Remembering the Future John 11:1-53

I am sure that many of you have heard the story of Lazarus coming out of the tomb, or parts of it, numerous times. You have probably heard it at funerals, in general sermons, through your personal Bible reading, and possibly in study groups. If this is the first time that you have heard it, I welcome you into some of the most encouraging and heartening passages of the New Testament. At the same time these are some of the most troubling and confusing passages.

This past week, I was again amazed by the number of shifts in time that take place and the bizarre behavior on Jesus’ part. To begin, we hear John tell the story of Mary to identify her: you know, she is the one who anointed Jesus with oil and wiped his feet with her hair, even though in the narrative of John’s Gospel, we will not be told of Mary anointing Jesus until the next chapter.

As I was reading, I noticed how the verbs do not always agree with the rest of the context of the sentences and that there are other allusions to events that have not occurred. Yet we, as the readers and hearers of this story, both when it was written and today, are to remember the future has already happened.

We hear that Lazarus is sick and a message is sent to Jesus to inform him of the fact with the desire that he come immediately. Does Jesus go to this person he loves? No. He decides to stay where he is for two more days. In the background of our “already, but not yet” memories, we hear “And on the third day, he was raised up from the dead.” But wait, that is not Lazarus; that is Jesus.  

Lazarus is four-days-dead when Jesus and the disciples arrive outside the village, outside the house of Martha and Mary. When Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will rise again, she looks ahead to the future, to the coming messiah. Jesus tells her that the resurrection is not something to come; it is before her in that moment. Jesus says, “I am I am, the resurrection.” This is not some future thing that will happen; it is loaded with the history of the “I Am” of Moses encountering the burning bush, and it is happening again as Jesus speaks with Martha and as we hear it.

Then we come to that classic line all translators of this text wrestle with. Jesus looks to heaven and says, “I knew that you always hear me.” This past tense certainty comes with a present tense understanding “for the sake of the people standing here”, both those hearing Jesus that day and throughout time. This construct that begins in the past has a life in the present of the speaking that assumes the future of all of you gathered here today.  It is nothing short of spectacular how this short passage prefigures our language of Eucharistic mystery, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” We feel, more than hear, that “Jesus’ time has not yet come”, in the language of John. We are reminded that this story is about Lazarus, meaning God’s mercy.

The next instance is after Martha goes out to meet Jesus when we hear Martha whisper to Mary that Jesus is calling for her and yet there is no evidence in the text that Jesus has called her.

Then we hear the people respond to Jesus’ question, “Where have you laid him?” with the words that reveal the messiah earlier in John ch. 1, “Come and see.” Yet this time the words “Come and see” are not an invitation to find new life, they are an invitation to witness death—real death—stinking, rotting death. Again, John reminds us that Jesus truly died, but this story is about Lazarus, God’s mercy, not Jesus’ Easter victory.

Or, is it? Amid the seemingly poorly told, mixed-up tenses, and out of sequence events of this story of Lazarus, we encounter resurrection and the resurrected one who has the power to destroy death, to raise the dead of the world from their places of death into new life. We encounter the one who has the authority to command the stone to be removed from the tomb and lay it as the foundation stone of what is to come. In this spectacular way, we are called to remember, not the past, but the future. For the world of the resurrection is all about seeing the possibilities of what is to come—the realization of hope in the future, a world of anticipating  the true state of nothing separating us from God’s “Lazarus mercy and love”, that is, God’s everlasting grace.

No wonder that there were some who believed because of what they saw. No wonder there were those who had to go and tell the authorities what was happening. No wonder there were those who thought that this Jesus had to be stopped because, if more people understood that Jesus had the power to put death to death, everybody might come to believe in him.

Several years ago, a pastor I know had a young man who was new to the faith come to her office to tell her that he had enlisted and was being shipped out to Afghanistan. He asked for the prayers of the community while he was gone.

The pastor asked if there was anything else she could do for him before he left. He asked if she could tell him how to get a copy of that book they read from on Sundays. The pastor asked if he meant the book of hymns. He said, “No, that book that you read from every week.”

She said, “You mean the Bible?”

