Resurrection: A Lenten Meditation on John 11

Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

 And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there,

to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.

Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus,

unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

Then when Jesus came, he found that he

had lain in the grave four days already.

Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:

And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary,

 to comfort them concerning their brother.

Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming,

went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.

Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here,

my brother had not died. But I know, that even now,

whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.

Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall

rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life:

he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

Believest thou this?

She saith unto him, Yea, Lord:

I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God,

which should come into the world.

The Gospel text in John 11 for this Sunday brings us face to face with two great realities that every human being will encounter eventually:  life and death.  Everyone who is born into this world is born broken and sinful, so that everyone from the moment of their conception is moving toward their inevitable demise.  Every giggling new born baby, every rambunctious child, every rebellious adolescent, every stalwart adult in the height of their strength and intellect—every person of every tribe and tongue, race and gender, will eventually die.  All our friends, our family, our neighbors… those whose company we adore, and those who strain our polite civility, every one of them will eventually die.  Such is the story of Lazarus.

John tells us that Jesus and Lazarus were particularly close in their affections, as were they with Lazarus’ sisters Mary and Martha.  They had seen Jesus do many wonderful things, heard Him teach with divine authority, and as best they could wrap their minds around the idea of God Made Flesh and dwelling among them, they knew Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, who was foretold by the Prophets centuries before.  They were partners in His ministry, often traveled with Him, and knew Him as well as any of His disciples.  Yet knowing Jesus and having His close friendship did not stop Lazarus from dying of illness.  In fact, Jesus goes so far as to say that He is glad He was not there to heal Lazarus, so that all His disciples might come to believe more fully who He truly was.  Having been told of Lazarus’ grave illness and knowing of his imminent death, Jesus lingered long enough that when He arrived where Mary and Martha were grieving, Lazarus had been in the grave for four days.

That timing was significant.  Jewish folklore of the time (not Scripture) suggested that the spirit of a dead person could linger around a body for up to three days, and by waiting until the fourth day, Jesus ensured that what He was about to do could not be mistaken by superstitious people as a fluke.  He engaged first Martha and then Mary, finding them in their great grief of having lost their beloved brother, and perhaps to a certain extent, dissatisfied with Jesus having not prevented it.  They knew that Jesus was a healer and a prophet, a miracle worker who had prevented so many others from succumbing to their ailments, and they knew that if Jesus had been there when Lazarus was sick, Lazarus would have been healed, too.  What they could not yet see through their tear blurred eyes and wounded hearts, was that life is more than what we see a person pass through from birth to the grave.  Life, true life, persisted beyond physical death, and was rooted in the Author of Life Himself:  Jesus Christ.

After Jesus was led by Martha and Mary to the cemetery where Lazarus was laid four days prior, He showed them what real life looked like by calling Lazarus from his tomb by the power of His Word.  Lazarus became a living symbol to the Jewish authorities and the pagans all around that Jesus was way more than they had anticipated—that He was, without a doubt, in His very Person and by His very command, the Resurrection and the Life.  Everyone who abides in Him lives even though he dies, just as Jesus would live despite the tortures of His Cross and grave.  Everyone grafted into Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection by His grace through faith in Him, even though they would pass through sickness, death, and the grave, would have a life that transcended every suffering of this world, and was kept safe for eternity in Jesus.  Now added to the two great truths every person knows by experience as life and death, is the third great truth brought forth by Jesus:  Resurrection and Eternal Life.

Such truth changes those who embrace it.  A person who lives in this world only trying to flee an inescapable death, lives in fear and torment of mind all his days, knowing that despite the best human efforts of science and progress, death comes to us all as a consequence of our Fall into sin, death, and the power of the devil.  Somewhere deep down, the person who clings to temporal life knows their clock is winding down until death comes to claim them, and hell’s gaping maw swallows them into eternal darkness.  It is a sad and frenetic life, plagued by terror and only briefly satisfied by numbing the mind and spirit through temporary delights.  But those who know the third great truth, who live in this world trusting that their life is hidden in Christ unto eternal life, need fear nothing.  They walk as those who have already passed through the grave in their Baptism, been fed with the immortal Bread from Heaven in the Lord’s Supper, and heard the everlasting Gospel of forgiveness, life, and salvation in Jesus’ Absolution of their sins.  They live in this world unafraid of the grave, of the devil, of death, and even of hell, because the same Jesus who gave them eternal life by His Word, already demonstrated His victory over all these enemies of mankind.  Such ones who live by grace through faith in the Son of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit given to them in their new birth from above, walk as immortals among men, unafraid of fire, or sword, or persecution, or politics, or sickness, or war, or riot, or revolt, or the rising and falling of civilizations.  To them has come the love of God in Christ Jesus which casts out all fear, because in Jesus there is nothing left to fear anywhere in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the dark regions of hell below.  Like Jesus, they can weep with the mourning, suffer with the suffering, work with the laboring, study with the studious, debate with the debaters, confer with the counselors, rise up to walk with the noblest and stoop down to sit with the lowliest.  Like Jesus, they pass through this world and this life as those who are not chained by it, not afraid of it, and yet in love pursue everyone and everything as God sends them forth to serve.  They are the ones who pass through the temporal things, without losing sight of those unshakable eternal realities.

Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, and everyone who is bound to Him by grace through faith, who abides in His Word of Law and Gospel, lives forever.  He is the Truth and the reality which will change you, free you from the bondage of fear and hatred, and raise you up in boundless, inexhaustible love.  He is the Light of the World which will shine through you into the darkness of your broken, fearful, and enslaved neighbors, that they too might be freed by Jesus and live forever.  Hear Him as He calls to you today, that you might leave behind the darkness and despair of unbelief, and live forever.  Amen.

Let No Man Deceive You With Vain Words: A Lenten Meditation on Ephesians 5

Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;

And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and

hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God

for a sweetsmelling savour.

But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness,

let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;

Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient:

but rather giving of thanks.  For this ye know, that no

whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who

is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Let no man deceive you with vain words:

for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon

the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore

partakers with them. For ye were sometimes

darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

(For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)

Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship

with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.  

For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light:

For whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith,

Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,

and Christ shall give thee light.

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,

Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

St. Paul strikes a somber chord in the fifth chapter of his letter to the church at Ephesus, but it is one worth listening too, especially in Lent.  He begins the chapter by imploring the Ephesian Christians to respond to the love of Christ poured out for them, by living lives conforming to Christ and His Word.  This sacrificial, selfless, divine love is the beginning of the Christian’s faith and new life in Jesus, and also the pattern into which the Christian is called to be conformed through constant faith and repentance.  This new life which the Christian receives from Jesus, continues to flow from Jesus as He works through His Word and Spirit to sanctify every believer grafted into Him by grace through faith.  This life of faith given freely to the Christian by grace, continues to work itself out in love of God and neighbor, turning from the ways of darkness and back to the ways of Jesus.

Against this backdrop, Paul makes a clear distinction about the world which does not live by grace through faith in Christ alone—a world which does not hear or live by His Word.  It is a world marked by fornication, uncleanness, and covetousness, of filthiness, foolishness, whoremongering, and idolatry.  The world marked by these things is consumed by evil, deaf and blind to all that God speaks and shows forth through His Word and Spirit.  Such evil and corruption has but one end, which is the eternal judgment of hell.  It is a world enslaved willfully to the evil one, delighting in the works of violence and abuse, of corruption and hypocrisy.  Such a world persecutes the saints of God because it hates Him and His Word, refuses the grace He offers through His Son, and clings to its own hapless idolatry even as it decays into ever lower levels of debauchery and ruin.  Death, destruction, and insanity are the currency of this fallen realm, and it will end in the fires of divine judgment on the Last Day.

Keeping these two realities clearly in focus—the Kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of Darkness—Paul makes a very pointed warning:  don’t be deceived back into the Kingdom of Darkness, lest you become a partaker of its eternal judgment.  There is no halfway between the path which leads to life and the one which leads to death, no middle ground upon which to stand and be a neutral observer.  The path of life is marked by the Light of Christ and His Word, calling all people to repent, believe, and live forever in His grace by faith in Him; the path of death is marked by the darkness of the evil one, calling all people into the brutal slavery of self-idolatry, and eternal separation from the God of love, sacrifice, compassion, and mercy.  As Christ teaches, where a person’s heart is, there is his treasure:  either set by faith upon Christ and His eternal life, or set by unbelief upon the empty promises of the evil one unto death and eternal despair.  This is the judgment spoken of by Jesus when He says that He has come into the world that those who think they see by fallen human reason may be shown how blind they really are, and that those who are blind might be made to see eternal Truth as He opens their eyes by faith in His Word.

Let no one deceive you with vain words about the reality in which you live.  If you give yourself to the ways of darkness, you will die under the same judgment as the evil one.  If you give yourself to Christ, you will live forever in Him, because He has already taken your judgment upon Himself and given to you His forgiveness, life, and salvation as His free gift of grace.  No matter the trappings of the pompous liar who speaks vainly against these realities—the fancy clothes, the prestigious degrees, the positions of honor, the baubles of popularity and wealth—there is no empty speech or self-congratulating book which can change it.  What is real and what is true is inseparable and inescapable, rooted in the very reality and truth of God.

But what is the remedy for the one who finds himself on the path of death and darkness, leading to eternal perdition?  What hope is there for the fornicator, the covetous, the idolater, the whore and the whoremonger, the violent, the abuser, the foolish, the adulterer, the hypocrite, or whatever other sin has overtaken the sons of men?  For the non-Christian, the call is clear from Christ through His Apostles:  repent, believe, and be baptized everyone one of you for the forgiveness of your sins.  For the Christian who has wandered back into the ways of darkness, Christ and His Apostles call you back through the same faith and repentance, offering the Absolution which refreshes the grace given to you in your Baptism.  And to everyone the warning goes forth that there is no safety or comfort in sin, no peace or protection in the ways of darkness which lead to hell.  To all, the call to faith and repentance is brought forth with the passionate urgency of divine love which desires no one to be lost, but that all people might come to a saving knowledge of the Truth. 

And so the Word of Christ calls to you with the greatest of urgency even today, that wherever you find yourself and in whatever troubles you have become ensnared, there is forgiveness, life, and salvation in Him… and in Him alone.  Hear Him as He calls to you.  Repent, believe, and live.  Amen.