Fifth Sunday in Lent
John 11:1- 45
The Discouraged....the Hopeful
"Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it." Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go into Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?" Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." Thus he spoke, and then he said to them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him out of sleep." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover." Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said to her, "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 shall never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world." When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying quietly, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him;" John 11:1-45, RSV.
Grace and peace to you from our Saviour Jesus who is the Christ!!
I would like to shore with you a modern day parable which was taken from a book entitled Iowa Parables written by Pastor Jerry Schmalenberger.
"If John would have written this parable, he might have told it in this manner. And they were going up to Des Moines from Omaha, when they stopped halfway in Danish country to rest and eat. Traveling a short distance up Route 71, they come to a shaded roadside park near the village of Exira, and there decided they would eat their picnic. And behold, as the meal was being laid out, some of them wandered about the park and come upon an ancient oak tree which had embedded in it a single-bottom farm plough. "Master," they said, "How strange is this that a plough should be completely embedded in a beautiful oak tree. Tell us the meaning of this thing we have found at an Iowa roadside park."
He sat them down and told them the story of the Plough in the Oak Tree, as recorded by the Historical Society and handed down from one generation of Iowans to another.
Mrs. Anna Foss who lives near the tree with the plough in it explains how it happened. Her uncle, Christian Miller was a Danish immigrant and hired hand on the Andrew Leffingwell farm. For 3 days he tried to make the single-plough share scour as it should, but it did not work right. So it was leaned against the little scrub of an oak tree in a grove on a grassy knoll near the railroad track.
Christian Miller enlisted in the military at Fort Omaha. Years later, after Chris had married, he and his wife and their son. Andrew Miller were driving past the Leffingwell farm and he remembered the plough.
The plough was exposed to the public in the late 20’s, when U.S. Highway 71 was developed. The tree and the plough had become one.
Christian Miller died in 1932. Andrew J. Leffingwell’s granddaughter married John Miller and remembers clearly her uncle’s story about the plough in the tree. A nephew of Chris Miller still lives in Exira and confirms the account.
Now over a 1,0000 tourists a year come to the little roadside park to see this plough that became embedded in an Oak tree. All of this because Christian Miller, a hired hand for Andrew Leffingwell, farmer, gave up on a plough and parked it in discouragement and decided to enlist in the Army
After he finished the story, the little band of disciples were amazed and asked what meaning this could have for them. He explained that He spoke in parables so they could understand God’s great truths, and that many would would pass by and never see, and others would see but not understand.
Then He opened His mouth and said these words "Verily verily, I say unto you; That which seems like defeat, God can turn into our great opportunities."
I shared that parable from the history of Iowa with you this morning, because it fits very well our lessons from Ezekiel and John. These lessons are also about discouragement, and at the same time, they are lessons which show how God can take our defeats, our discouragement and turn them into victories which point to his power and his glory .
In Ezekiel, the people have been in captivity in Babylon for a long period of time. They have been discouraged, they feel defeated, they wonder if God will ever return them to their land, the land flowing with milk and honey. They feel dead, cut off from God. The people felt like the valley of dried bones, dried up, cut off with no hope, no promise for the future. They were discouraged like Christian Miller, they had given-up and placed their lives in the hands of their captives.
We also see discouragement and loss of hope in our gospel lesson. Mary and Martha had just saw their only brother, Lazarus, die. They had sent word to Jesus that Lazarus lay gravely-ill, but Jesus didn’t come in time. In fact if you read the text carefully, it shows he was slow on purpose.
When he arrived near Bethany, Lazarus’ sister, Martha met Jesus on the road. Martha says to Jesus,"Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
These were words of a discouraged sister. "Why, why did you let him die. If you would have hurried, if you would gotten here in time,my brother, Lazarus would still be alive."
Can you sense the discouragement, the frustration, the hurt in Martha’s words. She felt defeat, she felt death. she felt cutoff from God, abandoned .
