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

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[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.

Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life (John 11)

Jesus is the Life (John 11:25-26)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, April 10, 2011

5^th Sunday of Lent, 5^th Sunday of Church-wide Study - Culture Making

Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Festival of the Dedication, and while there, he said works (teachings and miracles) were testimony that he was the Messiah and the Son of God. Some did not like what he had to say. They wanted to stone him to death. The would-be executioners accused him of equating himself with God. He did not deny it (10:33-36). They wanted to kill him for blasphemy. He escaped and went away from Jerusalem, east of the Jordan River.

About that time, illness hit his good friend Lazarus who lived in Bethany. with his sisters Martha and Mary. When death was near, the sisters sent for Jesus. Bethany was in the shadow of Jerusalem, a short walk from the temple. To go back would be to return to where important people wanted to kill Jesus and were ready to do so without warning. Martha and Mary wanted him to come anyway, so he could save Lazarus.

Jesus waited. He took his time and continued his work. He told the disciples that the illness of Lazarus would show God’s glory (11:4). The disciples surely did not understand how a terminal illness could bring glory to God, but they had heard something like this before. Jesus said that a man they met was blind in order that “God’s works might be revealed in him” (9:3).

Curious. The glory of God is seen in deadly disease. The work of God is seen precisely because one is blind. Are there conditions that we see – epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis, alcoholism – that help us see God and see and experience the life God has for us?

Without hurry, Jesus made his way back toward Jerusalem, to the village of Bethany, to the home of Lazarus and his sisters. The disciples reminded Jesus of the death threats, and he replied, “Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them” (11:9b-10). By “stumble,” Jesus did not mean “die.” He did die, horribly, on a Roman cross. But death of the body was not his major concern.

In John 1, we read that Jesus is “the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it” (1:4b-5). In Jesus’ eyes, life is walking in the light and he is the light. The death of the body is not the end of life as long as the one who dies, dies in Him, the Light.

By the time Jesus and his nervous disciples made it to Bethany, Lazarus had been dead 4 days. Jesus has a theological conversation with Martha and an emotional one with Mary, and then he goes to the tomb. He commands the stone to be moved away. As weeping mourners looked on, Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man walked out of the grave alive.

When Martha talked with Jesus before he brought Lazarus back to life, she was unhappy. Jesus had not prevented Lazarus’ death. She didn’t know he would raise Lazarus that day. As they talked, Martha affirms her belief in an end-times resurrection. The idea of the dead rising was prevalent in Israel at the time. She believed it, but she didn’t want to wait for the end time. She wanted Lazarus to be alive and well right then and there. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.”

Most church goes believe what Martha believed – at the end, there is a resurrection. Even though we die, if we believe in Jesus, we will live, someday. Speculation about when someone goes to heaven after death is never-ending. Do we go to Heaven the moment we die? At death do we lie in a sleeping state and go to Heaven at Christ’s Second Coming or on Judgment Day?

Jesus blows up that sort of thinking with what he says next. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Whoa! Really, Jesus? Can we trust what he says? I ask because we know a lot of people who have died. I ran down the list - epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis, alcoholism, heart disease; people die. My mom recently read an obituary. It said someone had died of old age. That old lady believed in Jesus, the Jesus who said, “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” She died.

Death is reality. Twelve 12 people died during the Columbine High School shootings 12 years ago. Thirty-two people died in 2007 after a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. Almost 2000 deaths are attributed to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. On September 11, 2001, about 3000 died in the terrorist attacks on our country. Nearly 6000 have died in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, dating back to 2003. They don’t grab the headlines, but alcohol-related traffic accidents kill 10,000 annually.

In 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit Burma and claimed 85,000 lives and 54,000 people are still missing. Three hundred deaths are due to the earthquake that hit Haiti last year. Tragedies dominate the news. What is less reported is the 2 million people who died of AIDS in 2008. CNN and BBC and other news outlets give less attention to the 10.9 million children who die of hunger ever year. That’s 30,000 children who will die today for lack of food – we know about death. So how do we swallow Jesus’ assertion that “Everyone who lives and believes in [Him] will never die.” Yes they do. People do die.

An MSNBC interviewer badgered a well-known Christian leader recently. The interviewer said, “Does God care about the suffering in Japan right now?”[i]

Christian leader: “Yes.”

Interviewer: “Is God unable to do anything to help?”

Christian leader: “Of course God could help.”

Interviewer: “Well which is it? Does God care, but is unable to help? Or, is God able to help, but doesn’t care?” It must be one or the other. Which is it?

I thought, “What would I do if I were in that pastor’s place, on TV, and an interviewer peppered me like that?” The first thing that came to me was to say, there are many worse things the interviewer could pick up. I’ve named many – war, disease, other disasters, alcohol-related deaths. Every time there is death, we could ask, which is it? Does God care, but is unable to help? Or, is God able to help, but doesn’t care?” It must be one or the other. Which is it?

