Slice: Making Jesus Your Resurrection and Life (Jn. 11)

In his book Unspeakable Os Guinness tells the story of a Christian leader whose son had been killed in a cycling accident.[1]  Although this Christian leader was devastated he managed to suppress his grief, even preaching powerfully at his son’s funeral. His display of hope in the midst of tragedy led many to admire him.  But weeks after the funeral of his son, the man invited Guinness and a few friends to his house.  According to Guinness, this man then proceeded to speak and scream “not with the hope of a preacher but with the hurt of the father—pained and furious at God, dark and bilious in his blasphemy.”  It must have been a moving and troubling scene: a strong Christian leader screaming at God, dark and bilious in his blasphemy.

 

I recently heard an interview with Grammy winning Christian musician Stephen Curtis Chapman.  In a tragic accident in 2008 Chapman’s his five year old daughter was killed.  Chapman described that catastrophe and the years following it as “dark times.”

 

“Dark” is an appropriate description for how many of us feel in the face of death.  Almost universally, when death hits, darkness falls.  Even people of deep Christian faith experience darkness in the presence of death.  We often stumble in the dark times associated with death. 

 

This is true even of the first followers of Jesus.  In John 11 we witness a tragic death.  It involves a man named Lazarus.  Larzarus has two sisters-Mary and Martha.  Ten times in John 11 John reminds us that Lazarus, Mary and Martha are siblings.  John doesn’t refer to their family connection just one time.  He refers to it ten times.  John wants us to feel the deep love between this trio of sister, sister and brother.

 

Lazarus, Mary and Martha dwell in Bethany, a small village outside of Jerusalem.  Their home is a kind of hideaway for Jesus.  He seems to have spent significant time in their home.  Jesus is unusually close to Lazarus, Mary and Martha.

 

But Lazarus gets sick.  Jesus is some distance away when Lazarus falls ill.  Jesus has been run out of Jerusalem by a violent mob.  Mary and Martha thus send someone to find Jesus and tell him that Lazarus is not well.  The searcher finally finds Jesus and announces, “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (Jn. 11:3 ESV).  Immediately the sense of potential tragedy deepens.  Because not only is this a brother beloved by Mary and Martha.  This is a friend beloved by Jesus.  “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”

 

A few days later, Lazarus is dead.  Was it bone cancer?  Was it pneumonia?  Was it an infectious disease?  Was it a bad heart?  We don’t know.  But Lazarus is dead.  According to Jn. 11:38, they bury Lazarus in a small cave and roll a stone in front of the tomb.  It’s reminiscent of the scene after Jesus’ death.  They bury him in a small tomb and roll the stone in front of it.

 

And Jesus knows how hard people are going to take this death.  So he says this to his disciples in Jn. 11:10, “But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”  This is veiled language.  But Jesus seems to be implying that when people are hit with a death like Lazarus’ death, some wind up stumbling as if they are walking in the dark.  “But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles…”  So often when death arrives darkness falls.  It causes even people of deep faith to stumble.

 

Lazarus’ death seems to cause Mary and Martha to stumble.  When Jesus finally arrives, Martha runs to him and says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn. 11:22 ESV).  A little later, Mary says the same thing, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn. 11:32 ESV).  Mary and Martha are tripping around in the darkness of Lazarus’ death.

 

This scene is portrayed in a moving way in a recent film about Jesus: [PP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR1ku3kE2lY to 0:38 – 1:35 ]

 

In an old movie from the 1960’s Max Van Sydow plays Jesus.  As Jesus approaches Mary and Martha, Martha runs to him and scolds him: “Come to bury the dead?  Or have you come to feed the mourners?  You made a leper well.  You made a cripple walk.  Was it too much to ask that you keep my brother from dying?  Why do you come now that he is dead, when you could have come when he lived, when he needed you?  Why?”  We often stumble in the darkness associated with death.

 

And yet Jesus promises that there is another way to experience such tragedy.  Listen to what Jesus tells his disciples before they make their way to Lazarus’ tomb: “If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world” (Jn. 11:9 ESV).  Again, this is veiled language.  But Jesus seems to be implying that it is possible to face the death of a loved one and walk steady and stable as if walking in the light of day.  It’s possible to encounter times associated with tragedy and not have darkness but have light instead.

 

How is this possible?  How is it possible to find light in one of life’s darkest times?  Jesus puts it this way to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn. 11:25 ESV).  This is the last of the “I Am” statements of Jesus.  It is the climactic statement.  In this Sunday morning series we’ve heard Jesus promise to be the bread of our life; the light of our world; our door and our shepherd; our way, truth and life; and our vine.  One of the reasons I’ve called this series “Slice” is that each of these “I am” statements gives us a slice of the whole picture of Jesus.  But this “I am” statement is perhaps the biggest slice of all.  When it comes to the tragedy of death, Jesus wants us to know that he is the resurrection and the life.  And this is what makes it possible to face death with a different perspective.  Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, we do not have to stumble in the dark times associated with death. Instead, we can walk steadily as if in the light of day.

 

And Jesus not only makes this claim.  He proves this claim: ³⁸ Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. ³⁹ Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰ Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴²  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³ When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” ⁴⁴  The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (Jn. 11:38-44 ESV).  Jesus proves that he is the resurrection and the life.  Death has no chance in the face of Jesus.

 

A Puritan writer once said that if Jesus had not named Lazarus when He shouted, he would have emptied the whole cemetery!^[2]  No doubt this is true.  Jesus not only speaks this climactic “I am” statement.  He proves it.  He raises this man Lazarus from the dead.  And because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, we no longer have to stumble in the darkness.  We can walk in the light.

