Faith for Life - The Mission of God

Preached on Good Friday, April 14, 2017

Scripture reading: John 19:1-37

“It is finished!”

That’s what Jesus said.

Stations of the Cross
Our Lady of the Desert
Mattawa, WA
April 2017

Jesus was not finished, but his mission, the reason for his coming and walking on this earth was very nearly completed. The best was yet to come. But the worst part (not for his friends, but for him) was over now.

Jesus, on the cross, was one, great, open, bleeding wound, one man-sized mass of pain, from the scalp of his head to the soles of his feet. He was wounded by thorns, and the lashing of a special torture whip, and spike sized nails. The nails had torn the tendons in his hands and feet and they had severed the medial nerves in his wrists. And yet, he had to use those hands and feet to lift himself up, to take each breath. The nails held him in such a position that he was forced to use his arms and legs, his hands and feet, over and over again, to push and to pull himself up in order to take each breath: or else not breathe at all.

Somehow Jesus still wanted to breathe, but he was getting very tired. Up and down his body, the lashes of the scourge, tipped with sharp bits of metal or bone had torn through his skin and cut deep into the muscles underneath. In places, he had been cut to the bone.

It’s possible that there are people who have physically suffered more, and for a longer time, than Jesus did. But who wouldn’t say that Jesus had suffered enough?

Right at the start of Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist had looked at him, and had seen the super-human nature of his suffering. John said, “Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)

Think of what went on inside of you, sometime, when you were completely defeated and demoralized; or completely ashamed and distressed, because you saw the real wickedness of something you had said or done. Think how you felt when you were struck by the brutality and the injustice in this world. Imagine that experience multiplied by the billions and billions of lives of all the people who have ever lived, or ever will live.

Imagine all of this resting on your own shoulders. Imagine all of this wringing at your heart. Deeper than the wounds in his body, Jesus felt this.

It was sin that judged Jesus and nailed him to the cross. If you have ever been able to see the presence of sin in yourself, if you have ever known that the hurt of what you have said or done is really a part of you, then you know that you have a part in the hurting of Jesus, in the judging of Jesus and nailing him to the cross.

If this talk of sin makes you uneasy, then you should know that Jesus was also judged and nailed to the cross by the very best things this world has to offer. Jesus was judged and nailed to the cross by Roman law and order, and by the Roman peace.

Almost everyone in that world was grateful for that law, and order, and peace. It had made their world a better world: a safer world.

But the motivation behind the scourge, and the nails, and the thorns of the cross (the shakers and movers behind this cross) were the leaders of God’s own people who got involved and set it in motion.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying. I’m saying that it was the spiritual people (the holy people) who did it. The good people did it. I’m saying that people like me did it.

The best things in the world killed Jesus because they didn’t want to be found wanting. The truth is that even the best things and the best people in the world can be found wanting. They wanted to justify and prove themselves.

When Jesus said, “It is finished!” he meant that he had completed his work, and done the job of standing in for you (for you at your worst, and at your best). Jesus carries your pain. Jesus carries your burdens and sins. Jesus also carries your pride, and your faulty goodness. He carries all of this away from you, in his death on the cross. They are defeated by his sacrifice.

What Jesus has done is enough. It is more than enough, for you and for the whole world.

“It is finished!” means that the work you need him to do for you is complete and perfect. It’s all there. It can never run out, or be used up.

Jesus is God incarnate, God in the flesh. What Jesus has given to you on the cross is the infinite mercy and love of God. If you want to see God and the evidence of his love, it’s there on the cross, reaching out its arms. You are on your way to being finished when you find your life complete in him alone.

Look at the cross.

In Jesus, this cross is you.

In Jesus, this cross is the world.

On the cross Jesus makes us know ourselves. When the best things in the world stand up for themselves they shut God out and kill him.

This is who we are and what God must do for us; nailing our lives to the cross (Colossians 2:14).

This is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

Seeing the cross is seeing God, and looking into God’s heart.

This is love. This is glory.