Unless …

Unless Jesus means something different when he says “live” and “die.” Maybe he uses those words in the differently than we do.

Jesus said Lazarus’ illness would lead to God’s glory, but it led to death. When Jesus commanded the stone to be rolled from the grave, Martha protested. The rotting corpse would stink. Jesus responded, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” There it is again – God’s glory.

Bringing Lazarus to life was a sign of glory; God’s glory is Jesus. “I am the resurrection and the life.” Both resurrection and life are important. To understand the glory revealed in Jesus, we focus on the second part.

“I am … the life.” Later, when Jesus gives final instructions to the disciples before he is arrested, he says to them, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Life is not the flowing of blood through a body, the breathing in of air, the consumption of food. That’s life for animals. People are created for a special relationship with God, made in the image of God. Life for people, God’s image bearers, is relationship with Jesus.

When he says, “Everyone who lives and believes in [Him] will never die,” he’s saying belief – faith – is life. Death does not interrupt it. Though the heart stops, and the body dies, there is no interruption in the God-human relationship for the one who has put complete trust in Jesus.

Many people have died in Japan in the last couple of weeks. Those who knew Jesus still know Jesus and never for a second stopped knowing Him. Though their perished, the relationship was not broken. I don’t know if they’re in heaven right now or in a restful waiting place. The Bible isn’t that clear. But Jesus is clear that he is the life and that everyone who sees Him for who he is – the Son of God, the Lord, the Savior –will have the life. The disasters survivors who do not know Christ are are on a trajectory toward eternal death.

We do not seek the death of the body but neither do we fear it. Our time on earth ends when it ends. We know life is Jesus, so we seek to be in Christ. When we are in Christ, the death of our bodies, whenever that comes, is for the glory of God.

Life is eternal because Jesus is eternal. A rich young ruler asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to sell all his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and then, when he had nothing left, he was to come and follow Jesus. His question was about eternal life. Eternal life is had when we give up everything and follow Jesus. Eternal life is understood when we realize it’s not about our life spans on earth; it is about life in Christ. That does not end.

What does eternal life assume about the world? It assumes that the fate of the world is not the same as the fate of humanity. This world will end. We do not have to end. The key to eternity is faith in Jesus. Our fate is tied to our faith in Him.

What does eternal life assume about the way the world should be? Eternal life assumes human beings should desire things of eternal value over things of temporary value. A human life is of temporary value. Jesus raised Lazarus to the reality that Lazarus would go through the painful death of the body again. In John 12, the religious leaders are plotting to bring about Lazarus’ death. Lazarus’ should desire relationship with Jesus should more than health or life; that relationship won’t end and in the resurrection, he will have a new, incorruptible body. Eternal life assumes we should desire eternity over health, over money and power, and over all earthly things.

What does eternal life make possible? It is possible for Christ-followers to think and talk differently about death than those who do not know Him. It would be a sad lack of faith if we did otherwise. We aren’t casual about death or dismissive. If someone I love dies, it hurts. If it was my wife or one of my children, it would crush me beyond belief. But, in a place deep inside me or anyone who follows Jesus, the posture toward death is not what it would be if I didn’t know Him. Jesus is the life and he makes it possible for us to treat death for what it is – painful, but not an end.

What does eternal life make impossible? Hopeless grief is impossible. Grief is appropriate. Jesus displayed grief. As Mary wept at the fate of her brother Lazarus, Jesus also wept. He knew Lazarus would be raised, but he wept at Mary’s sadness and at the way sin blinded people from seeing Him and seeing God at work. Jesus wept. We are encouraged to weep if weeping expresses what’s in us. But, when we know the life, Jesus, it is impossible for us to be hopeless. Even our sadness is filled with eternal hope.

What new culture is created by eternal life? In Christ, we have unending fellowship with God and one another. It is a culture of unbroken friendship, uninterrupted relationship. This culture begins shaping our view of reality the minute we ask Christ in and begin giving our lives completely to Him. Eternal life does not start at the death of the body. Eternal life starts when we are born again. It is more fully experienced once we enter the resurrection, but it begins now. All in Christ are already eternally alive.

No matter what comes your way – the good, the bad, and the ugly – remember that Jesus is the life and we have that life now. When people die, we grieve and comfort. When there’s a disaster like the tragedy of hunger that kills millions, we rush to help. As we do so, we share the gospel knowing that when others come to Jesus, they enter eternal life.

AMEN

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[i] At the time of this writing a major earthquake and subsequent tsunami rocked Japan (March 27, 2011) and the disasters lead to a major nuclear power plan meltdown. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/magnitude-65-earthquake-rattles-eastern-japan-again-tsunami-alert-issued/2011/03/27/AFFFlvkB_story.html.