Resurrection and the Life

John 11:25-26; 38-44

Playing with the Game

I used to play this game called World of Warcraft. This was a computer game, you played online with thousands of people, and you had to work in this game, leveling up your character to conquer harder and harder enemies, and so you get better loot and better equipment, so that you can conquer harder and harder enemies.

Early in the game, this was in the beta phase, they didn’t have that many different monsters, so it actually looked like you were fighting the same wolves all the time, but now they were Master Double-hard Wolves of Fierceness! Way harder.

I was fighting through these wolves to get some magic thingy thing when the game glitched like crazy. I lost the magic thingy thing and died.

So I hit the support window and it summons this guy in the game who is a game master. This is an employee of the company and he asks me questions about what happened, he checks the log of what happened.

And then he hits like two buttons and all the magic thingy things that you could get from this area just pop into my inventory.

Awesome… but it totally broke the illusion of their value and of their power. This was the stuff I was supposed to strive and struggle for, but this guy can wave his magic keyboard and they just appear. He broke the game.

… and that is when I stopped playing World of Warcraft (at least the beta). The magic was gone for me.

Not like “real” life. Our “real” life things have actual value and power.

Jesus is about to break the game. Since the earliest humans, death has been the great enemy of man. The grim reaper. The end of all. It has been personified, it is captured in every myth and mythology. Death is what humans strive against, the fear of it, the fact of it.

Jesus is about to break the game.

Recap

Jesus hears that Lazarus has died. And he reveals three purposes of God at play. He says this sickness will not end in death but rather reveal the glory of the Son of God.

He says that because he loves Mary, Martha and Lazarus he will delay two days in returning, and we will pick up the rest of that thread today. And finally, when he tells his disciples that Lazarus has actually passed, he says that he is glad he was not there, for their sakes, that they might believe.

Then he comes to Bethsaida and encounters the grieving sisters: Martha and Mary. And he answers each of their heartfelt questions. To Martha he gives a profound theological insight and a promise of how he is about to meet her need. To Mary, he meets her in her emotion, in both her anger and outrage and her weeping. Jesus enters fully into their pain.

And he comes to the tomb of Lazarus…

John 11:38-44

38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.

This was the burial practice. Find a natural cave, of which there are many in the rocky hills around Judea. Hollow it out more, carve out the stone, a small horizontal cave just large enough to lay the body, then seal it with another slab of stone.

39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”

Or, in the King James, “Lord, by this time he stinketh…”

Now we come to the reason why Jesus may have delayed.

Many scribes at the time had some conception of soul and body, and the way the connection worked. And the idea, at this time, was that the soul would sort of hover around the body for three days seeing if it might reanimate the body. This would then explain near death experiences. Not-quite dead people.

But if the soul saw that the body started to rot after three days, then the spirit would depart entirely.

So four days later. Lazarus would have begun to rot. And they used perfumes but they used them to mask the smell, not embalm the body like Egyptians. So Martha is seeking to avoid a painful moment, a very real and raw moment, not to mention gross. We see she is not expecting anything positive from this.

40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

Jesus said 6 days before, this would reveal the glory of God, the glory of the Son of God.

41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”

As if Jesus had already had this conversation with God, the Father. An ongoing conversation, and this plan for Lazarus had been in play for some time… and Jesus is welcoming the onlookers into his dialogue with his heavenly Father.

43 When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” 44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

It’s a good thing Jesus called the name of Lazarus, or all the graves would have emptied out. And Lazarus comes out, probably hopping. They would wrap him, a sheet from the foot up over the head, back down the other side, and then bind with linen strips. So Lazarus is like a trussed up prisoner, shuffling or hopping out from the tomb, still clothed in his graveclothes.

But alive.

And then the story ends. There is no recording of the reaction of Mary and Martha, of the immediate moment with the crowd, the thoughts and experiences of Lazarus. What does he remember, what was it like waking up in a tomb at the voice of Jesus? Stumbling out and seeing another day?

But all of the focus, like a movie that ends with that blinding flash of light, all of the focus is on this singular miracle.

The Word speaks the word… Lazarus, come out! And Lazarus, who was dead, is alive. Stunningly simple. Anti-climatic…

Except this is death we are talking about. What has been the ultimate end of man. The unanswerable, unavoidable, unescapable enemy of all. Answered. Avoided. Escaped.

