Come and give your life away
“Come and give your life away” (John 11)
by Pastor Peter Goerzen
October 9, 2011, Grace Hill Mennonite Church
Jesus wasn’t there
Jesus wasn’t there that day that Lazarus died. He wasn’t there to stop the illness from spreading. He wasn’t there to keep death at bay.
Mary and Martha had sent word to their good friend Jesus that their brother Lazarus was sick. Jesus could heal him, they knew. If he could heal a man born blind, if he could restore the crippled man’s legs, if at nothing more or less than his powerful word, the official’s deathly ill son was healed, surely Jesus need only say the word, and Lazarus would be well again!
They sat at his bedside and comforted their brother and prayed for him and reassured him: we’ve sent word to Jesus. It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright. Dear God, let it be alright. They prayed, and they hoped, and they waited. . . and they waited. . . and they waited by the bedside of their sick brother who was only getting weaker.
I never knew my grandmother on my dad’s side, but I’ve heard enough about her that I’d like to think I know something of her. She was diagnosed with cancer in her late 50s. Family gathered around to give support and comfort, and to reassure. “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright. Dear God, let it be alright.” And she and my grandpa and the family prayed and prayed and hoped and hoped and waited and waited. . . and they waited at the bedside of my grandmother, who was only getting weaker.
I think a lot of us here know what it’s like to pray and to hope and to wait and wait for something beyond our power to control. The “waiting room” probably has the most self-descriptive label of any room in the hospital. We gather there, and we wait, not just as time passes by, but as life hangs in the balance. We reassure ourselves, “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright. Dear God, let it be alright.”
We gather, and we pray without ceasing, and we hope with every bit of courage that we have, and we wait, and wait, and wait in that waiting room or that doctor’s room or that lab, waiting to hear the doctors words or the surgeon’s report.
What great relief there is to hear the words, “He did great in surgery.” Or “It looks benign.” Or even “20 years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything, but today, today we have options.” What relief, what gratitude, what reminder of God’s constant and eternal care over each and every one of God’s children, and of God’s protection and provision over us all.
But I know how many of us know what it’s like to pray and hope and wait, only to hear the words, “I’m sorry, there was just too much damage. There was nothing more we could do.” Or “The best we can do now is to make you as comfortable as possible.” And then we’re left to grieve as we can, and to try and make sense of all our questions and numbness and shock as best we can – the great let down, the great dashing of all hope after all that praying and hoping and waiting, and we wonder, wouldn’t it have been better not to risk hope in the first place? Wouldn’t that have made things easier?
“If you had been here. . .”
Mary and Martha and Lazarus had sent word to Jesus and waited and hoped for him to come, knowing, believing that he could make Lazarus well, but Jesus wasn’t there in Bethany that day, and Lazarus died, and Mary and Martha were left to grieve and to make sense of what had happened.
When Jesus finally arrives at Bethany, both sisters greet him with exactly the same words, first Martha, then her sister Mary, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” which, translated, I think means, “Lord why didn’t you save him? Why did you let him die?”
And how many of us modern-day Marthas and Marys have said the very same thing in our heart of faith? It takes faith to say those words, after all, faith to acknowledge that Jesus could have saved Lazarus, tremendous faith to acknowledge that it is God who finally holds the keys even to life and to death, and we simply wonder why it had to be death. The person who does not believe has no reason to ask that question.
It’s always shocking to hear Jesus cry out from the cross later on, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Surely he of all people should know that God hasn’t forsaken him. Why this moment of weak faith?
Yet these are precisely the words of faith, the words of the Psalmist, who said, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?”
And those who heard Jesus’ cry knew the rest of the Psalm as well: “You who fear the Lord, praise him. . . for he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.”
Every anguished cry to God, every “If you had been here,” even one as shocking as Jesus’ heart-wrenching cry from the cross, which breaks us out of our neatly-packaged views of faith, is a prayer of faith and courage and hope, and if it belongs anywhere, it is before God.
God desires our honesty, even the honesty of our grief and confusion. No amount of rationalizing anything can change what has happened. We sit, we pray to God for everything to be alright, we hope, and we wait, and wait, and wait for a word of reassurance, and for what? Death comes in spite of all this, in spite of every effort and every prayer.
Why, we ask. If only, we say, and our hearts are left vulnerable, exposed, disappointed, exhausted, let down.
Jesus didn’t show up in Bethany that day that Lazarus died. If only he had. That’s the longing these two sisters feel in their hearts, “Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.” “Lord why didn’t you save him? Why did you let him die?”
Resurrection and Life
But then, having said that, each sister begins to perceive something more. Each sister begins to perceive that what is happening is bigger than a story of illness and death, and a friend’s tragically late arrival.
Martha is the theologian of the two, the one who is able to put it into words. “Even now, I believe that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” There in the depth of tragedy and grief, she believes, she perceives that there is yet possibility, though even she for all her intelligence cannot imagine what that might be.
It’s kind of like the odd way we talk about things at funerals. We gather at the graveside to say farewell to one who has died, and there, with every possible reminder of death around us – a whole cemetery of tombstones, the weeping of our loved ones and our own tears, the casket or urn containing the remains of what used to hold such joy and love and warmth, but are now simply a random collection of molecules going back to the earth, there, there we dare to say that death is swallowed up in victory. We even dare to taunt death just a little bit with the words of Paul, “Where O death, is your victory? Where, O Hades, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:54-55).
It’s something we believe to be true, especially for some future time, but we say this even though for us the sting of death is still very real, and we can hardly imagine what this conviction means for us as we grieve. Our pastors give words of comfort and remind us that death isn’t the end of the story, and we agree, but with the shock of death still upon us, we, with Martha’s mind, cannot yet imagine what this means for us.
