John 11:17-38

 April 16, 2006 - Easter Sunday

 I am the Resurrection and the Life

Humorists and philosophers have mused on the fear of death and its dilemma. Woody Allen once said "I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying." French existentialist writer Albert Camus said: "Neither in the hearts of men nor in the manners of society will there be a lasting peace until we outlaw death."

Leave it to the French to take his advice. The town of Le Lavandou on the French Riviera passed a law barring any more burials in the town cemetery. It's full. The law hasn't stopped people from dying.[1]

But it is not only the French who wrestle with the conflict of death and government. A letter from Health and Human Services was sent to a resident of Greenville County, South Carolina: "Your food stamps will be stopped, effective March, because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if your circumstances change."[2]

Alan Ball, who created the HBO television series Six Feet Under, is no stranger to death. He says,

"When I was growing up, a lot of people in my family died, and I spent a lot of time in funeral homes."

In addition to the deaths of his father, grandfather, grandmother, and great aunt, an automobile accident took the life of his 13-year-old sister. Ball reflects,

My sister just disappeared. And then, all of a sudden, we went to a funeral home and there she was, lying in a box. They had done her hair in a way she would never do it, and she was wearing a color of lipstick that wasn't her. She didn't look like her, and it was weird and creepy. There was weird music playing, and the whole experience was muffled. When my mom broke down and really started to cry and grieve, somebody swooped out and carried her off behind a curtain.

Ball believes we fail to face death and grief appropriately. "Our knee-jerk reaction is to try and avoid those feelings," he says, "because they're painful and uncomfortable. But it doesn't serve us well. There's a psychological cost to living in denial. When you pretend death doesn't exist, you just give it that much power over you."[3]

But whether we approach death with a joke or head on acceptance, the pain of death is very real, unavoidable and frightening. For that reason, this day is one of the most significant days of the year. Resurrection Sunday gives us the means to face the painful truth of death. With the resurrection of Jesus we know that while we are all living in the land of the dying, by God’s grace alone applying the completed work of Christ, we may be counted as in the land of the living, even though we will all die.

Finding comfort in the face of death is what Easter is all about. It is at the heart of the “I am” saying in John 11:25, the final saying we will examine in this series. But we often do not comprehend the depth of the comfort available to us. When we consider the resurrection superficially we are like consoling friends who offer a kind word, a shoulder on which to cry, or a tuna casserole when times are tough. Such expressions are wonderful, but incomplete. In Christ we have comfort of his presence, his promise and of his person. READ John 11:17-38.

Jesus had been told that his friend Lazarus was sick, but Jesus did not come until after he died and was in the tomb now for four days. As he makes his way to Bethany, not far from Jerusalem, news of his impending arrival reached the ears of Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary. 

Friends already gathered to support Lazarus’ sisters. No doubt kind words were spoken, meals prepared, shoulders were offered on which to cry. When news reached the two sisters that Jesus had arrived, Martha left the house where she was mourning and went out to see Jesus.

When she greeted him she uttered words of respect; Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yet in her expression of hopeful sorrow we see Jesus comforting her and us.

Jesus comforts us with his presence

Jesus’ presence comforts our sorrows

Jesus waited while Lazarus lay sick, he lingered while they prepared his body for burial, he showed up late to the funeral. His delay was not uncaring, but so that his presence would comfort in ways it would not had had he come and healed Lazarus while he was still sick.

His delay beyond the time of death may be due to a prevailing superstition which held that the soul loiters around the grave for a few days and only after the fourth day does it depart. It had to be clear that Lazarus was dead.

Jesus comforts us not just at the onset of our trials, but may allow us to sink deep in discomfort before he comes along side us, while the darks shadows of what appears to be the Father’s frowning providence hangs overhead. But we must never doubt his comfort.

Martha’s complaint in v21 questions his comfort.

How often have we muttered in prayer: “God where are you? Why don’t you do something about my sorrow?” Yet Martha’s doubt is ameliorated with hope, as she corrects herself in v22. Yet I wonder if she really expected Christ to raise her brother from the dead. In v39 when Jesus commands the stone to be rolled away, she protests, ‘by this time there will be an odor” or as the old KJV eloquently states: “Lord, by this time he stinketh.”

She is like all of us, we can ascent to the truth, but at each step we doubt. Still, there is comfort in our sorrow that no matter how much we doubt, he remains faithful. 

While the resurrection may only be a theological abstraction to you now, when the sorrow of death grips your life, Christ’s presence will comfort you in sorrow. In sorrow we need that comfort.

Sorrow is a young widow trying to raise her three children, alone.

