Hope Rises(24April2011)
Series: Loving God by Following the Way of Jesus
The Way of Jesus M12 (11 04 24) (Part of the Easter Celebration Service)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Hope Rises
Text: John 11:1-44
BIG IDEA: Jesus’ rising from the dead proves to us that tragedy, and even death, can be reversed.
Last month we witnessed the devastating tsunami unleashed by Japan’s biggest recorded earthquake. We saw the footage of homes being carried by the water, cars swept away, and even large trucks and freighter ships being flipped over like small toys.
Then, in the days that followed, we saw scenes of the drooping skeletal remains of buildings, and images of the flooded streets.
Some of our extended family were in Sendai when the earthquake hit, my wife Sakiko’s closest aunt and her aunt’s mother. For four or five days we had not received any word from them—they didn’t show up on any of the lists of people who were in the shelters. Their son had worked for IBM—and is tech savvy—so we figured he would have been able to reach them. Things were not looking good after 4 or 5 days. At the dinner table, I turned to Sakiko and asked, "Do you think they're dead?" "I think they may be dead," she replied.
Then the following day, we heard that they were OK.
I am originally from Japan and my wife was born and raised there, and as we saw the houses being carried away…. I was in tears and my wife wept.
Sakiko’s dad was twelve years old and living in Osaka when the World War II ended. He said, “Japan looks like it did after the war.” The war, of course, with the exception of Kyoto, reduced Japan’s major cities to ashes…
And seeing the recent images of the skeletal building of Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, like a massive bomb had exploded, I felt grief, but I also thought about how the country and the people were able to rise from the ashes of the war.
Sakiko’s parents’ and my parents were children--about 12 years old when the war ended.
During the war and just after, they were very hungry much of the time. I remember my mom telling me how she (usually when I refused to eat my veggies as a boy) how she and the other children were so hungry that they walked out to the river to pick flowers and ate them (I told her we have would have flowers on the platform today and asked her to make sure she had breakfast before coming). With the help of foreign aid they were able to re-grow their crops, rebuild their roads, their houses, and their businesses.
Through that experience of great adversity, arguably Japan’s greatest generation emerged. Our parents’ generation literally and metaphorically –rebuilt the country. And as a result of that tragedy, people were opened to new spiritual realities, and my mom and some members of our family came into a life-changing relationship with the living God.
We, of course, don’t have a crystal ball to see the future of Sendai and Fukushima. People are saying that just like after World War II it will take about 30 years to rebuild.
I don’t want in any way to diminish the pain and loss that Japan has experienced.
But we do know from history that people do rise from the ashes. We know that people who appear beaten down, like seeds that are cast on the ground, stepped on, and forgotten, in time have a way of rising.
So Easter is not just a story for us here in Vancouver, but it is a story of hope for people in places like Japan, Tunisia and Egypt, Libya, and the Middle East. It is a story of hope for all people, particularly for those who have experienced suffering and have been touched by death.
Easter is a story about Christ rising from the dead, but that resurrection, of course, would not have happened, without Christ first having gone through what appeared to be a tragic, senseless death.
We would not have Easter if we did not have Good Friday. What is Good Friday? Why do we call it good?
Good Friday looks back to the day when Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God, was nailed to a Roman cross. The cross, of course, is such a famous symbol today. People wear it around their neck. But, it was certainly not a beloved symbol in the Roman world of the first century. It was equivalent to the electric chair. Worse really. When a person was nailed to cross, everyone would have assumed that they had committed a violent, heinous, crime. In fact this tortuous death was considered so gruesome, so degrading that by Roman law a Roman citizen no matter how monstrous and evil a crime they had committed would not be subject to death by crucifixion.
When Jesus was on the hanging cross, those who did not know him assumed that he was dying as a criminal for a sin that he had committed.
But according to the Scriptures he died as a sacrifice for our sins. So we could be forgiven and free to know God.
The Japanese people who have volunteered to work on the frontlines to contain the nuclear radiation are acting in a way that gives a window into what Christ did for us.
