we labor but never actually get to touch or taste.  Talking about turtles, we could be talking about the myriad speedbumps and roadblocks that make life hard.  Should life be this hard? 

          Life is hard because of sin – my sins, yours; the sins of other people; our ancestors’ sins.  Humanity’s collective cruelty, jealousy, selfishness, and greed shows up in your life and mine in small ways, in our little cruelties, jealousies, selfish words and thoughts, and greedy deeds.  God can see that life is tough and promises something better for us. 

          I don’t know if in the new earth God promises giant leatherback turtles will struggle so mightily just to lay eggs.  I don’t know if there will be giant leatherback turtles in the new earth.  I hope there are.  Our daily struggles and pains won’t be a part of the new earth.  Walter Brueggemann writes “this promised action of [God] [in Isaiah 65] is clearly designed to overcome all that is amiss, whether what is amiss is caused by [God’s] anger, by [our disobedience], or other untamed forces of death.”[ii]  This is how God makes things right.

          Imagine the conditions to which God is responding in this vision.  Jerusalem, having been utterly defeated by the Babylonians, was a pile of rubble.  The city walls were torn down, and the temple was burned and smashed; completely destroyed.  Picture a city like Beirut after a bombing campaign or the trash-strewn underbelly of the poorest sections of the world’s most densely populated cities.  To this wretched condition God says, “I am about to create Jerusalem – the city – as a joy, and its people as a delight. … No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress” (Is. 65:18b, 19b).

          Because of disease, poverty, lack of education, and lack of access to healthcare, many places in the world have high infant mortality rates.  This is intolerable and God is more offended and heartsick by this than we are.  So, in the new earth he says, “No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days” (v.20a).  In fact all babies in new creation grow up healthy and life spans will be long.  “One who dies at a hundred” will be considered a youth.  Recall the crazy old ages of the patriarchs mentioned in the early chapters of Genesis.  Isaiah reaches back to that era. 

          Also think of places and times when people, perhaps indentured servants or coal miners or migrant pickers and farmers, work but see little to no fruit for their labor.  In unjust systems, the wealthy grow fat off the backbreaking labor of powerless peasants.  Not in the new earth.  “They shall build homes and inhabit them.  They shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit.  They shall not build and another inhabit.  They shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall be the days of my people, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands” (v.21-22).

          The new heaven and new earth is a reversal of the pains plaguing humanity.  God hears every prayer.  Even the natural violence between predators and pray will cease.  “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together. …They shall not hurt or destroy on God’s holy mountain” (v.25). 

          Philip Yancey talks about living in Colorado compared to the time he spent living in Chicago.  First he describes his wilderness home where he routinely sees all manner of animals and birds outside his window.  He has a front row seat to the pristine purity of nature.  Then he writes,

In downtown Chicago, my day proceeded very differently.  Most mornings began with a run through the park.  I saw few animals, other than squirrels and pigeons. … I saw instead winos and homeless people sleeping under newspapers and smelly blankets; prostitutes sleeping in doorways next to discarded condoms; well-dressed yuppies standing in neat lines at bus stops; foreign-born nannies pushing the carriages of those yuppies’ children; garbage collectors, janitors, street sweepers, sewer workers, and others who perform the undesirable jobs that keep a city running.[iii]

          Aesthetically, the Colorado wilderness holds more appeal than the grimy inner city streets.  But the image of God is not in the red squirrels, gray foxes, and brown bears Yancey admired from his warm home.  The image of God resides in the yuppies, nannies, prostitutes, and sewer workers.  God created nature’s most spectacular beauty to be enjoyed and admired by each of those millions of city dwellers, his image-bearers. 

          We know that out of His great, grace-filled love for us, God will eventually restore the world.  The wretched underclass will enjoy creation’s splendor.  That new creation will come at the end of history when Jesus returns and we join him in resurrection.  How does God begin now the work of ushering in His eternal kingdom?  God works through His body, the church. 

          We are the tellers of the redemption story - God in human flesh, Jesus; his tragic but necessary death on the cross, and his spring morning victory at the empty tomb; Easter!  We are God’s story-tellers.