Sorrow is a father walking to the cemetery to stand quietly and alone before going about the tasks of the day, knowing that a part of him is in the cemetery.

Sorrow is silent, knife-like terror and sadness that comes a hundred times a day, when you start to speak to someone who is no longer there.

Sorrow is the emptiness that comes when you eat alone after 30,000 meals together.

Sorrow is the helpless wishing that things were different when you know they are not and never will be again.

Sorrow is a whole cluster of adjustments, apprehensions, and uncertainties that strike life in its forward progress and make it difficult to redirect the energies of life.[4]

And into those sorrows Jesus comes, with the comfort of his presence.

Jesus’ presence comforts our struggles

His presence was a comfort to these sisters for they knew not only his power to heal, but his empathy for their pain. When Mary, Martha’s sister, later comes out to meet Jesus, she says the same thing as her sister. But this time John gives us insight into the comfort Christ gives. He is not a stoic statue, with stiff upper lip. He is not a detached emotionless robot, sent on a mission from God, without feeling for those who hurt. Rather in v33 we are told he was deeply moved and greatly troubled.

Verse 33 describes a sensitive vulnerability on the part of Jesus, but the words used here go beyond that Jesus’ presence at Bethany offered consolation through empathy. The phrase “deeply moved in his spirit” is used only of moral outrage, indignation, not grief or empathy. But this aspect of Jesus’ response to death is far more helpful than tears of sorrow.

Jesus’ anger is at the ravages of sin. This fury vented at the tomb of his friend shows he is no idle spectator, but, as Calvin said of this scene “like a wrestler preparing for the contest. Therefore no wonder that He groans again, for the violent tyranny of death which He had to overcome stands before His eyes."

Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus for he knew the destructive power of sin and the cost it would take to free us from its grip. Compassion lacking outrage is mere sentiment, outrage without compassion is self righteous arrogance, but in Christ we have one who is present with us and able to change us.

We are comforted by Christ’s presence for he engages our struggles in the incarnation. But at the grave Jesus weeps as he will weep again in the Garden preparing for his own struggle taking on our sins. That Christ came, died and rose in our place should comfort us as we struggle with sorrow and with sin. He is not a dispassionate, harsh God, but one who knows the pain of death, the struggles we have with sin that leads to death. 

Jesus comforts us with his promise

While there is comfort in his presence, Christ’s weeping is not where we find our greatest comfort.

It is not just that Jesus knows our pain and comforts us with his tears. What strengthens us, what Easter is all about, is not just knowing how much he cares, but what he has promised he would do. The comfort we have in the resurrection, the comfort we have in Christ is the comfort of his promise.

We see it first in his response to Martha: “Your brother will rise again.”

With veiled meaning, he uncovers the power of the resurrection for her and for us. Jesus’ comforting promise tells us that there is more to life than this life, that Easter initiates a whole new life, a new way of understanding the future and the present.

She knows that there will be a future resurrection and she has pinned her hopes on that day. But Jesus wants her to know that faith calls us not just to a vague hope in a better tomorrow, but a specific promise for change today. In v25 Jesus proclaims: “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”

The resurrection is a promise of what is to come and what is now.

Later Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead as a resurrection promise. We are promised that life nor death will separate us from God. Resurrection is the promise that death holds us not in the grave, that those in Christ will be raised from the dead. Resurrection is the promise not only for the last day, but for today. The one who trusts Christ can know the freedom from the guilt and shame of sin today, can know the acceptance by the Father, the comforting promise of eternal life.

Comfort of Christ’s presence empowers us when our faith is shattered

You probably do not remember the name Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin. During his day he was as powerful a man as there was on earth. His life held out great promise. He was a leader in the Bolshevik Revolution 1917, the editor of the Soviet newspaper Pravda and a member of the Politburo. His works on economics and political science are still read today.

In 1930 he traveled to Kiev to address an assembly on atheism. Addressing the crowd he aimed his heavy artillery at Christianity hurling insult, argument, and proof against it. He sought to remove all comfort of Christ’s promises

An hour later he was finished. He looked out at what seemed to be the smoldering ashes of men's faith. "Are there any questions?" Bukharin demanded. Deafening silence filled the auditorium but then one man approached the platform and mounted the lectern standing near the communist leader. He surveyed the crowd first to the left then to the right. Finally he shouted the ancient greeting known well in the Russian Orthodox Church:

"CHRIST IS RISEN!" En masse the crowd arose as one man and the response came crashing like the sound of thunder: "HE IS RISEN INDEED!"

This morning as we proclaim Christ is risen we do more than give assent to a fact, but to the promise that as Christ is raised from the dead there is hope in the face of death. In the darkest hour we know that the power of death is cowed into submission by the promise of Christ. 

