Sermon at All Saints’ Parish Church, Whiteparish - Evening
Prayer – Sunday 10 April 2016
Isaiah
38:9-20; John 11:17-44
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Martha said to Jesus
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother [Lazarus] would not have died. But even
now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of Him”. Jesus said to her
“Your brother will rise again”. Martha said to him “I know that he will rise
again in the resurrection on the last day”.
Jesus said to her “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they
will die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never
die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that
you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
This is the same Martha that complained to Jesus in an
earlier visit to Lazarus’s house when her sister Mary had sat down in the
parlour to listen to Jesus’s teachings whilst she, Martha had been rushed off
her feet in the kitchen preparing supper for their host. It had been Mary who had broken open the jar
of expensive nard perfume to anoint Jesus’s feet and wipe them with her hair,
whilst Martha had again been busying herself on domestic chores – again we see Martha
is complaining again that Jesus should have come earlier and prevented the
death of her beloved brother, Lazarus.
We could call her “Martha the Moaner” but in this passage the truth is
that she receives a massive revelation – a massive faith that Jesus is all whom
he says he is after he explains to her his true mission on earth.
A long dark shadow had fallen over that small house in
Bethany where Jesus had, on numerous occasions, enjoyed a good meal, drink and
the company of his friends Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Martha is incredibly angry. When Lazarus had first become ill they had
sent for Jesus knowing that he was a great healer but, as we can read earlier
in John 11:4, Jesus, upon hearing
that his good friend was seriously ill delayed going to him for a full two days
and there followed a debate with his disciples as to whether or not they should
go back to Judea where the elders and scribes had sought to kill Jesus. Jesus,
knew that Lazarus would die if he didn’t go straight away but explains to his
disciples that “I am glad I was not
there, so that you may believe.”
Martha is therefore quite indignant – “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” She
moans. I am sure we have all had those thoughts – “if only I had been there” or
“if only I hadn’t done that” and especially in tragedies when we hear stories
like those which were published after the 9-11 horror – stories of people who
were killed or were saved through good or bad timing. Here, though, Jesus acts
beyond our earthly view of timing. For
him, the delay is of no consequence other than as a means of showing to his
disciples, many of whom still cannot quite grasp who Jesus actually is, and to
the world of disbelievers that he is the long awaited Messiah, the Son of God,
the Saviour of the World.
We can also hear and feel Martha’s pain at the loss of a
brother. Most of us here, probably all
of us, have felt that pain of losing a loved one. When we see somebody whom we love so dearly
carried away by death it can be easy to want to blame God for taking them away
from us. The grieving process can be long and complex consisting of seven
recognised stages – shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and,
hopefully eventual acceptance. We see
all of these in Martha but she has massive Faith that Jesus could have saved
Lazarus; but a deeper healing than Martha has in mind is on offer. Even Jesus weeps at the death of his friend –
a tangible piece of evidence from scripture that Jesus understood and
experienced human grief and, even with the knowledge of what he was about to
do, it’s perfectly okay to shed a tear of sorrow – indeed, it is often
positively helpful.
When Jesus says “Your
brother will rise again”, Martha interprets this as a widespread Jewish
belief in a future resurrection of all the dead whose names are in the Book of
Life on the “Day of the Lord” (see Daniel
12.2).
But Jesus corrects her: the promise of resurrection and
eternal life is not lodged in some future event at the end of time – “on the
last day” - but is available already in the person of Jesus. Jesus, as Tim
Heaton puts is, identifies himself as the present fulfilment of future
expectations, and asserts his rule and power over our present and future lives.
Physical death has no power over those who believe in his name. Martha’s response, “I believe”, is an affirmation of belief not in Jesus’s statement or
its logic but in the person of Jesus himself and it is this belief that brings
power to his name.
Jesus then demonstrates this “present fulfilment” by calling
the dead Lazarus out of his tomb. We
read how the stone was rolled away and Lazarus came out unaided, still wrapped
in his funeral clothing. By this one act
Jesus demonstrates not only the power he shares with God the Father – this one
showpiece miracle as Heaton calls it – but also foretells his own death and
resurrection from a similar tomb. A
sign, we could say, before he himself becomes the sign of God’s power and love.
Jesus’s death and resurrection will be the beginning of a
brand new age in which God’s hope for the world becomes a reality. We are
living in that new age; an age when the glory of God has been revealed to us.
We read later on that Martha’s sister, Mary, met with many of
the Jewish Faith who came to believe in Jesus and it was this increasing belief
and adoration that led to Jesus being seen less and less in public until that
final week of the Passiontide.
During the long period of my theological study for this
ministry, I have had to consider and understand the various differing views of numerous
eminent theologians over how atonement is attained through the Cross. I prefer to keep it as simple as
possible. God revealed his love for us,
his willingness to forgive us by sending his Son, a perfect human yet also
divine to act as a go-between. To be
human himself, to experience the same emotions as any one of us, love, anger,
grief, frustrations yet pure and unsullied to be the perfect unblemished
sacrifice for us. Above all, he is
relevant for us here today – not at some future time. He is timeless – the
alpha and the omega – beginning and the end.
Lazarus, we must assume, eventually did die, unlike
Jesus. The miracle of his resurrection
was for that time and place to show the love and power of Jesus as the Messiah. The wonder of Jesus’s resurrection was to
show the love and power of God the Father – a love not just for his Son at that
time and place but for all of us and future generation for all time.
Amen
MFB/76/10042016
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