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GOD’S TIME
(A sermon preached March 9, 2008 at University United Methodist Church of
East Lansing by John Ross Thompson)
John 11:1-45
11:1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and
her sister Martha.
11:2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet
with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
11:3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill."
11:4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death;
rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through
it."
11:5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,
11:6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in
the place where he was.
11:7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."
11:8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to
stone you, and are you going there again?"
11:9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk
during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.
11:10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them."
11:11 After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,
but I am going there to awaken him."
11:12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be
all right."
11:13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought
that he was referring merely to sleep.
11:14 Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead.
11:15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But
let us go to him."
11:16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us
also go, that we may die with him."
11:17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb
four days.
11:18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away,
11:19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about
their brother.
11:20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while
Mary stayed at home.
11:21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not
have died.
11:22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him."
11:23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
11:24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection
on the last day."
11:25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who
believe in me, even though they die, will live,
11:26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you
believe this?"
11:27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the
Son of God, the one coming into the world."
11:28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and
told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you."
11:29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.
11:30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place
where Martha had met him.
11:31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up
quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to
the tomb to weep there.
11:32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and
said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
11:33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also
weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.
11:34 He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and
see."
11:35 Jesus began to weep.
11:36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"
11:37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind
man have kept this man from dying?"
11:38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave,
and a stone was lying against it.
11:39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man,
said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four
days."
11:40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would
see the glory of God?"
11:41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father,
I thank you for having heard me.
11:42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of
the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."
11:43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"
11:44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth,
and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him
go."
11:45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what
Jesus did, believed in him.
Ezekiel 37:1-14
37:1 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit
of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.
37:2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and
they were very dry.
37:3 He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord GOD,
you know."
37:4 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry
bones, hear the word of the LORD.
37:5 Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you,
and you shall live.
37:6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and
cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall
know that I am the LORD."
37:7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly
there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
37:8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them,
and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.
37:9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say
to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and
breathe upon these slain, that they may live."
37:10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and
they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
37:11 Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.
They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off
completely.'
37:12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going
to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will
bring you back to the land of Israel.
37:13 And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and
bring you up from your graves, O my people.
37:14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place
you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will
act," says the LORD.
Some people might think that God doesn’t care.
Supposedly, the people of Israel were God’s chosen people, but the prophet
Ezekiel characterizes those people as a valley of dry bones.
Jesus, the Son of God, hears that his friend Lazarus is dying, delays his
trip to the home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, and comes only after Lazarus has
died.
Does God care? Other Bible passages clearly tell us that God does care, but
these two stories seem to tell us otherwise.
I believe it’s a matter of God’s timing.
It’s hard to understand God’s time, but we keep trying.
Why when we fervently pray for something NOW does it wait to come?
Why are some of our dreams unfulfilled?
Why is our loving God so slow to act?
We get a glimpse of an answer in both of these scripture passages. Think
first about Lazarus, Mary and Martha.
When you have best friends, you usually bend over backwards to do things for
them. Especially when you hear that a good friend is dying, it makes sense to
move mountains to get there and show your love and care.
Mary and Martha don’t understand. Jesus’ disciples probably didn’t, either.
Why didn’t Jesus hurry to Bethany when he knew his friend was dying? Why did he
tarry along the road, and wait until after Lazarus had died before getting to
Bethany?
The glimpse we have is Jesus’ comment that he was glad he was not there when
Lazarus was dying, because now the disciples would believe. He also said that
the illness would not lead to death, when it is obvious that Lazarus did die.
Only Jesus had knowledge that Lazarus would physically live again. Jesus also
says that we need to look in the daylight, not at night, if we want to see.
It’s very easy to be wrapped up in ourselves. The perspective each of us has
is based on who we are, where we are, and what we know. We can’t often get
beyond that.
Just think of someone you know who is wrapped up in self-love. We had a
hilarious moment when we were in Georgia in January for a conference on Biblical
study and preaching. Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor told the story of a friend
who talked on and on and on about himself. Finally, he finished and said to the
other person, “That’s enough about me. Now, what do you think of me?”
Our faith perspective leads us beyond ourselves, out of our limited
perspective on self and the world and into a larger perspective. It is based on
God’s world and all of God’s children, not just on ourselves.
The Hebrew/Eastern view of the world, on which the Old Testament was based as
well as much of the New Testament, is centered on the tribe or family, the
community, not the individual. We in the Western world often have trouble
understanding this perspective, because it is alien to our often self-centered
views.
We are receiving new members into our church today. We rejoice in those who
become part of this church family, both those who officially join our church and
others who take part in our activities. We find in the church a wider circle of
friends – another way God opens us up to what God has created, a diversity of
persons.
So what was Jesus doing, waiting in another town while his friend was dying?
His broader perspective, his insight into what could happen helped him to know
that all was not lost. Martha and Mary felt their world fall apart when their
brother died, but Jesus reopened the part of their world that seemed to have
closed.
Notice the repetition of the word believe in verses 4, 15, 25-26, and
again in verse 40.
Belief is not fairytale wishing. It is getting in touch with a greater
reality. It’s seeing with God’s eyes, not just human eyes.
