The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to John.

 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.  “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

‘Come and see, Lord,” they replied.Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.  “Take away the stone,” he said.“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

(Jn 11:32-44

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Our Western provinces salesman,  told me once of a practical joke he and a friend played on a neighbour.

They stayed up late. They waited until a good hour had passed from when they saw their victim’s houselights go out, and then they got ladders, and lots of black plastic, and duct tape. They spent a good couple of hours blacking out every window of their neighbour’s house.

They laughed so much while doing this, that they nearly fell from the ladders, but they completed the job, and went home to sleep, worn out, and smiling at the thought of what their neighbour and his wife would do when they woke up at a time when it should have been light out, and found themselves in darkness

Of course, it was a bit of an anti-climax. The neighbour and his wife had clocks to tell them the time, and they could see that the windows had been tampered with.

But it was a good idea, wasn’t it?

It would have to be a better idea than that,  to keep me up until the early hours, though.

That episode brings me to something a couple of us were talking, about, a week or so ago – the relativeness of time. How falling asleep, you are not aware of time. Do you know what I mean?

Have you ever woken up feeling as if you have been asleep for a long time, to find when looking at the clock that it has only been a few minutes.  I know the opposite is mostly true – you wake up after a night asleep and feel like you only had five minutes. 

There are stories of people who have been asleep – in a coma – for twenty years, say, and have woken up, thinking they have been sleeping for just a few hours. They are astonished when they are told that twenty years have passed.

So the idea that came out of our short discussion was that when we die, and are laid to rest,  the time between our dying and our actual ascent to heaven – assuming that’s where we are going – which could come at the end of time, will seem instantaneous.

Coincident with that, then, is an assumption that if say a wife dies ten years before her husband, then it would seem to be only an instant  before he joins her.

We like to think that when we die, we immediately go to Heaven, and that may be, I am only indulging in a little speculation here, because we have John’s Revelation for our first reading today.

John has had a vision, and in it he sees that at the end time, God will live among us. He has promised to be our God, and that we are his people.  It is a wonderful idea of what heaven will be like.

The promise is also seen in the Old Testament and in Paul’s’ writings. Ezekiel, has, “My dwelling place shall be among them.” 

God’s promise in Isaiah  is , “Tears and grief shall be  no more….. and sorrow and sighing will flee away ……I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people…..no more shall be heard the cries of weeping or the cry of distress”

….. then, promising the end of death, God says, “ Death too,  shall be gone,” and then ” God will swallow up death in victory and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.”

This vision of John’s, of God living with His people, in a new Jerusalem so beautiful, it can hardly be described, is a promise for the future, but it is also a comfort in today’s world, especially  for all those who mourn.

We know that death is not the end. Dying is not dropping down some big black hole to nothingness. It is the gateway to closer communion with God, in the place prepared for us.

This day is set aside for us to remember the saints.  The saints of the church. And I don’t mean only those whose names are in the canon, but those we have known, ordinary men and women, passed away, and also those we still have with us.

We remember those who by their very being, their being among us, make the days seem brighter,  and who somehow manage always to have time, love, and concern for others. 

And I mean you.

Those who mourn will be blessed, but even better for us who are still in this world, death is swallowed up in victory for those who know Christ, and the power of his resurrection.  In other words, we don’t die.

The story of Lazarus in today’s Gospel shows us Jesus’s power over death, and presages his own death and resurrection, his own victory over death.

In Jesus lives are made new. And that means that  we have no need to carry with us the bad memories, the burdens laid on us by the past. 

God says, through Isaiah, “Remember not the former things, do not consider the things of old. Behold I am doing a new thing.”

How many of us are affected by the things of our own past? How many of us have problems that come from our past – childhood, or later – that still have an impact on us today?  And which we wish we could get rid of?

Paul says that God can take a person and recreate them. He can  make a new person out of them.

Because as John  says, all things begin and end with God. He is the Alpha and the Omega.

Somebody once compared a life that has been changed by Jesus to a piece of embroidery.

You look at a piece of embroidery and the picture or pattern woven there is exquisite. That is life with Jesus.

Turn  the piece over and you see all the thread, tangled, confused, with no apparent purpose or design – that typifies life before Jesus.

But there is more, since John tells us that God has prepared a beautiful place for us, a new Jerusalem. A place of such beauty that it is hard to describe.   The prophets have said it has streets paved with gold, and walls studded with precious gems, and no need of light from sun or moon, since it will be lighted for ever by the light of God.

So, we go from this life, this old life, to that new life, seamlessly, it seems, slipping out of our old worn-out bodies, frail and diseased as they may be, into a new existence, with no pain, no tears, no worries, no hardship, in a place custom made for our happiness.

This isn’t to imply that we should give up on life and look forward to death.

The early martyrs, thrown to the lions ran forward eagerly to meet their deaths.  They were convinced  they were  going to that  better place. They were eager to be with Jesus.

But, Jesus himself  asked God, if it were at all possible, to spare him from that death on the cross.  In his obedience, he went to his death willingly, but he had no death-wish. He wanted to live. He had work to do. Things to accomplish. Life to live. Love to give. He went to the cross knowing it was his destiny, and his Father’s plan.

So it is with us Christians, we have no death-wish. We have a life wish.

In fact, the best Christians I know are so full of life, they won’t quit living until they die.  This is contrary to those who seem to have given up years ago, and just continue to exist.

We know, don’t we,  here,  in our heart, that in time, we will inherit immortal life, and join our brother Jesus in that special place, but life is too precious to give up right now.

There is too much to do.

We want  to make this  world better.

Pity those without the vision. Pity those who are merely passing time, waiting for   death to catch up with them. They have no belief in the afterlife, and it seems, no belief in the present life. They spend  it  so cheaply.

George Burns, who worked hard until the day he died, said, “If you were to go around asking people what would make then happier, you’d get answers like, a new car, a bigger house, a raise in pay, winning a lottery, a face-lift, more kids, less kids, a new restaurant to go to – probably not one in a hundred would say a chance to help people. And yet that may bring the most happiness of all.

“I don’t know  Dr. Jonas Salk, but after what he’s done for us with his polio vaccine, if he isn’t happy, he should have that brilliant head of his examined. Of course, not all of us can do what he did.   I know. I can’t do what he did. He beat me to it!!

“But the point is, it doesn’t have to be anything that extraordinary. It can be working for a worthy cause, performing a needed service, or just doing something that helps another person.”

Cast your mind back and remember those saints who were part of this church in years gone by. Or the ones who influenced your life for the better, in school, or in some other place or time.

Then think about the saints who are among us right now. They are the ones who spend busy lives doing God’s work,  not letting faulty knees, or bad hearts, or creaky joints hold them back. 

And are still doing it.

And just won’t stop!

Go and do likewise.

Amen.