I am the Resurrection and the Life

5 Lent 2013

Job 19:23-27a; Ps 16:5-11; Rom 8:6-11; John 11:1-45*

Father Adam Trambley

March 17, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

“I am the Resurrection and the Life”

I am the Resurrection and the Life

This morning, we look at one of Jesus’ statements about himself that is most important to us.  In many ways, the statement would be surprising if we weren’t so used to hearing it.  “I am the life,” makes perfect sense, and Jesus is called the life many times.  After all, he created us and sustains us and is the source of life for the entire universe.

But “I am the resurrection” is a bit trickier.  Resurrection implies something that has died and is returning to life.  We know that people had a hard time with the idea of the Jesus dying if he is the Messiah and the Savior of the world and the Son of God and all the other things he claimed to be. For many of us, that death still may not make as much sense as if God flipped a magic switch and kept him from dying.  Throughout church history various people have in fact claimed that Jesus Christ didn’t fully die – whether because he was in some drug induced death-like trance for three days or because God spirited him away right before death or whatever.  A Son of God who dies seems hard to accept.

Of course, on the other side, resurrection requires coming back from the dead, and well-meaning people in every age have cast doubt on Jesus returning to life.  Starting with Matthew’s gospel, we have reports of some people claiming the whole thing is a hoax by his disciples.  Others of a more rationalist bent refuse to go in for such miracles, but really do like Jesus’ teachings.  Still others just think we’re all nuts for believing any of it. 

The problem with either of those understandings, however, is that for Jesus to be the resurrection, he needs both to really die and really to rise.  As Christians we believe he did precisely that. 

This central tenant of our faith is important for us because we are all going to die.  We don’t last forever.  At some point before sin and brokenness came, we may have been destined for eternity as we were, but that way of being was lost a long time ago.  Instead, we are corruptible, fragile souls, with bodies and spirits that are not quite up to snuff.  While God could certainly throw us all onto the cosmic scrap heap to start over, he doesn’t.  Jesus’ own resurrection is the assurance that God has an eternal future planned for his loving children even after they die.  Jesus doesn’t say, “I am the divine-detailer-of-low-mileage-models-that-need-a-tune-up and the life.”  He says, “I am the resurrection, pulling-the-rusted-hunks-out-of-the-depths-of-the-junkyard and the life.”   Resurrection means that we don’t have to be sort of OK for God to bring us into eternal life.  We can be totally dead, decomposed, eaten by worms, ashes scattered, whatever, as well as not being anything near perfect when we were alive, and still come to the Resurrection and the Life in Jesus Christ.  Resurrection is not in us, but wholly from Jesus. 

Jesus in today’s gospel brings Lazarus from the dead.  After Lazarus’s death, Jesus comes to town and Lazarus’s sister Martha comes to meet him.  Obviously she is upset that her brother is dead, and maybe a bit annoyed that Jesus who healed all sorts of people hadn’t come in time to heal her brother.  She tells him so, in a polite way, while also noting that God would give him whatever he asks, in case he might still be able to ask for something.  Jesus response is that, “Your brother will rise,” but she isn’t immediately comforted.  It sounds like the kind of thing you say to people who are mourning, like we would say, “He’s in a better place.”  The statement is true, and we believe it, but that’s not the same as saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll bring him out of the grave for you in time for tea.”  Martha says to Jesus, “Yeah, I know.  In the resurrection on the last day.”  Scripture doesn’t record her expression, which may very well have been, “but that’s not really what I’m hoping for.”  Then Jesus lays it all out: “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  Martha says she believes this, and then Jesus goes out to call forth Lazarus from the tomb. 

Now Jesus as the Resurrection is not really about bringing Lazarus out of the tomb.  Lazarus isn’t raised finally to eternal life.  Jesus restores him to life, but it is to this life.  He will die again.  He had died prematurely, and Jesus brings him back from death.  But the raising of Lazarus is not the resurrection that is our hope.  The raising of Lazarus is a sign that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life that he claims.  Lazarus is an arrow pointing to Jesus to help us believe. 

The real resurrection is what Martha and Jesus are talking about, and there are two components.  The first is the resurrection on the last day.  Every time we recite the creeds, we say that we believe in the resurrection of the body.  Christians believe what Martha believed, that we are not really some sort of spiritual beings stuck in a body that dies before the important part of us goes off into a ghostly heaven.  No, we believe that our bodies are an integral part of who we are, and that in the end our bodies are resurrected and we live out eternity as embodied beings.  Our resurrected bodies are going to be like Jesus resurrected bodies – incorruptible and better in ways we can’t fully describe – but they are also going to have some connection to who we are now.  If we take Jesus’ example, we are also going to be able to do some things we do today, like eat.  This resurrection to a full, better life than we have now is what Jesus as the Resurrection and Life offers to bring.

The second component of Jesus as Resurrection and Life is that those who believe in him never die.  This saying is difficult, because we see believers die regularly.  But Jesus is offering something else.  Jesus is offering an ongoing spiritual life for those who believe.  When we die, we are delivered from death into something else, something that comes before the general resurrection.  We don’t just die and wait in death for resurrection, as Martha believed.  Jesus broke the bonds of death during his own death and resurrection, so that now we are delivered before death into a place of life while we await Jesus’ final return and resurrection of the body.  Paul is describing this in our Romans reading when he says that if we have Christ, even though the body is dead, the Spirit of life remains in us.  We don’t actually die, we just are somewhere else, but eventually that same Holy Spirit of Christ will then give life to our mortal bodies.  Our immortal soul doesn’t just ditch our bodies when we die.  Instead, Jesus living in us keeps us alive in the Spirit when our mortal bodies die until our bodies themselves are raised to an incorruptible, eternal life.

In your bulletin is a sixteenth century Russian icon that captures who Jesus is and what he does as the resurrection.  Jesus is standing on the broken white gates of death and hell, and if you look closely you can see the broken chains and bonds of death underneath him in the black background.  Adam and Eve are beside him and he is raising them out of their tombs.  Notice that Adam just has his hand outstretched and Jesus has grasped his arm – all the active effort is Jesus’ because he does all the work.  In Jesus’ left hand is a scroll, depicting the message of salvation he brings to the souls in death.  Behind Jesus is a big blue egg, a symbol of life and resurrection.  Jesus’ white cape is flying upwards behind him, to show that he is descending down to lift us up.  On the left side are Kings David and Solomon and John the Baptist, depicting Old Testament figures Jesus brings from death, while on the right are those of Jesus time.  Above Jesus are the angels holding a cross and a chalice, representing the instruments that Jesus uses to deliver us from the grave.

I would encourage you to take this icon home and use it for meditation during the end of Lent, Holy Week and Easter as a way to call to mind how Jesus comes down to us and lifts us out of death into eternal life.  Not only does he do this at the last day at our final resurrection, he is also reaching down and pulling us out of all the little deaths of sin and suffering we find ourselves in during the course of our life.  Like those who have used it over the past five-hundred years, we can pray with this icon to draw closer to Jesus who promises us…

“I am the resurrection and the life.” 

*Note: with permission of bishop we are using alternative readings this Lent to focus on “Who is Jesus?”