Morning. Let me just pray quickly. Lord Jesus, we invite you now to come pour out your spirit upon us to draw close to us. And we thank you. Amen.
It's a cheery note that this morning's gospel reading ends on. I'm going to speak to the whole chapter. I don't want anybody to be left hanging that this is the punchline for the sermon.
Let's go follow Jesus and die with him. There's more to this chapter. This message this morning is a great passage. John is a great storyteller. He's a master of literary devices.
When I was in seminary, I kind of decided John was my favorite gospel because of this, because he is such a good storyteller.
And anytime a writer of a gospel slows down the narrative, it's a signal for us that we should slow down too and pay close attention.
That's what's happening in John 11.
So Tommy preached a message on John 11 at a service of a lament a few weeks ago. If it was recorded, I'd go give it a listen. It was great.
This morning's message is about how Jesus was encountered by Martha and Mary, Lazarus, his disciples, and even by his critics.
It's also a passage that's highly relevant to healing prayer, a new ministry offering here at Advent.
And I say this because healing prayer is always about encountering Jesus.
And I tell people that the goal of healing prayer, whether it's inner or emotional healing or physical healing, is that people walk away feeling loved.
And today's passage has three acts like all good dramas.
Absence, presence, and resurrection.
So, act one, absence.
This drama opens by setting the scene.
Lazarus, a close friend of Jesus, is sick with a deadly illness.
And Lazarus' sisters, who are also close friends of Jesus, ask him to come help.
And in this first act, there are two groups of people who experience Jesus.
Mary and Martha and Jesus' disciples.
I want to talk about Mary and Martha first.
They're not explicitly mentioned.
They don't show up in this first part, but they're there.
And their experience of Jesus is as silent and absent.
It's one of the hardest moments of their lives.
Their brother died.
He's sick, and he's on the verge of death.
And they call upon Jesus.
They send him a message asking him for help.
In effect, they pray to Jesus, come help.
While John doesn't say one way or another for sure, Jesus doesn't seem to answer them.
He doesn't send a message back to them or in any way even acknowledge their message.
He's silent in response to their cries for help.
And equally hard, Jesus doesn't answer their prayer in substance.
Martha and Mary ask Jesus to come heal their brother, and he doesn't.
What's already a painful and grief-filled moment for Martha and Mary is made worse by Jesus' silence and absence.
The reason they sent a message to Jesus in the first place is because they knew him.
They knew what he was like and what he could do.
They knew he eagerly wants to heal and that he can heal anything.
And so to send a message in faith and confidence that their friend would come and heal their brother like they knew he would,
and then for Jesus not to come would have been very difficult.
I tried to imagine what they were telling Lazarus during this moment while he was ill.
They were probably telling him things like, don't worry, we sent for Jesus.
It's going to be okay.
Hold tight.
And then as they watched Lazarus get more and more sick and decline,
as Lazarus got worse, there was no word from Jesus.
He wasn't showing up.
This was devastating.
Devastating to watch their brother for sure, but also as they struggled to know what to say,
what answer to give him when he said, is he here yet?
What hope to give?
And then he died.
It would be hard to quantify the depth and severity of pain that Martha and Mary felt at that moment.
When deep suffering sets upon us, and suffering is a thing that does befall us,
everything gets thrown into question.
We thought Jesus was our friend, that he cared about us.
So why didn't he respond?
We thought Jesus was the most loving and kind person we've ever met, maybe ever.
And that limitless power works through him for good.
So what happened?
Is he not that kind or good?
Was this too much for him and his power?
What if Jesus isn't who he said he is?
And if that's true, maybe God isn't either.
For any of us who have suffered deeply, even traumatically,
we even question whether anything is good,
whether life, the universe, or reality.
Suffering in the silence and absence of God is what Fleming Rutledge calls godless.
The silence and absence of God in suffering carries with it the sense that we're over here,
in our pain, apart from God, and that God is over here,
with all who he says he is, and everything he made,
and everything he's supposed to be about.