Faith for Life - The King of Humility and Peace

Preached on Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017

Scripture readings:

Zechariah 9:9-10 (Mention that the Hebrew word “ani” means humble, not only gentle: "humble and riding on a donkey"); and John 12:12-19

There is a lot to think about here.

One thing to think about is the donkey. Jesus had a specific reason for riding on the donkey in that parade into Jerusalem. The donkey sends a message telling us who Jesus is.

Burkett Lake, North of Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
March 2017

John, the writer of the gospel, tells us what he wants us to be able to see in his gospel. John says, “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31)

Each new thing we learn and believe about Jesus, as the Christ, the Son of God, changes us. Each new experience of who Jesus is gives us new life from him, in a new way.

We learn about who Jesus is from that donkey. There is just the sheer fact that, five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Zechariah had predicted that the Messiah would come to Jerusalem riding on a donkey. So, Jesus did it.

When Jesus rode the donkey, he wasn’t doing something new. The Lord has one story to which everyone who ever lived and ever will live belongs to. It’s the story of our creation, our falling away, our new life from God in Christ, and the glory that is to come. It’s one ancient story that isn’t finished yet.

The donkey wasn’t just a donkey. For Zechariah, the donkey had meaning. The donkey meant (among other things) humility and peace, and the horses stood for pride and war. So, there were no horses in the Palm Sunday parade.

From time to time, especially during the Roman occupation, individuals had come forward, with a lot of charisma, claiming to be the Messiah, and coming forward to raise an army. They would come for war, and they would succeed in killing some Romans, and some collaborators. And then they, themselves would get caught and killed. Those were the horse people.

Jesus rode on a donkey to say that he had come forward for humility and peace. The only trouble with this is that I don’t know if there was anyone there who actually believed him. I don’t know if there was anyone there who was truly interested in humility and peace. Even the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus was about or what he was really saying, until after the crucifixion and the resurrection.

Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to say that he was fulfilling God’s plan, as the prophet had predicted over five hundred years before. But Jesus also rode on the donkey in order to tell the people who saw him, what he was really all about, and what God was really like. The donkey was a message about what God wanted to accomplish with the Messiah, because of who he is, as God.

The donkey-riding-incident was one of the deepest messages about who God is, and how God works. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. That is, Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus is God with us.

The theme of humility and peace go right through the Bible. In the Old Testament book of the prophet Isaiah, in chapter 42, the Lord speaks of his Messiah this way: he says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness, he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he has established justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope.” (Isaiah 42:1-4) There is something in the heart of God that loves quietness, humility, and peace.

In some strange way, the new world full of God’s justice (full of the work of God’s making things right and good) were (from the beginning) supposed to get done without any show of force, without a lot of noise. God’s great work was predicted, in these words from Isaiah, to come with humility and peace.

In spite of all the violence in the Bible, and in spite of the apparent violence of God in the Old Testament, I believe there is one very simple, basic example of God’s humility and peace. That example is the people of Israel. This is very mysterious (I know).

In fact, it sounds like a complete contradiction of everything the Old Testament is so famous for. But I believe that the simple fact that God called one single, little family (a sterile and infertile couple), that became a little tribe, that became a little nation that, often, betrayed God, and was often defeated, and enslaved, and slaughtered (and did more than its share of slaughtering), and yet this family, and this part of the story, has continued to exist to the present day: and it says something. It’s a miracle that says a lot about the humility of God.

It even says something about the peace of God. We should study that word “peace” sometime. Peace doesn’t mean that you will have no problems, no trouble, and no conflict. What peace does mean, among other things, is that you will be always held in the strength of a faithful, and abundant, and enduring love: the love of God.

God was in Christ, offering his humility and peace to Jerusalem. Jesus was the face of God’s humility and peace looking Jerusalem in the eye, and looking us in the eye. The look in Jesus’ eye offered forgiveness and a new birth, as a way of returning to the God of humility and peace.