          We are the inviters.  In Isaiah 60:3 God declares that the nations will come to Israel’s light.  The world will be drawn to the gathering of the people of God, which in our day is the church.  But for the world to know that God can be worshiped and loved and know, we need to invite. We need to tell God’s story and actively, energetically, invite people to hear our telling of it.

          We are the point of contact where a lost and dying world meets the Savior God.  Jesus’ final command to the disciples and continuing commission to us is “go and tell.”  Obeying this command, we help people see beyond the temporary world as it is to the eternal world of God’s blessing so many are currently unaware of even when they get little glimpses.  We are where the lost world meets the Savior God.

          New Testament scholar N.T. Wright thinks of it this way.  In an attic, a collector finds a faded manuscript of music written for piano.  He contacts a dealer who sees it and then contacts another expert.  They all put their heads together pondering this score, sure that what they’ve found is a previously unknown work by none other than Mozart. 

          How wonderful!  A new work by greatest composer ever.  Yet, as they study it, they realize it seems incomplete.  There are long periods of rest, and it dawns on the collectors and dealers that what they have is indeed by Mozart, but it is written for more than one instrument.  They only have the piano part.  What’s the other instrument or instruments? Cello?  Violin?  Flute?  “If those other parts could be found they would make sense of the incomplete beauty contained in the faded scribble of genius now before them.”[iv]

          When God finishes re-making the world, his earth and his heaven made new and brought together, we, his image bearers, his church, the body of Christ, will become His completed beauty.  Until that day comes, we lean toward it, pray for it, anticipate it, and invite each other and those outside the church to imagine it and find hope in it. 

          Until that day comes, we work for justice and help one another with the struggles of our day.  They are real but so too is God’s promised new creation.  It makes sense that we would long for it.  God placed that longing in us.  That longing drives us to look to God constantly and reflect his hope to the world.

          AMEN

---

[i] P. Yancey (2003).  Rumors of Another World: What on Earth are we Missing?  Zondervan (Grand Rapids), p.47-48.

[ii] W. Brueggemann ((1997).  Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy.  Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p.549.

[iii] Yancy, p.53.

[iv] N.T. Wright (2006).  Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense.  HarperOne (New York), p.39-40.

A Tribute to John Charles: A Man and His Books

A Tribute to John Charles: A Man and his Books

News2Use – August, 2015

Rob Tennant

          My friend John Charles is nearer to the end of his earthly life than is to the beginning of it.  He is 85.  He has Alzheimer’s.  Only God knows how much time he has left.

          For me, to be his friend and his pastor these past 9 years has been a true privilege.  Pastors are, in a sense, friends to all the church members.  And whatever the relationship is, however intimate or distant, when a church member nears death, the pastor is drawn close.  This is nearly always the case.            Maybe the pastor had not been a large force in that person’s life, but as death closes in, suddenly, the pastor becomes important.  No matter how good we are at doing it, we pastors are seen as the guides who shepherd people from life on earth to eternal life in the embrace of God. 

          In John’s case, it is happening, but with a caveat.  Before Alzheimer’s took John away, he and I were close, and it was because of who he is, not because I am his pastor.  John has had many pastors before me.  And if someone else were here at HillSong, he would be as close to that pastor as to me.  It is a mark of his and his wife Marion’s faithfulness that they committed themselves to the life of the church.

          Before I mention John’s books, I need to make this clear.  Throughout his life, John was a committed Christian who took discipleship very seriously.  I remember our men’s Bible study – all men over 70 with 38-year-old me.  We were moving furniture into the apartment of a newly arrived refugee.  John was on one end of as a couch that we being carried up the stairs.  He had the skin on his knuckles ripped off as his hand scraped the brick wall in the stairwell.  But he didn’t drop his end of the couch.

          John was faithful in service.  I remember the times he told me of how members of his family became Christians.  He knew what was stake and so, he teared up as he shared the stories.  Yes, the stoic bookworm John Charles was moved to deep emotion when he thought about someone he loves accepted Jesus. 

          John was husband, father, grandfather, brother, friend, teacher, and mentor.  He was all these things.  He should be remembered for these roles and for the love he had for God and his family.  That is John Charles much more than a library. 

