Don't Be Afraid!

[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Lutheran Church, Amelia, Ohio, during worship celebrations on November 4 and 5, 2006.]

Stewards of an Eternal Hope
All Saints Weekend
John 11:32-44
In English Literature class in high school, I came to love a poem written by Alan Seeger, a young man killed in battle during World War One less than a year after he penned, I Have a Rendezvous with Death.

One reason I liked the poem so much, I think, is that it was just dawning on my sixteen year old brain that all people--even I--have a rendezvous with death.

But we can go to absurd lengths to deny the reality of death and all the other realities that go with it: aging, deterioration, and sagging bodies. This past week, one of my favorite bloggers, author Annie Gottlieb, wrote of seeing a famous political campaign strategist on TV:

She's on CNN right now and she has had a really terrifying facelift, eyelift and Botox assault. She can hardly move her mouth, she can't smile at all (not that that was ever her strong suit, but even her trademark sneer has fallen to Female Facial Mutilation) and her eyebrows are paralyzed. She's almost unrecognizable. She looks like a particular fake alien face on the original Star Trek. It's a disaster! Hey, I feel bad about my neck too, but at least it's still my neck.

None of us like it, but the truth is that we all have a rendezvous with death.

That reality is acknowledged in today’s Bible lesson. But so is another reality, a deeper, more powerful reality.

In our lesson, Jesus’ friend Lazarus dies. In fact, earlier in chapter eleven of John’s Gospel, we see that Jesus knew that Lazarus was dead even before He told His disciples that they were setting off to Bethany, Lazarus’ hometown.

The disciples hadn’t wanted to go there. Just a short time before, they had escaped their fellow Judeans with their lives, mobs bent on stoning Jesus and those with Him to death. Now, Jesus wanted to take them back into the jowls of death.

According to John’s Gospel, these reluctant disciples had already seen Jesus perform six major miracles, six major signs of Who He is, of His Lordship, of God’s Kingdom. They’d seen Jesus:

• turn water into wine,
• heal a desperate father’s son,
• restore healthy legs to a crippled man, f
• eed 5000 with a few scraps of bread and some fish,
• get them to a safe shore while the boat in which they rode was tossed and swamped by a furious storm, and
• make a blind man see.

But Lazarus was dead. Dead is dead, they thought, the end of the line. Why should Jesus risk His neck and theirs to simply pay His respects? They didn’t know that Jesus had another miracle, another sign, He wanted them to see.

Our lesson finds the disciples, Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters, and the people of Bethany all struggling to follow Jesus in the face of the greatest enemy any of us will face. In the bargain, they can’t help blaming Jesus. Three times in John, chapter 11, and twice in our lesson, they tell Jesus or each other, “If Jesus had been here, Lazarus wouldn’t have died.”

We have similar thoughts when someone we care about has died. We may think,

“If only I had gotten so-and-so to a doctor sooner...”
Or, “If only I had known how much pain he was in...”
Or, “If only I’d arrived five minutes sooner, I could have called the life squad..”

Some even think that if God was in heaven and all was right in the world, this person wouldn’t have died at all. They become angry or even disbelieving toward God.

But it’s interesting to see that in the course of events at Bethany, John reports several times that, not just the mourners, but Jesus was agitated. At one point, He even began to weep. I have puzzled over why Jesus had such a reaction. After years of study and prayerful reflection, I’ve reached two conclusions.

Part of Jesus’ reaction, I think, stems from grief for us. He hates to see us suffer, die, or grieve. This was never part of God’s plan for our lives. But until Jesus returns, we live in a world groaning under the burdens of death, decay, and sin. Jesus wept because His friend, Lazarus, and each one of His precious children, have a rendezvous with death.

But I think that there was another reason for Jesus’ tears. He was frustrated to the core of His being that the people along whom He had lived for several years, the disciples, Mary, Martha, and the people of Bethany refused to get it. They refused to dare to believe in Him. “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” He asks with bewildered frustration. Were they so stymied by death that they couldn’t see that the God Who made life and was among them at that moment could overcome all our fear and dying to give us eternity with God?

Jesus didn’t begrudge them their grief. Grief is natural. But He was frustrated by their hopelessness.