He said he didn’t know, but he would like to get a copy of it to take with him. He thought that he could read it while he was gone. It would remind him of the people he had met at church. She took him into the sanctuary where she gave him their Bible, The Message translation, saying, “This is a gift to you from us. We will get another and read it with you.”

Well, time went by, and the young man came home. He came back to worship and then showed up at the pastor’s office one afternoon. He asked, “Pastor, do other people know about this book?”

“Yes,” the pastor said.

“Do other people read this book?” the young man asked.

“Yes. Why do you ask?” the pastor responded.

“’Cause, after reading it, I couldn’t help but think, if more people read it, it could change the world.”

The writer of John, in this story, challenges us to witness the authority of Jesus who puts death to death. We are called to remember the future—the events that are to come—the world that invites us to imagine life abundantly, hopefully, joyfully, and prayerfully. We are called then, to tell the story in all times and in all places confessing the resurrection of the body and the life of a world, as yet unknown, to come. And so, in those words that we have been taught, we pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Martin Luther reminds us that God’s will will be done—God’s kingdom will come without us praying for it—but, in this prayer, we pray that we might know, that we might know God’s will and know God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, not sometime in the future, but right here and right now.

This is a precious story that grows when we find ways to share it. Today we heard Brandon join us in telling the story. With his voice, we learn that the story is not only for the old but for the young. And we give thanks for his voice in our midst, that voice of youth and promise.  It is the voice of here and now and the voice of the future. It is another voice that invites us to hear the story of Lazarus’ rising. Telling the story is not about remembering the resurrection in the future but of Christ’s presence in our lives today, lifting us up into new ways of living. It is a story of love and hope that our world needs and longs to hear. It is a message that can change the world. In God’s Lazarus mercy, “Come out!”.

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut, Matthew 5:21-37

The old commercial used to say, “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.” Today I say, “Sometimes you have to take the Bible literally, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you have to take the Bible metaphorically, sometimes you don’t. And sometimes, you have to take the Bible metaphorically and literally at the same time. Welcome to the Sermon on the Mount.”


For the past couple of weeks, we have been talking about this new community that Jesus is creating and forming. It is a new world vision that includes all of God’s people. So once again, let’s review the people who are gathered on the mountainside. They are the people who have come from all of Syria, Galilee, Jerusalem, Judea, and the land beyond the Jordan. These people are the diseased and infirm, those who have mental illness, the epileptics, and the paralytics. These people have come with their care takers and followed Jesus up the mountain.


Here, on this mount, as we witness a new community being formed, we are reminded of Moses in the wilderness—how Moses went up the mountain and came back down with the Ten Commandments. When the people, like Moses, come down from this mountain, they too, will have a new understanding of what it means to be God’s people in the world and to be a follower of Jesus. These words will give identity to the people and shape the attitudes and conversations engaging the world. These words will also shape the mission and ministry of the nascent church while developing an ethic and vocabulary for considering our place in the world.


Jesus is speaking to the people gathered before him on the mountain, and, at the same time, he is speaking to us in his distant future. He is using extreme language, setting the bar low enough so that we will attempt to live by them, but high enough so we know that it is only by God’s grace that we will be able to claim these words as our own.


Sue got her degree in economics, and though the subject of economics continues to confuse me in all kinds of ways, she helped me understand at least part of the economic conversation by telling me that there are two major conversations of economics that are always going on; sometimes they even talk with one another. There is the conversation of macroeconomics which is about the financial concerns of the nation and the world economy and there is microeconomics which deals with household spending.


I use this image of macro and micro as a way of suggesting how Jesus is speaking to us, giving these commands as both a macro- and as a micro- ethic. It is not just for the people who are there, but for those that we will come to know as the followers of Jesus. We will call them Christians. Just as Moses gave the Ten Commandments as guides and mandates for the greater community of faith, not for individual piety and self-righteousness, but for the entire nation of Israel, we will claim these words of Jesus as guiding words for ourselves today.


The Ten Commandments were given as an identifying signature symbol to the world stating why these particular Hebrew people were different. They were for all of God’s people who had come out of Egypt and also for the generations of people who would follow them. These commandments were given to help the people live together in peace with a common set of rules among the families and tribes, and guidelines for being in relationship with the nations/peoples around them. These commandments were at the same time, macro- and micro-.