The strangest thing is this. The humility and peace of Jesus on the donkey gives you the freedom to do with Jesus absolutely whatever you want. It is as if he asks each one of us, “Here I am. What will you do with me?”

There were many in the crowd who celebrated the coming of Jesus because they thought he would raise an army and lead a revolution. They thought he came to throw out the Romans and the Greeks. If Jesus failed to do this, they would turn against him. And that’s exactly what they did.

They didn’t care so much about forgiveness and grace, or humility and peace. They wanted vindication. They wanted to get even. They wanted the defeat of their enemies and their own superiority. Maybe this is one kind of peace, but it’s not Jesus’ kind of peace.

I often want to be vindicated. But I am basically a man of words. So, what I notice about myself, when I get angry, or when I feel slighted, or misunderstood, or mistreated is that I rehearse words in my mind, after the event. I imagine what I might say to justify myself, or to prove myself; or to produce shame, and guilt, and regret in others. I make very unhumble and unpeaceful speeches to myself.

I do this. And I would rather run through these speeches over and over again, in my head, rather than to step down, and step away, and have peace. For me, this is a test. It’s God’s test. I don’t always meet this test very well.

The Pharisees represent a different group of people; the people who look into the eyes of Jesus and say: “I don’t need forgiveness. I don’t need a new heart and mind. There is nothing wrong with me. The problem is somewhere else. You’re the one who has the problem.”

This is pride. Pride never has peace, and it’s always offended by the humble, and the peaceful, and the peace-makers.

The Pharisees can represent any of us, even when we love to be followers of Jesus, because we want to be right so badly. We want to be good so badly. We don’t want to see our own failures or our own shallowness.

It is the hardest thing in the world for the proud to say: “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” I know this, because it is one of the hardest things for me to do.

This is another test from God. The Pharisees didn’t pass this test, and they couldn’t live with the challenge of having Jesus looking them in the eye.

They had to close those eyes of Jesus. They had to close those eyes to keep themselves from seeing their true reflection in his eyes.

They had to get rid of Jesus, and kill him. They wouldn’t admit that (in thinking this, and doing this) they were actually killing themselves. The truth is that they were dying, spiritually, on the inside.

Then, there was a different group of people in the crowd. They saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. There were people in the crowd who knew that the blind could see, and the deaf could hear, and the lame could walk, and that people were being made new.

They were finding faith. They were believing, and coming to life in Jesus’ name.

They were the thankful people, and they felt a great freedom stirring in their hearts. It was the freedom of humility and peace, and it was something that they could share with others. It was a new way for them to live in this world.

Jesus came to Jerusalem on a donkey, and people could do with him whatever they wanted. The Pharisees, and the Temple authorities, and the Roman governor couldn’t maintain their authority, and the order of the day, in the presence of a higher power that ruled with humility and peace.

Jesus came the way he did to offer himself as a sacrifice for the sin of the world, at their hands. He simply let them be themselves, and he went on being himself.

In the greatest humility, Jesus actually got his work done by letting them do with him what they most wanted to do. He managed to die for the sins of the world, and our sins, by letting them (and us through them) carry out their sins against him. The sins of our world killed him, and he defeated those sins by rising from the dead as our savior. This is the way he is.

This is the way God is. This is the work of a God who rules and works with humility and peace. This is Jesus, and when we believe in him, we have life in his name.

Because our king is Jesus, we have a different kind of king. Because we have a different king, we have a different life.

Other people boast about their freedom, but their freedom doesn’t change them and it doesn’t make the world a better place. Jesus said, “If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

The freedom of Jesus takes us somewhere new. His freedom helps us to grow and change, and yet his freedom also helps us to hold onto the things that it would be a shame for us to lose (a certain childlikeness, for instance). A different king lets us see life differently and truly live.

Our different king shows us how to find our way through this world. He makes our values different; and our morals and ethics. He changes the way we see other people and treat them. He changes the way we understand ourselves and our purpose in life as it is shaped by Jesus.

