A synopsis of the sermon delivered by the Rev. David L. Hicks at St. Paul’s Reformed Episcopal Church on Trinity XV, September 26, 2004. Please read St. John 11:17-27.
One of the most difficult doctrines of Christianity for people to accept is the resurrection of the body, but it is also one of the most important. The story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead brings this doctrine to the foreground of Jesus’ ministry and provides an occasion for understanding how Jesus relates to it. When he arrives at Bethany, Martha, one of Jesus’ friends and the sister of the deceased Lazarus, greets Jesus and exclaims, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give You” (Jn 11:21-22). She knows that our Lord has power to perform miracles – she is a believer – but Jesus takes this occasion to teach something about himself beyond the ability to perform miraculous deeds. “Your brother will rise again,” he says. Martha assents to what she knows to be right doctrine: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” What Martha must fully understand is the centrality of Jesus in this matter: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Notice that Jesus is not simply teaching about the resurrection, but he states that he is the resurrection. It is precisely this kind of statement that sets Jesus apart from any other religious teacher or leader. It is the reason that people said of him, “No one ever spoke like this man” (Jn 7:45). Although Jesus taught about many things, his mission was not to teach about ideas in abstract but to teach about those ideas in relation to himself. Jesus does not call us to believe in the doctrine of the resurrection alone, but we are called to believe that Jesus himself is the resurrection and the life – there is no resurrection apart from him. Our hope of the resurrection and eternal life is bound without qualification to the person of Jesus and who he is. This is why the church has been very careful about explaining who Jesus is in its doctrinal formulations. One may disagree about the hymns that a congregation sings or the order in which a service is conducted. There is room for difference of opinion in such things. But when it comes to what we believe about Jesus we must be adamant in defending the right teaching about his person, because our eternal life is at stake. If Jesus himself is the resurrection, then we need to be clear about who Jesus is.
Jesus asked Martha, “Do you believe this?” and this is a question for us, today. Do we believe in Jesus Christ? This is something more than asking if we believe there will be a resurrection of the dead someday. The question is, do we believe and trust in Jesus who is the resurrection and life? If we do, we have Christ’s own promise that whoever lives and believes in him will never die.
Amen.
