I Am the Resurrection
Sycamore Creek Church
October 19/20, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

What’s the closest you’ve come to dying?  When I was a teenager I went to a church that was about thirty minutes from my home.  Youth Group was Sunday night.  Often when youth group was over I would hang out with friends for another couple of hours.  Then I would drive home.  One Sunday night on the drive home I fell asleep while driving on the highway at sixty-five or seventy MPH.  I woke up when I hit the rumble strips, but it was too late.  I was already heading toward the steep embankment.  I hit a mile marker and it snapped off and flew into the air.  Quickly I was off the pavement and onto the grass.  I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop just in between two trees.  I sat in my car stunned at what had just happened.  Eventually a tow truck came and pulled me out, and I have never again driven when I felt that sleepy.  I came too close to dying.

Death.  It’s something we all can look forward to.  If you are alive, you will die.  A close brush with death makes us ask some hard questions.  What comes after death?  Am I prepared to die?  Have I lived a life worthy of the gift that it is?

Today we continue the series: I Am Jesus.  And we’ll be exploring a moment that Jesus had a brush with someone else’s death.  Throughout this series we’ve been exploring the “I am” statements of Jesus written down by one of his closest followers, John.  There are seven “I am” statements.  They are:

I am the way the truth and the life.
I am the bread of life.
I am the gate/door.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the vine.
I am the resurrection.
I am the light of the world.

Today’s verse is:

I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.
~John 11:25 NRSV

What exactly is a resurrection?  A resurrection is when something was dead and comes  back to life.  Of course, Jesus is known for his resurrection, but his resurrection is not the only resurrection recorded in the Bible.  The other is Lazarus.

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”
~John 11:1-3 NRSV

Many of us are in a state of bad news today.  The one you love is sick and dying with cancer.  The job you love is going away.  The dream marriage turned into a nightmare.  A close friendship might not be working out.  The school principal calls to talk about your teenager, and it’s not about the honor roll.  I have received some bad news lately.  My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.  You may have recently received some bad news yourself.  So how does Jesus respond to the bad news he receives?

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.”
~John 11:4 NRSV

Hmmm…Jesus has a very interesting (or as my son says, “in-stir-ing”) response.  Jesus then does nothing for two days before deciding to go.  His disciples tell him it’s dangerous to go to where Lazarus died, because last time they were there they almost got stoned.  Jesus tells them that Lazarus has fallen asleep, and he is going to wake him from the darkness.  His disciples say that if Lazarus is just asleep then all will be OK.  Jesus realizes they’re taking him literally and says that Lazarus really is dead, and he’s going to show you God’s glory.  Thomas responds, I think rather sarcastically, “Well, let’s go and die too!”

Today I want to look at three different ways we die.

1. Thomas: Dead in your Doubts
As I just mentioned, Thomas responds with what I think is a sarcastic response:

Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
~John 11:16 NRSV

Thomas really has got his doubts about this whole Jesus thing.  He’s really not sure he believes that Jesus is who he is claiming to be.  Thomas is dead in his doubts.

How many of you have had doubts?  Those with your hands down can polish your halo when you get home.  The rest of us are being honest.  We all have doubts.  We all are uncertain about a lot of things.  All of us have prayed for something and God could but didn’t.  Or maybe a professor at college shook your faith.  Or suffering caused you to ask: “If God is all powerful why didn’t he cure so and so?”

Our church took a momentous step last week by voting to buy the old Calvary UMC building and move our Sunday morning venue from a school to a church.  We’ll no longer be a “Church in a School.”  We’ll be a “Church in a Church.”  I’m very excited about this venue change, but if I’m honest I’m also a bit anxious and even have some doubts.  It’s like having a baby.  You’re full of joy but nervous too.  Here’s the crazy thing about being a leader.  You have to choose a way forward in spite of your uncertainties.  It’s human to have uncertainty.  It’s human to question your own decisions.  It’s even healthy to do these things.  Someone who is unwilling to question their own decisions is probably a psychopath.  Here’s the key: we are only dead in our doubts if we allow our doubts to dictate our decisions.  In faith, we use the brains God gave us, and we seek God’s direction, and we move forward trusting God along the way.

Some of us are dead in our doubts today because we’re letting our uncertainties about life dictate our decisions.

2. Mary: Dead in your Discouragement
Some of us today may be like Thomas, but others of us are like Mary.  We are dead in our discouragement.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.
~John 11:20 NRSV

Notice that Mary didn’t even come to see Jesus.  She thought, “Why bother?  I can’t change anything.”  Some of us are just as discouraged as Mary.  We feel always alone, depressed, stuck in a dead-end job, or that we’ll never have the marriage we thought we would have.  We put on our religious language with Sunday clothes and a smile on our face, but there’s no smile inside.