He makes our view of the world different. Jesus makes us see our society, and our culture, and our laws, and our government, and our world deeper than what television and radio and the internet teach us to see. We learn to see to the roots of the real issues of good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice.

But that different lens, through which we see and live, is Jesus. Jesus is about forgiveness and mercy that give us humility and peace. And peace is the strength of the faithful, enduring, abundant love of God. This gives us a different life, and this is good news that we can practice in our lives, and we can share this good news with others.

Lenten Reflections on the Catechisms - The Lord's Supper

"Lenten Reflections"

Alternating during the Wednesdays of Lent, I am taking turns with the local Lutheran pastor preaching or guiding meditations and reflections on themes from the catechisms.

Shared on Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Scripture readings: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Matthew 26:26-29

I wish the Schwan Truck would start making regular deliveries again, because I’m waiting for a new bag of frozen pierogi. A pierogi is like a Polish ravioli. It’s a pasta stuffed with potatoes or other stuff. It’s good stuff. I have a taste for it.

Photos: Burkett Lake, north of Desert Aire/Mattawa WA
March 2017

I have a taste for pierogi because I have (or did have) something that you may not have had. I had a “Baci”. Baci is a Polish word for grandma, and I had a Polish grandma, and (because of her) I’m also Polish. Of course, I’m an American, too, and that’s very important to me. But I’m also Polish.

I know this because my Baci told me so; along with my other older Polish relatives. They told me I looked Polish, although I suspect that this was a love-based sort of “fib”. They also told me that I thought the way I did because I was Polish; and it’s true. I do think like them (at least a little bit) to this very day.

“Jak się masz?" That means, “How are you?”

Since we’re in church I should say, “Pan jest z tobą”. * (I know I'm not saying this right.)

Then, I guess, that you should respond by saying, “A także z tobą.” (That would mean, “And also with you.” You can guess what the other means.)

So, in a way, I am Polish. I’m American, but I change when I eat pierogi. I become Polish. All of a sudden, I become, once again, the kid helping my Baci make pierogi for my family, and learning Polish words. I become the kid who ate the food of Poland with my Baci.

This is a long way to say that the Holy Communion of the Lord’s Supper is an even holier and more powerful meal than pierogi. The Lord’s Supper claims you and changes your identity.

It tells you that you are a different person, and that you belong to someone else. If you will believe, the Lord’s Supper makes you a Jesus-person, and you belong to him.

Some of the old catechisms, the old teaching-questions-and-answers, of the Reformation ask us what are the ways that Jesus uses to make his salvation effective. What are the ways that Jesus uses to make everything that he is, and everything that he has done powerful, and real, and a living part of us? What are the ways that Jesus uses to make everything that he is, and everything that he has done, and everything that he has change our lives, and change the very nature of our world, as we experience it, and live in it? There are several ways.

Those ways are called: his laws, his word, the sacraments, and prayer. The sacraments of the church of the Reformation tradition are Baptism and the Holy Communion of Lord’s Supper.

The tradition I come from says that the power of the Lord’s Supper doesn’t come from the ceremony of it. The power doesn’t come from what the bread, and the wine, or the juice, are made of (when we eat and drink them as part of the ceremony). The power doesn’t come from the authority of the person who is doing the ceremony of the Supper, or who gives us the bread and wine. Our tradition says the power comes, “by the blessing of Christ and the working of His Spirit in those who receive them by faith.”

My Baci had a lot of blessing in her. She had a lot of spirit in her. She had something that made me different (in some ways) from any of the other kids I knew.

In God’s hands, the Lord’s Supper goes deeper than that. The blessing of Christ and the working of his Holy Spirit are infinitely more powerful in the work of changing us and making us different.

My catechism says that the Lord’s Supper is a regulation. That means it’s a rule. We might not like rules, but it should be easy to see what a strange rule it is that requires us to accept the idea that humble things, like bread and wine (or juice) are the way to receive great things.

That should make us think deeply. The everlasting Son of the Everlasting Father came by the power of the Everlasting Spirit to become a baby, who became a carpenter, who became a wandering teacher, who became a victim of injustice who was executed on a cross in order to give us great things.

