I AM the Resurrection and the Life

A sermon on the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11),
preached By Rev. Brian Lee October 19, 2008
AUDIO

Death is an awesome power in our lives. Mortality — the certainty of our physical death — hangs over each and every one of us, just as it has hung over every man and woman that has ever walked the face of the earth. It is a true universal fact of human existence.

From the first, man has fled death with a dread fear, but in the modern world, we have become more adept at suppressing our mortality. Even the energy and resources we invest in trying to forget, to ignore our mortality testifies to its continued fearful power. We have banished the bodies of the dead from our homes, from our churchyards, and more and more, even from their own funerals. We have pushed our mortality further and further over the horizon of the future, all but eradicating the pervasive death of infants, the pervasive death of mothers in childbirth, the pervasive death of the ill. Indeed, a serious illness that did not lead to death was a relative rarity before the last century.

While death has receded from our day to day existence, it is useful, and most Christian, to name the name of death. The catechism teaches us that we must know how great our sin and misery is in order to enjoy the comfort of the Gospel — the only true comfort afforded us in this world. We are not instructed to love our lives, to live joy-filled lives, or to have our best lives now. We are instructed to know our sin and misery, to know how great, how powerful, how awesome a thing it is. At the end of the day, all the little fears, wants, and uncertainties that infest our modern existence are masking one great fear — the fear of death. Men seek power, wealth, fame, to ward off death. Women seek security, possessions, relationships to ward off death. Even our children seek our affection, our proximity, our care, to keep away death.

The Good News, brothers and sisters, is that Jesus came to conquer death. His victory over sin was not a clinical exercise. This victory was achieved through a most gruesome battle. It may have resulted in the forensic, courtroom verdict of “not guilty” — a verdict that by law is our very own possession —  but that verdict was the judgment of a referee raising the hand of a bloodied and beaten, though victorious, boxer. In our text today, on the very eve of that fateful Passover when he would do battle, our champion is confronted with his foe. As Calvin noted on this text, “Christ does not come to the sepulcher of his friend Lazarus as an idle spectator, but like a wrestler preparing for a contest. Therefore no wonder that He groans yet again, for the violent tyranny of death that He had to overcome stands before his eyes.”

Death, stinking, wretched death, is on display for us in this text. Dear Christian, behold your death in this text. See your fear in the fear of the sisters: “Lord, hurry, the one you love is ill.” Death is creeping even now upon our loved ones. See your fear in the fear of the disciples: “Lord, the Jews are seeking to stone you… don’t go to Judea… if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” See their resignation in the face of death: “Let us also go with Him, that we may die with him.”

But the most remarkable picture of death’s dread power is found in our Lord himself. It has been remarked that this text portrays the emotional life of our Lord like no other, even, if possible, more starkly than that dread night passed in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Neither the translation before us nor our prevailing, romantic view of Christ allows us to fully grasp the picture that this text is painting. When Jesus sees the weeping of his friend Mary, and the weeping of the mourners — and we should picture here the ululating howl of middle-eastern mourners that you have perhaps seen on television news — when Jesus sees this weeping, our text says he was “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled,” but these words barely capture what could more accurately be described as a visceral rage and anger of our Lord in the face of death. The greek word here is used outside of the bible for the snorting and whinnying of horses, it is an expression of indignation, even disgust.

In the history of the church, many have effectively stripped Jesus of human emotion, under the influence of the classical view that the passions were inherently uncontrollable and therefore sinful. If our Lord did indeed “suffer” in his passion, as the word implies, then he did so stoically, impassively, as one whose knowledge of the greater good to be gained allowed him to coldly calculate the benefits of that suffering. And fear, certainly, would be unseemly to the divinity of our Lord. Yet Jesus is fully human, and he experienced all those emotions that are so characteristic of our humanity, yet without sin, and he did so “in his spirit,” that is, with a proper degree of self-control and appropriate outward expression, and outward expression which included tears of great lament. Indeed, regardless how measured or controlled the expression of his grief and rage may have been, it was noted by those Jews who observed him: “See how he loved him!”