It carries with it the sense that our pain and suffering is actually what's most real.
In this first act, we see Martha and Mary.
We hear about them.
We know what's going on with them.
But we also see Jesus as disciples and their experience with him.
In this first act, we hear, we learn some things about what's happening on Jesus' side
from what John says and what Jesus says.
One thing John tells us is that although Jesus loved the sisters and Lazarus,
he chose to stay put.
It's kind of interesting.
It's an interesting phrase.
It's one of the few times when John explicitly says about Jesus that he loves someone.
In most of his gospel,
he shows Jesus' love by what he says to people and how he interacts with them.
Jesus staying put in those circumstances was significant enough for John
that he had to go out of his way to underscore,
despite how it looks, Jesus did love his friends.
And he underscored this not just by stating this explicitly,
but by naming each of these friends individually when he said so.
John wanted us to see this and have this in mind.
Jesus also tells his disciples a few things.
When the news of Lazarus' illness arrives,
he says it won't lead to death,
but will bring glory to God and to the Son of God.
And then later he says he's going to go wake up Lazarus,
a euphemism referring to Lazarus' death.
Despite all that,
despite even how Jesus comes out and says explicitly,
Lazarus died,
the disciples just aren't tracking with him.
John tells us as his readers that Jesus loved his friends,
even though he stayed put,
which was confusing.
And that creates this disconnect between us and the disciples.
What we are told,
the disciples don't seem to understand.
And worse,
they're not focusing on what Jesus is trying to focus on,
about Lazarus' illness and going to wake him up.
What they do focus on is what Jesus said,
which was eventually,
let's go to Judea.
So he can wake up Lazarus,
but the disciples only hear,
let's go to Judea.
And they have a freak out moment.
Their immediate response is,
why are you doing that?
Why would you go there?
There are people there trying to kill you.
And when they decide as a group,
it is time to go,
Thomas says,
the verse we ended the passage on,
let's go too so we can die with him.
So I always like to imagine the disciples in these little moments,
somebody should have looked at Thomas and kind of said to him,
enough with the good ideas today,
Thomas.
I kind of liked you better when you were doubting,
Thomas,
you're quieter.
The thing that the disciples missed was that Jesus said Lazarus' illness
would bring glory to God and the Son of God.
We should pause on this for a sec.
What's Jesus saying?
What does he mean?
Why would he even say this?
It's probably good to say maybe what Jesus isn't saying.
He isn't saying that Lazarus' death isn't a big deal,
and therefore it's okay.
He isn't saying that it's okay that Lazarus dies
because it's for a good cause.
He isn't saying that the illness and eventual death of Lazarus
now all make sense and is therefore okay.
Jesus doesn't minimize, trivialize, or dismiss Lazarus' suffering
or that of Martha and Mary.
And he doesn't offer a clear why that makes it all less painful.
So what is he saying?
When Jesus speaks of God being glorified and the Son of God being glorified,
he's speaking of contrasting proportions.
When Jesus points to what he's pointing to,
when he says the glory of God would be revealed,
is he saying that the love and goodness and beauty and life
that is who God is would show forth.
The suffering of Lazarus, what's happening to him,
and what's happening to Mary and Martha is great.
Jesus doesn't dismiss it.
He's just saying that the glory of God is something entirely other
and proportionally greater.
Paul kind of gets at this when he writes to the Romans in chapter 8.
He says,
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time
are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
Paul is not dismissing anybody's sufferings.
He's just speaking proportionately.
So we don't get an answer about why this is all happening in Jesus' statement
or when or even how this is going to happen.
How will God be glorified?
We only get the assurance that Jesus will show forth his love
and goodness and beauty and life
in the midst of and even through and despite
what's going on with Lazarus and Mary and Martha.
And yes, it will make a difference,
even if we don't know how yet.
Martha and Mary don't benefit from what Jesus is saying to his disciples
and his disciples who do hear all this
aren't really getting it either.
They seem to be thinking from a different frame of mind.
They miss what Jesus is saying.