His rule says that there is no other way than this. The Lord becomes a servant. The servant becomes the King and Savior. The bread and wine become the presence of Jesus: the Servant, the King, and the Savior, the Life-Changer.

It’s the only way. It’s the rule. To become great, you first must be a servant, and even a slave. This is the rule in the heart of God. This is the rule for his kingdom, in the church. This is what God wants to do, in order for his people to carry his kingdom out into the world. God wants to make you become the humble signs of great things.

This is the rule for what he does with bread and wine. It’s the rule of his heart, and he insists on using his rule to change you into something else, and make you his own. He wants his heart to become your heart. The Lord is wonderfully consistent on this point: this rule.

You can see how this regulation of the Lord’s Supper can only be truly received by faith. It’s not the rule of the world’s heart. It’s the rule of God’s heart. It takes faith to receive the Lord’s rule for what is truly great, and to be changed by it. It’s by faith.

My catechism, and the word of God (properly understood), teaches that, in this meal, Christ and the benefits of a new covenant are “represented, sealed, and applied to believers by physical signs.” (Question #92) This just means that what Jesus is, and what he came to do, and what he continues to do, can be communicated to you through the bread and the wine.

When you have been claimed by Jesus, you don’t just see signs with the eyes in your head. You get a new heart that sees, and hears, and knows. A seal was a bit of wax that had been imprinted with a symbol of the identity of the owner of the object, or the maker of a promise. A covenant is a promise.

Parents have to be careful what they promise, because a child always remembers a promise. If you don’t keep it, your child will howl the words, “But you promised.” A child knows that a promise isn’t words. A promise is a reality that they want to be their reality. The Lord’s Supper is about such a covenant-promise, and such a reality.

The Lord’s Supper builds on the promise and covenant of the Passover Feast of the Jewish people. It represents a new life. It represents a journey to the Promised Land. It represents a journey out of Egypt: out of the land of idolatry (which is deceptions and lies), out of the land of human power, and control, and prestige, and out of the land where faith is not the way of life.

Jesus said, “This is my body. This is my blood of the new covenant.” His point wasn’t to say what the bread and wine were made of. He meant to say that the new covenant (his promise) was made from him. Jesus is the promise. Jesus is freedom. Jesus is mercy. Jesus is hope. Jesus is our light, and our Promised Land.

The word “remembering”, for the ancient people of the Bible, meant much more than thinking about the past with your brain. One of the commandments says to “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” This doesn’t mean that we can say, “Hey, it’s the Sabbath. Darn, I forgot all about it. It’s too late to do anything about it now.”

Remembering, as all ancient people understood, meant to enact the thing: to make it real, or to let it become real. Doing the Lord’s Supper means living in the world of the cross. With Christians, and among Christians, as the people of Jesus, the whole world (the world as everyone else knows it) has been swallowed up by the world of the cross and the resurrection. The spirit of the season of Lent, means recovering, and rediscovering, what it means to live in the world of the cross and the resurrection.

This strange world doesn’t make us so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. We bring this heavenly world into the world that everyone thinks they know, and the Lord’s Supper is a door to heaven from which Jesus comes out to us, and changes our life together, and sends us out into the world.

Remembrance is this. Remembrance is the door by which the kingdom of Jesus works. It’s how he seals us as his own and says, “I own you. My sacrifice on the cross owns you. You belong to me. Be my presence in my world.”

“This is my body and blood” means “this is me on the cross”. This is my offering and my gift to you.

Let’s look at some of the questions of that old catechism called “The Westminster Shorter Catechism”.

Q91. How do the sacraments become effective means of salvation?

The sacraments become effective means of salvation, not because of any special power in them or in the people who administer them, but rather by the blessing of Christ and the working of His Spirit in those who receive them by faith.

How would you describe the experience of the blessing of Christ and the work of his Spirit when you share the Lord’s Supper? Has something ever happened to you there?

