We always welcome visitors in our church from wherever they may come. But I do wonder today if we have any visitors from the other side. The other side, you know.
No, I don’t mean the Catholics. I mean the other other side. Do we have any visitors from beyond the grave?
Thus begins the sermon for the Sunday after Halloween!
What must it feel like to come back from death?
Can you even imagine it? What must it feel like to have died, moved on to whatever it is that lies beyond, and then suddenly, one bright morning, you wake up and find yourself revived? It’s unthinkable, isn’t it?
Who has even dared to dream about dying and then coming back to life? Who of us has any experience with being revived?
If there’s anybody here who can tell us, first-hand, what Lazarus felt: you were in the grave four days, already decomposing, come tell us about it. Come report on the first Tuesday night practice of the Angelic Choir! Did you measure your mansion for planet-to-planet carpeting? Did you put on a robe and walk all over twenty-four-karat streets? If there’s anybody who’s had that experience, you just come take this pulpit! Because you know something the preacher doesn’t know.
Any takers? I thought not! There is no experience parallel to Lazarus.’
What must it have been like to come back from the dead? Lazarus, tell us.
Was it sort of like going to the mailbox and finding that the bank has sent you your mortgage, marked paid in full?
Was it a bit like getting your test paper back from the teacher, and she has crossed out the F you so richly deserve and written in an A?
What is it like to come back from the dead? Lazarus, is it like being laid off from the job, only to be called a week later. "We can’t get along without you. Come back and we’ll double your salary."
Is it like discovering a brother from whom you were separated as a child? Is it like losing your keys, so that you can’t drive, you can’t get in your house, you can’t do anything …only you stumble on them in your own driveway?
What is it really like to be revived?
I
But guess what? Hard on the heels of that question is another one. There is another nagging issue that has to be met all too soon.
What is it like to be revived, only to realize that you will have to die again? What is it like to be called back from the dead, only to discover that your revival isn’t permanent? And that someday, some way, you’ll have to go through this thing all over again?
Put your imagination to work. Imagine Lazarus enjoying his new life. He tests everything to make sure it works. Stretching and jumping and running. Just to make sure this thing is real.
He turns to Jesus, "By the way, Jesus, what’s the warranty on my new body? Thirty days, thirty years, thirty thousand years? Am I fixed forever?" And then what do you think Jesus would have answered? You know; I’ve heard you say it. "We are not guaranteed tomorrow. We have only today. Revived or not, we are not guaranteed tomorrow."
Sort of puts a pall on being revived, doesn’t it? Hey, Martha, don’t put anybody else in this tomb, I’ll be needing it again. You out there ... really enjoyed your singing at my funeral; use that same song the next time. Fold up this shroud, Mary; it looks good, and I’ll need it again.
If we can only barely imagine what Lazarus felt about being revived, can we even come close to imagining what he felt when it dawned on him, that he would have to die all over again?
Downs and ups and down again. To have to go through that pain once more. To have to suffer that agony still another time. To have to be sick and to face anxieties and to know that your family will feel loss, all of that again. What about that? Is it worth it?
Here’s my real question: is it worth it to be revived, when you realize you are revived only to die again?
II
We as a church, and some of us as individuals, have been through a revival. For several days we basked in vigorous singing, we delighted in clear, concise preaching, we listened to one another’s testimonies. We were revived.
We gathered to get a new sense of belonging to Christ and belonging to each other. And it happened. It really did happen. There is among us new energy, new commitment, new clarity, and, thank God, some new faces. We were and are a revived church.
How does that feel? What does that feel like? Pretty good, right? Even wonderful, amen? Like the debt canceled, the F converted to an A, the salary doubled, the long-lost brother, the keys we found. It feels great. Up, up, and away. Revived.
But has it dawned on anybody yet that we are revived to die? We are revived, but only to die again. The excitement of last week will not last forever. The commitments and promises made last week will become routines. The energy of our worship and the fervor of our prayers will settle down. We are revived, yes; but in many ways we are revived only to die again. It is just unavoidable.
And how will that feel? How will it feel to be a church which experienced renewal, but then fell back into our old habits? How will it feel to be a Christian who made some promises to the Lord, to yourself, and maybe to others, but those promises got harder and harder to keep? How will it feel to be revived, only to die?
III
In fact, let me probe a little deeper. Let me take the question a step further. How will it feel to be revived, to know that the revival will someday die, and then to find out that some folks are actually trying to kill it? How will it feel to discover that some do not understand, some feel threatened, some prefer the old ways to the new ways? How will it feel not only to recognize that spiritual renewal will die down, some day, some way; but also that somebody will even try to hurry along that death?
John tells us that when the crowds heard about Lazarus being raised from the dead, they came. Oh, they came from far and wide to see Lazarus and to see Jesus. Lots of folks. Curious folks, spiritually hungry folks. With apologies to the movie, "Field of Dreams", if you raise him, they will come! If you bring life, they will come!
But, listen to this in the Scriptures: "So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus".
