March 17, 2002

Fifth Sunday in Lent

“A Faith Stronger than Death”

 

Read John 11:1-44, The raising of Lazarus

 

Sermon: 

            I have a concern about some Christians today.  Let me use the Olympics to explain what I mean.  It wasn’t too long ago that we were all watching the Olympic athletes compete in Salt Lake City.  And we all know how that program works.  You begin with long hours, thousands of hours on the ice or the ski slopes, practicing your sport.  If you reach a certain level, and win enough local competitions, you may advance to regional trials.  If you win the regional contests, then you practice longer and harder until you can make it to the national competitions.  And if you win at the national level, you may be allowed to compete for you country’s Olympic team.  And so you practice longer and harder, and now you find yourself pitted against the very best of the best from your whole country. 

            If you go to the Olympic trials for your country, and face the most grueling competition of your life, and you win that competition, what happens then?  Do they give you an Olympic gold medal?  No.  What you win is an invitation to go to the Olympics and face even stiffer competition from the best of the best in  the entire world!  So, you practice longer and harder than ever.  And if you win there, then what do you get?  A very short-lived moment of glory that will be followed by one of two things: 

            1. Either you go professional, which means you continue to compete and strive and practice and work and sacrifice to set new records of performance, or

            2. you fade quickly into obscurity.

            Now, here’s my point.  Some Christians act as though when they come through some trial or difficult time, they should be handed a gold medal and spend the rest of their life on the podium being showered with praise.  We conquer one obstacle in life and we get this idea that we should be given a free pass for the rest of life. 

            Seriously!  How many times do you hear Christian grumbling about the problems they are facing, angry with life, angry with people, angry with God, because somewhere along the way they picked up a theology that said Christians were supposed to be above it all.  We start to think that if we just follow Jesus, He will see that we don’t have any more problems.  Then, when we run into a problem, we sit down and whine about God being unfair. 

 

            We just read the story of the raising of Lazarus, and we always focus on the end, the miracle, the dead man walking out of the tomb.  But go back to the beginning of the story, when Jesus was with His disciples and they first received the news that Lazarus was ill.  Jesus delayed.  Why?________  Any ideas about that?

            Did you ever wonder about that.  Jesus knew that Lazarus was dying, yet He delayed.  And this, we are told, was one of His dearest friends.  Mary and Martha and Lazarus were among His most beloved friends.  He should have gone running nonstop to where Lazarus was and rebuked that illness and made everything all right.  But He didn’t!

            Ponder that!   He delayed until Lazarus died!    Why do you think He did that?

Do you think He did that because He didn’t really love them that much?

Do you think He was saying, “Lazarus is a friend, but there are more important things in my life than him.  Mary and Martha will just have to understand, I’m very busy right now.”

 

            What about this:  Maybe, by delaying, He was actually saying, “The time has come for the biggest test of all, the facing of death itself.  And there’s no one I know whom I could trust with a test like this more than Lazarus, Mary and Martha. “

 

            These three friends had competed for the faith at the local level.  That is, they had welcomed Jesus into their home, and stood by him even when the neighbors gossiped, and the religious leaders condemned Him.  The conflict surrounding Him has already risen to a fever pitch, and if they were inclined to think that religious faith should be a buffer against all pain or conflict, they would surely have turned away from Jesus long before this.  But they didn’t.  In fact, as the conflict and struggle became more intense, they seem to have drawn closer to Him. 

            Question:  When the conflict and pain swirl around you like a hurricane, do you draw closer to Jesus, trusting Him more than ever, or do you push Him away with doubts and fears, wondering if He really cares about you?

            Lazarus, Mary and Martha had lived through the hurricane of opposition surrounding Jesus, and while many others had been blown away by the winds of conflict, they had only grown closer to Him.  That is why, I believe, Jesus delayed and allowed Lazarus to die.  Because it was time for Him to demonstrate His ultimate weapon, and to do it, He needed someone He could trust absolutely to stand by Him to the end, no matter what they saw happening. 

            What about us?  When we are facing a tough time, and Jesus delays, what do we do?  Do we cry “foul”?  Do we bargain to get God’s attention?  Do we threaten that if He doesn’t fix our problem, and do it right now, our faith is going to start looking to someone else?

            Or, do we stand our ground?  Do we say, “Jesus, my life is in your hands.  You know more about this situation I am going through than I do.  I trust You completely with it, and I know that You will resolve it in Your own time, in Your own way.  And I know that the way You choose to handle it will probably be very different from the way I would have chosen.  But I will remain faithful to You, no matter what You do.”

            Can you say that?  Have you learned anything from Mary and Martha today?  Did you not hear their words when they came to Him, not accusing, not bargaining, not pulling back in their hurt, but running to Him, clinging to Him?  Listen to their words again and fix these words in your mind when you are facing a trial:
            “Lord, if You had been here, I know my brother would not have died.”  Do you hear the faith in that statement?