The follower of Jesus need never be hopeless! Pastor Mike Foss tells the story of visiting a man about to undergo surgery. Says Foss:

Eyes sparkling, he laughed. I had met him at the hospital and, before any anesthetic had been administered, he and his wife and daughter gathered with me at his bed side. There I began to talk of his impending surgery. “It’s natural,” I said, “for you to be anxious.” And I didn’t get any further than that, because he laughed. It wasn’t a laugh of derision. Instead, it was the laughter of one who had no fear. As I stood there (at a loss for words) he grinned and said, “Pastor Mike, I’m not afraid. I already died once. I know what’s on the other side because I saw it…and I saw Jesus. I’m not anxious at all because I know that no matter what happens it’ll be okay.” Later, after his surgery, he told me his story of dying on the operating table and being brought back after a long time of great efforts by the surgical staff. He shared his story of traveling above the operating table and into a wonderful light where he met the Savior. He will die, this man of faith, but he has no fear of it.

That was precisely the lesson Lazarus learned that day in Bethany. Dead four days, his body emitting the stench of death, bound in the tight bands of cloth in which the dead in first-century Judea were always buried, Lazarus was called from death back to the once mournful, now astonished villagers of Bethany.

I’ve often wondered if Lazarus hesitated when he heard Jesus call, knowing that on returning, he would reenter a life of death and decay, a place where people get facelifts and eyelifts and Botox injections in order to fool themselves and the world with the lie that we really don’t have a rendezvous with death. Or that we can put it off. Lazarus knew that, in returning, he would have to go through death again. Knowing that, I might have hesitated to return.

But Lazarus knew that deeper reality I mentioned earlier, something C.S. Lewis called “the deeper magic.” Lazarus knew that all who entrust themselves to the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, will live in God’s presence forever.

And I’ll wager that when any time after that, people tried to tell him how natural it was to be afraid, he laughed.

How can a follower of Jesus Christ really be afraid when she or he knows that beside a rendezvous with death, we also have a rendezvous with God that lasts forever?

How can we be afraid to stand against injustice or to help the poor and the hurting when we know that God has committed Himself to taking care of us forever?

How can we worry about parting with some of the gifts God has entrusted to us--gifts of time, talents, and treasure--when we know that one day we will walk with Jesus Christ on streets of gold?

How can we hesitate to do as Marti and Paul did--inviting 51 neighbors to be with us for Friend Day last week--knowing that even if people tell us no, God will spend an eternity telling us YES to all that’s best for us?

This is All Saints’ weekend. In part, it’s a time to remember the blessed dead who have lived and died believing in Jesus, the resurrection and the life, and who are now in His presence. Today, for example, our members Tim and Diana are worshiping at Lutheran Church of the Resurrection, where Tim and his brother join that congregation in dedicating a brick memorializing the memory of their mother.

And it’s appropriate that you and I remember today the three Friendship members who, in the sixteen year history of our congregation, have died believing in Christ, each in their own ways: Karen Hendrickson, Isaac Hauke, and Diane Binder.

But there’s more to All Saints’ weekend than remembering the blessed dead.

A saint, according to the Bible, is nothing more than a forgiven sinner, one who has turned from sin and let Jesus loose them from death.

Whether we’re saints on earth or saints in heaven, we all are spared separation from God.

By His gracious acceptance of those who trust in Jesus, we belong to God forever. The Lord Who has conquered our sin and our death allows us to say, “Yes, we have a rendezvous with death and through Christ, we also have a rendezvous with God!”

And we can laugh!

In two weeks, we will be celebrating our annual Consecration Sunday. We’ll have a potluck on that day. You and I will also be asked to estimate how we will use the gifts of time, talents, and treasure that God has given to us to advance the mission of Friendship Lutheran Church in 2007. This will help us plan for the year to come, something we especially need to do well in what is the most financially challenging period in our congregation’s history.

But, as you prayerfully do your estimating, I want to ask you to remember that we belong to a God Who calls the dead back to life and who gives all who follow Jesus a rendezvous with life that lasts forever.

Don’t be afraid! Keep trusting Jesus Christ. He has eternity in His hands. Let Him have you and let Him have Friendship in those strong hands, too!