11-8-09

Text: Luke 11 and Isaiah 53

● I found myself violating a long-established personal conviction this week: I listened to Christmas… prior to Thanksgiving. This year I have just felt like I need more time with Advent.

● Isaiah 53 is considered a ‘Messianic passage’, in that as the prophets looked forward to Messiah, the writers of the NT were someone looking back to Messiah and making, what they felt, were unmistakable connections to Jesus (“This is that!”)

“… a man of suffering, familiar with sorrow”

            Although most Jews held to a “Messianic story”, there certainly seemed to be no consensus on how he would come and what he would accomplish. 

● How good that we did not get the Messiah of “our choosing and expectation”; one who would be a national-hero, of sorts, yet having no clue as to how vulnerable we really are; one who was untouchable and unscathed by what causes us sorrow. “familiar”--- the word has various meanings, but in this context, it means that he had intimate, first-hand experience with pain and suffering.

How good it is that God chose not to come as the conquering warrior or the mighty King because we might be tempted to wonder if he was more about vengeance or compassion? (Was he just ‘getting even’ for humanity’s blatant disregard or was he moved by the pain which sin and evil inflicted upon us?)

● The beauty of Isaiah 53 is that it at once, addresses the dilemma of sin and the need for restoration. It brings together ‘Advent’ and ‘atonement’, Christmas and Easter.

● We find Jesus hanging out with Martha, Mary and Lazarus on more than one occasion in the Bible. I think it’s because he could just be “Jesus” when he was with them. He could temporarily escape from all of the demands of Messiah-ship and truly enjoy interaction with friends. No demands; no expectations; no “show us that water into wine thing again!”

● We are told by John that Jesus’ friend Lazarus is sick. His relationship with Lazarus was well-known: “the one you love …”

By mentioning Jesus’ love for the family before describing the incident, John draws us in; he provides opportunity for us to consider episodes in our lives when, convinced of God’s love, we are still unable to reconcile his delay or seeming lack of involvement in our painful circumstance.

● After what may have been a few days of travel or searching, the servant finds Jesus and delivers the message. Jesus’ reply: “Death will not be the final word in this story”. “That’s it? That’s what you want me to tell them? Come on, I’ll help grab your stuff. Let’s get going”.

● Surprised to see the servant returning without Jesus, he delivered the message to the dying man’s sisters. “Jesus said it’s going to be a couple of days before he can get here, but he also mentioned something about God getting glory out of all of this”.

Maybe Martha feels some temporary sense of relief in Jesus’ words of consolation. She wants to trust Jesus, although she doesn’t always understand him.

You get the sense that our own personal comfort and clarity are not the priority for Jesus; but that “glory” is, and that glory need not avoid suffering, but often comes out of or through it.

● The hopeful expectation of a secured future is not necessarily a guarantee a sorrow-free present. The “glory of God” comes, most often, right in the midst of human tragedy; the working out of his good and just intentions for us amidst the disorder causes us to glory in God.

We discover that Jesus brings consolation “in” our sorrow, but he sometimes allows us to taste sorrow for ourselves. He enters “into” our sorrow. And it is just that… ‘our’ sorrow.

● We might envision that as Mary and Martha cared for their brother and watched as his condition deteriorated, they would often whisper, “If only the Lord were here. If only the Lord were here”.

The situation deteriorates; Lazarus’ condition worsens. The illness proves fatal and the delay on Jesus’ part proves tragic. Jesus’ words prove to be hollow consolation.

Dealing with crisis (in this instance, death) is difficult enough, but dealing with the apparent absence of God in the process makes the situation even more challenging.

Lazarus’ death has left them not only grief-stricken, but filled with questions concerning Jesus’ response… or lack thereof.

● Days after Lazarus is dead, Jesus arrives.

“Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died”. The statements of Martha and Mary are identical, but the delivery and the intent are different.

Martha sees the situation as an unfortunate lapse in time (“If you could only have made it on time, ….”); Mary sees it as a blatant lapse in judgment on Jesus’ part: “Where were you?! Decided to show up, huh?”

“Your brother will rise”…accepted Jewish teaching. Since God would one day bring a new heaven and new earth to pass, they would receive new bodies which were made for eternity and enjoying the new life which would be made available.

