Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington has taken an unorthodox approach to preaching.  For the last nine weeks, he has preached over “the controversial and the very controversial” as voted by anybody who logged on to the Mars Hill website during the three months prior to the sermon series.  He has covered topics from birth control to Christian dating to hell.[1]  By addressing the top issues of the day, Driscoll has sought to open the church to larger audience, a larger audience that may believe that the church has nothing to say to modern world.  That issue of relevancy has plagued the church in recent years.  Churches and institutional structures that thrived in the middle of the last century struggle today to show that they are even needed.  The question, “Is the church relevant for today?’ is being asked more and more.  I believe it is or I would not be standing here. And it would take a lot longer than a nine week sermon series to illustrate that point.  In fact, it is something I try to illustrate every week. That our faith is not just important, but essential to our lives.  Our faith helps us to understand and live in the world today.  Our faith gets us through the good times and bad.  Our faith answers the big questions and little questions of our lives.  Today is a big question day.  This story of Jesus and Lazarus, Mary and Martha, answers a big question.  The questions about death, why we die, what God thinks about it, and what is next.  Big questions.  If the church and by extension our faith is to be relevant and meaningful it has to be able to address those kinds of questions.  Because those are the questions that are being asked.  Those are the questions being asked by you and those are the questions being asked by all those people sitting at home this Sunday morning. 

          Take for example, a recently popular country music song by Brooks and Dunn “God Must Be Busy”.  This unapologetically gloomy song follows the news reports of one day.  Fighting in the middle east.  Layoffs.  Twisters in Oklahoma.  Amber alerts.  Drought. Seniors without drugs.  Because of all the tragedies prayers go up and then the constant refrain “God must be busy.”  “God must be busy.”  The beautiful melody of those words being sung clashes with the hopelessness of their meaning.  One prayer is answered.  The lost girl is found, but then more get added on. “God must be busy.”  When I say that the church and our faith has to be relevant for the world we live in, this is what I am talking about.  In the face of hopelessness, having some reason to believe. Being able to point to the reasons we sit in these pews Sunday after Sunday.

          The passage begins with Jesus hearing about Lazarus’s illness.  Mary and Martha had sent word to Jesus who was on the opposite side of the Jordan avoiding the Jews who were trying to try to kill him.  If you remember, this was the place Jesus went early in his ministry to bring the light of God.  The Jews of this region were less influenced by the Pharisees who were plotting to kill Jesus and there was also a large population of Gentiles so Jesus was safe.  This message about Lazarus’s illness will mean Jesus must make a return trip to a dangerous area he just left.  But that is not the reason Jesus delayed two days in responding to the news.  Jesus stayed on the other side of the Jordan because as he says in verse four “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 

          There is a purpose to his delay.  We know Jesus could cure Lazarus.  He cures and heals throughout John’s gospel.  But this moment is a pivotal time.  The raising of Lazarus from the dead, which happens next in our passage, occurs immediately prior to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem prior to Passover and what becomes Holy Week.  This is Jesus last miracle prior to the Passion Week and shows the height of his power.  From the first miracle at the wedding in Cana, turning the water into wine, to this miracle, Jesus has healed many sick, multiplied loaves of bread, walked on water, and given the blind sight.  These miracles are not neat magic tricks.  They are showing in bigger and bigger ways that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is God, that Jesus has the power, and most importantly that Jesus is worthy of faith.  It is as if Jesus is saying, “well if you don’t understand who I am or have faith in me because of what I have told you or everything I have already done, here is just one more thing.”  That ‘just one more thing’ has gotten bigger and bigger with every miracle.

           I pointed out last week that it is one thing to heal somebody who has gone blind and yet another very different thing to give a man sight who was blind from birth.  You could almost look at Jesus’ action of fashioning that mud to put on the blind man’s eyes as him creating new eyes for him from the dust of the earth as God created Adam.  And here in this passage we have Jesus not just curing or healing somebody with an illness, but raising them from the dead.  Lazarus is already in the tomb by the time Jesus gets there. Jesus waited so long that Lazarus has begun to rot in the hot climate of the Eastern Mediterranean.  And it is then that Jesus performs his most remarkable miracle by raising Lazarus from the dead.

          What is most shocking about this passage is Mary and Martha. Mary and Martha, who are probably the most faithful of Jesus’ followers, did not even believe Jesus could perform this miracle.  They were so faithful in sending for Jesus, believing and holding out all hope that Jesus would save their brother.  They had listened to his teachings before and had witnessed all his healing power before.  And yet, when Jesus arrives following Lazarus’ death, following him being entombed, Mary falls to Jesus feet and says “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  This is a very ironic statement.  On the one hand, it so faithful.  A faithful confession of Jesus’ healing power.  And on the other, completely blind and unhopeful about the scope of that power.

          In the middle of this story is both the shortest verse in all the bible and almost certainly the most human moment of Jesus’ life.  Verse 35 is “Jesus wept.”  Jesus wept is the clue to larger story of what is going on here.  Death, blindness, sickness, disease, hunger and so many other things were not God’s intention for humanity.  They are the result of sin.  They are signs of the brokenness of this world we live.  And Jesus has come to do something about.  He has come to show God’s love.  To show God’s care for us.  He has come to overcome all those things for us because we can’t.

          One of the things we confuse about this passage is that Lazarus is not resurrected. Jesus is the first of the resurrected.  Lazarus is just living and breathing again.  He will die again. And rot in that grave again.  In this miracle, Jesus shows God’s intention to raise us all from the grave one day.  That death isn’t the end.  When Christ died a little over a week later and he was resurrected by God, he showed us what all that was going to look like.  New bodies.  New life.  Eternal life.  Unbroken life.

          I promised answers in this sermon.  I promised relevancy.  I know I have given less and more because the scriptures give us less and more.  I want to say we are not going to die.  That none of us will feel that lose again, but we will. We are still going to die.  People, loved ones are going to die around us.  We are going to weep and mourn.  And in the majority cases, it is going to be more than four days.  But I am telling you, God’s intention for humanity and all of us is life.  All that curing and healing and raising from the dead and then resurrection from the dead is not about magic, it is about showing God’s intention for new life in all of us.  It is about showing that is more than we can see and more than just this life.  That this is not the end and is barely the beginning.  It is about showing us there is hope in not just a few things like Mary and Martha, but in all things.