There are certain government regulations, of course, that limit the amount of radiation a worker can be legally exposed to. A typical worker is only allowed to work for about 15 minutes while trying to contain the nuclear radiation. Our friends in Japan tell us that a disproportionately high number of people volunteering to work on the frontlines to contain the radiation are followers of Jesus Christ (the number of Christians who have volunteered is surprisingly high—as you may know there are very few Christians in Japan). And they are begging their supervisors to let them work longer than legal 15 minutes… for much, much longer so they can make more headway. In some cases it means that they are being exposed to 20 times, that’s 2000 % of the radiation in a day that they are legally allowed to face in a year. The reason we know of this is that some of Christian front line workers have asked my wife and me to pray for them.
Seth Grae, the CEO of a North American based nuclear consultancy company has been observing what these men are doing and says, “What we are seeing now is, really, heroic.”
These workers are voluntarily willing to lay down their well-being and maybe their lives to contain the nuclear radiation so they can protect their communities, their country, and the world.
They walk into death`s door and hope rises.
And likewise so in a mysterious way when Jesus Christ was dying on the cross, it was like he was absorbing in his body all the radioactivity of our sins--so that no matter what we have done in the past, no matter what our sin, we can be forgiven. Jesus absorbed the radioactivity of our sin in his body on the cross, so that we could enter into a relationship with God without guilt or shame, so that we could be free of spiritual contamination, so that we could be adopted as cherished daughters and sons of God.
Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
On Good Friday Jesus died—Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Three days later he rose from the dead.
On the Sunday morning following Jesus’ death, friends felt deep grief much like someone in Sendai who had lost their father, or someone in Egypt or Libya who had lost a mother or daughter, or maybe as you felt if you have ever lost a loved one.
But their grief turned to laughter and delirious joy when they saw Jesus three or four days later risen from the dead.
But what did it mean—what did his rising mean? This is the question of Easter.
In order to unpack the meaning of the Christ rising from the dead, let me take us to an event in Jesus’ life 2 or 3 months BEFORE—he died on the cross and rose again. It gives us a glimpse of what his rising from the dead would mean for us… and a window into the meaning of the Easter.
In the gospel of John, Chapter 11, just a few months before Jesus dies on the cross, Jesus receives news that his friend Lazarus is very sick. Lazarus was the brother of Martha and Mary, two of Jesus’ closest friends. After receiving news that Lazarus was seriously ill, Jesus stayed where he was for a couple more days before going to see him. His friend Lazarus ended up dying. And when Jesus arrives he finds that Lazarus has already died and has been in the tomb for four days. Martha, Lazarus’ sister, comes out to meet Jesus. She said, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha responded, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
Martha here is referring to the great final Day of Judgment when every person will rise up from the grave and stand before for the living God. She is referring to a future final day.
But, listen to what Jesus says:
“25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).
Jesus suggests that the resurrection –i.e. rising from the dead – can also occur now.
Jesus asks, “Where have you laid him?” They took him to the cave where Lazarus was buried.
And Jesus wept.
The Greek here word for wept suggests that Jesus was deeply distressed and angry. The Greek word describes a horse that snorts in anger. When someone we love dies there is grief, tears, sadness, but like Jesus we can also feel anger.
And when God sees devastation and anger, he also weeps and experiences anger.
Jesus says, “Take away the stone.” But Martha, the sister of Lazarus, says, “By this time there is bad odour for he has been dead for four days.” Martha, who was a very straight forward kind of woman, says in effect, “Jesus, you don’t want to go near his body. It is going to stink.” People in Jesus’ day believed that during the first days of death the soul would kind of hover around the body, but on the fourth day even the soul was saying, “I’m outa here!” But Martha was just warning Jesus to stay away from the body because it had already begun to decompose and smell.
Jesus approaches the tomb and simply says, “Lazarus, come out!” No long incantation. No abracadabra. Simply “Come out!” Lazarus comes out in his grave clothes. In Jesus’ day when a person died you would wrap him or her in over a hundred pounds of linen strips. And here comes Lazarus—dead man walking, a walking mummy coming out of the tomb.
Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead was of kind of a glimpse of what was to come.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” Jesus says he or she who believes in me even though he or she dies will rise to eternal life.