The library does also need to be mentioned.  John Charles was a lover of Biblical scholarship.  A Bible scholar is not someone who just reads the Bible over and over.  That in and of itself is good and noble and a worthwhile pursuit I recommend to all Christ-followers.  And John did that.  But he also studied the Bible critically.  Doing this did not demystify the Word for him.  Rather, critical study increased John’s reverence for scripture as critical study does for anyone who is a person of faith and dares to ask the tough questions.

          John studied the scripture in the original Hebrew and Greek, and he studied early commentaries in Latin and commentaries from the great 19^th century German scholars.  He was a master of languages.  He also studied in depth theology, church history, and hermeneutics (methods of scripture interpretation).  In terms of scholarship, he was a renaissance man.

          Over the course of his life, this study of God through the writings of great scholars was a passion for him and he amassed a library of over 2500 books.  A few weeks ago, his family gave me charge of the books.  I could keep as many as I liked.  The rest I needed to donate to pastors or church libraries or seminaries that would resonate with John’s approach to theological study. 

I have long known that the day would come when John and Marion would call me to be the steward of his life’s passion.  Now that it is here, I am amazed by the enormity of the task.  It is a true blessing.  My own pastoral library will just about double by the time I am done.  I have taken in great books and it has impressed upon me a sense of responsibility.  I won’t be the scholar he was.  I am terrible at languages.  I muddle along in Greek and am hopeless in the others.  But, John left me a lot of great theological writings and Bible commentaries.  To honor him, I need to read these works and be shaped by them. 

I am going to do exactly that.  It will take years and I have already begun.  I am studying two works by American scholar Karl Donfried and one by Alister McGrath of Britain.  I have changed some things, and dropped some things out of my life to give me time to get a jump on reading these great works.  I won’t ever be John Charles.  I am not supposed to be him.  But his life’s work will have a powerful effect on me living  the call God has set before me.

In addition to responsibility, the fact that I am now the steward of a significant portion of John’s life has had a great humbling effect on me.  I think I was starting to create an idol – John’s books.  I only paid homage to the idol in my mind, nowhere else, but there in my consciousness it was occupying a bigger and bigger space.  God freed me from this idolatry when God made it clear that I had to give many of these books away to pastors who I knew would cherish them, read them, and grow in theological knowledge because of them.  As we divvied up the books, many times, one of my friends claimed a book I really wanted.  It was freeing to let him or her have it.  God is the maker of my life as a pastor.  The books help, but they shouldn’t just help me.  I was humbled to pass John’s blessing on to others and they were enormously grateful. 

The responsibility to be a theologian-pastor and the humility to be a giver (and not a hoarder) are truly things God is using to shape my life.  Of course my appreciation for John and Marion and my love for them has grown immensely in recent weeks.  As time passes, this summer of the disbursement of theological blessing from a man who had more than enough to give will fade in memory. 

But it won’t fade too far into the background.  There will be an afternoon in the near future when I will be reading.  I will want to go over to John and Marion’s home and have a cup of coffee.  I can’t drink coffee without thinking of my father and of John Charles.  I will want to sit with John and discuss the protreptic purposes in Paul’s terminology in Thessalonians.  Of course you don’t know the word ‘protreptic.’  Microsoft Word’s spell checker didn’t know it either.  And to be honest, I had to look it up.  John wouldn’t. 

But, John is not here for that discussion, not anymore.  He has eternity in the resurrection ahead of him for he truly is a Christ-follower and will be with the Lord in the Kingdom forever.  But he is gone for now.  I won’t be able to go talk it over with him and listen as he shares with me how he became a reader and collector of great theological literature. We have had that conversation so many times and now I won’t be able to sit with him again.

And yet, I will.  I will sit in my office, look at my shelves, take a sip of coffee, shove my nose back into that book, and John will be there with me. 

