March 29, 2020
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45
The Resurrection and the Life
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Former baseball coach for the New York Yankees, Yogi Berra, once said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
So true! My mother taught me the importance of washing my hands. And since then, I’ve had more teachers and workplace situations repeating that same lesson than I can count. But, boy, am I washing my hands a lot more than I used to! And not only that, but I’m paying attention to how I wash my hands! I’m humming the Happy Birthday tune and interlacing my fingers as I scrub away. Who knew that a video on the proper steps of hand washing could be so fascinating!
Yes, the difference between theory and practice. My mother taught me about germs in theory. “There are germs out there, Mary. You want to wash them off your hands.” But nothing teaches you in practice like a highly infectious disease!
Theory and practice. Lazarus is critically ill. His sisters, Martha and Mary, know that Jesus possesses remarkable healing powers. If only they can get Jesus to come and lay his hands on their brother, Lazarus can be saved. If only Jesus can make it there in time!
They send word to him. And then they wait. And wait. Lazarus becomes sicker. Still no Jesus. And then Lazarus breathes his last.
Four days after their brother’s tomb has been closed shut, Jesus arrives. One by one, each sister has the same words for Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Theory and practice. They know that Jesus possesses remarkable healing powers. But the full scope of his life giving abilities remains hidden to them behind the shadows of their imagination.
Jesus tries to stretch Martha to see him more fully. He tells her, “Your brother will rise again.” He’s declaring this to her. He’s stating it in practice. But Martha can only hear it in theory. Her relationship with resurrection is in theory only.
“Yes, Lord, I know,” she says, “On the last day, he’ll rise again in the resurrection of the dead.” What she doesn’t know is that the very power of the resurrection is standing right before her.
Theory and practice. We come to church. We read our Bibles. We’ve heard the stories of Jesus since we went to Sunday School. But our experience with resurrection is very similar to Martha’s. On this side of death, resurrection isn’t something we have personal experience with. We see it only in part, through a foggy mirror. Like Martha, our understanding of resurrection is imperfect.
On that day, standing beside Lazarus’ tomb, Jesus wants to lift the awareness of his resurrection power from theory into practice.
Jesus walks with the sisters to the tomb of Lazarus. He orders someone to remove the stone from the front of the tomb. Martha tells it like it is. She says, “Lord, my brother has been dead for four days. If you remove the stone, it’s going to smell bad.”
Prior to this, Jesus had raised some other people from the dead. But they hadn’t been dead for very long. Jairus’ daughter had just died when Jesus arrived and took her by the hand. And the son of the widow from Nain had probably died within just a few hours. He was being carried to his burial. People didn’t wait long to bury a body then. It happened very quickly. Even Jesus was laid in his tomb within hours of his death.
So, when biblical scholars look at Jairus’ daughter and the son of the widow from Nain, they say, “Well, they were just barely dead. Maybe these miracles are more like a resuscitation that a resurrection.”
But not so with Lazarus. As Martha said, he’d been in his grave long enough for his body to start decomposing. He was very much dead. There was no chance of resuscitation. There was no CPR, there were no paddles applied to his chest. He was dead.
After the stone is removed, Jesus prays out loud. He tells his heavenly father that he’s doing this so that people may believe, believe in practice and not just in theory. Jesus wants them – and us! – to believe in the resurrection and the life he brings.
Jesus calls to Lazarus. He calls to his friend who has long since crossed over the boundary into death. He commands Lazarus to step from the darkness of his tomb into the light of Jesus’ new day. And Lazarus is given new life.
Jesus had called, “Lazarus, come out!” He calls to each one of us in the same way. Jesus calls us to step into his new life.
In our baptisms, we were buried with Christ into his death. We were drowned in the waters of our baptism. We died to sin. And as we rose from those waters, we stepped into Christ’s new life. St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Christ’s resurrection life is in us already.
When Lazarus stepped from the tomb, Jesus ordered someone to remove the strips of grave clothes binding Lazarus. He lived again, but the vestiges of death were clinging to him.
That aptly describes us, too. We live already in the new life of Christ. But death and the old order still bind us. They cling to us. They do their best to drag us back into the grave. They pull us into the darkness of this world’s old reality.
But friends, we are Easter people. We have seen, and we believe in the power of Christ. We know that he is the resurrection and the life! Each day, let us lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely. With each new morning, we step again from the tomb of despair into Jesus’ new light. And thus freed, we run with perseverance the race set before us.
Lazarus was literally given a new lease on life. Here was one who fully knew resurrection life in practice! How differently did he consider all his days thereafter?
Some people are lucky enough to receive a new lease on life. If you talk to people who live with cancer, they appreciate the value of each day with greater fervor. Those who have survived harrowing accidents do, also. They’ve walked away from the jaws of death to live another day.
As our world is threatened by pandemic, our perception of life has taken on new poignancy. Is it just me, or does it seem like people are friendlier? We’ve come to recognize – not just in theory, but in practice – the value and gift of life.
On that day, Lazarus stepped from the tomb. His rising demonstrated in practice that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
But years later, Lazarus once again died. What was his second funeral like? His first funeral was laden with tears and grief. Mary and Martha were inconsolable. But something tells me that it wasn’t so at his second funeral. Because in between his two burials, two things had happened. First of all, Lazarus had already stepped out from his tomb. But even more significantly, Jesus, himself dead, had stepped out of his own grave!
When Lazarus was buried for the second time, surely the air was filled with the hope of resurrection. There was grief, but joy was even more present. The grave had not held him before, and it wouldn’t hold him now.
We still gather to bury our dead. Funerals are still marked with grief and tears. Each death is a loss, and we grieve our dead. But there is also joy and hope among the tears.
Recently we had a funeral here at Hope. Our dear saint Doris Jacobson died on February 29th. Doris died just one day short of her 94th birthday. Although we grieve Doris’ passing, Doris’ funeral was not marked by sadness. It was a day filled with joy. It erupted in the hope of Christ’s resurrection. On that day, the power of the resurrection was felt not just in theory. It was felt in practice!
Friends, may the reality of our Lord’s resurrection and life fill you, body and soul! And may the light of his eternal day shine anew on you every morning as you step from darkness into light.