When the religious leaders asked him to prove his claim to be the one who could raise us from the dead, Jesus said, “Destroy this temple [meaning his body] and I will raise it up on the third day.”
When God raised Jesus from the dead, it was God’s way of saying, your sin have been paid for. You and, i.e., us can rise from the dead to eternal life as well.
Jesus' death and rising from the dead was a glimpse of what would happen to us if we put our trust in him.
Because he walked into death, hope rises for us.
Earlier in the service, Kahlil Ashanti portrayed part of C. S. Lewis’s famous children’s story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
One of the children, Edmund, betrays Aslan the Lion, the Christ figure, and his friends.
And so the White Witch says to Aslan the great Lion, the Christ figure, “You have a traitor here. You know the deep magic says that every traitor belongs to me. His life is mine. I have the right to kill him...”
Aslan bargains with the witch to exchange his own life for Edmund's. So, the Witch ties Aslan to the Stone Table, shaves off his great mane, and then kills him with a knife.
Susan and Lucy, two of the children who were hiding behind a bush witness the horrific death of Aslan are now walking about aimlessly…
At that moment they hear from behind them a loud noise, a great, cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a huge stone. The stone table on which Alsan was killed was breaking into two pieces cracking from end to end.
They looked around and there shining in the sunrise was Aslan, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried the children staring up at him. “What does it all mean?” asked Susan, when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, ‘that though the witch knew the deep magic, there is a deeper magic still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back into the stillness and darkness before time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a victim who had committed no treachery was killed, though in a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and death would start working backwards.”
We celebrate Easter because Easter means because of Christ’s death, Christ who committed no treachery and was killed in a traitor’s stead—our stead. Death works backwards.
Aslan walks into death and hope rises.
Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
Easter means that even death the worst and last enemy is defeated.
I have a grandmother who is 97 and just recently retired from playing tennis. Some years ago she was bragging to me that she was ranked the #2 tennis player in the nation of Japan in her age category. And I said, “Yes, but in your age category there are probably only 2 or 3 of you still playing.” I thought that was a pretty funny thing to say until she showed me her backhand. My grandmother has been extraordinarily healthy and fit for her age, but recently she is showing signs of forgetting. She is showing signs of early dementia. I wonder how much longer she will live for.
I am reminded as I watch her how, of how fleeting our life on earth is. But, I know that because her life is in Christ’s hands and that she too will one day rise from the dead.
Even as death encroaches, because Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
Christ’s death and rising again doesn’t just mean hope for us rising at the end of time. It can also mean a reversal of fortune for us in this life.
If we live long enough, we will experience some kind of pain and suffering, usually directly, but if not directly through the experience of someone we love and care for. Pain in not being admitted to a particular school or a company, the loss of a job, unreciprocated love, a breakup with a partner, pain because of accident or an illness. Suffering can feel deep and awful, and at the time can feel never-ending.
Jesus’ dying on the cross and rising again means that all of our fortunes can be reversed.
It means our suffering can be redeemed in this lifetime, and if not here, certainly in the life to come.
The Scriptures teach that when our lives our joined to him, God begins to work out all things for our ultimate good—even tragedy.
It’s a like when an artist like Michelangelo joins his brush to ours and begins to work with our brush on the canvas of our life so that it even the black spots become part of a larger masterpiece.
This is why followers of Christ, look back and say I thought it was the worst that ever happened, but I now see how God has redeemed it and how he has given me beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of heaviness.
No matter how tragic something appears, Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
And if that seems impossible, listen to what the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky said in the Brothers Karamazov:
"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage… that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all suffering…."
Dostoyevsky is saying that in the end God will choreograph something so precious that all of our suffering will be healed and redeemed so that even the worst kind of suffering will vanish like a mirage, as if we are waking up from a bad dream.
Because Jesus walks into death and hope rises for us.
When first married I used to have this reoccurring nightmare. I would dream that my wife Sakiko had died. Then I would wake up and see with a sigh of relief and that she was still asleep beside me. But, I’d watch to see if the duvet would rise and fall once or twice just to be sure. (But the challenge is we have a pretty thick duvet--so Sakiko, in case you been wondering all these years why every once in a while I jerk you awake without any reason, now you know why.)
