Angry at Death

Transcript

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[0:00] We go now to our sermon. Our sermon text is John chapter 11, verses 32 through 44. Today we observe All Saints Sunday. It really is on November 1st. That's why we call Halloween All Hallows Eve. It's the night before All Saints Day or All Hallows Day.

[0:17] But it's kind of just the first Sunday of November is when we observe it. And this is our traditional reading. And our gospel reading today is about the raising of Lazarus, which is really a very powerful reading in the gospel of John. I'll say this. While we are not in Mark, we have been working our way through Mark and we're more or less done with that. I see this as a kind of a continuation of this conflict narrative that Jesus is in as he journeys to Jerusalem. So Jesus, as you remember from Mark, is in conflict with various forces. We'll get into that a little bit later, all of them. But he's always contending on his way. There's resistance as he comes closer to his goal. And so Jesus is now in conflict again in this story. And we'll see how that kind of plays out. The setting for this story is Bethany. That's the hometown of Lazarus. It's right on the other side of the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. And when we went to Israel a few years back, we went to Bethany and we went to Lazarus' tomb. And we're going to go there again, maybe in 2023. So find me if you want to go on a trip to Israel. With the rest of the church, whoever wants to go. And some people want to go again, believe it or not, which is exciting.

[1:31] So as we read, I'm going to ask you to listen for where the conflict is. What is Jesus opposing and what does Jesus hope to triumph over? So let's go to our reading. It's John chapter 11, starting with verse 32.

[1:56] John chapter 11, starting with verse 32. When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, See how he loved him. But some of them said, Could not he who opened the eyes of a blind man have kept this man from dying?

[2:23] Then Jesus again greatly moved him. He was greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, already there is a stench, because he has been dead four days.

[2:39] 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 looked upward and said, Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you would hear me. I know that you always hear me. But I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me. When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, Unbind him and let him go. Let's pray.

[3:20] Father, thank you for your word. We ask today that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen. I want to make a few notes about our text first. Just kind of some highlights of what's going on in this actual text, these 13 verses or so. One is that it kind of seems like Mary is blaming Jesus for her brother's death. You know, she knows he can heal people. She probably knows that he can raise people. But if he knew that he was sick but didn't come sooner, which is part of the narrative in the section before us, then why didn't he come earlier so that he wouldn't die? It's kind of a fair question, right? So she seems to be blaming Jesus for her brother's death. And that's something that's going to come up a bit later. And Jesus doesn't actually answer this directly. He doesn't kind of give her all the reasons. He seems to have a larger plan that would explain why he didn't act sooner. And one of them he even alludes to is so that people can see, and when people see, they start to believe. This is an important theme in the Gospel of John, is that people believe because they see the miracles, they see the works of Jesus.

[4:33] One thing that's been made a lot of is the number of days that Lazarus was in the tomb. And this is actually significant, right? He was in the grave for four days. His sister, Martha, believes that he's begun to decompose.

[4:50] There are other resurrections in the New Testament. They all seem to have a shorter timeframe after death, from a few hours to maybe a day. Jesus meets one funeral procession and raises a person who's being carried out in a funeral procession. That person wasn't dead for four days. There's other people who died. Jesus seems to appear right at that moment or maybe a few hours later. But this is kind of an outlier. It's four days that he's already been, not only been dead, but they gave up hope that Jesus would show up. And they actually buried him.

[5:23] So, does the longer time accentuate the miraculous? Is kind of the question. Is this a bigger miracle because more time has passed? And some people think so. And I would kind of agree with that. But it's important to note that this is different from other resurrections that Jesus performs, other raising of the dead that Jesus performs.

[5:43] And I would think, just kind of from a point of view of biology and physiology, it's even more of a miracle if decay has set in, right? The restoration is not just a resuscitation. It's almost like, in my mind, it's almost like a whole new body. Like the repair on a cellular level that's necessary for this to happen. If you know about medicine and you know about these, this kind of process in your body where there's certain sort of cells in your body that begin to instantly, almost instantly, start breaking up the rest of your body when there's no life anymore. The phages. You can look that up. And that has been happening. But Jesus reverses all that, which is pretty amazing.

[6:31] You'll notice, and maybe you remember this, verse 35. And I'll go back to, oh, you've got it there. Thank you, Caleb. This is, verse 35 is often called the shortest verse in the Bible, right? In our translation, it says, Jesus began to weep, which is four words, right? But other translations have it shorter as Jesus began to weep. Jesus wept. Two words. And so, you know, if you ask a kid to memorize a verse of the Bible, and they're kind of like, oh, I can do this. I can do John 11, 35. And you're like, wow, you're pretty smart. You know, Jesus wept. Done. But it is, it is probably the shortest verse in the Bible. I haven't, I believe it. I haven't kind of checked. The verse is only three words in Greek. And one of them is this article in front of Jesus's name that indicates that Jesus is the subject of the sentence. Kind of. And that's the word that sets him apart. The remaining two words are Iesous, which is Jesus's name, and the Greek word, edakrisen, which is the word for weeping that results from deep emotional pain, as opposed to tears from physical pain. There's a different word for crying when you're hurt physically. This is crying or weeping, this deep weeping that comes from emotional sadness. And so if you want to hear the whole verse in Greek, it's as simple as ho, which is that

[7:50] article I mentioned, ho Iesous edakrisen. And Jesus wept. Jesus wept. Jesus began to weep. Now I want to focus mainly on one verse, and that's verse 33. It's still up here on our screen. We'll keep it up there. And it goes like this. When Jesus saw her weeping, talking about Mary, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. Deeply moved, it says. Disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. Now we're going to get into the Greek a little bit today, but you'll see why. And it's kind of fun. It's always fun, I think. The more common translation for the word for greatly disturbed here is, and that's the Greek word, which I think is one of the more interesting Greek sounding words, is embrymaomai.