            “Lord, I know that even now, God will give you whatever You ask.”  Do you hear the identity of Jesus in that statement?

            “I believe You are the Christ, the Son of God who was to come into the world.”  Do you hear her?  She hasn’t seen a resurrection yet.  She’s standing in a graveyard surrounded by wailing mourners, and yet she makes a statement like this.

            Question:  Is the church today ready for this kind of faith?  Will you declare your absolute trust in Him before you see the answer to your prayer?

            Something has happened with our prayer wall in the back of the church, the “Wall of Hope”.  We just had to add some more tiles to it because we ran out of room.  I’ve been thinking about what that means.  It seems that one of three things is happening there, and I don’t know which it is:

            1. God isn’t answering our prayers, so they just keep piling up.

            2. God is answering our prayers, and some of those papers need to be taken down and reported as miracles and added to the red book.

            3. People have been so encouraged by past miracles that we are praying more than we ever have, and the expansion of the wall is a sign of our growth as a people of prayer.  If that’s the case, then I don’t mind if we cover the whole back wall of the church and start up the side walls!

 

            I don’t know which answer is the correct one.  You’re going to have to tell me.  Are there prayers up there that have been answered and need to be reported.  I would love to give a praise report on Easter Day of answered prayers we can add to the red book.  But you have to tell me if that is happening.

            But if it’s number 1, if those prayers are still up there because God has delayed, what will we do about that?  Will we abandon the wall and say, “Maybe it was a mistake to trust God this much” or will we be drawn closer and say, “Lord, what are You trying to tell us?”

            I want to end by going back to where I began, the image of athletes in competition.  It’s so deceiving to see those beautiful young people standing on the podium receiving their medals and enjoying the praise.  But to see the reality of an Olympic gold medal, you have to listen to an in-depth interview, when they describe the hours, days, years of struggle, sacrifice, learning and waiting for their moment of triumph.  You have to see the thousands of dollars spent on lessons, equipment, coaches, renting time in an arena to practice.  You have to see the lonely times when they could have been out joy riding with their friends, but instead they were on the ice practicing, and practicing, falling, and getting up, and falling again, and getting up again. 

            You have to see all the times when they doubted themselves, but they kept on striving for the best they could do.  And even when they doubted their own will, they continued to believe in their goal. 

            Relativism is a huge problem for us in this “post-modern” era.  Many people seem to think that everything in life is relative.  They determine their ethics on the basis of the present situation rather than any absolute standards.  They determine their politics on the basis of what they can get out of it rather than any greater vision of what is good for the nation.  They determine their economics on the basis of what they want at the moment rather than any long view of what needs to be invested in. 

            Martha, Mary and Lazarus have a powerful message to teach us:  Faith and friendship go hand in hand.  Relativism is the opposite of faith.  Relativism is the opposite of friendship. 

            This is my prayer for you, the Church, today.  It’s a call to trust God when you have lost all ability to see His plan.  It’s an old saying that goes like this.  When you cannot see His hand, trust His heart.  Are you here today to see what you can get out of God, or are you here because the Lord is your Friend, and you love spending time in His presence, no matter what is going on in your life?  Holy Week starts next Sunday.  As we follow Jesus all the way to the cross, this question will be driven home to us forcefully.  When you cannot understand what He is doing, do you still trust Him?  When you cannot see His hand, trust His heart.

 

            Let us pray.

            Lord Jesus Christ, we are here today because we believe you are the Resurrection and the Life.  We have come here with many needs and concerns, many trials that we are facing, many loved ones who are hurting.  We are praying for them.  Some of them are on the prayer list.  Some of them are on the wall.  All of them are on our minds.  All of them are in Your hands. 

            Lord, many of us are going through a time when we do not see Your hand.  We don’t know what You want to do with these needs that we bring to You.  But we have come to say that we trust Your heart.  We are here because You are not only our Master, but our Friend.  You have been a faithful Friend, and we have a book full of miracles to prove it. 

            It is not Your faithfulness that is on trial in America today, Lord, but ours.  That is why we are here.  We stand together on the faithfulness of our Friend and Redeemer, and just like Mary and Martha and Lazarus, we will not back down.  No matter what happens, no matter if the neighbors gossip, no matter if the religious philosophers of relativism call us foolish and misguided, no matter if sickness and death test us to the very limit of our being, we will not back down.  We are in this race to the end.  We will not back down from the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus who has made us His own, and purchased for us a hope that is eternal in the heavens. 

            This is our creed, that even when we do not see Your hand, we will trust Your heart. 

            And all of God’s people said, “AMEN”