The Lutheran Hour
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"Is God Missing in Action?"
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Text: John 11
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Is God missing in action? An extended reading from John 11, selected verses.
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to [Jesus], saying, “Lord, he whom You love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it He said, “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.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was. … Jesus said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.” The disciples said to [Jesus], “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that He meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” …
Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met Him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now whatever You ask from God, God will give You.” 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. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled. And He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. … Then Jesus, deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that you have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that You sent Me.” When he had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Here ends our reading.
Most of us, at least once in life, have come face to face with the death of someone we love; we’ve stood toe to toe with finitude on the finishing line of life; we’ve walked to a graveside to let go of a life and let God receive a lamb of His own flock. I once had the honor one cold February of carrying the pink miniature casket of our newborn granddaughter, Malia, to her final resting place. It was the longest Lent of my life.
Who hasn’t stared into the seemingly irreversible pit of death and cried, “Why, Lord?” Of course, the mystery of our faith has an answer to that question. And this text from John 11 seems to offer one—that God has a different understanding of what the end is, and what the end is for. And that’s part of what going in this reading as it gives us a hint of Easter in the midst of Lent. Jesus, as a fully human person, is deeply moved and greatly troubled at the earthly death of Lazarus, which makes Jesus just like us when we lose someone we love. But Jesus, as a fully divine person, has a plan and purpose for this death and every death up to and including yours and mine. That doesn’t mean we don’t weep when we feel shredded by the grip of grief. I wept while walking in my granddaughter’s graveyard despite my faith, I wept. And that doesn’t mean we don’t have questions for God. Like Mary and Martha, these sisters of Lazarus. “Why Jesus? Why permit Lazarus to die in the first place? Why do we have to go through this pain? Why didn’t You show up on time, Jesus? Why do You seem so unavailable, Jesus, when we needed You the most?”
My friends, do those kinds of questions echo with your experience? Why does Jesus seem either not to hear us or seem not to care to answer our prayers? It wasn’t my faith that was missing. I believed. It wasn’t my conviction that was lacking I know that “all things are possible for those who believe.” It wasn’t the place to which I turned for help that was defective; I turned to Jesus. It wasn’t my words of prayer that were flawed; I spoke them sincerely, even praying from my doctrinally approved prayer book. Where is Jesus when I need Him most?
My wife Monique and I were walking recently in downtown Santa Monica, in a place known to many as the Promenade. And there were a group of people there, a particular religious cult founded in New York City, and no offense, but this group is totally not my cup of tea. And they were making a lot of noise, chanting and drumming and dancing, and in the middle of them stood a lone young man holding up a long pole with a large Christian sign atop it. As they encircled him in a frenzy of whooping and hollering. he stood peacefully smiling, his sign simply saying, “Jesus paid the penalty for your sins.” Monique and I approached him as small sign of solidarity for his public witness. His name was Jason. And we ended up having a delightful chat with him. “Do people ever harass you?” in what seemed an obvious question. “A few do” he said, “but it’s not that bad.” “Do people stop to ask about Jesus or the Christian faith? “Quite a few,” he answered. “More than you might imagine come with questions.” “What’s their most frequent question?” I probed curiously. He didn’t hesitate, “It has to do with why bad things happen if God is so good and so powerful.” That’s the same sort of question that the sisters of Lazarus had for Jesus: “Jesus, we know that You are the Resurrection and the Life, but we are experiencing the sting of death and the stench of the grave. We’ve got some cognitive dissonance going on here, Jesus.
I wonder what we would hear if we could overhear the prayers of others? “Where are You, Jesus? My diagnosis is bad and the prognosis is not hopeful.” “Where are You, Jesus? My marriage is a mess.” “Where are You, Jesus? My dreams have crumbled to dust in the palm of my hands.” Why is Jesus MIA … missing in action? In desperation, Mary fell at His feet, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
As a pastor, I have heard countless painful variations of this same question. Theologians sometimes call it “theodicy.” How to interpret the problem of evil. It is inexplicable. But as a response I tend to say, that is has something to do with the presence, the obvious presence, of sin in our world. And even more to do with the fact that God works according to His own schedule, not ours. Because He is God, and we are not. Because He knows what is good in the long run, and we haven’t a clue, really. In other words, the position of God has already been filled, and your application isn’t being taken.
