5 Lent, Year A

Ezekiel 37: 1 – 14
Psalm 130
Romans 8: 6 – 11
John 11: 1 – 45

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, April 10, 2011.

“CHANGED LIVES”
(Homily text: John 11: 1 – 45)

“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus said to Martha. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” she said in reply.

Sometimes, I get a real kick out of the ads that can be seen on cable TV. For example, this past week, I saw one on one of the news channels on cable which was advertising a copy of the ring that Prince Andrew gave to Kate Middleton in advance of their wedding. Listening carefully, I noticed that this ring (which cost $19.90, but whose purchase was limited to “one per household”, by the way) promised to have all the luster and beauty of the real one.

As I listened, I realized that one of the enticements that was being use to promote the buying of this ring was that it intended to connect the buyer to the royal wedding which is coming up in a few weeks.

Of course, the real ring and the real wedding are the stuff of dreams….marrying a future king and living in a palace belong in fairy tales. They happen to special people in far-off places. These things don’t happen to ordinary people like you and me.

I think that’s the gist of Martha’s response to Jesus.

As He says to her, “Your brother will rise again,” she says, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Put another way, she seems to be saying, “My brother is dead, and I won’t see him again until the last day.” Martha seems to acknowledge a reality – the resurrection of God’s people – but only in some far-off time and place. Certainly, such a reality is not the stuff of ordinary peoples’ lives such as hers, and it certainly isn’t the stuff of a time and circumstance such as hers. At least not as far as she is able to understand and experience at that moment.

All of that is about to change. Martha’s life will change forever. So will her sister Mary’s. So will her brother Lazarus’. And so will yours and mine.

Turning back to the text for a moment, we see that, following this interchange, Jesus presses His point. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

Again, Martha indicates that this reality can’t possibly be one that she will experience in the here-and-the-now. She says in response, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”

Let’s pause for just a moment and reflect on the statement that Jesus has just made, that one which goes like this: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” At first glance, it looks like one of those statements that we often encounter in John’s gospel account. They don’t seem to make any sense. How can a person live, even though they die?

Jesus seems to be affirming the reality of physical death. Martha, who is the first one to have heard this statement, was squarely in the middle of that reality, for her brother had died.

Yet Jesus says that Lazarus, and all of us who believe, will never die.

In the midst of death, then, there is to be life, life which lasts forevermore.

Maybe that’s Jesus’ point.

I don’t know about you, but I need proof that Jesus’ statement is true, for His statement says that – in essence – that the power of life is stronger than the power of death.

For you and me, death is the ultimate enemy.

That ultimate enemy, death, is about to meet the more powerful, creative force, life.

Or, more properly, the One who has the power over death and the power to create life. That One is Jesus Christ.

Return with me to John, chapter one and verse one, which reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men….” (italics mine)

Here, Jesus Christ’s creative power over life is affirmed. He is the One by whom all things were made, the One who is life.

This theoretical reality is about to become physical reality.

“Lazarus, come out,” Jesus says, and the dead man came out of the cave in response.

Lives were changed in an instant by Jesus’ command, and by Lazarus’ response.

Martha’s theoretical belief in the resurrection was married forevermore to the physical reality, the physical proof, of the resurrection. So was Mary’s.

Lazarus, who eventually died in an unknown time and place after this event, could now face his own death with the full assurance that he would live forevermore. Perhaps he faced that death without fear.

The disciples’ faith should have been strengthened by knowing that Jesus had complete power over death. If they’d understood the full impact of Lazarus’ raising, the specter of the cross and Jesus’ death on it should have had no power over their fear. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on those original disciples, for they understood the importance of the raising of Lazarus only in hindsight. Lazarus’ resurrection is a foretaste of Jesus’ own resurrection.

The chief priests and the Pharisees who now plotted to kill Jesus because of the raising of Lazarus ought also to have taken careful notes. No doubt they thought that they could wield the ultimate power that they possessed over Jesus by killing him, but they were wrong.

Your life and mine are also changed by this demonstration of the power that Jesus Christ possesses to create life and to defeat death.

For one thing, if we come to Him in faith, then our lives are completely and totally bound up with His in an intimate embrace. His power takes up residence within us. No one will ever take us away from Him, as Jesus affirms in John 10: 28 – 29.

For another, we can face death without fear, knowing that on the other side of that veil will stand a loving God who will receive us into His presence.

So, we stand with Martha, acknowledging the eventual realities of these things on the last and great day.

But where is the proof that Jesus Christ has to create life and to defeat death? Is there any proof in this life, some sort of proof such as the proof that Martha received when her brother came out of the tomb?

Is there any such proof for us as we live our lives today?

Speaking personally, I can tell you that there is such proof available. I have seen it in my own life experience. I have seen it in the new life that was granted to my father, whose life seemed totally and completely bound up with the forces of death. No earthly or human power could have turned by father around so dramatically. Truly, my father was raised to new life in God through the power of Jesus Christ to save, and through the awesome power of the Holy Spirit to convict.

So I have seen the Lord’s awesome power to call someone out of the living grave, for my father was living in such a grave. Only the progress of time prevented his total descent into that grave. But God called him out of the tomb that his life had become, and new life resulted.

May God, by His grace, provide each of us with the proof we need to see the power to create life and to defeat death in our own lives, and in the lives of others.

AMEN.