Sermon: A Community of Eternal Life
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
A Community of Eternal Life 18 April 2010: pm
The Revd Jenny Wilkens
- Psalm 86:1-7
- Isaiah 38:9-20
- John 11:27-44
http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons
What a wonderfully powerful story our New Testament reading is this evening. I think what I love about it is it is as if we are watching a play, and we watch the strongly drawn characters experiencing a whole spectrum of emotions. And Jesus himself is not immune from this too – we see Jesus in all his power, but also in all his humanity and vulnerability.
I wonder if you noticed a word that is used 9 times through this chapter - and we only heard half the chapter this evening, it is worth re-reading the whole story. It is the word believe, one of John's key words in the Gospel, and it comes up again and again: so that you may believe, do you believe? Yes Lord I believe, did I not tell you that if you believed, many believed in him…
John says at the end of his gospel that he has written about the signs that Jesus did 'so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name'. (John 20:31)
That is the crux of our reading today – here John presents to us the greatest sign there could be that Jesus is indeed God, that even that last great enemy, death, is subject to him, and that he has the power to give life and to grant life anew.
That is wonderful, but perhaps what is even more wonderful is that we’re given a picture of Jesus too in all his humanity. We learn that for Jesus too, death is not negligible, he is not immune to its consequences, death touches him as much as it touches us.
If we go back to the beginning of the story, we get a rather different impression of Jesus, quite a mysterious one really. It almost seems as if Jesus is orchestrating this great miracle. He hears his great friend Lazarus is ill, but he does not rush to his side to save him; in fact, the reverse, Jesus stays where he is in seclusion for two long days.
We find it hard to comprehend his delaying tactics, although we do hear from Thomas that Jesus would be putting himself in real danger if he ventures near Jerusalem, such is the growing opposition to him. Is Jesus wrestling with this dilemma?
Or is there something in Jesus staying away as long as possible so that it is clear beyond any possible doubt that Lazarus is dead, so that when his family and friends see life emerging from the tomb rather than the stench of decay, they will know that it wasn’t just Lazarus recovering from a period of unconsciousness or coma, that he was indeed dead and is now alive.
John doesn't elaborate on Jesus' motives for biding his time, but when Jesus finally arrives, Martha certainly doesn't let him get away with it! Martha comes out to meet Jesus, and quite fairly I think chides him – if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
Jesus does not chide her in return, rather he entrusts her with the most amazing claim. It is not just that he trusts God to bring resurrection, but rather that resurrection is found in him: 'I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live.' (John 11:25) And then he challenges her to believe - do you believe this? And Martha responds with a great affirmation of faith: 'Yes Lord I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.'
What an affirmation of Martha's faith! But what are we seeing of Jesus? So far in the story you could almost say that Jesus seems quite impassive, unmoved really, that he is just here to demonstrate his power and to talk theology…but then suddenly when Jesus meets Mary, sees her and those with her weeping and mourning, the reality of his friend Lazarus's death seems to finally hit home. Even though Jesus knows he is the resurrection and the life, yet the tears and the sadness and the loss of death finally take hold of him.
First of all we hear Jesus was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved, the words really have a connotation of being greatly disturbed at gut-level, and there’s also the dimension of indignation, of frustration and anger at the pain and havoc that death wreaks in people’s lives. And then Jesus weeps – the shortest verse in the Bible, but yet it’s one of those extraordinary moments when we seem to see right into the very heart of God.
Jesus has come to demonstrate God’s absolute power of life over death, and yet he reacts as we all do to a life cut short, to the desolation of losing someone we love, and he shares the pain of those who mourn, he weeps with them.
And it is this Jesus, human, shaken, mourning, who then goes to Lazarus’ tomb and raises him from the dead. It is not just an impersonal act of calm and majestic power, but rather an act of gut-wrenching faith and hope that love is stronger than death. Jesus prays to the Father, and calls Lazarus out from the tomb, and out he comes, alive, whole, new! As simple as that! – and as mind-blowing as that!
But do you notice that the one character we don't hear from in this story is Lazarus himself! We don’t hear anything about how Lazarus feels about it all. Imagine journalists vying to get that first interview with Lazarus for national TV! Just what was it like, Lazarus?
Eugene O’Neill once wrote a play entitled LAZARUS LAUGHED. The play deals with what happened to Lazarus in the years after Jesus called him back to life. In the play Lazarus comes out of his grave laughing...not a scornful, bitter kind of laughter, but a soft, tender, all-embracing sort of sound that seems to well up from a joy that is utterly bottomless. There is a radiance emanating from him that makes him look younger than when he died. There is a peace and serenity about his being that is absolutely tangible. As soon as Lazarus gets home, his sisters ask him the inevitable question: Well, what is it like beyond the grave?
Lazarus says this, ‘There is only life. There is only laughter... the laughter of God soaring into the heights and the depths. There is no death really. Death is not the end, it’s not an abyss or the entrance into nothingness or chaos or punishment. Death is a portal, a passageway into deeper and brighter life. Eternal change, everlasting growth...that is what lies ahead. There is only life, sisters, nothing but life.’ As the play unfolds, Lazarus goes on to live a life in which he is freed from the fear of death. He lives knowing that Jesus is truly the ‘Resurrection and the Life.’
Perhaps in that is a message for us all. For what we see in the raising of Lazarus is a foretaste of that hope that is offered to us all through Jesus’ own death and resurrection, the hope that God will not let us go but keep us in his life and love, through death into life eternal.
Often it is hard to believe that this world is definitively under God's care and power, as we learn of wars, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters in our world. We experience our own griefs & pains - the death of our loved ones; and also the daily trials that sometimes seem to sink us into despair and hopelessness.
But John tells us that Christ brings us into being part of a community of eternal life, NOW! He is resurrection and life for all those who believe and trust in him now. In Jesus' powerful announcement to Martha that he is ‘life’ we’re invited to embrace Jesus as the resurrection and the life not only at times of death and grief, but also in the daily reality of life now.
John's gospel speaks of Jesus bringing us into the realm of eternal life now, this moment, not later, not just sometime in the distant future; resurrection can happen in any situation in the present, not just in some unidentified future.
In my own grief journey over the last couple of years since my mother’s death, I have been comforted by the strong message in John’s gospel, that we who have faith in Christ have already passed ourselves from the realm of death into the realm of eternal life, and that we live already with those we love who have died in the community of eternal life.
Of course we still know the grief and pain of physical separation from them for a time now, and we still have to go through physical death ourselves, but in the communion of saints, we are already sharing fellowship with those who are in Christ, the resurrection and the life. And so as our liturgy says, we worship together with all the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. (NZPB p. 422)
Sandra Schneiders writes in her study (Written That You Might Believe) of John 11, ‘We are not asked not to weep, but [we are asked] not to despair, for [Jesus] the one in whom we believe is our resurrection, because he is our life’
John says to us today in his gospel, if you are in need of resurrection hope today, if you are in need of new hope, new life, turn to Christ, who is our resurrection & our life.
Jesus says to us today as he said to Martha, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’
