Let Christ Bring A Resolution Jn. 11:47-53
There’s always a resolution for your problems. Things can and do come together after all. Ezekiel in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 37) offers an image of life being breathed into dead bones with the result that there is a noise and a rattling sound, and the bones came together bone to bone with tendons and flesh over them and skin. Holy Spirit life is breathed into them, just as Paul reminds us in the epistle (Romans 8:11-19), with Life given to you and me in the risen Christ. In the Gospel,(John 11) we learn the terrible plot concocted by the religious authorities to get rid of Jesus, ended up being the very plan by which God would bring together his scattered children and make them one.
Yes, things really do come together in Christ.
But not always. Such was the case when the chief priests, and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of 70 to discuss their problem. So many people were flocking to Jesus; he was gaining so much in popularity and power, with miracle after miracle, and his powerful God-breathed teachings, that they were concerned that the ruling Roman government would intervene and take away their power and position, and whatever authority their Jewish nation had. A meeting was held; blame was assigned. Jesus would be come the culprit and the victim, much like a sheep led to the slaughter. Caiaphas, the High Priest, whose very coffin, engraved with his name was discovered a decade ago in Jerusalem when it was accidentally dug up by a bulldozer, spoke up, determined that there would be another grave, and this one, for Jesus: “Don’t you realize it is better for you that one man die for he people than that the whole nation perish?” Caiaphas said.
It reminds me somewhat of the trap law enforcement people run into to quickly assign blame and a culprit, in high visibility murder cases, even when there is little evidence to go on. An innocent person is put in jail. Now and then, you and I face this pressure to assign blame, in the many unresolved issues we struggle with. How quickly, when unable to decipher and solve, or just live with, a problem we’re facing, we fail to trust the Lord for insight, acceptance and resolution. Instead, we grow impatient, and, as the pressure and anxiety builds, we just find someone to blame. We don’t pause for a minute to first shoulder the responsibility ourselves and explore our own sinful shortcomings, one by one, but use a different type of multiplication, we refuse to address the two by four in our own eye, and instead focus on removing the fractional speck from someone else’s. Someone becomes the scapegoat, the focus of anxiety in a conflicted family or organization. Those of us who have been victims of this unconscious strategy in the minds of anxious persons and family systems, have come a long way when we don’t respond in kind, stubbornly and angrily rising to defend ourselves. For, often it may not be about us at all.
There was something that had to be resolved in Jesus time, so they called a meeting.
We so frequently face situations in life that need resolution. There is the meeting of the doctor with the family outside the hospital room or emergency room. There is the meeting of parents and teachers about the child; the student. The same voices of desperation as found in our text can be heard. “If we don’t do something; if we let this go on, then just look what could happen.”
This was the response the religious authorities had to the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the story that immediately precedes this one. The antagonism that followed may well explain the seeming reluctance of Christ to show up in Bethany and why he stayed away two more days. Martha said to him: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But Jesus did get there. He showed his ultimate power in raising from the dead this Christian Brother, Lazarus. And this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Something had to be done, these religious authorities had decided. Once again, with money answering everything, with thirty pieces of silver, Jesus Christ would be betrayed at the hand of one of his own followers, taken in, beaten, tried and executed in the method Romans commonly used for criminals: crucifixion. This was how things would be resolved. In the weeks to come, leading up to our Easter celebration, we will see just how momentum built toward this end.
But God used this plan of sinful men to bring about the fulfillment of his greatest plan, to rescue sinful human beings from damnation, and save them for eternal life in heaven. Through the cross, an instrument of torture and execution, Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for us, and received the punishment we deserved for our sins. Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, the prophet Isaiah tells us. God brought things together finally. The judgment for sin that lay upon each of us was resolved in the death of this good man who gave his own life as a sacrifice, Jesus Christ. It is impossible for us to comprehend this act of giving and we are left speechless. As Paul writes, ‘thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.’
