DEATH: FROM GOD’S PERSPECTIVE

ALL SAINTS SUNDAY – NOV. 1, 2009 - John 11: 32-44 – Pastor Deborah Birkeland

Grace to you and peace on this All Saint’s Day as together we remember with thanksgiving those precious persons in our lives who, by their witness of faith, share in the name of Jesus Christ, and have gone on before us into God’s eternal glory. Amen.

Steven Covey, in his best selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, tells his readers that one of the most important of life’s lessons is to keep the end in mind. He illustrates that point by asking us to imagine going to our own funeral. Imagine, he says, that there are five people in your life who step forward to share a eulogy about your life. Who would they be? And what would you want them to say about you? Covey stresses the point that in order to really ìliveî we must always keep the end in mind and live as we want to be remembered right now!

Keeping the end in mind. Death is an end we ALL keep in mind to some degree, don’t we? If you are like me, I find myself checking the obituaries in the paper and noting the ages of those who are listed there. Death is always waiting for us, yet Jesus came that we might see and focus on a different kind of end. God so loved the world that he came in flesh to show us the way home. The way to that placeÖthat END, where we all belong, and where LOVE has the final, definitive say.

Death in Jesus’ day was shrouded with great mystery. One thing we often don’t realize is that people of the Old Testament had little or no belief in life after death. In the early days, the Hebrews believed that the soul of every person, good or bad, went to Shoel.

Now Shoel is NOT what we understand as hell, but a land of shadows and mystery. The Psalms are literally filled with images of this place of shadows that follows bodily death. Here, it was believed, the soul lived a vague, strenghless, joyless, even ghostly kind of existence. King Hezekiah, says the prophet Isaiah, was reported to have cried out before he died, ìFor Shoel cannot thank thee O God, death cannot praise thee; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for thy faithfulness!î (Isaiah 38:18) He represented the pessimistic view that after death came a land of silence and forgetfulness, where the vague shadows of men were separated not only from one another, but also from God.

New hope began to emerge in later times as the psalmist dared to hope in the coming Messiah. Job, who faced so much suffering and loss, made a daring leap of faith when he declared, ìI know that my Redeemer lives and that on the last dayÖI shall see him in my flesh.î (Job 19:25-26)

Perhaps you get a new understanding then of the amazing power of our gospel text this morning in which Lazarus is raised from the tomb, commanded to come forth, be unbound, and set free. The Jews also believed that the ghostly spirit of the departed hovered around his tomb for four days seeking re-entrance into the body, but as an odor indicated the body was beginning to decay, they thought it had departed to the land of Shoel. From this mysterious and ghastly place, only the coming of the REAL Christ could bring resurrection.

Jesus said to Martha, ìI am the Resurrection and the LifeÖî This was a bold statement of an end that NO ONE had thought of. That God, in human flesh, would be their Savior! Even though Martha admitted that Jesus was the Christ, the One of God, she and the other Jews assembled there were hardly prepared for what was about to happen. For in front of hundreds of mourners, Jesus’ authority to raise a dead man even from Shoel proved that Jesus was the Messiah!

A new END was in sight, yet the cross lay ahead and before the good news of Easter, Death had to be conquered once and for all! Jesus did not jump to that end until he had walked through the valley of human loss and suffering that defines our broken condition.

Our text says: ìWhen Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply movedÖî These words, ìgreatly disturbed in spiritî come from the Greek verb that denotes a certain sternness, almost anger. They indicate that Jesus was so distressed that his body trembled, perhaps an involuntary groan came from his lips that revealed his great anguish over the grief and sorrow he shared with these, his people.

For many, that tiny verse, ìAnd Jesus wept,î has brought deep comfort, as they weep. For to know that God’s Son fully experienced the depth of our human anguish gives us undeniable proof of the profound love and compassion God has for us, His children. In Jesus, we see the mind and heart of God that understands our greatest times of despair, and weeps with us even as He walks beside us through that darkest of valleys.