I think ahead to this new venue.  There is sure to be some discouragement ahead.  We all have dreams for this building.  We all have expectations for this building.  We all have hopes for what can be.  Reality will likely not conform 100% to any of our dreams, expectations, or hopes.  I think it’s important to remember what we call the role renegotiation model.  When you’re expectations are broken, don’t gossip about it to someone else, go talk to the person who broke the expectations and renegotiate.  This means that your expectations have to be up for renegotiation too.  Maybe they were unrealistic to begin with.

The temptation when we get discouraged, especially in a church, is to isolate ourselves.  We stop coming.  We stop leaning on deep spiritual friends.  We just disappear.  Our church isn’t quite big enough to not notice when people disappear, but it’s also a bit too big for me as the pastor to always follow up with everyone.  So don’t let discouragement disconnect you from deep friendships.  You are only dead in your discouragement when you allow your discouragement to drive you away from deep spiritual friendship.

3. Martha: Dead in the Delay
Some of you are like Thomas, dead in your doubt.  Others are like Mary, dead in your discouragement.  But others still are like Martha, dead in the delay.

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
~John 11:17 NRSV

The number of days that Lazarus was dead is important here. It’s important because Martha shared a kind of cultural belief about how dead you were after four days.  It’s not a biblical idea, but it’s a cultural idea.  The belief was that a spirit would stick around for three days, and the body would be “mostly dead.”  But after four days, there’s no coming back.  You’re fully dead.   Jesus has a different set of beliefs.

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.”
~John 11:39 NRSV

The King  James Version translates this saying “he stinketh.”  It’s an unholy stink!  Martha believed that if Jesus had been here, her brother never would have died:

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
~John 11:21 NRSV

Martha is dead in the delay.  Many of us are too.  I’m waiting but…

All my friends are getting married, and I want to get married but there’s no right person.  I want a baby, and all my friends are getting pregnant but it’s not happening for us.  I’m praying for a loved one to experience God’s goodness but they’re getting further away from God.  I’ve been praying for healing for someone but nothing is happening; it’s only getting worse.

It’s important to know that God’s delays are not God’s denials.  Back to our building.  Let me tell you, it has been a fourteen year delay for us getting a building.  In my first year at SCC we ran a capital campaign to begin saving for a building.  In the next five years at SCC we have considered more than thirty buildings.  We have seriously looked at and considered nine different options: Property on College Ave, the old Girl Scout building in Holt, the old L&L building in Holt, buying our current office location, two churches that wanted to move but needed to sell their building first, two churches that were interested in merging with us, and the old Alternative School Building in Holt which we voted positively on and then the whole thing fell apart.  But, God willing, and Mt. Hope votes positively today to sell us the building, the delay will soon be done.

While Martha was seemingly dead in the delay, she still shows amazing faith:

But even now I [Martha] know that God will give you [Jesus] whatever you ask of him.”
~John 11:22 NRSV

Martha says, “Even now.”  Even as we are dead in our doubts, discouragement, and delay.  We need an “even now” moment.  Even now when you are discouraged in your jacked up family.  When your heart is cold and calloused to the things of God.  When someone or some dream really is dead.  Not mostly dead, but really dead.

Sometimes God resurrects you by giving you a new vision.  SCC looked at Calvary UMC once before I got here and decided it wasn’t right.  But between then and now we’ve had a new vision.  We envision seven satellites in seven venues on seven days of the week. This building looks very different when you think of it as one of seven venues.  It becomes a launch pad for reaching new people.  We also gained a new vision by seeing how God is using other churches in older more traditional venues reach new people.  New Life Church in Chicago has twenty-one venues on Sunday morning alone and most of them are in older church buildings.  Cornerstone Church, the largest UMC church in Michigan, has successfully launched a new venue in an old Christian Scientist building that is now reaching 200-300 people every Sunday.  God resurrected our search for a building by giving us a new vision.

Jesus is in the business of resurrecting that which is dead.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “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. Do you believe this?”
~John 11:23-26 NRSV

The resurrection is not an event.  It is a person.  It’s not just what Jesus does.  It’s who Jesus is.

When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 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.”
You are raised not because of you, but because of Jesus
God is always glorified by what has happened
~John 11:43-44 NRSV

So where are you dead today?  Some of you are dead in your sins.  Your relationship with God is broken, and the choices you’re making are only taking you further away from God.  Turn around and come back.  Jesus says:

“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. Do you believe this?”
~John 11:25-26

Do you believe?