Jesus is listening to and following his father's leading
and it seems beyond his disciples at the moment.
In this first act of John,
there's plenty of mystery
and plenty of the disciples being still on their own journey with Jesus.
Act 2 of this chapter,
Jesus does decide to finally go.
He arrives in Bethany
and he's found out that the situation is,
if possible,
is even worse.
Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days now.
I don't mean to be indelicate,
but a body was in the tomb for four days
and it's not good.
It's starting to break down.
And according to popular Jewish belief,
a person's soul was thought to linger for three days after death
and then depart,
which means in everybody's minds,
Lazarus is dead beyond hope.
Martha hears Jesus arrived
and she goes straight to Jesus
and frankly gets straight to the point.
If you'd been here,
my brother would not have died.
Her words carry grief and anger.
Mary comes later.
She falls at Jesus' feet
and says the same thing,
but her words come with a little less anger,
maybe more grief in it.
In this act,
Jesus is present.
He's present to Martha and Mary.
There's a couple things that this means.
First of all,
it means that he's just simply there.
He's with them,
simply put.
But it also means that he receives.
He receives Martha and Mary
and their words,
and their grief,
their confessions of pain,
their confusion,
their anger,
even their accusations,
their lament.
He receives them in everything they bring,
without condition,
without reservation or restriction.
Nothing is not allowed.
Martha and Jesus
have a bit more
of an extended conversation
than Jesus and Mary.
For me,
incredibly,
in the midst of her pain,
she still believes
that God will give Jesus
whatever he asks.
And then Jesus offers something else
that comes with his presence,
words.
Jesus responds to her
like he did to his disciples earlier,
probably for the simple fact
that like the twelve,
Martha is his disciple too.
And he takes her as a person
and as his follower seriously,
and he takes her suffering seriously too.
Like he did earlier with the disciples,
he invites Martha
to a deeper place in himself,
a deeper place of knowing
who he is
and what he's like for her
in the midst of her deepest pain.
Jesus says,
Lazarus will live again.
But Martha doesn't quite catch
what Jesus means.
She thinks that he means
Lazarus will rise
and the general resurrection
in the afterlife.
But Jesus presses her
to believe something more
about himself
right here and right now.
That believing in Jesus
means overcoming death.
And when he asks Martha,
do you believe this?
She makes a confession
about him
that actually exceeds
Peter's best confession
anywhere in the Gospels.
Martha's an amazing person.
And Jesus draws out
of Martha's hurting heart
during this time
of deepest suffering
a new level of faith
in himself.
But even so,
as readers,
we hear Jesus' words
to Martha
about him being
the resurrection
and the life,
and we know
there's more to it
than what Martha
is confessing
in that moment.
And there's one more thing
Jesus brings
when he brings his presence.
He brings his feelings,
his emotions.
We have to know
when reading about
Jesus' emotions
during this chapter
how invested he is
in Martha and Mary
and their experience.
We have to understand
that he's not just
with Martha and Mary,
he is going through it
with them.
The emotion Jesus feels
when he sees Mary weeping
and the Jews
who came from Jerusalem
to weep with Mary
is deeply moved in spirit
and greatly troubled
it's a little sanitized.
The Greek word
is
abrimameo mai.
It describes
a deep,
from the gut
exhalation
of raw grief
and anger.
It's not a word
that's spoken,
it's like an exhalation
of deepest
raw emotion.
And then that exhalation
turns into weeping.
Jesus being present
means he is,
means knowing
how he feels
about us
and our pain.
And so what was
Jesus crying for?
What were his emotions
about?
Frankly,
everything.
That Lazarus
had to experience
sickness
and then die,
that this ripped up
Mary and Martha,
that this impacted
a whole community
with grief,
that sickness
and death
even existed,
that people suffered
like this at all,
and because when God
made everything
through his son,
none of this
was supposed to happen,
none of this
was supposed to be.
Jesus wept
because this was
all wrong.
Jesus being present
means he takes
our pain
and grief
and trauma seriously.