You can have comfort in the presence and promise of Christ because of the resurrection, so that you need not fear the grave. Whether death is far from your mind or a present pain, you can know that because Christ is risen, you shall also rise. The comfort from the presence and promise of Christ comes not just in his standing with us or speaking to us, but it is found in his very person.

Jesus comforts us with his person

Jesus’ comforting person gives hope for future

Presence and promises are only as powerful as the person. What Jesus says is backed up by who he is and what he has done. The comfort we have is found in who he is.

Notice he does not merely say: there will be a resurrection, but I am the resurrection and life. Jesus locates our comfort in himself, his person, his very being. It is not just because he rose from the dead that we can have hope today, but because he is our very life. 

Those who find in Jesus merely a good man, a famous teacher, will find no great comfort in Him at the time of death and sorrow. If Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection makes salvation only possible we would have reason to fear and wonder about our own destiny. But to know that in the face of death we have not only the comfort of God’s presence, the promise of new life, but that the one who gives us this comfort is the source of our life.

Seven times in John’s gospel Jesus’ words echo those words spoken by God to Moses from the burning bush: “I Am!” God, the self-existent One is the source, the foundation, the reason we will be raised at last day.

This parallel phrase tells us not just that resurrection and life are synonymous. The description in v25-26 shows us that the resurrected life is both now and in the future.

There is the resurrection to come, so that for us who believe in Christ’s death for our sins and resurrection for our justification, we have the certain hope that even though we die we shall live. When we face death as we all must, there is no greater hope in life or death but than we know we shall be raised. Our resurrection is not some ethereal transportation to a vaporous existence. But that body and soul, we shall live again.

Christ’s resurrection is the model for our own. It will be physical and real.

Resurrection is not a wish for a better tomorrow. It is the raising of this body as new. No more will the aches and pains we face each day depress us; no more will we stare in the mirror and ask why our bodies age as they do. Resurrection comforts us for the future.

Jesus’ comforting person gives help for today

The resurrection of Christ on that first Easter morning, the resurrection of Lazarus in John 11, our weekly celebration of the resurrection each Lord’s Day morning looks not only to that future day, but the comfort of the resurrection today.

The parallelism of v25 is not repetition of the future, but the now and not yet of the present. Just as we will be raised in Christ at the Day of Judgment, so that even though we die we will live again, so also Christ is our life today, so that we, who live here and now, will never see spiritual death. This is the promise Jesus made earlier in John 5:21, that there is life in the Son. That life, that resurrection is certainly for future, but it is also for today.

We live today in the resurrection. New life has begun; we are raised and seated with Christ. As the person of Christ has risen and we are in Christ, so too are we now raised. Death no longer has dominion over us; the power of sin is gone. We are now raised to new life; we are seated with him in heaven. We shall never die for even though we will die, we shall live again.

The temper with which you daily wrestle, the impure thoughts that plague you day and night, the restless wanting more, the doubting of God’s mercy - to all that we have died and are now raised to new life. When we revert to those patterns we willingly chose that which is no longer a power in our life. We are not believing the gospel at that moment, the resurrection of Christ, our resurrection to new life is very distant. But the person of Christ is a great comfort to us as we believe the resurrection is now ours.

Donald Barnhouse was the pastor of Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church when his wife died and left him with young daughters to raise alone. It was while driving to that funeral that he realized that he had to say something to explain all of this to his girls, to somehow put in perspective for them something with which he himself was already struggling.

They stopped at a traffic light while driving to the funeral. It was a bright day, and the sun was streaming into the car and warming it. A truck pulled up next to them, and the shadow that came with the truck darkened the inside of the car. It was then that he turned to his daughters and asked, "Would you rather be hit by the shadow or by the truck?"

One of them responded, "Oh, Daddy, that's a silly question! The shadow can't hurt you. I would rather be hit by the shadow than by a truck."

It was then that he tried to explain to them that their mother had died and that it was as if she had been hit by a shadow. It was as if Jesus had stepped in the way in her place, and it was he who had been hit by the truck."[5]

We have comfort when death ruptures our life. The shadow that falls on us will not harm us for Christ was struck in our place and Christ is our resurrection. He is our life. The simple question Jesus asked of Martha is a question which we must answer: “Do you believe this?”

Do you believe that Christ has died for your sin and risen from the dead?

Do you believe that in Christ you too will be raised from the dead at the last day?

Do you believe that in Christ you are now raised from the deadness of sin, that as you are in Christ, you have freedom from sin’s dominion, that you have comfort and hope to live as God the Father has commanded us to live?

Can you with Martha speak with confidence, “yes, Lord, I believe!”