"A Shining Light Through the Cracks"
Overcoming the power of fear and death in our lives
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Text: John 11:17-27
There is a story of a journalism class where the professor challenges the students to come up with the most sensational headline they could using only three words. He asked them to go away for the night and to come back in the morning, and he would adjudicate which was the most sensational and award prizes accordingly.
The students went home and thought about the three words that would capture the most sensational headline. Next morning, the class came together and the professor read out the three winners in descending order. The third prize went to the person who said, “President Declares War” - a sensational headline! The second prize went to, “McDonald's Closes Down.” In Canada, we would say Tim's! The first prize, the headline that was the most sensational, was, “The Pope Elopes.”
Sometimes, the most dramatic phrase can be coined in the most simple of language. It doesn't take a lot of words to make headlines. Pithy, to-the-point phrases can capture everything, none more so than this morning's passage: Jesus said, “I am the resurrection.” From these words, the most incredible, the most passionate, the most powerful, the most sensational of all headlines was written: “Jesus has risen!” It is that headline that has dominated 2,000 years of history. It is because of that very headline that you and I are gathered in this place this morning, and if you are listening at home with friends, you are listening because of the words, “I am the resurrection” and the headline that followed, “Jesus is risen!”
It is that headline, that very phrase that changed the life of two women in the Scriptures. Their names were Martha and Mary, and they were the sisters of Lazarus, whom we know was close to Jesus. We do not know a great deal about the relationship except that Martha and Mary and Lazarus were all very close friends of Jesus.
In this passage, these women are dominated by another headline, and that is: “Lazarus is dead.” These two women are so upset that their brother has died that they turn to Jesus, whom they have seen as a great miracle worker, whom they believe to be the Messiah and the Lord of the universe. In anger and in disappointment, they say to him, “Jesus, if only you had been here, our brother would not have died.” In other words, they ask Jesus, “Why were you not here?”
Jesus responds to these two women at their point of grief: He weeps. Then he says something that they thought was almost flippant. He says, “Your brother will rise again.” They must have thought that was a very flippant, insensitive thing to say for as observant Jews of the first century, they believed there would be a day of resurrection in the future. As faithful Jews, they believed in what was known in Hebrew as the “hayye alam,” the last day of the resurrection, the age to come. So, when Jesus says, “Your brother will rise again,” this is no news; they already know that, they already believe that. It is sort of like waking up and seeing a headline in the Globe and Mail that says, “All flights in and out of Pearson yesterday landed and took off safely.” What kind of news is that? That is hardly a headline! It must be a pretty slow news day if that constitutes a headline. No. You would only say, “All planes coming in and out of Pearson yesterday were safe except for one.” That is news!
For Martha and Mary, then, Jesus talking about the resurrection of the last day was no news at all. It seemed flippant, dismissive and unimportant, and they were full of grief and disappointment. They felt a little bit like I used to feel when I would visit my cousins at their farm in Scotland for the summer. On this farm, there were cattle grates at the pasture gates, to help prevent the sheep from straying into the wrong field or onto the road. Because the sheep and the cows would not cross over the grates in case their hooves fell through the cracks, my uncle knew his sheep would be safe in their fields and would not wander.
Well, you know what my cousins would do to me, the city boy? They would stick me in the middle of a field with all the sheep, and then they would run away. They knew that I was scared of falling through the cattle grates, and so I would run to the edge of the field, look at the grate, and stand there and tremble and cry for my mummy. My cousins loved this! They all jumped over the grate to the other side and left me standing there. To make matters worse, they would go and get their friends and say, “Come and look at the English boy standing in the middle of the fields! Isn't he a wally?” So, I would stand there, crying, frightened of the cracks, for that was all I could see. After a while, they took pity on me, especially when my uncle wondered where I was for supper. Then, they would come and pick me up and carry me across the gate in the most ignominious manner to safety.