Now as the parent of a rambunctious 2-year-old, I have a dream from time to time that I have lost Joey somewhere in a crowd--all of a sudden I can’t see him anywhere. (This actually has happened…. in real life… While entering Science World, when I was just turning away to hang up his coat, and then turned around, Joey was nowhere to be seen. I ran outside to look for him on False Creek. He wasn't there. I ran inside and quickly scanned the entrance way. I couldn’t spot him. I contacted one of the staff members who told me to stay where I was--near the entrance--in case he tried to run out of Science World. The staff member got a description of him from me and then walkie-talkied that information to the staff: (look to the side) start looking for a Japanese looking 2 year old, wearing a blue sweatshirt or a maybe a green shirt, or maybe it’s brown… or it could be yellow. It was definitely a color. After about 6 minutes (which felt like about 60) somebody found him.) That really happened, but I have dreamed about him being lost, and my feelings of panic and depression feel incredibly real because in my nightmare I know my wife Sakiko is going to be inconsolable over our son's kidnapping or even death, and I am also sad and frightened because I know she is going to kill me too.
Then I wake up from the dream and I see Sakiko lying beside me… (And I think I will let her sleep). I know Joey’s sleep in his bedroom at the end of the hallway dreaming of cupcakes.
Because of Christ's resurrection –if our lives are joined to him – one day everything that has ever happened to us that’s bad–will be so healed, so completely redeemed that its memory will fade as if we were waking up from a dream.
In the great story Lord of the Rings Sam believes that Gandalf has fallen off a cliff and has died. But at the end of the story, Sam has been asleep for a long while and then he begins to wake up. As he wakes up Gandalf stands beside Sam, his face glistening in the sunlight and says, “Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?” Sam, laying on his back, stares with open mouth and for a moment between bewilderment and great joy cannot answer. At last he gasps, “Gandalf, I thought you were dead, but then I thought I was dead. Is everything sad going to come untrue? “
“A great shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed. Sam said, “I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves, and all the songs I have ever heard.”
Christ’s dying and rising again means everything sad things that happened to us, everything tragic, will be healed and redeemed so like waking from a bad dream, every sad experience will come untrue.
Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
This is why we celebrate the promise of Easter. This is why we have hope. This is why we, along with one-third of the world, celebrate Christ’s rising.
If you are here and you are not sure that you believe, one of the ways that you can begin to believe is by asking Jesus to give you a little glimpse of the resurrection that you can one day experience.
My wife and I had two wedding ceremonies, one in Japan and one here in Vancouver. Before the ceremony in Japan, Sakiko, whose job it had been as a writer to go restaurants and write the restaurant guides, and her dad, who was a food executive who sampled food in his work, went to the hotel where we were going to be having our reception and they sampled the food: the appetizers, the main course, the wines and the deserts. It was a glimpse, a foretaste of what was to come.
When Martha’s brother Lazarus had died, Jesus came to see her. She said, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” He said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha responded, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
She is referring to a future event.
But, Jesus says:
“25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).
Jesus suggests that a resurrection –i.e. a rising from the dead – will occur in the future, but can also happen right now. He is saying we can begin to experience a spiritual rising to new life now. When he says anyone who believes in me, that is anyone who trusts in me will live even though they die and whoever believes in me will never die – he is talking about a spiritual life that can begin in us now and that will never die out.
So if you would join your life to Christ – not only will you experience the resurrection at the end of time – you will experience a spiritual rising to new life today.
Has this happened to you? Has your heart changed—has God brought new life to you, a spiritual resurrection?
If your life is joined to Christ, you will rise again as he did. But that resurrection does not have to begin only then. It can begin now if you will turn your life to Christ and ask him to bring new life to you.
The risen Jesus stands ready to walk into the pain and even tragedy of your life and can bring you comfort and new life and as he does in hope will rise for you.
If so, and you would like to do that, you can pray with me, “Christ, I don’t understand it all, but I believe you died on the cross and rose again for my sins. You absorbed the radioactivity of my sin in you so that I could be forgiven and restored to God. I turn to you. Help me to experience a new life now and in the days to come.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
The Way of Jesus M12 (11 04 24) (Part of the Easter Celebration Service)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Hope Rises
Text: John 11:1-44
BIG IDEA: Jesus’ rising from the dead proves to us that tragedy, and even death, can be reversed.