Jesus finally does show up at Bethany right on time. There are three ways for Christian to understand TIME. One is chronos—like the tick-tock of the clock, like the time that we measure with a chronometer or a calendar or a timepiece. Then there is kairos—the right time or opportune time; it’s really about timing. Some folk I know say it this way: “God may not come when you want Him, but He’ll be there right on time.” God may not come when you want Him; that’s chronos. But He’ll be there right on time, that’s kairos. In our culture we are preoccupied with chronos. We want what we want when we want it.
I have an African friend from my days of working with Lutheran World Relief, and he would insist—of course, halfway in jest—”We, Africans, invented time. The Europeans invented watches. But you, Americans, invented watching time all the time.” Jesus did not show up when Mary and Martha wanted Him, but He showed up right on time, according to God’s time. Then, Jesus makes life happen again for Lazarus, bringing him back life. Why then the delay? Why the gap? Here is the answer we get from Jesus: it’s seems cold: “I’m glad I was not there. I’m glad I was delayed, according to your standards, in order that God’s agenda may be glorified, in order to punctuate the point that there is a third kind of time at work in God’s economy. It’s called eternity, which is unending time, timeless time, time outside of time. “Thy kingdom come” kind of time. “He will come again to judge the living and the dead” kind of time. It’s the permanent present-tense time of the One who said: I AM. I AM the Resurrection and the Life. It’s the kind of time that’s built for all who have run out of chronos time and are tired of the rollercoaster-like rat race of life that cannot deliver ever what it promises. Jesus is not MIA, missing in action. Jesus is fully in control of His itinerary and our lives, which are set to GMT: God’s Messianic Time: the soul-saving time zone.
Sisters and brothers, in Christ, Here’s what I work hard to wrap my mind around: That Jesus cares more about our life with Him in eternity than He does about temporary things like our worldly success or secondary things like our physical fitness or momentary things like our relational happiness. God cares first and foremost about eternal things. That’s why time stopped one Good Friday afternoon when He poured out His life for us on a cross, with blood that flows from the altar of Calvary to the cup of the Holy Eucharist. That’s why God pours out His love into our hearts, creating faith by His Word. That’s why God pours water on us through the hands of a pastor in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that we might believe even when believing isn’t easy. So that we might trust even when the evidence is to the contrary. So that we might receive new mercies when all we can perceive are old miseries. Jesus is on record saying: “Everyone who believes and is baptized will be saved.”
Martin Luther goes on to describe it like this: This is the simplest way to put it, Luther says, “the power, effect, fruit, and purpose of Baptism is that it saves.” Luther continues, “To be saved, as everyone well knows, is nothing else than to be delivered from sin, death, and the devil, and to enter into Christ’s kingdom, and to live forever with Him.” That’s God’s goal for your soul and for mine and for every person in human history. I challenge us today to ask the Holy Spirit to help us think differently about those negative things that inevitably come our way.
L-E-N-T – Let’s End Negative Thinking. Let’s unbind our minds. What would it look like if we considered every delay, every detour, every setback, every snag, betrayal, failure, every hitch, every glitch, every crisis, illness, sickness, as not leading to death, even if we die, but as leading to life with God. If God is in all things, and He is, then nothing is missing in your life. Nothing can separate us from God’s love. No, Jesus did not want Lazarus to die. Jesus wants us all to live forever. St. Irenaeus once put it this way: “The glory of God is the living human being.” But what glorifies Jesus finally is not this miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead but the raising on the last day of Lazarus to be resurrected to eternity, never to die again. This is the main goal Jesus has for Lazarus and for you and for me, that we might be delivered forever from sin, death, the devil, and from all evil.
The One who comes from God comes to lead us back to God forever. Nothing is missing. In Jesus. Amen.
No Reflections for March 26, 2023
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Be Still, My Soul” arranged and performed by Erin Bode. Used by permission.
“Entrust Your Days and Burdens” by Paul Gerhardt. Music © Stephen R. Johnson. Recording © Concordia Publishing House. Used by permission.
“My Song Is Love Unknown” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.