Q92. What is a sacrament?

A sacrament is a holy regulation established by Christ, in which Christ and the benefits of the new covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to believers by physical signs.

Being “sealed” is about ownership. What special times, or relationships, or experiences remind you that you are owned by God: that you belong to God?

Q96. What is the Lord's Supper?

The Lord's Supper is a sacrament in which bread and wine are given and received as Christ directed to proclaim His death. Those who receive the Lord's Supper in the right way share in His body and blood with all His benefits, not physically but by faith, and become spiritually stronger and grow in grace.

How do you try, in your life, to “proclaim his death”? How do you “become spiritually stronger and grow in grace” as you become a person of the cross?

Q97. What is the right way to receive the Lord's Supper?

The right way to receive the Lord's Supper is to examine whether we discern the Lord's body, whether our faith feeds on Him, and whether we have repentance, love, and a new obedience - so that we may not come in the wrong way and eat and drink judgement on ourselves.

This concern about the right way, and the dangers of the wrong way, come from the Apostle Paul, in First Corinthians, chapter eleven. The concern isn’t about the danger of guilt, but the danger of coming without repentance, love, and a new obedience. Or it means the faith to come to the only one who can give you what you lack.

William Barclay tells this story: “An old highland minister seeing an old woman hesitate to receive the cup, stretched it out to her, saying, “Take it, woman; it’s for sinners; it’s for you.” (“The Daily Study Bible Series”; “The Letters to the Corinthians”; p. 105)

How might Holy Communion create an experience of a different way of seeing the worth of your life and seeing the worth of other people? How might it serve as a picture of your relationship with Jesus?

There’s a passage that I love, about the Lord’s Supper, in the Scot’s Confession, written in 1560.

“…this union…which we have with the body and blood of Christ Jesus in the right use of the sacraments is wrought by means of the Holy Ghost, who by true faith carries us above all things that are visible, carnal, and earthly, and makes us feed upon the body and blood of Christ Jesus, once broken and shed for us but now in heaven, and appearing for us in the presence of his Father.”

The bread and the cup seem too small to hold all of this; and our time with them seems too short. Our own lives seem too small and too short.

But this is God’s rule for himself, and for us. The rule is that God makes himself your food. How will this change you? What will you do with it? Just think about that.

*Note: About the Polish quote with the asterisk: if you didn’t guess, this would mean, “The Lord be with you.”

(The catechism questions and answers are quoted from “The Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English” by Douglas F. Kelly and Philip Rollinson; P & R Publishing Company)

Faith for Life - The Lord of Tears and Eternity

Preached on Sunday, April 2, 2017

Scripture readings: Daniel 12:1-3; John 11:17-44

A four-year-old spilled his milk on the floor and he wanted to clean it up, so his Mom told him that the mop was just outside the kitchen door, on the porch. Well he ran to the door, and he opened it, and he saw that it had gotten dark outside and, all of a sudden, he felt scared.

Burkett Lake, North of Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
March 2017

He ran back to his Mom, and told her about it. And she told him that Jesus is everywhere, even in dark places, and that Jesus would always protect him and help him. This made him happy, so he ran back to the door, and opened it up, just a crack, and he yelled, “Jesus, if you’re out there, could you pass me the mop?”

When Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus, he was sharing the darkness with us. Jesus is God in the flesh, and you would think that nothing could make God cry, but maybe God understands the dark times that make us weep even better than we do.

Sooner or later we run out of tears, or we put the time for tears behind us, but Jesus, in his stay on earth, showed us that there is something in the heart of God that is always ready to weep in the presence of sorrow, and loss, and pain, and evil, and death. God has something in his heart that weeps when he sees these things: these wrenching, aching needs. Somehow, even in the middle of all the glory, and joy, and peace of heaven, God sees these things, all the time. As we see God in Jesus, we see God weeping.

How does the Lord handle it?

First, the Lord handles it with a plan.

We see this during his visible stay with us, in Jesus.

Jesus worked with Lazarus and his family according to plan.