And you, yes, you sitting in the pew this morning. Have you ever felt like Christian Miller, or the nation of Israel, or Martha, and Mary, have you ever felt as if God had let you down, had withdrawn His protecting arm from you?
Be honest and in that honesty you cannot help but answer yes, All of us have been discouraged in this manner. As a pastor, I have been with and heard so many ask, why, why when I prayed did not God answer my prayer, As I stood by the grave of a 19 year old, who was killed along with 3 others in o terrible car accident, the community, the parents, the church asked, wondered, where was God in all of this. Discouragement, abandonment separation were the feelings that were present at that grave side. As I watch children, men and women die the slow death of cancer, with all of its pain, with all of it its anguish, I ask why does God permits such a disease to end life in such a terrible fashion? I feel discouraged because there is so little I can do or say as I minister to the body and spirit of cancer victims that are slowly being token away.
Yes. all of us at one time of another, have been where the people of Israel, where Christian Miller, where Mary and Martha have been, in the jaws of discouragement, in the depths of despair, in the gulf that separates us from what little love we see coming from God.
But discouragement, despair, separation, are not the end of our story, no, on the contrary , out of that, out of those feelings of despair, discouragement , separation comes life a new life in and through Jesus. The discouragement of Christian Miller was turn into victory by God. God didn’t give up. Because now there are beautiful fields of corn and beans growing on that same land. And look what happened to that little sprout of an Oak tree, it grew and grew, quietly, surely it grew around that sharp plow, it grew around that handle engulfing the whole thing in it’s neck. It grew as a reminder of once the despair, the discouragement that had now been turned into a great monument to God’s progress and purpose.
Martha says to Jesus, "If you would have been here my brother would not have died." And Jesus responds by saying, "I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me though he die, yet shall he live. " And eventually, Jesus finds the tomb where his friend Lazarus is buried, he asks for the stone to be removed, then he calls, "Lazarus, come out." And out of death, out of the stench of a body that had been dead for four days comes Lazarus.
And to us, to you and me as we live with our discouragement, our despair , our hurts, our pain, Jesus says to us be still and know that I am God as God said to the psalmist long ago in Psalm 46, "Be still’ and know that I am God. I am exalted among, the nations, I am exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge."
Jesus says to us as we face all those things that make it difficult to believe and trust in a loving and caring God, Jesus says, be quiet, listen to that still small quiet voice, the voice of God with us, the voice of Emmanuel which lets us believe and trust as St. Paul says in Romans: "We know that in all things; God works for good with those who love him. "
There is a hope, a promise that out of the discouragement of life, out of death, God will indeed bring new life. Maybe we cannot see God’s victory, maybe we cannot understand the plan he has for us, but we must trust and believe that from the brokenness, the discouragement, the hurts, the pains, the very jaws of death, God has and will continue to raise new life.
When I had to leave the parish because of this post polio syndrome, I felt discouraged. When it became apparent that I could not even supply preach any longer, I felt even more discouraged. When I had to have two surgeries on my vocal chords just so I could speak, I was really discouraged!
But then, our town received access to the Internet. I learned how to do HTML, and then I began to write sermons for anyone who would visit my site. And now, I have around 500 visitors each week reading my sermons and other helps. Out of that despair, came a new ministry, a ministry of "fingers" and now I have found a "new life" and some real purpose. I enjoy the challenge of writing a sermon each week, for those many people whom I don’t even know to come and read.
I have received many e-mail messages of encouragement which for me is another sign that out of my despair, God through Christ brought hope, and a renewed purpose to my life again.
Lazarus, come out and with these words hope was restored to those sisters, and hope is restored for us. For with these words and the words of Jesus, "I am the resurrection and the life" our hope for a new life beyond this one is assured.
And as we near the end of our Lenten journey, with Jesus’ face set toward Jerusalem, we know that the events of Good Friday will bring forth another coming from the grave, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Amen
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale March 7, 2005