[8:40] Embrymaomai, which is like a really long word, you know, embrymaomai. And it actually is, set aside how I'm pronouncing it because that doesn't matter. But this word, the more common translation of this word isn't to be greatly disturbed, although that's part of it. The more, sort of the primary meaning of it is indignation and anger. There's a difference, right? To be greatly disturbed is one thing. You could be disturbed emotionally and sad. But to be indignant and angry is a different emotion. They're related emotions, and grief and anger are kind of our cousins. But this is different. This is indignation and anger, a strong feeling. Now, here's the interesting thing. English translators have tended to make it more sound like intense grief rather than anger, right? And it's probably because of verses like verse 35 where it says, Jesus wept. So they're like, well, Jesus is greatly disturbed. And a few late verses later, he's weeping. So that great disturbance of him must be deep grief. But that doesn't matter. That doesn't quite answer the, that doesn't quite, it works. Sometimes that works when you do it in a contextual way. But translations in other languages like German have it more as anger.

[10:00] We mentioned last week that Luther translated the Bible in the Wartburg Castle. And this, we're going to set a record here. We're going to read something in German in two weeks in a row. You're going to be so excited. But this is how, this is how Luther renders it in German. Er ergrimmte im Geist und betrübte sich selbst. Which means he was angry in the spirit and distressed, right? So there's a little more anger here. And so for our purposes, actually, I think a better English translation could be, he became angry in spirit and very agitated, right? That paints a different picture, doesn't it? It kind of turns it up to 11 a little bit there, doesn't it? Now you're saying to yourself, why does all this matter, right? And you're asking, why is this? Why are we stuck on this? Why is this in this word? And you should ask these questions. Now, I'm going to answer that. For one, I think the people translating the Bible in English, they get a little uncomfortable when Jesus is angry. We don't like it when anyone gets angry. It makes us put a little bit on edge. And we definitely want to avoid people who always seem to be angry about something. I could just, you know, I just want to avoid those people. I can't always avoid them.

[11:14] But if somebody's always angry, you know, I don't always have time for them. Because it's just, that's kind of hard. So we don't like thinking of Jesus as angry. Although he does get angry. He's not always angry, but he does get angry. And I think we should be uncomfortable if Jesus never gets angry. Because there are things that Jesus really should be angry about. And he really should show his anger. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a second. The other problem that translators may have had calling this anger instead of grief is then the question, well, who or what is the object of his anger? Whom or to what is his anger directed? Right? And one uncomfortable choice is that it's at Mary. Can he be angry at somebody who just lost her brother? Right? Who else could he be angry at? She's the one that just blamed him for not showing up on time. Right? So is he angry about that? Later on, he says, didn't I tell you? He told Mary. He told Martha. But I think they both heard it. Didn't I tell you that I would show you the glory of God? Is he saying, in effect, why do you lack faith that I could raise your brother? Is Jesus frustrated, angry, indignant at what Mary is saying? What Mary and Martha are kind of telling him?

[12:32] You should have come earlier. So in that case, Jesus would be angry at her lack of faith. And that she blamed him for not arriving sooner. And you know what? That's not actually a bad guess. I don't think it's quite right, but it's not a bad guess. Because Jesus actually does seem to get angry when he is confronted with people's lack of faith. He gets angry about some things. He gets angry about the people in the temple selling things. He doesn't like it. It's his father's house. He gets angry about a few other things. But sometimes he gets angry because people lack faith.

[13:08] So in Mark chapter 9, a man brings his son to Jesus to have a demon taken out of him. Because his disciples can't do it. He tries to get his disciples to do it. But the disciples are unable to get this demon to come out of his son. And Jesus gets frustrated at his disciples. And he says, Oh, unbelieving generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me. So you kind of get the sense that Jesus is like, Ah, these guys, they don't have enough faith to do the things that I've told them to do. And he's frustrated, right? So is it possible that Jesus is angry, frustrated, indignant, at him? At Mary's lack of faith? Mary and Martha's lack of faith?

[13:51] And so on that day, it seemed like Jesus is annoyed by unbelief when he talks to his disciples. What's happening on this day? Just think about it. What's happening on this day? So I don't rule out the possibility that he's angry about unbelief. That happens in other places in the scripture. But I think he's more angry at death itself.