There was a plan then.

There is a plan now.

Jesus never acted as though he were in the middle of an emergency, as though he were caught by surprise. He always knew what would happen, and he always knew what he would do about it. So, when Jesus heard about the illness, and the danger Lazarus was in, he said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (11:4) The Lord had a plan for Lazarus’ death, and a plan for Lazarus’ life.

We human beings have all kinds of wrong ways of dealing with God’s plans. We worry and we fret about the plan of God. We make other people feel guilty when we say, “If you had only had been more obedient to God, this bad thing wouldn’t have happened.” or “If you had prayed with faith, your prayer for healing would have been answered.” 

It’s better to be silent and say nothing than to mishandle God’s way of working when we talk to others. None of us knows enough. Especially none of us knows enough about God’s ways of working with other people to try to teach others about God’s ways and plans. I try to be very careful about this, although I’m trying to shed some light on it here. You be careful too.

Martha and Mary had sent an urgent message for Jesus to come, and he waited instead. When Jesus came too late, they were upset. For them, saying, “If you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened” was no different from saying, “If only you had listened to us this wouldn’t have happened.” We have these false ideas of the plan of God that we use against others, against ourselves, and against the Lord.

We misread God’s will and God’s plan. When Jesus went to Lazarus’ grave, and ordered that the stone be removed from the entrance, Martha protested. I wonder if Martha was thinking something like this: “Don’t do it, Jesus. We were there. We know what happened. We know what God’s will is. Let it go. Let it be.  Accept it. It’s all over now.” 

But it wasn’t all over. They were thinking about what could be done and what couldn’t be done. But they were misreading the plan. They were misreading God’s intentions, and God’s will, and God’s heart.

Jesus was to blame for this. Jesus always kept them off balance about his plans, when all they wanted was just to know what to expect. But that was the problem. Instead of wanting to know what to expect, they should have wanted to know Jesus better, and trust him more.

We want to have confidence in things. Jesus wants us to have confidence in him; and not as a last resort, the way we normally do.

We don’t need to know the plan. We only need to know that there is one, and trust the one who knows what the plan is.  Let’s trust Jesus.

When Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death,” Jesus is talking about his plan for all of us. This is what it means when he says: “I am the resurrection and the life.” (John 11:25) Jesus is talking about his plan to share the power of his life with us, beginning now.

None of our sicknesses will end in death. Jesus gives us a life where we don’t have to be afraid when it looks like we, or someone we love, is coming to the end. We do not end in death, because death is not the end. He gives us a life that will never end. “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

When Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he is talking about his plans. Jesus dealt with darkness, with pain, and sorrow, and evil, and death, through the plan of the cross.

Jesus died on the cross, so that the cross would be a bridge of mercy, where we could cross over, and away, from our entrapment in everything that’s wrong with us, and we can cross over to the freedom that comes from the mercy of God.

The cross is his plan to take us across to safety, away from a life that will run down, away from a life that will run out, across to a life full of glory that will grow and grow. For us death turns into the glory of heaven. Then, in some future time, the glory of heaven will turn into the glory of the resurrection.

Then, someday, the glory of the resurrection will turn into an even greater glory. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another….” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Jesus deals with death, and all the bad stuff, by carrying out this plan of the cross. Faith means trusting this cross: trusting him.

And then, Jesus deals with sorrow, and pain, and loss, and evil, and death by grieving. The shortest, plainest verse in the Bible says it. “Jesus wept.” (11:35)

Something in God’s heart knows how to weep.

Why would the Lord weep when, all the while, he knew that Lazarus would live again? Why would Jesus weep, when he knew he had the power to conquer death?

Jesus wept because of what his friends were going through; because his friends had to experience the loss and absence that come from death. More than that, Jesus wept just because there was such a thing as death in the world.