Rob Tennant

Ezekiel 36 - God's Nature

            It is not for you sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name.  God says this in Ezekiel (36:22).  God proceeds to promise a return from exile to the land originally promised to Abraham.   Throughout his work on Old Testament theology, Elmer Martens asserts that land is a key component of God’s intentions for God’s people.[i]  Even when land does not literally mean Jews living in Palestine, Martens sees land as the word that points to gift, promise, and blessing.  Whether an Israelite ever again lives in Jerusalem does not matter.  God’s promise of land means God will always be with all Jews, all the people of God, giving blessing.  So, when God, in Ezekiel 36, promises to ‘gather’ his people (36:24), this amounts to a promise of presence and blessing, and it is a promise God keeps.

            This is who God.  God keeps promises.  God gives blessings.  God does it all for the sake of God’s name.  God’s holiness makes it impossible for God to do otherwise.

            Ezekiel 36:25-27 sounds baptismal.  “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; … I will put my spirit within you and make you follow my statutes.”  If exile was a death, it was a death followed by a new day, one created by God.  Israel’s guilt along with the guilt of the nations led to this state of dispossession.  Our sins are not inconsequential.  When humanity rebels against God over generations at a societal level, pain and suffering follow.  But, God does not leave it there.

            “I will save you from all your uncleanness” God promises (36:29). God does this because it is in God’s nature to save and renew.  This is who God is.  God punishes with (sometimes with exile, sometimes with war, sometimes in other way).  But then God moves beyond punishment to a new day.  Without God, no new day comes, no new life is possible.  But there is no such thing as “without God.”  There is no time or place where God is not.

            Atheists would have us think there is no God.  Agnostics would say we cannot make any definitive statements about God: it’s just an unreachable mystery.  Deists would say there is God but one who is mostly uninvolved in the state of things.  Fundamentalists would say God is concerned about the future and afterlife of individuals but has nothing to say to humanity as a whole.  Ezekiel rejects each of these stances.

            God is in everything, in control of everything, and the events of our lives fall within the purview of God’s plans.  Remember, this is a big picture perspective.  God is in this, whatever “this” is.  God may be in it condemning ungodly behavior.  God may be the cause of the pain, using that pain to draw us back to himself, but God is omnipresent – everywhere.  And God is omnipotent – all powerful. 

            The good news (Gospel!) is God will end each story in which we find ourselves with a new day, new life, and blessing.  God does this for God’s own sake.  It is God’s nature to bless us humans.  That’s what God does.  Walter Brueggemann says, “Yahweh [God] is a Character and Agent who is evidenced in the life of Israel as an Actor marked by unlimited sovereignty and risky solidarity.”[ii]  The all-powerful God joins with humans in relationship for God’s sake, and the result is we have life with God which means blessing, love, and joy.

            I have tried to at least declare if not show God’s unlimited sovereignty.  The “risky solidarity,” to use Brueggemann’s term, comes in joining with humans, Israel in the Old Testament, and the church added in the New.  Israelites are not better than other humans.  Christians are not more holy than non-Christians.  We make mistakes and bow to idols and behave in a way that we deserve exile as much as those who lived in Jerusalem in 586 BC.  But when it comes, whatever the exile looks like, God does not bail out.  God stays with us.

            God does not impose unending wrath.  Even as we suffer, God is working on a new story.  “I will cause towns to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt” says the Lord (Ezekiel 36:33).  God’s siding with us when we are at our lowest gives the skeptic ammunition.  What kind of God do you worship that He would let you wallow in such misery?  God’s reputation is at stake, but He risks it because God is unmoved by the skeptic’s taunts.  God is not bothered in the least by the jawing scoffers.  God’s concern is God doing things God’s way.  As Ezekiel (and the rest of Bible, Old and New Testaments) shows, God’s way is to risk solidarity with people He knows will sin.  Because of who God is, God will love us when we are at our worst. 

            In what “waste place” do you find yourself right now?  God is going to rebuild it and you along with it.  We experience joy when we willingly yield ourselves and live in God’s ways by choice instead of by divine force.  Every knee will bow in obeisance (Isaiah 45:23; Philippians 2:10).  Those who resist the rule of God are “kicking against the goads” (Acts 26:14).  Those go God’s way, even while in suffering, find that as He rebuilds the waste places he works through them and they are renewed and invited to enter the “joy of the master” (Matthew 25:21, 23).

        As God, for his own sake re-creates the world humans who live by faith are remade.  With our new hearts, we live in joyful relationship with God.   