But there is another meaning behind Jesus’ emotional display that we must not overlook. That of profound anger! Jesus was ANGRY because that ìBULLYî called death has robbed God’s children of the joy and hope we can have to see the true end from God’s point of view.

Max Lucado tells a story of taking his little girls to see a magic show one day. As the magician showed them his trick, Max watched his daughter’s reactions. They were amazed when a coin disappeared, and then gasped when it reappeared. At first, Max was humored by their bewilderment, but then he realized that he didn’t like what was happening. His kids were being duped into believing falsehoods. The magician was tricking them, and in their innocence, they believed. So, Max began whispering into his daughter’s ears. ìIt’s in his sleeve.î And sure enough, it was. ìIt’s behind his ear.î And, so it was. Maybe it was rude, he said, to interfere with the show. But Max didn’t like seeing his children fooled into believing that which was only a trick. And neither does God!

Our God refuses to allow the biggest bully of all, Satan, to deceive his children. And do you know what his greatest trick is? DEATH! For if death is the ONLY end we can believe in, then Satan will ultimately have deceived us away from our eternal home to an eternity without hope. God will NOT allow that deception!

There is a story told in Brazil about a missionary who discovered a tribe of Indians in a remote part of the jungle. They lived near a great river and had many superstitions. A contagious disease began ravaging the tribe and people were dying daily. An infirmary was located in another part of the jungle and the missionary realized that the only hope for these people was to go for treatment and inoculations. But in order to get to the infirmary,

they had to cross the great river, a feat they were terrified and totally unwilling to do.

The river, they believed, was inhabited with evil spirits. To cross the river meant certain death. So the missionary set about trying to convince them that this was only a superstition. He explained how he had crossed the river to come to them and had arrived unharmed. No luck. He led the people to the bank and walked into the water until it was up to his neck, splashing water over his head and face. The people watched closely, but would not follow him. Finally, in desperation, he dove into the water and swam as hard and fast as he could, often submerged under the water. The people watched with anxious fear. Finally, the missionary emerged on the other side of the river. He punched a triumphant fist into the air having proven that the power of the river was a farce, and the people cheered as they rushed to follow him to the other side. (Lucado, Max, Six Hours One Friday,îMy Death is Not Final,î pp. 157-158)

For us, death IS a big deal, and getting to the other side IS impossible from our point of view. But, from God’s view, death is a necessary transition in our journey into his everlasting arms. God, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, has given us a bridge in Christ’s love that connects past, present and future. The life we find in Christ transcends time and can be found IN THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT! But only when the eyes of our hearts behold and our ears listen to Jesus, God’s SonÖand NOT the trickster!

Jesus was angry and filled with sorrow when he saw the fear of a cheap and bullying power over those he came to love. He tried to explain that we have nothing to fear, but we wouldn’t believe. He touched a young girl and brought her back to life. The followers were still unconvinced. He whispered life back into the body of a young man and returned him to his widowed mother, yet people were still cynical. He let a dead man lay in his grave four days until odor overwhelmed, and then called him forth. Was that enough? Apparently not! For at Calvary, Jesus submerged himself in that river of death so that God’s children would believe that he truly IS the TRUTH, the WAY and the LIFE. He is the resurrection that has conquered the trickster’s greatest trick, death, forever.

When Jesus called in a loud voice for Lazarus to come out, his voice also carried with it a battle cry that he would take to the cross. ìIt is finished!î And when that stone was rolled away, and his tomb was found emptyÖwhen he spoke those loving words, ìMaryî and then walked into that room to bring peace and a future of hope and power to his disciples, the bully was finally exposed for just who he really is. And now, the TRUE END is indeed in sight for each and every one of us. Let us keep THIS END in sight, an end that is truly a BEGINNING. Peace and comfort on this All Saint’s Day. Amen.

GUIDED BY THE GOSPEL: GATHERING • GROWING • GIVING