 

Two years ago Rick and Beverly Ross lost their daughter Jenny.  Jenny’s brother Josh is a friend of mine.  Rick and Beverly recently wrote about Jenny’s death:[3]  “Two years ago today, my family was halfway through the roller coaster ride of our 31-year old daughter Jenny’s struggle for her life. The previous week she had gone to the doctor, been diagnosed with the swine flu, and sent home with a prescription of Tamiflu.  Three days later, she was much worse. At the hospital we discovered that she had been misdiagnosed. Actually, she had Group-A strep, and it had gone untreated for days – throwing her body into septic shock. It ravaged her body like a wildfire. After a cruel battle, she went to be with Jesus on February 22, 2010.  As my wife and I walked down the ICU hallway after leaving Jenny’s room, Beverly asked, ‘What do we do now?’ Being the task-oriented person I am, I thought she was referring to making arrangements. But what she meant was, ‘How do we do life now?’ ‘How do we take our next step?’ ‘How do we breathe our next breath?’ Beverly is a licensed marriage and family therapist, so she knew that grieving would be difficult physically and emotionally. But as she later said, ‘What I didn’t anticipate was the spiritual eruption. Death created a spiritual earthquake and left me searching through the rubble to find the remnants of my faith.’  Paula D’Archy once said, ‘I know this, you can’t die from crying . . . or I’d be dead.’ Never having been a crier, I have now come to appreciate her words over the last couple of years. Just a couple of weeks after Jenny’s death, my oldest son, Josh, a minister in Memphis, TN, called me one Sunday morning and said that we, a family of ministers, would be ‘playing wounded’ for a while. He reminded me of how Emmitt Smith played one of his greatest games with a separated shoulder. And I totally understand and agree with what Josh said, as two years later we continue to ‘play wounded.’ But many are the times I have thought that I would rather play with a separated shoulder than with a broken heart.  Still, I often think of something Jenny said several years ago as she struggled with secondary infertility. She said, ‘I want people to remember me as someone who, even when she didn’t get her way, praised the Lord.’ And that is what we as a family choose to do. As Beverly has said, ‘Our family has been called to do hard, so we will do hard.’  Being a minister, I have come to view grief in a totally different light. Grief that, too often, I had naively assumed passed in a couple of months. I had mourned the death of my father and my father-in-law. But I had never known grief – not like this. Now, when I hear about a teenager killed in a car wreck or a young mother who died of breast cancer, my first thoughts go to the families. Oh, what grief!  Paul asked the question in 1 Corinthians 15, ‘O death, where is your sting?’ I can tell him. It is piercing the hearts of people who lose loved ones. Oh, I know that through Jesus, the sting has been ultimately removed. But it sure feels like a swarm of killer bees right now.  There are so many spiritual things that I used to KNOW that I don’t know anymore. Lots of things I once had tied up – that now look like a fishing reel when it has ‘bird-nested.’ But I am taking the advice of a fellow minister, John Scott, who told Beverly and me to ‘learn to be content in the mystery. I am learning to live the words of Anselm of Canterbury, who once prayed, ’I do not try to understand you so that I can trust you. I trust you so I can understand you.’  Some people have insinuated that they will be glad when Beverly and I ‘get back to normal.’ I know they mean well and only have our best interests at heart. But what they need to know is that this IS our new normal. Our lives have been forever changed by the events of two years ago. In some ways, even for the better. I am a better minister today as I walk with the bereaved. And my faith has been put to the test in such a way that I no longer wonder how I would respond in the face of real persecution. I have learned what trust REALLY means. That word is huge to me today. Trust. And hope. And peace.  So, back to Beverly and me as we walked out of ICU that day nearly two years ago. We stopped in the hallway and looked into each other’s eyes. She said, ‘Remind me what we believe.’ And I stood in that moment speechless. It seemed like an eternity, although it was only a second or two. ‘Remind me what we believe.’ And in that moment, with all of the theological positions and views I have often thought were so important, only four words came from my mouth: ‘The tomb is empty.’  When life was at its darkest, I can imagine that Mary and Martha may have asked Jesus this question, “What do we believe, Jesus?  In the face of this tragedy, what do we believe?”  And Jesus, in answer, raised Lazarus from the dead.  And God, in answer, raised Jesus from the dead.  What do we believe?  The answer is found in these four words: The tomb is empty.

 

A few weeks ago in this series I talked about Van Gogh.  Scot McKnight writes about Van Gogh.[4]  He says that if you follow Van Gogh’s life, you find a gradual increase of the color yellow in his paintings.  For Van Gogh, the color yellow indicated the hope and warmth of the love of God.  The more yellow you found in a painting by Van Gogh, the more you could assume that on the day he painted that piece, Van Gogh believed the world was filled with the light of God’s love.   A few weeks ago we looked at a painting filled with darkness.  It seemed to point to a time when Van Gogh could see very little of the light of God’s love.  But there is another painting which Van Gogh created later in life.  It overflows with yellow.  It’s filled with light.  And not surprisingly, it is called “The Raising of Lazarus.” This entire picture is bathed in warm light.  Some even believe that Van Gogh painted his own face on Lazarus to personalize this painting.  What’s Van Gogh saying?  He’s saying that even at the darkest times, in the face of the death of a beloved brother and friend like Lazarus, it’s possible for the world to be filled with light.

 

Jesus wants you to know that in the darkness of death, it’s possible to not stumble and not fall.  It’s possible to find light in the midst of that darkness.  It’s possible because of one climactic claim of Jesus: “I am the resurrection and the life.”  It’s possible because of the undeniable truth of four simple words: “The tomb is empty.”  Say them out loud with me: “The tomb is empty.”