[14:15] Jesus is angry at death itself. Death is often personified. But it doesn't have to. I mean, in a way, it is kind of its own thing. It's got this power, right? He is truly indignant that death has such power over the human race. As far as we can tell, everybody who's ever lived eventually has died or will die. We haven't found any immortal people yet. Not yet. I don't think they exist, right? So Jesus knows that death is this constant in the human race. And it wasn't always supposed to be that way. He's angry that death got a foothold in the world in Genesis chapter 3 when Adam and Eve fell.

[14:57] And so I could sense in this that he's angry because Lazarus died. Not angry at any lack of faith. Not angry, not just sad, but actually angry. Why do I say that? Because on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus is opposing all sorts of demonic forces. Remember from our past sermons, lies, unbelief, hypocrisy, false teachings, powers, privileges, demonic possession, illness, lack of commitment. You know, he's fighting against everything and more. But actually, when you put it all together, most of all, I think he is opposed to death itself. That's Jesus' great movement as he goes towards Jerusalem. He is going to have a conflict finally with death. Death itself. And he meets it on the way in Lazarus. And he's angry. He's angry at death and he's so angry that he wants to put death to death.

[15:57] He wants to put death to death. He is emotionally invested in this battle. Not just because it has taken his friend Lazarus and caused so much grief in that family that he loves. But because it is taking his creation. Death is ruining the creation that he helped make. And he finally, finally, I think he knows that death will take him. He's going to Jerusalem to contend with death. But he has to do that by undergoing death. And so he's angry. And I'm, you know, personally I'm glad that Jesus is angry. I want him to be mad about injustice. I want him to be mad about death. I want him to look at death and say, this can't stand.

[16:43] This can't have the last word in this world. This can't have control over everything. I'm going to do something about it. Now we tend to think that miracles of raising Lazarus and of raising Jesus from the dead might be a little easy. Now you may not think that. But that's kind of sometimes some of the thinking then in the history of the church. Lazarus, he could have cured him before he died. But he didn't. He waited until he died and had been dead four days. Then to raise him. And people say, well, why did he do that? Well, it was to prove that he could do it so that people would believe. And if that was the case, then why did he cry about it? Why did he cry about Lazarus dying if he was going to go raise him from the dead again? And you could say the same thing about Jesus. Why was he worried about dying? Why did he pray on the Mount of Olives? Could I have this cup taken away from you but not your will but mine? Not my will but your will be done. Why did he pray that if he knew he was going to be raised again? The reality is that death still has this power. Death still is a destruction.

[17:55] Death is this formidable opponent. It's winning all the time and it's particularly dangerous to people who, for example, have rejected God's grace. Jesus cares about all this. Lazarus had to die. He had to be in the tomb for four days to demonstrate that Jesus can defeat death. Decay had set in. Death had set in. Death had begun the process of destruction. And Jesus had to be in the tomb over several days. He had to die and not in a painless way. He had to die in a very painful way. There's a heresy in the church that's long been discredited. It's called Docetism but it was a moving thing for about two, three hundred years. It was finally put to rest by Saint Augustine. This view was that Jesus only appeared to be human. That he was just kind of like a sophisticated hologram. And that on the cross he only appeared to suffer. But his spirit was fine. So he even looked like he was suffering as kind of a fancy act. Which is really bad, right? It's a bad heresy. It's a bad false teaching. But we reject that. We've rejected that forever. For seventeen hundred years. We believe in the incarnation. We believe that Christ had a true human body and a true divine nature at the same time. And that he could suffer in all the ways that we can.

[19:13] So for example, he could get angry and annoyed. He was human, right? He can weep. He can laugh. You can hug him or you could strike him. You can stab him and crucify him and kill him and he would die painfully in extreme anguish. Jesus was a real human. He was not just sort of a hologram. And we also believe that he was raised as the decisive battle that won the war on death itself. This is the moment of victory. Not that he died on the cross, although that was part of it. It was on the third day when he rose from the dead. And it was God's way of saying to death, your days are numbered. It begins today. And it goes on and on and on from this point. Death does not have dominion over this world that I created. This is mine. And eventually it will be banished. Remember our readings. Death will be no more. Death, where is your sting? Death, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin. But praise be to God for the new life that we have in Jesus Christ. So the grave could not contain Jesus. And this is the good news for us. This is a good All Saints Day good news thing, right? Jesus is so engaged in the battle with death. He's so angry at death that he quite literally takes death personally. Think about that. He takes death personally.

[20:44] He dies personally. And he's mad at death. He gets angry at death and deeply agitated. And as we say over and over again, we've said before, he fights for us. All these battles, we can't fight on our own. That's hard for some of us to take because we like to fight our own battles. And, you know, you look at your kids. They're at school and they have a conflict with other kids. And you're like, should I fight this battle for them? Or should I let them fight their own battle? Because they might grow from that. And then as we get older, we're like, I think I should fight this battle myself. But in this case, we can take all of that and we can hand it to Jesus and say, this is your battle. You fight for us. So Jesus fights for us. And that means he fights for you and he fights for the saints that have gone on before us. Death does not have the final word. It does not win. Death is swallowed up in victory. And thanks be to God for that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you.

[21:46] Thank you that death is put to death by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Amen.