A few weeks ago I was worshipping with some of my students while on a short mission trip with the Fort Wayne School of Urban Ministry. We had been challenged during our time there to pray the impossible for God’s glory. Students began to ask for some pretty crazy things for the community they had been serving in. Good stuff!
As we sang and offered “crazy” prayers in between, I sensed that some of my younger friends were praying things that they wouldn’t pray for themselves. Why should we expect God to open hearts and change lives in Fort Wayne without living in that freedom ourselves.
We took a moment to look at the 11th chapter of John‘s story about the Christ, in which Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, gets deathly sick and dies. His family (also friends of Jesus) is heartbroken, and Jesus himself cries during the incident — both because he his saddened at the death of his friend and because to perform the miracle that he will perform will set off a series of events that will end in his own death.
4 days. Lazarus has been in the grave for 4 days. That is longer than Jesus was in the grave. 4 days of decay, lifelessness(at least bodily).
Mary and Martha are Laz’s two sisters. Before Mary comes out of the house where she is grieving, Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will rise again. Assuming that this meant the eventual resurrection that will happen in the future at the culmination of history, she must be shocked when Jesus tells her plainly:
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
The resurrection comes at the end of time (or the beginning of the next phase of eternity); so how could Jesus say in such a strange way that he IS the resurrection, even before experiencing his own resurrection? So strange. Stranger maybe is Martha’s answer:
“Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Christ,the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”
Good answer. She knew Him, she knew what had been said about him during the centuries prior, and she will soon be shown more fully what all that meant.
The other sister, Mary, joins them as they head to the graveyard. Martha warns Jesus about the stench. Death, human entropy. The stings-the-nostrils-worse-than-sour-milk-plus-dirty-socks-and-burning-hair combined smell of death. Jesus is not bothered. He prays, thanking God for hearing him. Then he says loudly:
“Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
The students began to name the stenches of death in their lives, pray for each other, and thank God for hearing them.
What a privilege it is to know the Christ, the son of the living God who was to come, came, and is to come. The Christ is is not afraid of the stench of our humanity. He asks us to believe in Him so that we can see the glory of God (v. 40). New life today in Him, and in the coming day of resurrection for everyone.
Resurrection and Life. Today and on that day.
May the Lord’s will be done,
Cwillz