There's no waving
of a magic wand.
Act 3
is a resurrection.
This actual,
this part of the story,
the actual raising
of Lazarus
from the dead
is surprisingly brief.
Jesus tells people
there to roll away
the stone.
Martha objects.
Jesus reminds her
if she believes,
she'll see the glory
of God.
And so people roll back
the stone covering
the tomb.
Jesus' longest speech
part is a prayer
to his father.
He doesn't ask God
to do anything
in this prayer.
In fact,
it seems that Jesus
was already praying
before this moment
because he says,
thank you for hearing me.
And I don't know
when he was praying,
maybe when he was waiting
before coming,
maybe on his way
walking to Bethany,
maybe while he was
talking to Mary or Martha,
maybe when he was weeping.
But he had been praying
and he now thanks God
for hearing him
and acknowledges
that people are watching.
And he prays
that this would make people
believe that his father
sent him.
And then comes
the miracle.
His words are simple,
three words,
Lazarus,
come out.
So we don't know
what happens spiritually
in this moment.
We don't know
what happened
once Jesus spoke
out loud like that.
It was on the surface
ordinary speech
at an outside gathering
in front of a tomb.
It was audacious.
It was a high risk
thing to say,
something that spoke
against the grain
and flow
and way of too much
of how things are
in the world and life.
It was too much
for his disciples
and Martha
to get their heads
around in advance.
I came across
a quote.
I'm going to pull it up
and I'm going to read it
because there's something
of the mystery
of what I'm talking
about in this.
I'm quoting
the great theologian
Matthew Perry,
the actor who played
Chandler
on Friends.
So he wrote a new book.
It's not an endorsement
of his book.
We all love Friends.
The book's probably good
but this is Matthew
talking about his life
and as I think
a lot of us know,
he struggled deeply
with addiction
for a long time.
So,
I'm pulling out
a couple passages.
It's worth reading it
in its entirety.
We're going to pull out
a couple parts.
At one point,
Matthew says,
God, please help me.
He whispers,
God, please help me.
Show me that you are here.
God, please help me.
And he describes
a change coming over him
and then he says,
I started to cry.
I mean,
I really started to cry.
That shoulder-shaking
kind of uncontrollable
weeping.
I wasn't crying
because I was sad.
I was crying because
for the first time
in my life,
I felt okay.
I felt safe,
taken care of.
Decades of struggling
with God
and wrestling with life
and sadness
all was being washed away
like a river of pain
gone into oblivion.
I'd been in the presence
of God.
Picture Chandler
saying this.
I'd been in the presence
of God.
I was certain of it
and this time
I had prayed
for the right thing,
help.
Eventually,
the weeping subsided
but everything
was different now.
I stayed sober
for two years
based solely
on that moment.
God had shown me
a sliver
of what life could be.
He'd saved me that day
and for all days,
no matter what,
he had turned me
into a seeker,
not only of sobriety
and truth
but also of him.
He doesn't know
what happened to him.
He just knows
that he encountered Jesus.
Whatever happened spiritually
in this moment
in John 11,
Jesus' voice went out
in the hearing
of everyone watching.
It went into that tomb,
into the stench
and darkness
and it went down
into death
and it gave a command
that could not be resisted
by anything
and Lazarus
walked out of the tomb
alive again.
It just happened
and we don't know how.
Incredibly to me,
John doesn't describe
anyone's reaction.
He only says
that many there
believed in Jesus
and some,
for some,
it accelerated
their plan to kill him.
It's just grievous to me.
How is that possible?
They knew a miracle
had happened
and their response was,
wow, that was amazing.
We should hurry up
our plans to kill him.
John never mentions
Martha or Mary
or even Lazarus' reaction
or the disciples' reactions
who were there
but this time
not mentioned.
I think if I was writing it
I would have said something like
and at that moment
everybody just lost their mind.
Like it would have,
like it was joyous
and they were in shock
and they said,
can you believe
what just happened?
We would probably all say,
yeah,
that was probably
what happened.
