John 11
“I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”
So ends the Apostles’ Creed … the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting …
When this perishable body puts on imperishability,
And this mortal body puts on immortality,
Then the saying that is written
Will be fulfilled:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory,
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death is your sting?
The last miracle … the final enemy vanquished …
The last miracle … calling Lazarus out of the tomb …
The last miracle … dealing with the final enemy.
Paul the Apostle calls death the enemy … that which stands over against us … a shadow looming on every horizon … the hushed whisper that steals into our consciousness in quiet moments … “dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
The final hurdle … too high for us to jump.
The final challenge … too brutal for us to master.
The final enemy … greater than all our technologies and defiant of all our philosophies.
“Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.”
Our faith is bluntly honest.
The truth is told.
Nowhere in the pages of Scripture is death presented as anything but death … terrible and ugly.
In the Old Testament, death drags everyone down to Sheol, the land of the dead, where joy and praise are no more … great and small, kings and paupers … to the land of the dead.
In the New Testament, it is the wages of sin …
Death is enemy!
Death is not a part of God’s original plan – death has no place in the kingdom of God – death comes as the result of sin … the breach, the broken chain … the chasm that opened up when Adam and Eve plucked the fruit and turned their backs on God … out of that ruptured relationship emerged the shadow of death … like an alien beast slinking out of some ancient crater.
The whole of creation groans under the weight of sin and sin’s wages: “dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.”
The little flea and the mighty whale are subject to death … the sunflower of summer and the tulips of spring … the folks we love and the folks we don’t – friend and foe alike: “dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.”
The shadow of death casts a chilling shade.
Every ache and pain reminds us.
Every tick of the clock, and every page turned is a poignant reminder of time’s hastening passage.
Every obituary gives us a “lover’s” pinch.
Speaking of obituaries,
Gallagher opened the morning newspaper and was dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he had died. He quickly phoned his best friend Finney. "Did you see the paper?" asked Gallagher. "They say I died!!"
"Yes, I saw it!" replied Finney. "Where are you callin' from?"
Mrs. Pete Monaghan came into the newsroom to pay for her husband's obituary. She was told by the kindly newsman that it was a dollar a word and he remembered Pete and wasn't it too bad about him passing away.
She thanked him for his kind words and bemoaned the fact that she only had two dollars. But she wrote out the obituary, "Pete died."
The newsman said he thought old Pete deserved more and he'd give her three more words at no charge.
Mrs. Pete Monaghan thanked him and rewrote the obituary: "Pete died. Boat for sale"
Sally was drying her tears when her friend Lois came by. “How’s it going Sally,” she asked. “Oh, all right. I sure miss him, though. But I’m really grateful for the $25,000.”
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Lois.
“I bought a stone with it.”
“A headstone for that kind of money?”
“No, this kind of stone.”
Death remains the great mystery for human beings … of all God’s creatures, great and small, it’s our frontal lobe – the capacity of our mind to contemplate our own end, to know that our days are counted … that time is ticking away – like sand held in the hand, one grain at a time, until the last grain falls, and time is no more!
“Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.”
I’m grateful that God’s Word terms death “the enemy.”
An enemy worth hating … that which steals away love and crushes hope … that which sin created, not God … an enemy with whom we need never be reconciled … to whom we need never surrender … an enemy that deserves to be called what it is: the enemy!
Olivia Manning wrote The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Triology, about a young British couple, Guy and Harriet Pringle in Romania just prior to the outbreak of World War 2. Guy teaches English in the university of Bucharest; Harriet is a secretary.
When Romania is invaded, Guy and Harriet flee to Athens, and finally to Alexandria, Egypt, and as the war deepens, Harriet is sent home to England by ship.
At the last moment, before embarking, Harriet hooks up with a friend traveling to Damascus.
A few days later, word is received that torpedoes sunk the ship … and Guy believes Harriet is dead.
In the chaos of the Middle East, Harriet is unable to get a hold of Guy. She has no idea the ship has gone down; she has no idea that Guy and their friends believe her to be dead.