Last month we witnessed the devastating tsunami unleashed by Japan’s biggest recorded earthquake. We saw the footage of homes being carried by the water, cars swept away, and even large trucks and freighter ships being flipped over like small toys.
Then, in the days that followed, we saw scenes of the drooping skeletal remains of buildings, and images of the flooded streets.
Some of our extended family were in Sendai when the earthquake hit, my wife Sakiko’s closest aunt and her aunt’s mother. For four or five days we had not received any word from them—they didn’t show up on any of the lists of people who were in the shelters. Their son had worked for IBM—and is tech savvy—so we figured he would have been able to reach them. Things were not looking good after 4 or 5 days. At the dinner table, I turned to Sakiko and asked, "Do you think they're dead?" "I think they may be dead," she replied.
Then the following day, we heard that they were OK.
I am originally from Japan and my wife was born and raised there, and as we saw the houses being carried away…. I was in tears and my wife wept.
Sakiko’s dad was twelve years old and living in Osaka when the World War II ended. He said, “Japan looks like it did after the war.” The war, of course, with the exception of Kyoto, reduced Japan’s major cities to ashes…
And seeing the recent images of the skeletal building of Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, like a massive bomb had exploded, I felt grief, but I also thought about how the country and the people were able to rise from the ashes of the war.
Sakiko’s parents’ and my parents were children--about 12 years old when the war ended.
During the war and just after, they were very hungry much of the time. I remember my mom telling me how she (usually when I refused to eat my veggies as a boy) how she and the other children were so hungry that they walked out to the river to pick flowers and ate them (I told her we have would have flowers on the platform today and asked her to make sure she had breakfast before coming). With the help of foreign aid they were able to re-grow their crops, rebuild their roads, their houses, and their businesses.
Through that experience of great adversity, arguably Japan’s greatest generation emerged. Our parents’ generation literally and metaphorically –rebuilt the country. And as a result of that tragedy, people were opened to new spiritual realities, and my mom and some members of our family came into a life-changing relationship with the living God.
We, of course, don’t have a crystal ball to see the future of Sendai and Fukushima. People are saying that just like after World War II it will take about 30 years to rebuild.
I don’t want in any way to diminish the pain and loss that Japan has experienced.
But we do know from history that people do rise from the ashes. We know that people who appear beaten down, like seeds that are cast on the ground, stepped on, and forgotten, in time have a way of rising.
So Easter is not just a story for us here in Vancouver, but it is a story of hope for people in places like Japan, Tunisia and Egypt, Libya, and the Middle East. It is a story of hope for all people, particularly for those who have experienced suffering and have been touched by death.
Easter is a story about Christ rising from the dead, but that resurrection, of course, would not have happened, without Christ first having gone through what appeared to be a tragic, senseless death.
We would not have Easter if we did not have Good Friday. What is Good Friday? Why do we call it good?
Good Friday looks back to the day when Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God, was nailed to a Roman cross. The cross, of course, is such a famous symbol today. People wear it around their neck. But, it was certainly not a beloved symbol in the Roman world of the first century. It was equivalent to the electric chair. Worse really. When a person was nailed to cross, everyone would have assumed that they had committed a violent, heinous, crime. In fact this tortuous death was considered so gruesome, so degrading that by Roman law a Roman citizen no matter how monstrous and evil a crime they had committed would not be subject to death by crucifixion.
When Jesus was on the hanging cross, those who did not know him assumed that he was dying as a criminal for a sin that he had committed.
But according to the Scriptures he died as a sacrifice for our sins. So we could be forgiven and free to know God.
The Japanese people who have volunteered to work on the frontlines to contain the nuclear radiation are acting in a way that gives a window into what Christ did for us.
