“I AM the resurrection and the life…” – John 11:25
When I preached on this text just over a month ago, I focused on the “If then…” of Martha and Mary and how we wish for things to be different in this world. If God had shown up… If this or that election had turned out different… If I had left my house 10 min earlier… If I had taken better care of myself earlier in life… There are a lot of “if then…” statements that leave us longing for a different present. The point I was making then, and I want to make in a whole different way now, is that Jesus calls us out of our “if then…” and into a “if Jesus…” way of viewing the world. It is easy for us to get overwhelmed with the state of the world when things are not going the way that we think they should. We end up spending so much time wishing life away, focusing on how things should be different, that we miss where Jesus is showing up in the mess of life and breathe new life into it. Do you believe that Jesus can breathe new life into whatever mess you perceive is going on around you?
When Jesus comforts Martha, he points her to a future reality, “Your brother will rise again” (11:23). Martha believes the standard Jewish teaching about what happens after we die. She says, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (v24). We need to pause for a moment and talk about what “Resurrection” means for the Jews, and for us today. Resurrection does not mean the soul leaves the body at the end of time to go into a heavenly spiritual existence without a body. Resurrection, for the Jews and the early Christians, was a coming into new life with new bodies, fit for the new creation. It is based in the belief that God created the world to be good and God hasn’t given up on that creation. Any notion that our end goal is a spiritualized, non-physical, bodiless, existence comes from the teachings of Greek Philosophy (Plato) and has been read into the Bible, not read from the Bible.
Here is some of the resurrection imagery in the Old Testament of the life that is to come:
The imagery of the dry bones coming to life in Ezekiel 37.
The new life springing from the water of life flowing from the temple in Ezekiel 47.
The awakening of those who sleep in the dust in Daniel 12:1-3.
The imagery of the “circle of life” being brough into peace together in Isaiah 11.
The hope of new heavens and new earth in Isaiah 65-66.
There are more images throughout scripture and when you study these, you begin to see more clearly the hope expressed all throughout the New Testament as it echoes the hope offered throughout the Old Testament. The hope offered throughout the Bible is a vision of new heavens and new earth, God’s whole new world. It is a world like ours only with its beauty and power enhanced. The most beautiful things of this world are the minor things of the world to come (think streets of gold and gates of pearl). The pain, ugliness, and grief found in this current world, brought on by the brokenness of the creation, will be abolished for good. The Jews and the early Christians believed that within this new world, all God’s people from the ancient times to the present would be given new bodies, to share and enjoy the life of the new creation. These physical bodies would be animated by the Spirit and would be the full image bearers within the good creation God designed us to be.
The hope for the Jews and early Christians was a fully physical and fully spiritual existence as God intended for it to be. The broken creation divorced the physical and spiritual and God intends to bring them back together. This is not reincarnation where we continue repeatedly within this broken creation. Resurrection is the undoing of death’s hold on this creation and restoring it to what God intended it to be. This is the picture painted in Revelation 20:13-15 when death is thrown into the lake of fire.
Jesus’ comfort that Martha’s brother will “rise again” doesn’t seem to provide much comfort in that moment. Thinking of the future sometimes doesn’t give the comfort needed in the present. What Marth wasn’t prepared for is that in Jesus, the future has burst into the present. When Jesus says, “I AM the resurrection and the life,” he moves resurrection from being just a future fact or just a doctrine. The resurrection is a person, and he is standing in front of Martha, imploring her to make a huge jump of trust and hope.
What does any of this mean about being a follower of Jesus? Jesus is the resurrection and the life, bringing the future hope into the present. Changing our “If then…” into “if Jesus…” The Spirit we are given in our baptism is the Spirit that brings the resurrection. Life in Jesus is a life lived in the future reality of the resurrection where God restores all things back to his good creation. You don’t live just with future hope, but we are people who bring future hope to a broken creation.
Where are you bringing hope to others today? Where do you see people marginalized and hurting? What message of hope do you have for them in their suffering? This is what Jesus teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”