It’s like Martha’s reply to Jesus’ promise that her brother will rise again. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. I know.” Have you ever noticed how at a funeral visitation, the immediate family receives friend after friend offering words of comfort: “He’s in a better place now.” “She’s with Jesus now. Suffering is over.” And time after time, the family nods, and says, “Yes, I know. I know,” but the tears keep coming.
Martha knows and believes and understands and accepts this common confession that the dead will rise. She knows. But God didn’t just give us brains. God also gave us hearts, and so often no amount of knowledge or self-preaching will comfort the hurting heart or fill the void we now sense in the soul, or answer the questions and longings of our hearts.
It is Jesus who speaks to the head and to the heart. “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. I am the resurrection and the life.”
It’s not just a nice comforting idea to take the edge off your grief. It’s right here, standing before you, loving you, embracing you. I am resurrection and life eternal now already. “Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world,” Mary replies.
There, in the depth of her grief, she has caught sight of faith and hope, and yet, she still does not understand that he is the resurrection and the life. Later, at the tomb, she protests when Jesus orders the stone removed, saying, “Lord, no, there’s a stench, for he has been dead four days!” She believes; she just does not yet understand.
Mary’s response is much different. She doesn’t have Martha’s quick wit or her talent for thinking through meticulous theology. Her intelligence is of a different sort, one of emotion, one of intuition. She simply falls at the feet of the one who could have saved Lazarus, but chose to delay his arrival. She has no more words. She simply embraces his feet with the same hands that will later anoint them.
She is grieving, but she knows where her grief belongs, and she looks up, and finds that he is weeping too. He was late, yes, but he wasn’t playing light with Lazarus’s life. He also is deeply troubled and angry at death. He is hurting too. He is weeping also. And that says more about life and death than any theologian could ever write. Jesus wept with Mary. Jesus weeps with us.
And I imagine there were still a few tears in Jesus’ eyes as the tomb was opened and the smell came out and as he gave thanks to God, and as he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, Come out! And God was glorified amid the tears; God was glorified even amid something seemingly so irredeemably painful. Even amid death’s stench, “I am the resurrection and the life!”
Come and Give Your Life Away
My grandmother died in 1980 after a very painful journey with cancer. There was no last-minute intervention, not even an intervention that came four days later. Twenty-five years later, as my grandpa was dying of Parkinson’s and congestive heart failure, one of my aunts asked him if he was looking forward to seeing his wife again. A tear came to his eye, and he nodded. Even after all those years, the sting of death had not been erased.
But at my grandfather’s funeral a few years back, I heard a story I hadn’t heard before. My uncle recalled how they had prayed and hoped and waited for good news, for a change, and it didn’t come. But later on, he said, he discovered that there was a change. It wasn’t in my grandmother, but in my grandfather. His language for when the cows got out had changed. Instead of being left to his grief, he found new life and gave life by volunteering his cooking skills honed years ago in CPS camp, by cooking at Swan Lake Camp in South Dakota.
I don’t believe God caused or desired by grandmother to have cancer, and I wouldn’t exactly call it a happy ending, but I do believe that God was glorified even amid something seemingly so irredeemably painful.
The Lazarus story doesn’t exactly have a happy ending either, you see. Jesus had revealed God’s glory and he had invited Lazarus to be a part of that glory as well. But you know, glory is an odd thing in John’s gospel. You see, Jesus refers to his death as his glorification.
Indeed, the raising of Lazarus so enraged and threatened the folks who were running things that they began to plot his death in earnest, and not only his, but Lazarus’s death as well. Jesus would shortly die; and Lazarus before long as well. Jesus may as well have called out to Lazarus, “Lazarus, make room for two in there! I’ll be coming soon!”
But that’s not what he said; he said, “Lazarus, come out! Don’t just stay there until the resurrection on the last day. I am the resurrection and the life now already! So much for ordinary dying from disease and illness and cancer and accidents. So much for praying and hoping and waiting and making every effort to postpone death until the last possible minute. Now you can come with me to Jerusalem, to the cross. We’re going to go and give our lives away!”1
Jesus asked Martha to believe that he is the resurrection and the life, and those who believe in him, though they die, will never die. Jesus was there in Bethany that day that Lazarus was raised, and Lazarus wasn’t the only one raised to new life that day. Everyone who believed in the resurrection and the life got a taste of life eternal. Everyone who believes in Jesus the resurrection and the life has a foretaste of resurrection life now already.
And when you have eternal life, you have no more reason to fear death, no more reason to obsess over delaying its coming as long as possible, no more worrying about tomorrow, no more running away from illness.
Rather, you have every reason to go and give your life away.
Go and give your life to Jesus.
Go and live as he lived, even when it makes no more sense than opening a dead man’s tomb.
Go and love as he loved even when everyone has only hatred.
Go and weep and rejoice with him.
Go and give your life to following him, even when death is stinking to high heaven and everyone thinks you’ve got it all backwards. Follow him, and you’ll find the fragrance of God’s glory, and everyone around you will delight in its hope and life as well.
Jesus is here today for new life. If you want to cheat death, go and give your life away. Go and give your life away.
The road to life runs smack through the cross every time. Go and follow Jesus to Jerusalem, to the cross, and give your life away. Because you’ll find it again, my friends. Entrust yourselves to Jesus, and you’ll find it again.
He is the Resurrection and the Life.
Notes:
1 Paraphrased from Frederick Niedner, “A Generation Ago,” The Christian Century (Feb. 26, 2008), 21.