---

[i] E. Martens (1981).  God’s Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, p.243.

[ii] W. Brueggemann (1997).  Theology of the Old Testament, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, p.268.

The Resurrection Worldview (John 11:1-53)

Sunday, April 6, 2014 – 5^th Sunday of Lent

John 11

11 ^1-2 A man by the name of Lazarus was sick in the village of Bethany. He had two sisters, Mary and Martha. This was the same Mary who later poured perfume on the Lord’s head and wiped his feet with her hair. ³ The sisters sent a message to the Lord and told him that his good friend Lazarus was sick.

⁴ When Jesus heard this, he said, “His sickness won’t end in death. It will bring glory to God and his Son.”

⁵ Jesus loved Martha and her sister and brother. ⁶ But he stayed where he was for two more days.⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “Now we will go back to Judea.”

⁸ “Teacher,” they said, “the people there want to stone you to death! Why do you want to go back?”

⁹ Jesus answered, “Aren’t there twelve hours in each day? If you walk during the day, you will have light from the sun, and you won’t stumble. ¹⁰ But if you walk during the night, you will stumble, because you don’t have any light.” ¹¹ Then he told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, and I am going there to wake him up.”

¹² They replied, “Lord, if he is asleep, he will get better.” ¹³ Jesus really meant that Lazarus was dead, but they thought he was talking only about sleep.

¹⁴ Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead! ¹⁵ I am glad that I wasn’t there, because now you will have a chance to put your faith in me. Let’s go to him.”

¹⁶ Thomas, whose nickname was “Twin,” said to the other disciples, “Come on. Let’s go, so we can die with him.”

¹⁷ When Jesus got to Bethany, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.¹⁸ Bethany was only about two miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁹ and many people had come from the city to comfort Martha and Mary because their brother had died.

²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus had arrived, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. ²¹ Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² Yet even now I know that God will do anything you ask.”

²³ Jesus told her, “Your brother will live again!”

²⁴ Martha answered, “I know that he will be raised to life on the last day,^[a] when all the dead are raised.”

²⁵ Jesus then said, “I am the one who raises the dead to life! Everyone who has faith in me will live, even if they die. ²⁶ And everyone who lives because of faith in me will never really die. Do you believe this?”

²⁷ “Yes, Lord!” she replied. “I believe that you are Christ, the Son of God. You are the one we hoped would come into the world.”

²⁸ After Martha said this, she went and privately said to her sister Mary, “The Teacher is here, and he wants to see you.” ²⁹ As soon as Mary heard this, she got up and went out to Jesus. ³⁰ He was still outside the village where Martha had gone to meet him. ³¹ Many people had come to comfort Mary, and when they saw her quickly leave the house, they thought she was going out to the tomb to cry. So they followed her.

³² Mary went to where Jesus was. Then as soon as she saw him, she knelt at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

³³ When Jesus saw that Mary and the people with her were crying, he was terribly upset ³⁴ and asked, “Where have you put his body?”

They replied, “Lord, come and you will see.”

³⁵ Jesus started crying, ³⁶ and the people said, “See how much he loved Lazarus.”

³⁷ Some of them said, “He gives sight to the blind. Why couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”

³⁸ Jesus was still terribly upset. So he went to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone rolled against the entrance. ³⁹ Then he told the people to roll the stone away. But Martha said, “Lord, you know that Lazarus has been dead four days, and there will be a bad smell.”

⁴⁰ Jesus replied, “Didn’t I tell you that if you had faith, you would see the glory of God?”

⁴¹ After the stone had been rolled aside, Jesus looked up toward heaven and prayed, “Father, I thank you for answering my prayer. ⁴² I know that you always answer my prayers. But I said this, so that the people here would believe that you sent me.”

⁴³ When Jesus had finished praying, he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The man who had been dead came out. His hands and feet were wrapped with strips of burial cloth, and a cloth covered his face.

Jesus then told the people, “Untie him and let him go.”

            How do you die? 

