A God Without Limits

Audio here

As a pastor, I am not ready for Easter Sunday. I don’t feel ready. Palm Sunday is next week, the Maundy Thursday, sunrise and worship services aren’t prepared yet. It seemed so far way just a month ago, now it is only two weeks away. As a follower of Jesus and participant in God’s Movement, I am ready for Easter. I am ready for life to reign over death. I am ready for winter to hibernate and let the sun shine, the rain fall, the grass and flowers grow, and until the find their way inside, the wildlife to awake.

Easter feels unexpected this year or maybe I just don’t feel prepared for it.

I guess that’s life though.

Today’s scripture is a familiar story. It’s a long story but it’s a familiar story and we know how it ends. Jesus and his disciples are on the road when they receive word that their friend Lazarus is sick. Jesus decides to stay for two more days where they are. Then he tells the disciples that they need to go to Judea again. The disciples are taken back, “Lord, we were just there and the church leaders tried to string you up, and you want to go back?”

Jesus answers, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble because they do not have the light in them. Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”

The disciples looked at each other and one of the said, “If he’s asleep, he’ll wake up.” So Jesus spoke plainly, “Fellas, Lazarus is dead and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, the twin, said to the group, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, went out to meet him, and said, “If you had been here, Jesus, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”

Jesus tell her that her brother will rise again, and she says, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus tell hers, “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?”

She says she does. Mary rushes out to him and says the same thing Martha does, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus sees her weeping, and everyone who came to comfort her weeping, and he was greatly disturbed in his spirit and deeply moved. He asks where they have laid Lazarus and they tell him to come and see. Then Jesus began to weep. Those around him began to say to one another, “See how he loved him! Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Jesus is greatly disturbed once more, walks up to the tomb, and tells them to move the stone. Martha tells Jesus that Lazarus has been dead for four days and there’s a pretty bad stench, “Are you sure, Jesus?”

“Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” Jesus answers.

They roll away the stone and Jesus looks up, says a prayer, and then cried, “Lazarus, come out!”

And out he came, 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.”

Our story is a long story. It’s a familiar story though. A familiar story that we all know in some form or at least know in part. It’s a familiar story in which we know how it ends. We know what Jesus is going to do and we know how Jesus is going to do it.

I may not be ready for Easter Sunday from a pastoral, worship perspective, but I am ready to hear to the voices of the disciples whisper among one another, “Is it true what Mary said? Is it true that he is not there?” I am ready to hear the hurried, frantic footsteps of John and Peter. I am ready for the amazement that comes with Easter. I am ready for life.

It’s been a long winter, much longer than the six weeks that groundhog predicted. At each turn of the day, when it looked like spring had finally established dominance, that life was going to show up, winter lets us know it’s still around. Death lets us know that it’s still lurking in the back.

Death cackles, “Ha-ha, you may think life is happening, but the truth is you’re on the road to death. In time, you will come to me.”

True. Death is never that far away. It’s hiding there in the shadows, just waiting until his time to claim us. As unpleasant as this is to say, eventually death will claim us all. And during the winter/spring tussle we see how close death really is.

While death is a reality in our world, it does not appear to be a reality in God’s. It’s not to say that we will not ever die, it’s to say that death does not have the final word. Death does not get to have the final say. God has the final say.

We see in the Gospel of John that Jesus wears two different wristwatches. One watch is set to ordinary time. Its 11:30ish on a Sunday. The other is set to God’s time, eternal time. In ordinary time, death is finality. In the ordinary time, death says hell has the final word. In ordinary time, we are trapped. In ordinary time, we are slaves to protective habits, to oppressive, corrupt power structures. In ordinary time, we are forced to worship a God who is limited to a place, high above us, beyond the crystal sea. In ordinary time, we always know winter is coming.

God’s time tells us something different. God’s time is eternal time. In God’s time, Jesus refuses to march to the atheistic anxiety of a world that tells us we’re running out time. In ordinary time we tell Jesus that he can’t go into the tomb of Lazarus, there’s death in there. In God’s time Jesus answers, “This isn’t about death, this about the glory of God.” In God’s time, “with eternity in his eyes and a manifestation of everything he was and is, Jesus walks up to the tomb, and moves into a world of death with life (Thomas Long).” In God’s time, Jesus walks up to the tomb and through the stench of death yells, “Lazarus to come out!” And come out he does full of life. In God’s time spring has arrived. In God’s time, life wins.

I read something the other day that stuck with me. In this ordinary time of ours, the church is constantly singing about the day we’ll fly away, about a day that is far away. In this ordinary time of ours, God is limited to where God can go. In this ordinary time of ours, we claim God’s goodness bars him from the tombs or gates of hell. In ordinary time we say, “You can’t open that tomb? Death is in there and it smells rotten.”

God’s time says, God is so great that he says, “If you make your bed in hell, I will be there.” And in God’s time, death and hell pose no barrier to Christ. Meaning the church, God’s people, in God’s time with no barriers are able march into the death of hell, and set up church full of life and hope. And God's people would say, "We're going to hell! We've got church down there!" In God’s time God conquers the hell of death, because God’s time is not bound to the realities this world. In God’s time, this eternal time, life has a way of breaking through. In God’s time we know who wins out in the battle between death and life.

The Lazarus story and the death of Jesus are familiar stories. We know how the story really ends.

A few months ago, I had just finished the graveside portion of Virginia Langford’s funeral, and Bill came up to me to tell me what a great sermon Lacy wrote, and I asked him a very deep question. I asked, “Does it bother you, as you get older, to attend all these funerals of those who are near your age?” And he said, in the only way he can with that little laugh of his, “No. It gives me hope.”

That’ll preach.

German theologian, Karl Barth once wrote, “In Jesus, God makes time for us, takes time for us, gives time to us. And Jesus is the Lord of time.”

Yes, I am ready for Easter. Are you?

Then join with me as we come to this table of life, the Lord’s Table and feast together.