In this sermon, Jesus does not mention all of the commandments, nor does he address the commandments in the order that we received them from Moses. Jesus also references some of the great number of the laws given in Torah as he talks about these new ways of understanding them.


Jesus begins “Don’t murder.” On a micro-, personal level, this commandment seems pretty straight forward. On a macro-, national level, this command becomes much more difficult. Yet Jesus does not stop with that complication, he makes it even more difficult. If you are going to be my follower, if you are going to be the people who will exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, then I say, “More than do not murder, don’t be angry with one another. Don’t get trapped in the pettiness of insulting one another. Don’t declare that others are fools.”


I need just a moment to talk about why, when Jesus says, “but I say,” it was so controversial for the people hearing this in Jesus’ time. A rabbi didn’t speak by his own authority but by the authority of other rabbis, past and present, who had influenced his thought, and with the authority of Torah itself. Many of the sayings and thoughts cited were from Moses. A rabbi borrowed the authority of Moses by reiterating Moses’ words, saying, “With Moses, I say …” or, “I will teach you as it is written in Torah (the first five books of the First Testament, sometimes referred to as the law)”. The rabbi also included the opinions of other rabbis who were in agreement with the history of the faith and in agreement with him. Thus, rabbis spoke with the authority of those who had gone before them.


A rabbi traveled around the country seeking out the brightest and the best of the young boys who might be worthy of becoming his disciple. While rabbis were teaching their own students, they offered up their own ideas derived from the arguments and teaching of others. When their students brought those teachings forward, they did so with the authority of their teacher. These students then taught saying, “As Rabbi so-and-so used to say, ‘this is what we should be thinking and doing.’” A rabbi, unlike Jesus’ statements, never really spoke with his own authority, but with that of a consortium of others.


It was understood that the only one who could speak with his own authority and without the voices of other people was Godself. Therefore, now understanding a bit about rabbinical authority, we can understand what authority Jesus claimed when he said, “You have heard it said in ancient times, don’t murder, but I say to you….”. Jesus’ words are so powerful because he is claiming the authority only allowed to the Son of God.


The people, both then and now, having heard these words, must determine whether Jesus was some sort of flim-flammer con artist, or whether he has the authority of God, indeed is God. If Jesus was a flim-flammer, then they, and we, don’t have to pay any attention to him. Today, we could just go home, go eat breakfast or brunch, prepare to take a nap. We could do any number of things that might fill our time in oh so many ways. We might even go to the mall to pick up a few things that we think we can’t live without.


But, today we are gathered proclaiming that the one speaking, one Jesus of Nazareth, is the Son of God, the Word of God incarnate. We are now accountable to living our lives differently: when issues arise that might divide us, we will try to remain friends instead of becoming adversaries. We will seek ways to be reconciled to one another, that is, we will make concessions for the sake of the other.


Just in case you think that this process of being reconciled to your neighbor is only for personal relationships, the micro-ethic, Jesus intends this is how national and local communities should interact with neighbors as well, the macro-ethic. In all relationships, Jesus urges do not be angry or vengeful, do not insult a neighbor, not even pointing out foolish behavior. Rather, Jesus demands reconciliation so that the value of the neighbor is not diminished, weakening the whole body of Christ.


This reconciliation is not “You need to change”. It is “We are willing to change in order for you to be part of us” reconciliation. This language suggests that “being reconciled to” means that we will make accommodations for the needs of our neighbors in order to walk together in Christ.


We know the early Christian worshipping community was divided over different ways of becoming Christian. In First Corinthians, we hear that some claim Apollos, others claim Paul. We know that some thought that it was necessary for a person to convert to Judaism first, and then, after they had become Jewish, they could begin Catechism to become Christian. We also know that the Gospel of Matthew was probably written in Antioch, Syria, and that the Christian community had gathered there to escape the Roman army in Jerusalem. So, as Matthew is recounting Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he is reporting it to a highly polarized, divided faith community. They are people who want to distance themselves from one another in self-righteous fervor trying to say that one faction is better than the other. They are more concerned about their faith positions than they are about what Christ has done for all of them. So, Matthew includes this divided community with all the other outcasts of the world when he speaks about Jesus’ concerns about divorce and adultery.