“Yeah, I know all that, Jesus”, that’s what everyone’s been telling me; we learned that in synagogue. The dead will rise at the day of the Lord”, Martha would say.

“No, you don’t understand”, Jesus replies. “I am the resurrection and the life”: the future is standing right in front of you!” Jesus was bringing a taste of the future into the present.

● Jesus was suggesting that the resurrection is not just some future event at the end of time, but a present reality. Everywhere Jesus went, resurrection was happening: life was coming out of death-situations; the new was coming out of the old; fear was being replaced by joy; condemnation was giving way to forgiveness and restoration. The gospel is always about life coming from death.

● The onlookers assume that Jesus is crying because he loved Lazarus and was struggling to deal with his friend’s death.  In some ways, they wish to blame Jesus, but they are struck by the way that this incident has so profoundly impacted him.

            “I mean, he opened a blind man’s eyes. Couldn’t he have done something about this? If he really loved him, why didn’t he do something about it?”

You wonder if Martha, who moments ago has declared her trust in her friend Jesus, is not hearing those sentiments ricocheting around in her own spirit.

● The phrase used here of Jesus response, “deeply moved and troubled in spirit”, is one filled with great emotion. The word is sometimes translated ‘groaned’. It was a word used to describe horses that were agitated and snorting. I suggest that Jesus anger arose from a profound awareness of the hurt and groaning that creation experiences as a result of sin.

“Jesus wept”… because of the death of his friend and the way that impacted him and his friends; maybe, most importantly, because this one who weeps is the one was responsible for all of creation; the one who is responsible for all of life, all of creation, now stands before death as the culmination of evil and its ruinous effects… Jesus weeps, “This is not the way it was meant to be!”

This might allow us to put away our images of a distant and disinterested deity and exchange it for one who knows sorrow; one who knows what it feels like and how it affects us; one who is willing to meet us at the place of our pain. This is how God really feels. This is who God really is.

                “You don’t know what it’s like down here, God”, we decry. “Yes, I do”, is the response of the incarnation.

● It seems that in our pain, we are truly only able to receive comfort from those who can sympathize; those who have ‘first-hand experience’ of our pain.

You get the sense that the closer we get to Jesus, the more vulnerable we become and the more susceptible we are to disappointment.

            It’s one thing to be disappointed with our ‘theology’; it’s another to feel that Jesus has disappointed us. We expected more from him.

            Frankly, it seemed much easier when “Christ” (-ology) was just a doctrine: faith was systematic, explainable. When it’s relational, we want explanations; we need reasons to continue to trust Jesus, not our theology.

● Disappointment is always connected to expectation. Without expectation, you’re never disappointed. But, without expectation you’re never hopeful, either. There’s no anticipation of anything beyond what you are presently seeing and experiencing.

The man of sorrows, the one personally acquainted with pain, who seeks not to prevent sorrow, who offers consolation in our times of pain, who will experience it with you, will endure it himself… will eventually carry it for you.

● As we walk alongside the Savior who is with us in our sorrow, we begin to understand and value what it is to be resurrection people: a people who have the hope that the sorrow we experience has an answer, that it is not the last word; that our God has spoken and acted in ways which offer “consummation”--- not only of all that’s right, but a comprehensive end to all that’s evil and interrupts shalom.

Advent: we experience…

            “consolation”--- the comfort we derive from the words of Christ that “this will end in glory”: not just that it brings attention to God, but that it brings a rightful conclusion to the story--- ‘shalom’, a world at peace, which has been God’s dream all along. 

            “recognition”--- that we, as followers of Jesus, see you in your pain and your vulnerable condition and we are glad to move toward you in ways that are empathetic and compassionate.

            “identification”--- that we know not only what it’s like to have sorrow ourselves, but that we are willing to share yours.

            “resurrection”--- as we continue to ‘wait’, as we experience the continuing ruin and pain which is the result of sin, we wait with hope that God has acted in ways which expand the limits of possibility. It allows us to get a glimpse/taste of life overwhelming the dead things in our lives.

● Admittedly, “God with us” doesn’t sound too promising at times. It doesn’t always seem to expedite the rescue or eliminate my painful life-circumstance.

But, it does create hope and hope is all I have left when I’ve run out of explanations. In the end, I’m more interested in a God that I can trust than one that I can explain!