There are certain government regulations, of course, that limit the amount of radiation a worker can be legally exposed to. A typical worker is only allowed to work for about 15 minutes while trying to contain the nuclear radiation. Our friends in Japan tell us that a disproportionately high number of people volunteering to work on the frontlines to contain the radiation are followers of Jesus Christ (the number of Christians who have volunteered is surprisingly high—as you may know there are very few Christians in Japan). And they are begging their supervisors to let them work longer than legal 15 minutes… for much, much longer so they can make more headway. In some cases it means that they are being exposed to 20 times, that’s 2000 % of the radiation in a day that they are legally allowed to face in a year. The reason we know of this is that some of Christian front line workers have asked my wife and me to pray for them.
Seth Grae, the CEO of a North American based nuclear consultancy company has been observing what these men are doing and says, “What we are seeing now is, really, heroic.”
These workers are voluntarily willing to lay down their well-being and maybe their lives to contain the nuclear radiation so they can protect their communities, their country, and the world.
They walk into death`s door and hope rises.
And likewise so in a mysterious way when Jesus Christ was dying on the cross, it was like he was absorbing in his body all the radioactivity of our sins--so that no matter what we have done in the past, no matter what our sin, we can be forgiven. Jesus absorbed the radioactivity of our sin in his body on the cross, so that we could enter into a relationship with God without guilt or shame, so that we could be free of spiritual contamination, so that we could be adopted as cherished daughters and sons of God.
Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
On Good Friday Jesus died—Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Three days later he rose from the dead.
On the Sunday morning following Jesus’ death, friends felt deep grief much like someone in Sendai who had lost their father, or someone in Egypt or Libya who had lost a mother or daughter, or maybe as you felt if you have ever lost a loved one.
But their grief turned to laughter and delirious joy when they saw Jesus three or four days later risen from the dead.
But what did it mean—what did his rising mean? This is the question of Easter.
In order to unpack the meaning of the Christ rising from the dead, let me take us to an event in Jesus’ life 2 or 3 months BEFORE—he died on the cross and rose again. It gives us a glimpse of what his rising from the dead would mean for us… and a window into the meaning of the Easter.
In the gospel of John, Chapter 11, just a few months before Jesus dies on the cross, Jesus receives news that his friend Lazarus is very sick. Lazarus was the brother of Martha and Mary, two of Jesus’ closest friends. After receiving news that Lazarus was seriously ill, Jesus stayed where he was for a couple more days before going to see him. His friend Lazarus ended up dying. And when Jesus arrives he finds that Lazarus has already died and has been in the tomb for four days. Martha, Lazarus’ sister, comes out to meet Jesus. She said, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha responded, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
Martha here is referring to the great final Day of Judgment when every person will rise up from the grave and stand before for the living God. She is referring to a future final day.
But, listen to what Jesus says:
“25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).
Jesus suggests that the resurrection –i.e. rising from the dead – can also occur now.
Jesus asks, “Where have you laid him?” They took him to the cave where Lazarus was buried.
And Jesus wept.
The Greek here word for wept suggests that Jesus was deeply distressed and angry. The Greek word describes a horse that snorts in anger. When someone we love dies there is grief, tears, sadness, but like Jesus we can also feel anger.
And when God sees devastation and anger, he also weeps and experiences anger.
Jesus says, “Take away the stone.” But Martha, the sister of Lazarus, says, “By this time there is bad odour for he has been dead for four days.” Martha, who was a very straight forward kind of woman, says in effect, “Jesus, you don’t want to go near his body. It is going to stink.” People in Jesus’ day believed that during the first days of death the soul would kind of hover around the body, but on the fourth day even the soul was saying, “I’m outa here!” But Martha was just warning Jesus to stay away from the body because it had already begun to decompose and smell.
Jesus approaches the tomb and simply says, “Lazarus, come out!” No long incantation. No abracadabra. Simply “Come out!” Lazarus comes out in his grave clothes. In Jesus’ day when a person died you would wrap him or her in over a hundred pounds of linen strips. And here comes Lazarus—dead man walking, a walking mummy coming out of the tomb.
Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead was of kind of a glimpse of what was to come.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” Jesus says he or she who believes in me even though he or she dies will rise to eternal life.
When the religious leaders asked him to prove his claim to be the one who could raise us from the dead, Jesus said, “Destroy this temple [meaning his body] and I will raise it up on the third day.”
