I know a man whose marriage came to end. Marriages do that. The problem was could they start it up again. This one they couldn’t. Life as he knew it came to an end the day his wife moved out. Depression began to set in. It was Fall. Winter was coming. He had come to the conclusion that if he was going to make it through this he needed to draw close to God and so he began to read his Bible everyday. One morning as he was reading, he happened to read Psalm 42 which just happens to be about a person who is longing for God, who feels cast out by people and forgotten by God feelings common to men when going through a divorce (Men in their fifties in general). A verse stuck out to him: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” He memorized the verse and decided that later that morning when he took his run he would contemplate it meaning he would just repeat it over and over to himself for he felt this verse was good, hopeful advice. About a mile into the run, he could show you the place, while doing his contemplating it hit. It hit him – “Why are you so down, man? You will again praise God.” The depression lifted and he knew God would work everything out so good that that in the end he could only praise and thank God for his goodness to him. Hope in God!
I know man who after yet another day spent drinking, was put on notice by his wife that he needed to get help or that would be it for them. He lay in bed that night and in his head and heart he was shouting out to and at God, begging, pleading, accusing, “Is this what you want, God. Is this what you want? Do you want me to be a miserable drunk? I have tried to quit. You know I’ve tried and tried. If this is going to end, God, you are going to have to end it.” Then, in a desperate fit of wanting to hear God speak yet not really believing God would, the man grabbed his Bible and just opened it and it opened to John 19 and the first words his eyes caught were “It is finished.” That’s the last thing Jesus said before he died. In that moment the man’s compulsion to drink was taken away and the next evening he started going to AA and has not drank since. The whole of verse 30 reads: “When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” Jesus took that man’s alcoholism to himself and died with it. God indeed spoke to the man though he didn’t feel he deserved it, and said, “It is finished.”
Jesus 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.” When he said that he wasn’t necessarily talking about what happens to us when we die. Yes, we will be raised from the dead and yes, we will be given life: new and true life free from sin and death. But, what Jesus means here in calling himself the resurrection and the life has more to do with the experience of the man I just told you about than it does with God’s future healing of Creation. Jesus is speaking of how our lives can just come crashing to an end and our only hope is for God to raise us from death in the midst of life and give us a new life in himself in the midst of this life right now. It is experiences such as these that assure us of the Resurrection and New Life on that Day to come.
When Jesus told Martha, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” he said it in the face of the horrible reality of the death of his beloved friend Lazarus, Martha’s baby brother. Martha doesn’t seem to understand what he was saying. It seems she’s on autopilot and assuming Jesus means the Day when Jesus returns and Creation is made new and God resurrects us. She thinks Jesus is doing the funeral sermon thing here that in the end really isn’t all that comforting. You know, “he’s with God in Heaven and we’ll all be together again someday.” Those words really aren’t all that comforting. When people told me that after my dad died it really made me mad. I needed a hug not saccharin religion.
For Martha, life as she and her sister Mary new it had come to end. Their brother, whom they loved, had died. With a very accusatory tone both she and Mary nail Jesus with that brutal accusation, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” That’s the “God, where are you in the midst of all my suffering?” question. I’ve seen very faithful people suffer while certain jerks have died in their sleep – not that anybody deserves to suffer. Yet again, I have been with quite a few people in their last days and hours and the sense of the presence of the Lord was rich around them. Anyway, I’m getting off topic.
The reality in this Lazarus story is that God, Jesus, did show up and he gave Lazarus a new life. Even in the face of the impossibility of Lazarus being four days dead, Jesus gave Lazarus a new life. That’s stinking dead. He was dead. He didn’t give Lazarus his old life back. For Lazarus and his sisters things would be drastically different. He would forever be the man Jesus raised from the dead. People who win the lottery suddenly find life is drastically different. How different would life be for Lazarus having to live as living proof to the fact that Jesus was the Messiah in the face of the religious authorities who had Jesus put to death because he raised Lazarus from the dead?
Anyway, looking at ourselves when Jesus comes in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit into the painful depths of our broken disrupted lives and raises us to new life in him, we don’t get our old lives back. Ask any alcoholic in recovery. They certainly don’t want their old lives back. What we find in Christ is a new life of hope, of joy, of peace but also the challenge of having to be honest and love and let yourself be loved. That’s hard to do.
Anyway, with this COVID-19 pandemic upon us, we are finding and will find that as this plays out we are going to have to change. With the isolation and the anxieties and the financial concerns and health care matters these things have and will change the way we do life forever. We are certainly asking where is God in all this. And, it likely seems to so many of us that he is somewhere far, far away and if he would just show up he could put it all to rights and we could get back to life the way we do it. Well, the problem is that this whole pandemic thing is the result of life the way we been doing it. It should tell us something that when this thing first broke out in January, the biggest concern seemed to be what it was doing to the Stock Market. It is my hope and prayer that when this all calms done that a more compassionate and community-oriented lifestyle will be the result rather than our returning to me being obsessed with getting the stuff I want.
Our God loves his creation. He really loves his humans, too, even though we are not what he created us to be. God deals in resurrection and life. Work for the Lord, my friends, for what we do in him is not in vain. Draw close to God. Love your neighbour. There’s a new life coming and we, the people of God, are the seed. Amen.