In many ways, Martha and Mary were just like I was in that field. All they could see at that moment was the headline: “Lazarus is dead.” All they could see were the cracks in the grate, and they were terrified. But then, Jesus said something to them that was revolutionary, that was sensational. He didn't just say, “Oh, it's okay, your brother Lazarus will rise again.” He said, “I am the resurrection and the life: I am the source and the substance of this eternal life, and because I am here, Lazarus, your brother, will live.” This transforms them from women just looking down at the cracks, seeing only the bleakness and the darkness and the fear. This is not a hypothetical concept of death being conquered at some later date: Jesus comes and he brings the imminent; he brings the moment; he says, “I am the resurrection. Do you believe this?” Mary and Martha looked at him, and in other words, another headline that has shaken the world, they say, “Yes. We believe.”
Martha and Mary were transformed by the presence of Jesus. Only later on, on Easter Day, the day of the resurrection, the day of the empty tomb, did they see their belief fulfilled. Only months later did they see this consummated. But they remembered it, and because they remembered it, they proclaimed it, and because they proclaimed it, you and I are here today.
Thus, the challenge goes out to you, as Jesus gave to Martha and Mary: Do you believe it? Do you believe in the power of eternal life as we find it in Jesus Christ? If you answer, “Yes, we do,” then let me tell you, it can transform your life, because the resurrection of Jesus is like a great light shining through those cracks. It a great light that shines and reveals God's goodness. It is a light that can shine on our lives as well.
You know, my friends, many people think of the resurrection as something that is way off in the future. In some ways, it is. But, it is also being realized in the present, through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is not just something for which we wait; it is a reality that we can experience right now. It is an experience that can transform and change every single moment of your life.
One of the greatest preachers in Britain was John Henry Jowett. Dr. Jowett used to visit a friend who was a shoemaker in a seaside town in the north of England. One day he was visiting his shoemaker friend in this tiny little room where he made his shoes, and he asked his friend, “How can you stand living in this dark room? It's dingy, it's smelly - how can you spend eight hours a day, six days a week stuck in this horrible little room?” The shoemaker replied, “I want to show you something.” He took Dr. Jowett through the room, and he opened the back door. The back door looked right out on to a beach, by the ocean. The sunlight poured in, and the waves crashed, and you could smell the ozone. He said to Dr. Jowett, “You see, when I feel my life pressing in on me, when I feel that my life is small and has no meaning, all I have to do is simply open the back door and let the light come streaming in. That is all I have to do.”
Well, my friends, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is just like that back door. It is the opening up to us of the light and the love and the grace and the freedom and the joy that comes from Almighty God. But the problem is that so many of us are still just looking down at the cracks. We become obsessed with the darkness. We become obsessed with evil. We become obsessed with injustice. We become so obsessed with death. We become obsessed with sin outside us and inside us. We become obsessed that all we can see is what Martha and Mary first saw: Lazarus is dead! These are the cracks that dominate our lives.
For so many people, life is dominated by those cracks. The resurrection of Jesus Christ comes to such people, and like a light, starts shining through those cracks. After all, if death is the greatest crack of all, if death is the most fearsome and formidable foe that we can face, and it has been defeated by the grace of Jesus of Nazareth, then surely all other fears, all other cracks, all other problems can be put in their rightful place.
Just before Christmas, in this very sanctuary, we buried a young woman who had battled cancer. She had sung in our choir, and the choir loved her deeply. Her family and her friends had to somehow find light and meaning in the midst of such sorrow. I spoke to her husband, who has become a friend of mine, and I asked him how he was getting through all this, and how he was going to live from that moment on. He referred me to a song by the country singer Tim McGraw, about a man who has received bad news from the doctor. He tells his friend that he prepared himself to die by reading the Bible and finding the good news there, and resolving to the following: (here is the chorus of the song, and what a chorus it is for Easter Sunday):
”I went skydiving;
I went Rocky Mountain climbing;
I did two-point-seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.
and I love deeper,
and I spoke sweeter,
and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying.
and He said, ”˜Someday, I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying.'”
That, my friends, is what the words Jesus spoke to Martha and Mary are all about: “I am the resurrection and the life.” They are the words that help us to live as if we were dying, but no longer just to see the cracks, no longer just to see the darkness, no longer to be consumed by the fear, but to live freely and to live boldly, knowing that the ultimate has actually been conquered if we believe. The reality is there are many people in our society who still live down those cracks. There are still the homeless and misused. There are still the poor and the outcast. There is still the suffering and those who are filled with pain.