Do we believe that God is going to bring things together for us? In the same way, he brought life to these bones, these dry bones of Ezekiel? Don’t most of our problems remain problems because we haven’t trusted God to resolve them for us and given him the time he needs to do so? This plan of God’s to bring together all of creation in the life, servant hood and sacrifice of the man Jesus Christ, came together only when “the fullness of time had come,” as Paul tells us in Galatians. With him, one day is as a thousand years. And a thousand years, one day. One day it will all come together gloriously as he returns again and a new heaven and earth are created and all things, including death have been placed under his feet.
In the meantime we catch glimpses of this divine pattern, this sacred stitching to life in his promise that “all things work together for good to those who love God.” We find it expressed hopefully in a prayer we have become familiar with from the Book of Common Prayer: “Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,” the prayer begins.
We see this knitting together happening as Christian people come together and work together -- husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, pupils and teachers and classmates. Even as dead, dry bones, we hear the word of the Lord, to use Ezekiel’s metaphor, and come together, flesh to flesh, sinew to sinew, tendon to tendon, skin to skin, and are empowered to carry out God’s great resolution in his Son Jesus. We’re not as quick to lay blame and criticism at the feet of one another, but rather affirmation. As I mentioned in the sermon last week: researchers have found, the only difference between a happy marriage, and a stable but unhappy one, is an additional 30 seconds of daily affirmation. But it takes more than this. It takes God’s affirmation as well, as evidenced in the forgiveness of sins offered one another through Jesus Christ. This is God’s goal; this is how God resolves things – through the forgiveness of sins, he brings people together and makes them one, just as he did here in using the evil plan of the religious authorities to bring about Christ’s death for the salvation of all.
This sense of affirmation for God and for one another is found throughout the Scriptures. In one chapter of the New Testament, St. Paul speaks fondly of the many people in that congregation and lists them name-by-name. I remembered fondly a Bible Class for teens and young adult singles skillfully taught by a layman in the youth Bible Class I once attended before I went off to seminary. It intrigued me how he stopped after Chapter 15 in Romans when there was still a chapter to go. Perhaps he just couldn’t pronounce all the names there that Paul had listed in thanksgiving. But, it’s a chapter that I find myself turning to when I want to somehow overcome the sense of separation that can exist between the Pastor and the people, and instead, reflect on the bond of love and forgiveness that brings us together in Christ. There Paul speaks of a God who brings people together in Christ and refers to them as beloved and working hard, or working very hard in the Lord. In that very action of working hard in the Lord, God’s plan plays out in our midst, and, to use a phrase from the Gospel, the scattered children are brought together and made one. Stubborn problems are resolved as we work things through and a great God brings things together for a marvelous outcome.
This sense of unity and purpose in the church, Paul describes as the one body, though having many parts, is yet one. It is also found in this anonymous parable entitled “You are needed..."
Someone has imagined the Carpenter’s tools holding a conference. Brother Hammer presided. Several suggested he leave the meeting because he was too noisy. Replied the Hammer,” If I have to leave this shop, Brother Screw must go also. You have to turn him around again and again to get him to accomplish anything.” Brother Screw then spoke up. “If you wish, I’ll leave. But Brother Plane must leave too. All his work is on the surface. His efforts have no depth.” To this Brother Plane responded, “Brother Rule will also have to withdraw, for he is always measuring folks as though he were the only one who is right.” Brother Rule then complained against Brother Sandpaper: “You ought to leave too because you’re so rough and always rubbing people the wrong way.”
In he midst of all this discussion, in walked the Carpenter of Galilee. He had arrived to start his day’s work. Putting on His apron, He went to the bench to make a pulpit from which to proclaim the Gospel. He employed the hammer, the screw, the plane, the rule, the sandpaper and other tools. After the day’s work when the pulpit was finished, Brother Saw arose and remarked: “Brethren, I observe that all of us are workers together in the Lord.”
God has brought together that which was scattered. Working through the evil plans of unbelievers, he brought forth a resolution to our greatest problem – sin itself, in the person of his Son Jesus Christ. As the events of Holy Week, now before us start to unfold, watch God at work, and watch him at work in you and through you and between you. AMEN.