Have you ever been to a meeting or gathering where the speaker or teacher's
voice was so monotonous it kept you on the edge of sleep? You might sit there
waiting for the speaker to finish, and you don't want to get embarrassed by
falling asleep; you check your watch ever so often...and then by accident, you
finally doze off. (Of course, this could never happen in church!) You have a
daydream that takes up a considerable amount of time for all the events to
happen. Then, you wake up, and remember all of a sudden where you are. Your
first instinct is to check your watch to see how long you fell asleep, since you
might have a feeling that you missed something important, similar to being late
for an appointment and the like. You look at your watch, and lo, hardly a minute
has passed. Then you begin recalling some of the things you dreamt about, and
you just know that more time than a minute should have passed for all those
things in the dream to take place. You know at least that if the dream had taken
place in the physical, more time would be needed to make the events happen.
Time also cannot be hurried. I remember as a child with a small garden
pulling up the radishes and carrots to see if they were growing. Of course,
hurrying the time stopped the growth.
Try to think of a time when someone else was desolate because they could see
only one thing, but because you knew something more, you could see another way.
That’s one thing that education does for us. As we learn more, our tunnel
vision widens and we can see more, even if it is only peripheral. We know more,
so we know more possibilities.
Our spiritual life is the same. While once we could see down only one
street, now through God’s spirit there are other ways to experience life. Jesus
blew away the mourners in Bethany that day, because he did what no one there
imagined could ever be done. With our wider spiritual horizons, we, too, can
know that there are other possibilities.
In our Lenten study book this past week, we read about John Wesley’s
discovery that God could do through him things that were unimaginable before.
Wesley was a proper Englishman, enjoying the beauty of churches, the dignity of
pulpits and proper dress for priests. When his enthusiasm led church officials
to ban him from Church of England pulpits, he had to do what he considered a
“vile thing” – preach outside in open fields. He didn’t want to do it, but
because he did, thousands of people heard him who never would have gone inside a
church.
So, what about Ezekiel’s dry bones? The imagery is familiar to most of us,
but how does it apply to 2008? Think Rwanda. Think Darfur. Or think about the
part of your life that has dried up and appears to be over.
The dry bones are an image that is without hope, because they are without
life. The God who promises us that God’s spirit will be in us, knows more
because that God brings life, not death. God restores life!
Compare the raising of Lazarus to Ezekiel's vision of restoration. Can the
dead live again? After four days of death's rot and stench? Or much further down
the road after bones have been bleached by the sun and strewn by the vultures?
Can dead situations be redeemed and can hopelessly wasted lives be salvaged?
Both Ezekiel and Lazarus would say the answer is YES!
There are times when perception is greatly influenced by perspective. What
appeared to be the end of the world when we were teenagers often looks like a
mild challenge ten years later. What feels like major debt for the average
person may look like "pocket change" to someone who has more money. What looks
like a dead situation for us is redeemable in the eyes of God. The language of
Ezekiel 37:11 suggests that the people of Israel thought themselves to be dead:
“Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”
Perhaps Ezekiel agreed with them. God, however, saw them alive and restored.
Are there "dead" situations and circumstances that God is challenging us to see
differently?
The priest and prophet Ezekiel offered pastoral words to a frightened and
desperate people. As God's messenger, his concern was not with job security or
getting a book of the Bible named for him. He was concerned with breaking the
exiles open to hearing a word of deliverance from God. Ezekiel worried that his
dramatic techniques were not getting the people's attention. He started thinking
it was all on his shoulders. Ezekiel despaired.
But then one day God plopped Ezekiel down in the middle of a valley of
dried-up bones. This time, God despaired. God took a good look at God's people
and saw dried up hopes, dried up dreams, dried up programs, and dried up
congregations. And God said, "Can these bones live?"
Ezekiel did not respond to God by pointing out all the good things that were
happening in spite of the stench of death. Ezekiel did not respond to God by
putting on a happy face, shoring up a positive mental attitude, and looking on
the bright side. Ezekiel had the wisdom and humility to respond with a
confession, "I don't know. Only you know, God."
At the death of her brother Lazarus, Martha despaired. She complained to
Jesus that he could have prevented this tragedy if he had gotten his priorities
straight. But then she spoke confidently of her faith in the God who hears and
answers. Jesus told her, "I am the resurrection and the life." He then asked,
"Do you believe this?" Martha responded in confession, "Yes, Lord. You are the
Christ."
Resurrection comes to despairing, dried-up people. The only hope we have is
in a God who can breathe life into our dried-up lives. Beyond our despairing no
and our optimistic yes comes the bone-rattling, air-stirring Spirit of new life.
“When you are aware that the Holy Spirit really means that God is present and
gives flesh and blood to God's purpose in even the most desperate circumstance,
then you are talking about something which you can see around you." -Laurens
Hogebrink, in New Life in Dry Bones
Catch some images of what God can do for those who believe. These images can
take us next week to Holy Week and beyond.
The Pathfinders Class is studying a book called “In God’s Time”, considering
Biblical passages about the end of the world and God’s fulfillment.
God’s time is when we see more than ourselves.
It’s when we take a longer view, like a view from an airplane that sees the
whole landscape, not just our corner of the world.
It’s when we see hope where others see only death.
God’s time is more than just adjusting our clocks for Daylight Savings Time.
It’s seeing the world through eyes of belief, through hearts that trust, through
love for the one who created us in God’s image.
When we don’t understand, perhaps it’s time to see it in God’s time.
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