But John,
I think,
is intentional.
He leaves us
with this astonishing miracle
and then lets us
have our own reaction
to Jesus
and what he did.
He invites us
to go deeper
with Jesus
in the process.
So maybe a couple
takeaways
at the close
of this drama.
What are some
of the takeaways?
For one,
healing prayer
doesn't trivialize suffering.
Just as Jesus
didn't minimize
the awfulness
or seriousness
of Lazarus' death
or illness,
praying for healing
takes the suffering
and woundedness
of others
as seriously
as it deserves.
In healing prayer,
the silence
and absence
of Jesus
is fully acknowledged.
The goal
is not to explain
away anything
or find a why
for anything
that's happened
to anyone.
In healing prayer,
we sit with
the mystery
that we don't know
how,
but Jesus
will show forth
his love
and goodness
and beauty
and life.
In healing prayer,
it's always
awaiting on the Lord
with others
for Jesus
to show up
and journeying
with others
when he does.
Healing prayer
is about presence.
Healing prayer
is about inviting
Jesus to be present
with someone
so his words
can be heard,
his heart
can be known,
and so people
can know
that Jesus
is there,
that he's going through
and he went through
their suffering
with them.
Healing prayer
is about being open
to Jesus' invitation
for people
to come
and find more
of him
and who he is,
what he is like
at their lowest,
darkest,
and most painful
of experiences.
I have found
that there's a place
in God
that can only
be accessed
when Jesus
meets us
in our deepest
places of woundedness.
It's not because
Jesus is mean
and withholds himself
ordinarily,
it's because
he gives us
an experience
of his disproportionately
greater glory
in the places
where we most
need it.
It doesn't mean
we look for suffering
or try and suffer,
and it doesn't mean
God engineers suffering
in order to give us
this experience.
It just means
he responds
to what should
never have been
with more of who he is
and what he wants
for us.
Lastly,
healing prayer
receives the resurrection.
Sometimes,
when you're praying
for healing,
whether it's inner healing
or physical healing,
it feels like you're
just choosing
to roll back
the rock of the tomb.
There wasn't a lot
of faith
in that moment.
Martha and others
objected,
and Jesus said,
roll it back,
and so they just did.
And Jesus
and the whole crowd
was standing
in front of this
contradictory data
of a dead man,
a tomb,
days old,
a stench,
and all heavily
resisted faith.
Martha and the others
only had obedience
to do what Jesus said,
to roll the rock back,
but that obedience
held enough faith.
And a lot of time
when we're praying
for each other,
we pray in the face
of contradictory data.
Our prayers
come in obedience
to Jesus' instructions
that we pray
for each other,
but we always press
towards seeing God
and his Son
be glorified.
I have seen
some amazing answers
to prayer,
really amazing.
I've also been
painfully disappointed
for myself
and for others
by not receiving
answers to prayer.
So my prayer
is that people
would encounter
the resurrected Jesus
in a prayer time.
And that my experience
through amazing highs
and hard lows
is that when I look back,
Jesus has always
shown up,
and he always does
eventually show forth
his glory.
And so I keep praying.
So the healing prayer ministry
is new at Advent.
I want to invite
anyone who wants
to pray,
who wants people
to come pray with them
to find Jesus
and see how he would
draw close to them
and mark them
with his glory
to come seek it out.
Prayer ministers
who come over
at the side
after services,
and if you want
to actually set up
a time for prayer,
contact Hillary.
And there are lots
of people who would love
to come pray with you
and see what Jesus
would do.
Let me close
in prayer.
Lord Jesus,
we thank you
that you offer
yourself to us.
You promise us
that you will
show forth
your love,
your goodness,
your beauty,
and your life
somehow.
And somehow
it happens,
and sometimes
it happens,
and we don't even know
how it happened.
It's just suddenly there.
you've done something,
and we are grateful.
We want to see you
keep doing this.
So Lord,
we invite you
to come draw close
to us
in those places
of pain
where we most need
to be marked
by your glory.
Amen.