When God raised Jesus from the dead, it was God’s way of saying, your sin have been paid for. You and, i.e., us can rise from the dead to eternal life as well.
Jesus' death and rising from the dead was a glimpse of what would happen to us if we put our trust in him.
Because he walked into death, hope rises for us.
Earlier in the service, Kahlil Ashanti portrayed part of C. S. Lewis’s famous children’s story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
One of the children, Edmund, betrays Aslan the Lion, the Christ figure, and his friends.
And so the White Witch says to Aslan the great Lion, the Christ figure, “You have a traitor here. You know the deep magic says that every traitor belongs to me. His life is mine. I have the right to kill him...”
Aslan bargains with the witch to exchange his own life for Edmund's. So, the Witch ties Aslan to the Stone Table, shaves off his great mane, and then kills him with a knife.
Susan and Lucy, two of the children who were hiding behind a bush witness the horrific death of Aslan are now walking about aimlessly…
At that moment they hear from behind them a loud noise, a great, cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a huge stone. The stone table on which Alsan was killed was breaking into two pieces cracking from end to end.
They looked around and there shining in the sunrise was Aslan, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried the children staring up at him. “What does it all mean?” asked Susan, when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, ‘that though the witch knew the deep magic, there is a deeper magic still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back into the stillness and darkness before time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a victim who had committed no treachery was killed, though in a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and death would start working backwards.”
We celebrate Easter because Easter means because of Christ’s death, Christ who committed no treachery and was killed in a traitor’s stead—our stead. Death works backwards.
Aslan walks into death and hope rises.
Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
Easter means that even death the worst and last enemy is defeated.
I have a grandmother who is 97 and just recently retired from playing tennis. Some years ago she was bragging to me that she was ranked the #2 tennis player in the nation of Japan in her age category. And I said, “Yes, but in your age category there are probably only 2 or 3 of you still playing.” I thought that was a pretty funny thing to say until she showed me her backhand. My grandmother has been extraordinarily healthy and fit for her age, but recently she is showing signs of forgetting. She is showing signs of early dementia. I wonder how much longer she will live for.
I am reminded as I watch her how, of how fleeting our life on earth is. But, I know that because her life is in Christ’s hands and that she too will one day rise from the dead.
Even as death encroaches, because Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
Christ’s death and rising again doesn’t just mean hope for us rising at the end of time. It can also mean a reversal of fortune for us in this life.
If we live long enough, we will experience some kind of pain and suffering, usually directly, but if not directly through the experience of someone we love and care for. Pain in not being admitted to a particular school or a company, the loss of a job, unreciprocated love, a breakup with a partner, pain because of accident or an illness. Suffering can feel deep and awful, and at the time can feel never-ending.
Jesus’ dying on the cross and rising again means that all of our fortunes can be reversed.
It means our suffering can be redeemed in this lifetime, and if not here, certainly in the life to come.
The Scriptures teach that when our lives our joined to him, God begins to work out all things for our ultimate good—even tragedy.
It’s a like when an artist like Michelangelo joins his brush to ours and begins to work with our brush on the canvas of our life so that it even the black spots become part of a larger masterpiece.
This is why followers of Christ, look back and say I thought it was the worst that ever happened, but I now see how God has redeemed it and how he has given me beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of heaviness.
No matter how tragic something appears, Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
And if that seems impossible, listen to what the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky said in the Brothers Karamazov:
"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage… that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all suffering…."
Dostoyevsky is saying that in the end God will choreograph something so precious that all of our suffering will be healed and redeemed so that even the worst kind of suffering will vanish like a mirage, as if we are waking up from a bad dream.
Because Jesus walks into death and hope rises for us.
When first married I used to have this reoccurring nightmare. I would dream that my wife Sakiko had died. Then I would wake up and see with a sigh of relief and that she was still asleep beside me. But, I’d watch to see if the duvet would rise and fall once or twice just to be sure. (But the challenge is we have a pretty thick duvet--so Sakiko, in case you been wondering all these years why every once in a while I jerk you awake without any reason, now you know why.)