When Jesus talks about divorce, his words seem to be talking about the breakdown of a personal relationship (like with the person we are married to), but adultery and divorce, in the scriptures we call the Old Testament, have more to do with our communal relationship with God than they do with marital conditions. They are more macro= than micro-. In Jeremiah 31:31-34, God says that, although we have not been faithful to God, God will not divorce us. We may divorce ourselves from God, but God will not divorce us. Instead, God will write God’s laws on our hearts, and God will remember our sins no more. So, when Jesus speaks about adultery and divorce, Jesus cautions us against turning away from God and chasing after other gods for false gratification and salvation and moving outside that relationship that God desires to have with us.


These words are for Christ’s body, that is, the people gathered in worship, and address the divisions that come within that community of faith, with the many gifts of Christ’s body, his hands and his feet, his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, who are gathered together for the sake of the world, seeking wholeness. So, Matthew reports that Jesus has said that when the eye or the right hand has caused the body to sin, remove it. This is not for the personal body, although there are times when surgery demonstrates the value of removing diseased appendixes, cancerous or severely infected organs like gall bladders and more, these words are written for the good order and the overall health of the body of Christ and caution us concerning outside philosophies and faiths.


It is better amid irreconcilable differences that one part of the faithful separate from the other until future discernment can find wholeness again. In this light, the Reformation, started by Luther’s actions 500 years ago, was a better way to go than to continue to fight within the Roman Catholic Church. Although we have not found wholeness together yet, we are now able to understand each other better than we have for many years.


So, at Jesus’ feet on the side of the mountain, seated with the first people gathered there, and with the divided community of Antioch, and within the midst of our own polarized and divided world, let us hear these words again that encourage us to be the new community of faith with new understandings of who this Jesus is. This understanding affects the way we live individually, but, more than that, it calls us as one of many communities of faith to honor those around us in ways that we have not in the past.


This is not a time for warfare and separation. It is not a time of hurling insults at the people who disagree with our communal beliefs. It is certainly not a time to call those who differ from us fools thereby increasing the chasm of distrust that separates us. It is not a time of chasing after easy solutions that dishonor the value of our neighbors. These words of Jesus pledge us to the commitment of seriously engaging the problems of the community we live in, embracing those problems in a way that says, “These are the concessions that we are willing and able to make to accommodate the needs of our neighbors. These are our theological non-negotiables concerning who Jesus is and whose we are, and, if we can’t agree on these things, it might be better for us to go our separate ways for the sake of the health and welfare of the body of Christ.”


Continuing in this community God has given us, as we sit and hear these words with those who heard it first, let us come down from the mountain, to live in the ways Jesus has proposed, not only with the words of “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not swear falsely using God’s name wrongly,” but with those added admonitions that help us live in healthy ways and loving relationships with one another.


In the relationships of faith which we have with one another, let us not swear in ways that dishonor God and God’s children: not by heaven, for that is God’s; not by the earth, for that is God’s; not by the city of Jerusalem, for that belongs to the government; not even by your head because you did not create it. Instead, when we engage with one another in honest debate concerning honest differences, let us openly say, “Yes, we can do this,” or, “No, we can’t.” In this way, we will be able to walk together in new ways. We will walk together in the way of forgiveness that is needed for our own spiritual health and ability to embrace life, not to change the behavior of the other person or group. We will walk together in the new way of making concessions to accommodate our neighbor, not because it will make our neighbor more acceptable to us, but because it will strengthen our community of faith and the body of Christ. We will walk together in these new ways, being honest in our relationship with God and one another, celebrating the gifts we have been given; not divorcing ourselves from God or one another; and not chasing after the new latest thing or idea that draws us away from those relationships.


In a divided world, in this time when the world continues to want to swear by flags and constitutions, by guns and walls that will only divide us, and by the wealth and lifestyle we have, let us remember and recognize God’s authority to create and forgive, and let us remember our calling to be the new welcoming community of God’s people and our willingness to serve in Christ, simply saying yes and no in faith.