Jesus was surrounded by people who were hurting inside. Jesus knew that the whole world was like this. It’s reputed that there was a Jewish rabbi in the first century who said, “Be kind to others, for everyone has a hard road to travel.” (Philo of Alexandria)

The Bible tells us that human death and suffering were not originally part of the world, as God created it. Suffering and death came from our rebellion and conflict with God. They came from the original human beings cutting themselves off, and passing down their isolation to their descendants: separating them and us from true oneness with God and with each other.

It’s in this sense that death is normal, but death is not entirely natural. Our life and our relationships were not designed for death, and that’s why grief (much more than death) is natural. Jesus grieved because he saw what was wrong with the world, and so grief came naturally to him. Jesus looked straight into the mess we had gotten ourselves into, and he wept, and then he did something about it.

We need to grieve deeply. But then we also need to look beyond our own losses and hurts, and see how we are not the only ones hurting.

We need to look at the things that are causing hurt and grief in the world around us, and decide to be healers, if we can be. We need to look at the causes of hurt and evil around us, among our neighbors, in our society, in our world. We need to identify what’s wrong, and grieve for it, and pray about it, and see what we can do to go against the flow, to cut against the grain, and stand for something different. We need to live for the kingdom of God in a sad world which has no idea that things can be any different than they are. And this begins with the ability to see and to grieve.

Jesus deals with sorrow, and loss, and pain, and evil, and death, by asking us to believe him: by asking us to trust him. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (11:25-26) “Do you believe this?” he asks.

 He means, “Will you believe in me? Will you trust me?  Will you depend on me?” Ole Hallesby, the old, Norwegian Lutheran theologian, in his book on “Prayer”, says that the secret to true prayer is helplessness: that you can never learn to pray until you come to the point where you know that you are not able, but God is able.

When I drive down to see my relatives in Southern California, and when I’m driving through downtown Los Angeles, or in the suburbs in Orange County; all through those places, I see how God’s creation is being covered over by human creation. They have so little chance to see God’s world. They have practically built God right out of their world. Yet we are not so far away from them as we think.

The original sin grew out of a desire not to need to depend on God alone. Maybe we all take pride in some part of our life which we have reserved for ourselves, to prove something to ourselves, and say, “I can do this all by myself. Here is one place where I don’t need anyone’s help.”

If we insisted, I think that this would be fine, unless we wanted to see the power of God.

Martha tried to keep Jesus from making a fool out of himself by opening Lazarus’ grave, even though he had already told her, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  When Martha tried to stop him from trying to get at Lazarus, Jesus scolded her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the power of God?”

Martha was falling back on her ability to be prudent and practical. She was falling back on her own strength. 

Jesus wanted to take her to a place where she was absolutely helpless. There was no way for her to contribute to what Jesus wanted to do. Jesus could do it, but Martha had nothing to give. Here was a place where she couldn’t make anything happen. She had to just believe. It must have felt awful. It was a crisis.

 There is a crisis that the Lord sets up in people’s lives (as he did with Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus) where we are powerless, but God is able. And we must break down and truly believe at last.

We are faced with something that proves we are helpless. We are not able, but God is able. Then we can see it. Then we can experience it: the power of God.

There is a freedom and power that comes from finally letting God be God.

As I thought about his, I do believe that there are just a couple things we do in worship that tell us that we are truly helpless without God. They’re the sacraments.

Baptism is about dying with Christ and rising with Christ from the dead. You can die by yourself, but you can’t do anything to rise from the dead. Only God can make that happen.

The Lord’s Supper tells us that there is something absolutely necessary for our life that we can’t do for ourselves. In the Lord’s Supper, God is our food. We can’t live without food. We can’t live spiritually without the food of God. 

Life in this world brings us up against many brick walls: sorrow, loss, sickness, evil, death; and we are all mostly powerless. But the Lord’s death on the cross makes things possible for us that are beyond our power; and his rising from the dead, and his living presence with us today, is part of a plan to give us a life that will not be defeated by anything; not even by death.

Jesus has a plan to show us his glory and his love. Jesus is the Lord of our tears, and he is the Lord of eternity, and eternal life. Jesus calls us to live in faith, so that we can see and experience the power of God.