Guy is devastated … so many memories of failed promises and delayed kindnesses … he blurts out in a moment of private grief: “I hate death and everything to do with death” (The Levant Trilogy, p.414)
Rightly so … death, the final enemy.
Having told the truth … is there yet a greater truth?
If death is our master, is there anything that masters death? … anything greater then the final enemy?
Some are willing to concede death’s victory.
Nihilists and others who have neither God nor hope conclude that death is the master … all the universe is hurtling toward a dark hole from which there is no escape, and for which there is no meaning; life is nothing but a momentary accident, without reference point, without purpose, without value or destiny.
That’s what some believe!
But it is not so.
“I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”
From the water turned into wine at Cana to our LORD's triumphant cry by the tomb, “Lazarus, come forth,” Jesus stands in the breach … holding heaven and earth together.
Where there is darkness, He’s the light of the LORD.
Where there are lies and deceptions, He’s the truth.
Where there is confusion and doubt, He’s the way.
Where there is death, He’s the life.
The lost are found by Him.
The blind are given their sight.
The dead are raised to life anew!
The last miracle confronts the final enemy.
It’s quite a story.
News comes to Jesus that Lazarus is ill … “Come quickly,” they plead.
But Jesus takes His time … no hurry for the Son of God … what strikes us as urgent has no urgency for Him.
When Jesus arrives, He’s greeted with the sounds of lament, and a tongue lashing:
“Where were you?”
“We were counting you?”
“You could’ve done something.”
“This wouldn’t have happened if you had been here.”
“Where is he?” asks Jesus.
Off to the graveyard they go, and he commands them to take away the stone … “but he’s already been dead four days … it’s no use; death is doing its grim work; the body stinks; there is no hope.
“Take away the stone,” says Jesus.
And He cries out with a loud voice … loud enough to wake the dead: “Lazarus, come out.”
Lazarus steps from the tomb as if it were nothing more than a Sunday afternoon stroll … wrapped in the linen of death … “Unbind him,” says Jesus, “and let him go.”
To whom does Jesus says those words, “Unbind him”?
To the family and friends there? Of course.
But more importantly, Jesus speaks to death itself: “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Death, you have no jurisdiction here; your word, O Death, means nothing.
I think of John Donne’s poem,
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
When my father died in my 23rd year, six months after Donna and I were married, I remember the drive to Wisconsin … the October sky, overcast, and I remember looking to the clouds, asking, “Where’s my father now?”
I wept bitterly … my heart was stricken …
Before we went into the funeral home, we all prayed in the car … then on to greet family and friends … and there my father lay in state … his life with us, no more. My mother standing beside the casket, her face puffy with grief.
The service, a blurred memory … the slow drive to the cemetery … and many years later, my son and I standing by that grave, I wept, and my son, taller then me, held me in his arms and said, “That’s okay Dad.”
We Christians live in between realities … on the one hand, the reality of death … on the other hand, the reality of Christ!
The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our LORD (Romans 6:23)
I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
The Holy Spirit whispers to our heart: “All will be well. All will be well.”
The poet Donne ends the poem:
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
Death has met its match in the matchless grace of Christ.
On that terrible cross, the Son of God endured and embraced all of hell’s fury … He was crucified, dead and buried; He descended into hell …
The Harrowing of Hell it’s called … He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah (1 Peter 3:18-20).
He descended into hell … as far away as one can go from God … to meet the last enemy on the enemy’s turf, and there to proclaim the love of God and the victory of life, to set the prisoner free … to drive the stake of grace through the very heart of death.
Where is my father now?
He is with Christ … along with all the saints in glory, who behold the face of God and sing the songs of heaven:
Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
To receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
And honor and glory and power,
Forever and ever! (Revelation 5:12)
But all is not yet complete … my father waits for the final day, the last miracle of miracles … the creation of a new heaven and a new earth … the dead in Christ gathered from the four corners of the world, and all made new … flesh and bone raised up like Ezekiel’s vision … all that we were, all that we are, and all that we hope to be … redeemed and made new … just like Christ … forever and ever, world without end.
I believe in resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
Amen!