            Please note, when I say ‘you,’ I am not asking, ‘how does one die?’  This is more pointed.  It is not a general sort of pondering question, how does a person die?  This is an invasion of your personal space.  I have wrestled with it all week because I am not sure how to answer it myself.  I am counted when I say ‘you.’  We sit with a story glaring at us, the story of Jesus raising Lazarus.  This is more than just an amazing miracle story.  The story confronts us and we must answer.  How do I die?  How do you die?

            I grant the absurdity.  Living people by definition have not died.  So how could we talk about how to die?  Every human life comes to an end, but we live like that end is in a far off future, one we’d rather not discuss.  We will all die and we all know that; yet none of accepts it and each of us tries to put it off as long as possible.  We are not interested, thank you, in the question, how do you die? 

If we believe the Bible, we should be.  Paul tells us in Romans 6, ‘the wage of sin is death’ (v.23).  We sin every day.  So we are paid with death every day.  But, what does that even mean?

            In a blog post, Australian pastor, Andrew Prior  writes, “Our things and our doings blind us to new opportunities of being human; indeed, they prevent us from becoming truly human.  They prevent us from finding that already present dimension of reality that the Gospel of John calls ‘eternal life.’”[i]  I think what he means, and I think what Jesus means when he tells Martha that he is the “Resurrection and the life” (v. 25) is that eternal life begins right now, today for those who are in Christ. 

In Christ all sins are forgiven and removed.  In Christ, we do not receive sin’s wage, death, because sin is no longer counted against us.  Those not in Christ carry the weight of sin every day.  In little ways, they die every day.  Our things and our doings, the possessions and activities that dominate the life of middle class people, blind us. 

            We like stuff.  We like thrills.  We build our lives on possessions we acquire, materials and things of which there is a limited number.  Competition is inherent.  New cars, expensive TV’s, fancy phones, designer clothes – exploitation is involved in creating these things and only a few people of the billions on earth end up having them.  Dating back to the industrial revolution, our society has 100 years creating and striving to own more and better possessions.  We have exported our ethos all over the world.  Consumerism has become our dominant cultural value.  Christianity gets fit in around our consumption.  Christianity is defined by middle class Americans rather than middle class American being shaped by Christianity.

            Consumerism leads to all manners of sin – exploitation, jealousy, envy, greed, theft, hoarding of goods, violence (both to attain goods and to hold on to them and avoid sharing them); these sins kill us every day, even we who are Christians.  We would never admit it, but we are the experts who ought to know how to die because we die daily.  “You can’t take it with you,” but secretly, we try. 

            Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died (v.21). Jesus’ response, I am the resurrection, is intended to get her to see everything differently in light of who he is.  He wants her to think about life and death in a new way.  Because she knows him her understanding of mortality can change.  And John wants us to read his gospel and in reading know Jesus and in knowing think about life and death in a whole new way. 

             

            Nothing is particularly evil about a phone or a trip to the movies or a new TV.  You can serve God through the use of the phone.  I can establish a relationship with someone and eventually share Christ with him.  Maybe he won’t go to church, but he’ll go to the movies.  We can host video parties where we watch the big game on our giant flat screen and in that context form relationships in which we give witness to the gospel.  These things can be used to glorify God.  But for the last century the culture around us has evolved into a worldview.  In this worldview, joy and happiness come with new things and thrilling activities.  This worldview is now entrenched.  We are part of it. 

            I see many Christians getting their energy and joy and excitement in purchases, in salary increases, in new gadgets, big or small.  They don’t realize how much better Jesus is because they can’t see him.  How they live in the now, by the worldview of consuming/owning/hoarding materials (the best of all goods and services), shapes how they think about life, death, and eternity. 

It should be the exact opposite.  The reality of eternal life with Jesus, as a son or daughter of God, should be what defines how we live now.  But we can’t really see that eternal life with God.  As Prior says, “Our things and our doings blind us to new opportunities of being human.”  The new humanity he refers to is the redeemed humanity, the humanity that has discovered Jesus and been made new.  This is the humanity of 1 Corinthians 15, people with bodies that are incorruptible, that cannot become sick or die.  This is the humanity of Genesis 1-2 that God created as “very good.”  We cannot imagine it.

