I AM the Resurrection and the Life
John 11:17-27
James Christopher McCurdy
Sing - “Wade in the Water” (once myself, second invite congregation)
One of my favorite parts of my time at the Montreat Youth Conference was the music leader singing this song… ah, Leslie…
She had this beautiful voice that put the soul of this song in your heart… I am not kidding you, when she sang, I wanted to leap up on stage and sing with her.
We all encounter these times, don’t we? Those times where we are genuinely happy, those times when all we can do is look back on them and say, “Now that was a good day.”
A Good Day… what makes a good day?
The older I get the more sure I am that a good day is just doing simple things with good friends.
Which, I think, is a large part of what we are all about here? Now as part of a shameless plug for VBS we have the opportunity for just that.
It is a lot of work
It is stressful keeping all the kid’s attention
But at the end of the day, after you have… smiles, held their hands
What is commonly overlooked in this passage is the connection between Jesus and Lazarus and his sisters. As it says in verse 2 – (read verse 2) - Bethany is described as the place where Mary and Martha live… no directions, no map… just Mary and Martha.
John seems to acknowledge here that there is a lot of history here. These are people who have spent some good times together.
Although it is difficult to imagine, I like to see Jesus this way. Jesus is just chillin’ by the pool and with Mary and his boy Lazarus. Their cool, nobody had remembered to bring any wine, but Jesus has it covered and busts out his vintage 32 A.D. from the Son of Man Vineyards. Martha, always the hostess comes out with a fresh platter of figs and dates. On her way out though, she trips on Pontius the goat, and dates and figs go flying. This catches Jesus so off-guard that he sprays wine out of his nose from laughing so hard. And then Martha looks down at the spilled tray and they all start laughing. Each of them ends the day and say to themselves, now that was a good day.
I love to see Jesus this way because it tells me that heaven won’t be a big stuffy worship service… but a meal shared with friends.
But just as I take comfort in Jesus knowing the good days, this scripture makes us see that Jesus is very aware of the bad days… As the scripture says in verse 35 of chapter 11 – “Jesus Wept.”
It is only with the good days in mind that we know just what it means when the passage says Jesus wept. The passage speaks that Jesus came late and Jesus prayed and Jesus called Lazarus out, so that we might believe, but it is noticeably missing from this verse.
The scripture does not say how exactly Jesus’ reaction was, but I don’t think it was one stoic tear. I think the simplicity of the verse announces a complete undignified response out of Jesus. Tears pouring, body racked, snot everywhere.
The song, Wade in the Water, although it brings me joy to sing it… think of where it came from…
We know these days… I think the passage does this very well in the word stench… (lazarus and the stench) the situation had a stench
So in the bad days we might fully understand what Martha is saying in verse 24 (read verse 24)
Right? Have any of us encountered a bad day and we hear a wonderful cliché response…
It’ll be okay…
God has a plan…
We think as Martha said, “yeah, I know he will be resurrected in the last days…”
Which is why Jesus’ response is as shocking to us as it was to her… “I AM the resurrection and the life.”
(Whew… low whistle) There is no wait for… there is no later… there is now!
Jesus doesn’t believe that this will happen… Jesus sees no light at the end of the tunnel, Jesus… is.
We, as Martha, confuse this salvation with gold streets and angels with harps… Salvation is Jesus…
He is the Bread,
The light
The way
The Shepard
The vine
The resurrection
Our salvation is with him who is Emmanuel… God with us.
There are no good or bad days with Jesus… we would call them good if we knew them but our good days are no point of reference… they are dust beside our days in the Kingdom of God.
And it is the present that we loose in this… there is no wait
As in Matthew 25… Jesus is there in the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the poor.
And the purpose behind Matthew 22… what is the greatest commandment? Jesus is both.
And it is in all of this we might see the barest fraction of the power behind the words “everyone who believes in me will never die.”
The I AM statements are more of a lesson than what Jesus is saying with them… they are a lesson of who Jesus is… I AM… Yehweh… He is…
As we also hear from the book of Job Chapter 19… (Read Job 19: 25-26) Hallelujah and Amen. Amen.