The message of Easter from the church is to reach down into those very cracks, and not only to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus so that a light can shine through those cracks, but to lift those people out of the cracks. If you, personally, this morning feel so challenged and so moved by the risen Christ that you want to do something to help those people, then you need only look at one or two pages of our order of service and you will find opportunities to do so through the ministry of this church, for there are people who are dying like they were dying, and they need to live like they were dying. In the name of the Risen One, we need to reach down into those cracks, and lift them up and proclaim in deed and in words that Christ is their life.
The resurrection is not only a light that shines for our life, it is also a shining light that pushes out our horizons. Jesus went on to say to Martha and Mary: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? For Jesus, then, what he was about to do for Lazarus, he was about to do for all time. He was about to do for you, for all, forever: to open the back door to the life that is eternal.
What frustrates me, my friends, and what I see from Easter to Easter is people who live their lives not just looking down the cracks, but also looking at the bars between the cracks, assuming that this life, such as it is, is good enough. That this is all there is. They spend their lives simply accumulating stuff, simply grabbing what the earth has to give them, taking and consuming and hoarding for themselves as if that is the ultimate goal of life, as if somehow that is the very end. When we have accumulated the most that we can, we can sit back and say that it has all been worth it.
Yet, I see people become disillusioned when they live like that. They become disappointed and disaffected, even with God. They realize it is not enough; they realize it doesn't fulfill completely. Oh, by all means, enjoy life! Go “two-point-seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu,” skydive, climb mountains, do great and glorious things! Enjoy the days that God has given you. Please enjoy the days that God has given you - but don't think that those days are it! They are not! Eternity is much longer, and Jesus knew it. He pushed the horizon out. When all Martha and Mary could see was that which was before their eyes, he said “I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?” You see, my friends, the moment you say “I believe this,” your whole outlook on life changes.
There is an apocryphal story told of a man who spent his life accumulating great wealth. Mid-way through, he decided that he wanted to ask God a favour. He said: “God, I was wondering if I can take all that I have accumulated into heaven?”
God replied, “I am sorry. We don't allow inanimate objects into heaven. We only allow people.”
The man said, “Are you sure?”
God said “Yes, I am sure. You can't bring it with you.”
So the man said, “Look, is there no way I can get around the rule?”
God said, “Well, all right. Look, whatever you can fit into this green garbage bag, I will allow you to bring into heaven.”
The man was ecstatic, and for the rest of his life he accumulated gold bullion. On the day of his death, his garbage bag was full of gold bricks. So he went to heaven and was greeted by the angels, but they said, “We are sorry, we don't allow inanimate objects into heaven.”
The man said, “I beg your pardon, I have already made a deal with God, and I can bring this in.”
The angels said “We are terribly sorry, but no one has told us about any deal.”
The man said, “Honestly, I can bring this into heaven with me.”
So the angels decided to check with the CEO and management, and called Peter over. They said “Now, look Peter, we are wondering if this man is allowed to bring this garbage bag into heaven?”
Peter said, “Actually, he is.”
The angels asked, “How did this happen?”
Peter said, “He made this deal with God, and God kind of said it was all right. He felt sorry for him - he allowed him to bring it in.”
So, the angels said, “Okay, come on in, and bring your garbage bag with you.” They were so curious about what was in this bag that the man thought was so wonderful. They opened it up and they saw the gold bricks, and one angel said to the other, “Look - pavement!” In heaven, the streets are paved with gold! All he had brought with him was a few bricks along the way! That, my friends, is how so many of us live our lives. Pavement, compared with eternity!
Jesus, and the power of his resurrection gets us to take those values and reverse them, to turn them on their heads. The resurrection is a light that shines on a new horizon, allowing us to see beyond simply what is in front of us in this life to what is ahead of us. That is the power of Easter! That is why I firmly believe that this Sunday changes our lives, and when we grasp that reality, we have grasped the most meaningful thing that our existence can possibly bring. The resurrection of Jesus Christ isn't one thing, it is The Thing. It is the light that shines through the cracks and proclaims the most incredible news: “I am the resurrection. Do you believe this?” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.