Note that this reaction of our Lord is not primarily an outburst of sympathy, though that is doubtless on display here as well. But it is not ultimately the grief of his loved ones that drives our Lord to grief; it is death itself. John notes emphatically that our Lord again was deeply moved when he came to the tomb, a cave which had been covered by a stone. This cave contained a dead man, a man four days dead, and it probably stunk. Jesus confronts, and is enraged by, death and the destroyer who brings it. The emotion is further expressed in his loud exclamation, “Lazarus! Come out.” Again, this is no polite request, but the dread scream of a parent whose child is toddling into the path of oncoming traffic. It is the emotional scream that empties ones lungs before you know what has happened. Lazarus! Get out of there!

Not only does this last and greatest sign that Jesus performed on the eve of the Passover prefigure his own resurrection, but it graphically portrays our own salvation. Jesus, moved by love, turns toward the grave on our behalf, he breathes in the stench of our death, and breathes out the very breath of life upon us. We are dead in our sins and trespasses, but he calls us forth; the power of his voice — no touch is required — creates anew life in us, and we are bidden to unbind ourselves from all that keeps us in the grave. He rages against our foe, and in his victory he swallows death whole, swallows it down, removes the sting of sin and its power in the law, tearing up its dread curse against us, setting it aside. And this connection between the resurrection of Lazarus and Christ’s own death and resurrection is emphasized by the reaction of the chief priests and Pharisees, who not only plot in concrete to kill him as a result of this sign, but also prophesied unknowingly in their councils that Jesus would die for the nation and to gather up all the children of God who are scattered abroad.

Now, if the climax of this story is Jesus’ emotional encounter with death on the eve of his own death, all of the tension and narrative advancement of the story is bound up in the matter of Christ’s delay, and the glorification of God through Lazarus’ death and resurrection. Mary and Martha send for Jesus when Lazarus falls ill, and his delay is explained by his knowledge that the sickness is not unto death, but unto the greater glory of God and the Son of Man. His eventual decision to finally go to Judea… Bethany being a short walk from Jerusalem, is misunderstood as a death wish by his disciples, and triggers another discussion of the necessity of laboring while it is daylight. Both sisters come to Jesus with the same expression of faith wrapped in a complaint: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Why did Jesus delay?  He tells his disciples, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.” Once again, Jesus signs are performed so that we may believe, and they are recorded for us by John for this same reason. The death and resurrection of Lazarus present for us the belief, and unbelief, of his disciples, whose own faltering faith is only gradually coming to full expression. Even Martha’s expression of confidence “…but even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you,” is undermined by her doubting of Jesus’ knowledge of the situation, and his power to save him even by remote command, as he had demonstrated elsewhere. The ambiguity of Martha’s faith is heightened by Christ’s claim, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha’s confidence in the final resurrection on the last day is not the final expression of faith that Jesus is looking for. The death of Lazarus is ultimately the opportunity for Jesus to reveal himself as something far more than a prophet of the coming Day of the Lord: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Indeed, this is the central teaching of this text, another great “I Am” statement of Jesus where he expresses the deep truth that he not only brings with him resurrection and life, but he IS resurrection and life. Jesus, the long-expected Messiah, brings the resurrection, brings life, in a way that no Jew could comprehend.

Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?

This is Jesus’ question for Martha, and it is his question for us. Note these two parallel statements both affirm the same truth, though from different perspectives. The believer who dies, yet shall live; the living believer shall never die. There is a future resurrection, yes, and Lazarus’ resurrection is a token and guarantee of that. Even more, Jesus’ own resurrection. But Jesus power is far greater than that. The one who believes will indeed die a physical death, but in a far more important sense the believer shall never die. The sickness unto death — the sickness of sin that haunts us every living moment from the grave that awaits us — the sickness unto death has been defeated. Lazarus sickness physically killed him, yet it was not unto death, it was not irreversible, for his sickness of sin had already met its match, the great physician had conquered it. In his apocalypse, John writes of this second death, the death that swallows the damned as they go down to judgment, and he writes that this death has no power over us.

Jesus was delivered up because of our transgressions, but he was raised because of our justification, according to the Apostle. Because of our justification. Because of his victory over sin, the grave could not hold him. Because of his victory over sin, the grave could not hold Lazarus — our Lord’s command was undergirded by the power of the creator, yes, but more importantly by the power of the redeemer. Lazarus, you must come forth. Lazarus, the grave clothes do not, cannot, bind you.

Dear, Beloved, Christian:

Death — horrible, stinking, wretched death — rightfully grieved and feared, is no match for your Lord.