Lazarus Remade and the Same

Imagine what Jesus did here. He turned back entropy. Rotten body, reconstituted matter, back into whole proteins, blood back in circulation, disease eradicated from the body, all the parts and all the pieces back in dynamic action, working together. All of Lazarus’ brain function, brain chemistry, thoughts and memories and skills and habits, all of that back in motion, seamless and it is Lazarus back from the dead.

What does it mean?

Jesus pulls back the curtain on life and death. And says something about the very nature of reality…

Jesus declares that death is done. Jesus broke the game.

It isn’t that he trivializes the loss and grief of death. Remember that he has entered fully into the outrage and the pain, the weeping of Mary and Martha, his own weeping at the grave side. This is a Jesus who wept.

But that which is unanswerable to him is answerable. The loss of the grave which for every human ever has been a dead end… to Jesus it is just a call away.

He is preparing the disciples for what he is going to do.

But he is also teaching us something fundamental about the universe… and more importantly, something fundamental about him.

And it isn’t just the someday resurrection we all look forward to when Jesus returns and remakes the world and new bodies and all of that. That is a someday event. Martha understood the someday event. Many of Jesus’ contemporaries, the whole Pharisee group believed in a someday resurrection.

It’s only a taste. It’s only a foretaste. And it’s on a small scale, because it’s just Lazarus. One guy. And it is partial.

Lazarus’ resurrection was temporary. Lazarus was not resurrected into a new imperishable body. In fact, Lazarus died again. His resurrection was temporary, partial in that sense. But Jesus was teaching a deeper truth, pointing at a more radical resurrection and a more radical sense of “life”.

Jesus declares that death is done.

He is pointing to his own resurrection, but he has already dropped the biggest truth bomb on Martha.

Jesus breaks the game, but he reveals the real adventure.

Resurrection is not something that Jesus does. It is not a magic trick he performs. Resurrection is something that Jesus is.

It is that he is in fact, now, already, the resurrection. That he is, in fact, now, life and life abundant. And anyone who is in him now, by faith, by belief, their life is already hidden with him such that they simply will never die in any real sense.

John 11:24-26

24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

I am the Resurrection

If Jesus is the Resurrection… what is different about that? He is it now. And anyone who believes in him now is already a participant in the Resurrection because they are already in Jesus. Anyone who believes in him is already alive in a way they weren’t before, and alive in a way that renders death meaningless.

Jesus declares that death is done. Life in Jesus is the real adventure.

Backup, Saved Game

To all the gamers Jesus says “I have saved your game. Go forth and live and do with no fear… because your game is saved.”

To all the techies, Jesus says “I have your files on dynamic cloud backup service. Go crazy, make massive edits to documents, life radically and fully… everything that is you and everything about you is backed up, hidden in me”

Like your precious valuables and photo albums in a fire-proof, nuclear-proof bank safety deposit box, Jesus has you and he has you forever in him. Your life, your self, all that you are, all that makes you who you are. With Jesus.

And because of that, because he is the Resurrection now, he can also be life now. That is bigger than just a renewed and restored life someday. This radically alters the game now. Now you can enter the great adventure.

Jesus declares that death is done. And so his people can live so radically and fully and courageously, knowing that there is no risk, no threat. I’m not just talking about risk to life, so go sky-diving (though yes, it’s amazing). There is no risk of failure at life, so we can take ridiculous risks for him. With him.

My daughter is fond of saying “YOLO” to which I respond, no thanks. If I only had one life to live, the pressure to get it right, to get it perfect, to not make mistakes and have my one and only life forever marred and damaged and lesser.

Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” You get to live and live and live, and live abundantly, and live fully, and eternally.

I am IMMORTAL. I have inside me blood of KINGS! And so we can live boldly, fearlessly for and with and in Jesus. Paul said to the Philippians “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” I just win.

To the Colossians he encourage “Your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in GLORY.

No Him, Know Fear, Know Him, No Fear

It’s a bumper sticker… but it’s a good one. Mostly the last part. We have no fear because we know him.

What is the next step of your adventure? Free from all fear, what would you do?

Think of your life in all its dimensions. If you had no fear for your social life, how would you live for him in the midst of your social world?

If you had no fear for financial life, what would you do for His Kingdom?

If you had no fear of ever being lost, where would you travel and explore with Him?

If you knew, without a doubt, that you were never ever going to die, what ridiculously awesome things would you go and do?

In him we have no fear, for the death that entered the world in the very first human beings has been conquered. This is the first taste, here in John, we see it in Lazarus.

He is raised to life… but it is the same mortal life. Partial, temporary.

But we are already walking in the Resurrection, in the Life, in the Lord Jesus.