Look at that! The Lord brings life, and so the Lord’s chief representatives decide to crush that life! Jesus gives revival, and the church elders vote, “No" . Somebody gets saved, and the pastor says, "Not in my church, you don’t!" “The chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death ... since it was on account of him that many ... were believing in Jesus."
Now what you do you feel, if you are Lazarus? Now the stakes are raised high, aren’t they? Not only do you feel the ups and downs of being revived and knowing that you will someday have to die again. Now you also feel the bitterness of hostility. Now you also fear anger and devaluation. Now you not only face death, one more time, but the possibility that it will be a painful death, shameful and violent. Poor Lazarus! Lord, maybe you should just have left me alone in the grave, rather than to bring me out to see this!
Lazarus must have felt a little like the fellow Abraham Lincoln talked about. The man was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. The fellow said, "You know, if it wasn’t for the honor of the thing, I’d just as soon have skipped that."
To die, to rise, and this: to be under the threat that somebody wants to crush you because you have been revived.
Church, there will be threats to our revival. There will be those who want to put it to death. There will be those who would like to forget about it and crush its spirit. There will be those who will want to make of it something divisive or disruptive.
And when I say that, don’t be looking around and wondering who the preacher is talking about. We know who the chief priests are, It’s right here. In me. In each of us, there is something that wants to kill revival. Something that wants to take our excitement, commitment, energy, and joy, and put the wet blanket on it.
Yes, I know who the chief priests are, who plot to kill Lazarus. Who are they? Every one of us who just won’t believe that the Spirit could possibly be afoot in old Takoma. Every one of us who resorts to that old canard, "We’ve never done it that way before." They call that the seven last words of the church. I call it plotting to kill revival.
Every one of us who wants to remain closed off from the new people who have come among us. Do you know that we’ve received about thirty new members thus far in 1995? How many of them do you know, how many have you embraced? If we won’t do that, that’s killing the revival. That’s plotting against Lazarus.
Every one of us who is scared of bringing energy to worship; everyone of us who avoids serious confrontation with the Scriptures; every one of us who fails to share his faith with his neighbor. We are chief priests, working to maintain the status quo, trying to make sure nothing happens here. Plotting to kill the revival.
Every one of us who remains locked up in privacy, never doing ministry. Every one of us who fails to take action when children hurt and seniors are abandoned, every one of us who turns a blind eye when young people need guidance and parents are at a loss: we are the chief priests. Look out, Lazarus, here we come! We are plotting to kill the revival.
And, yes, every one of us whose idea of financial responsibility is to pitch in a few dollars whenever we are here, and let it go at that. That too is plotting to kill the revival.
You knew I would get to this, now didn’t you? Jesus preached the sermon on the mount, Smith at least once a year preaches the sermon on the a-mount!
But yes, I have to say this. If you want to be a chief priest today, the surest way to kill the revival is to close up the wallet and lock up the checkbook. The most certain way to make sure that Takoma does nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing truly wonderful, is to deny Takoma her life’s blood. Don’t worry; I’m not going to harp on this. We don’t harangue people about money. But I just want to say, as I have said before, that we stand where the Bible stands, that the tithe, the tenth, is the Lord’s. We encourage you to give a tithe toward the support of your church not to be legalistic, not to be judgmental toward anybody, but we ask it because it is a vote to keep the spirit alive. It is a vote not to kill the revival.
IV
So: we are revived, but revived to die. And some would even hasten the day. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What shall we do to keep revival alive?
Did you hear what Jesus commanded when He raised Lazarus from the dead? It’s a powerful, positive word. It speaks to me. When Jesus brought Lazarus out of the grave, he commanded those standing around:
"Unbind him and let him go" "Unbind him, and let him go". Here comes old Lazarus, out of the tomb, but the grave cloths are still on him. There are straps, bindings, on his hands and his feet, and he can’t walk right. He can’t get out and move. He can’t quite get into his new life.
So the Lord commands, "Unbind him and let him go."
I hear this as the Lord’s command to his church today, "Unbind her and let her go. "
Unbind the church from all the things that threaten her revival, and let her go free.
Unbind her from the sin which does so easily beset her members, and let them hear the good news, new life, forgiveness, hope, freedom. Unbind them and let them go.
Unbind the church from thinking that growth can’t happen here, and let her go and share her faith freely and see what happens. Unbind her, and let her go.
Unbind her serving only one kind of people. Unbind her, and let her go into all the world and preach the gospel to all nations. Unbind her to reach blacks and whites, Asians and Hispanics, old and young, rich and poor. Unbind her, and let her go.
Unbind her from traditions that no longer make sense, from structures that no longer work, from practices that are no longer practical, from all the things that hold her back. Unbind her, and let her go.
Unbind her. Most of all, unbind the church from the littleness of faith that will not risk anything. Unbind the church from the pinchpenny mentality that will not spend anything. Unbind the church from the blinders that keep us from seeing the vision of our possibilities.
Where there is no vision, the people perish. Where there is vision, the people flourish.
Unbind us, O God, from everything that wants to kill the revival, and let us go!