             

            How did Jesus say it?  “I am the one who raises the dead to life! Everyone who has faith in me will live, even if they die. ²⁶ And everyone who lives because of faith in me will never really die” (v.25b-26).  One commentator writes that life in Jesus is life of another order, a new order.  The great blessing is not that Jesus raised Lazarus.  Lazarus would die again.  In fact in the very next chapter, the religious leaders plot the death of Lazarus as part of their plan to stop Jesus. He’s just been raised and he’s on an officially sanctioned hit list (12:10). 

The great blessing of this story is what Lazarus’ raising means: it is a sign of Jesus as the resurrection and the life.  He is the life.  Does Martha believe it?  Do we?  If we say yes, then what does it mean for how we live and how we view death?  From the point of view of the Gospel of John, everlasting life in Jesus is the same on both sides of the grave – now and after we are resurrected.  When we live in Christ we begin eternity now.[ii] 

This all comes down to worldview.  Do we see Jesus?  Or are we seeing as the world in which we have grown up has conditioned us to see?  If we keep the worldview that has been imposed on us, a world view of materialistic consumerism, one in which joy comes from acquisition, then we are driven to buy and own.  We have to train ourselves to share and be generous because we’re conditioned to greed, hoarding, envy, coveting, and eventually violence, direct or indirect.  These sin-soaked mentalities bring death.  That’s one worldview.

Another comes when by God’s grace we are freed from the destructive worldview we’ve always known.  By the Holy Spirit we are changed and we take on a resurrection worldview.  It comes as we see Jesus, fix our view on Him, and live with the Spirit in us.

Martha lived many centuries before the industrial revolution, so her worldview was different than ours, but for different reasons it was just as stuck in death as ours is.    Jesus told her to roll away the stone.  “But Lord,” Martha said, “you know that Lazarus has been dead four days, and there will be a bad smell” (v.39).  She had a death mentality.  She had just professed faith that Jesus is the Messiah to his face.  That was not enough to help her think differently.  She believed in death and lived toward just as we do.  Avoid it while living toward it.

Jesus rejects the smell of death literally and in the sense that death whether it comes from the sins of a materialistic worldview or another sin-filled worldview stinks.  The rot of death reeks and Christ won’t have it.  Death is the opposite of what God has in store for us.  In Jesus, God is with us.  He is Immanuel – ‘God with us.’ Thus, when we are seeing Jesus and with Jesus and his Holy Spirit, we get the opposite of death. 

The resurrection view is not only for Lazarus that special day in 30AD.  He did not get a bonus by being lucky enough to live in the days of Jesus walking the earth in the Incarnation.  That miracle of Jesus raising him was a sign of a new way of seeing and living – the way of Jesus.  Similarly, today, there are indicators of the resurrection worldview.  Think of coming alongside of and helping “the poor, the sick, the lonely, the depressed, the slaves, the refugees, the hungry, the homeless, the abused, … the despairing, [the orphan and widow, and the confused];” working on behalf of the ‘least of these’ … is a sign of the presence of Jesus today. When we bring healing and love, community and family, truth and hope, we are playing a vital part in the mission of Jesus and his church.  Jesus brought hope in the first century; he continues in the 21^st as he works through the deeds of his church to rescue people from the stink of corruption and death.[iii]  Our work of loving anyone and everyone and doing is proactively and sacrificially is a sign that our vision is colored by the Eternal Kingdom.  Our now is built by our sense of eternity.  When we see Him and see as he sees and work for healing and truth, motivated by Jesus-love, we are living eternity now.  It is then that we have the resurrection worldview. 

            How do you die?  The best answer is ‘I don’t know how I die because I am living forever with Jesus.  My body will die and then be raised.  I am already living eternally.  I cannot say how I die because I have a resurrection worldview.’  That’s the best answer.  We can give that answer with Jesus’ help.  From now until Easter, ask Him to push all distractions to the background and help you see as He sees.

            AMEN

---

[i].http://onemansweb.org/don-t-cave-in-to-the-death-people-john-11-lent-5.html

[ii] G. Sloyan (1988). Interpretation: A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: John.  John Knox Press, Atlanta, p.150-151.

[iii] N.T. Wright (2008).  Surprised by Hope.  HarperOne, New York, p, 191-192.