Now as the parent of a rambunctious 2-year-old, I have a dream from time to time that I have lost Joey somewhere in a crowd--all of a sudden I can’t see him anywhere. (This actually has happened…. in real life… While entering Science World, when I was just turning away to hang up his coat, and then turned around, Joey was nowhere to be seen. I ran outside to look for him on False Creek. He wasn't there. I ran inside and quickly scanned the entrance way. I couldn’t spot him. I contacted one of the staff members who told me to stay where I was--near the entrance--in case he tried to run out of Science World. The staff member got a description of him from me and then walkie-talkied that information to the staff: (look to the side) start looking for a Japanese looking 2 year old, wearing a blue sweatshirt or a maybe a green shirt, or maybe it’s brown… or it could be yellow. It was definitely a color. After about 6 minutes (which felt like about 60) somebody found him.) That really happened, but I have dreamed about him being lost, and my feelings of panic and depression feel incredibly real because in my nightmare I know my wife Sakiko is going to be inconsolable over our son's kidnapping or even death, and I am also sad and frightened because I know she is going to kill me too.
Then I wake up from the dream and I see Sakiko lying beside me… (And I think I will let her sleep). I know Joey’s sleep in his bedroom at the end of the hallway dreaming of cupcakes.
Because of Christ's resurrection –if our lives are joined to him – one day everything that has ever happened to us that’s bad–will be so healed, so completely redeemed that its memory will fade as if we were waking up from a dream.
In the great story Lord of the Rings Sam believes that Gandalf has fallen off a cliff and has died. But at the end of the story, Sam has been asleep for a long while and then he begins to wake up. As he wakes up Gandalf stands beside Sam, his face glistening in the sunlight and says, “Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?” Sam, laying on his back, stares with open mouth and for a moment between bewilderment and great joy cannot answer. At last he gasps, “Gandalf, I thought you were dead, but then I thought I was dead. Is everything sad going to come untrue? “
“A great shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed. Sam said, “I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves, and all the songs I have ever heard.”
Christ’s dying and rising again means everything sad things that happened to us, everything tragic, will be healed and redeemed so like waking from a bad dream, every sad experience will come untrue.
Jesus walks into death and hope rises.
This is why we celebrate the promise of Easter. This is why we have hope. This is why we, along with one-third of the world, celebrate Christ’s rising.
If you are here and you are not sure that you believe, one of the ways that you can begin to believe is by asking Jesus to give you a little glimpse of the resurrection that you can one day experience.
My wife and I had two wedding ceremonies, one in Japan and one here in Vancouver. Before the ceremony in Japan, Sakiko, whose job it had been as a writer to go restaurants and write the restaurant guides, and her dad, who was a food executive who sampled food in his work, went to the hotel where we were going to be having our reception and they sampled the food: the appetizers, the main course, the wines and the deserts. It was a glimpse, a foretaste of what was to come.
When Martha’s brother Lazarus had died, Jesus came to see her. She said, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” He said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha responded, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
She is referring to a future event.
But, Jesus says:
“25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).
Jesus suggests that a resurrection –i.e. a rising from the dead – will occur in the future, but can also happen right now. He is saying we can begin to experience a spiritual rising to new life now. When he says anyone who believes in me, that is anyone who trusts in me will live even though they die and whoever believes in me will never die – he is talking about a spiritual life that can begin in us now and that will never die out.
So if you would join your life to Christ – not only will you experience the resurrection at the end of time – you will experience a spiritual rising to new life today.
Has this happened to you? Has your heart changed—has God brought new life to you, a spiritual resurrection?
If your life is joined to Christ, you will rise again as he did. But that resurrection does not have to begin only then. It can begin now if you will turn your life to Christ and ask him to bring new life to you.
The risen Jesus stands ready to walk into the pain and even tragedy of your life and can bring you comfort and new life and as he does in hope will rise for you.
If so, and you would like to do that, you can pray with me, “Christ, I don’t understand it all, but I believe you died on the cross and rose again for my sins. You absorbed the radioactivity of my sin in you so that I could be forgiven and restored to God. I turn to you. Help me to experience a new life now and in the days to come.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
posted by Shigematsu at 8:49 PM
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