I am not much of a football fan, but, I think like many others, the world cup is different. So I wanted to watch the match the other night that England had to win to get to Brazil, and I was happy we won and are going. But it’s not logical. Why am I happy? It is almost bound to be a miserable experience. It certainly was for me back in 2002. My son was ten. Football – was, is – everything to him. England had to play Brazil. It should have been perfect son and dad time, but I had accepted an invitation to take devotions for some evangelists in London. It was a direct clash. The game was a disaster. Brazil won it by a free kick, thousands of miles from the goal. Ronaldinho lifted the ball into the air and it went sailing over the head of David Seaman into the back of the net. England were out. Just before I preached I phoned home. I was worried about my son. He came on the line sobbing. Oh dear…it’s one of those moments burned into my memory…’Dad’ he sobbed, ‘Dad…if you’d been here we’d have won.’ Totally illogical – but that’s how he felt –
If you’d been here…
Even as adults we can have that sort of feeling about people…if you’d been here.
And deep down many of us have had that feeling about God…
If you’d been here…
That was certainly the emotion burning in the hearts of two sisters in a village near Jerusalem.
They had sent a message to Jesus about their sick brother. Jesus hadn’t come; and their brother Lazarus had died.
Now their house fills up with mourners and we see Mary, her head down.
Her heart pierced by two daggers. The dagger of the death of her brother; the dagger of Jesus not coming. They had sent a message. He hadn’t come. Her brother was sick. Jesus heals. So they called him. He didn’t come. He could have come. He didn’t come. He didn’t come, because…and here the dagger keeps on twisting in her heart, poison seeping from its blade, because…at the end of the day Jesus is like all other men…there is a lot of talk, but when she Mary needed to see his love – it wasn’t there. It didn’t happen. It was a no show.
About an hour or so ago everyone knew that Jesus was on his way. Martha had pulled at Mary’s hand to go and meet him. That’s what happens in the Middle East when an important guest comes to visit your house. You don’t just sit and wait for him to come. You get up and go and meet him outside the village and escort him in. This is what Martha wanted to do. She is the practical one. She likes to do things properly. So she is pulling at Mary’s hand to get up and go.
But Mary wouldn’t go. She is too upset. She is what Iranians call ‘ghar’ with Jesus. She is not talking to him. The relationship is wounded. So she sits and Mary goes.
She is sitting with the mourners.
But then she receives a message.
Read John 11: 28-36
I see a simple but important truth in these verses. It is this:
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out – to heal our hearts and surprise us with hope.
He calls us out…out from where we are sitting, out from our families and friends
What are the characteristics of this calling out that we see in this story?
I see four things here
1. A broken heart – the PRIORITY (v 30)
There is something odd and very beautiful about what happens after Jesus has talked to Martha. She has come out to escort him back into the village. He is on his way to the village to see Mary and Martha and the whole family. So – we should now see him walking into the village.
But he waits. The writer underlines that in verse 30. He doesn’t move. He just stays where Martha met him.
Why?
Because Mary’s broken heart is his priority. He knows it. He probably guessed it as he travelled. Mary and Martha will be very upset with me. But then when he sees just Martha coming out by herself, it is confirmed. Mary’s heart was broken. That dagger was twisting away in her heart, the poison breaking down her trust in his love.
So here we come to something very beautiful about Jesus Christ – as we see him here in this story. He is a man surrounded by pressure. The men who are with him are – quite rightly – stressed out. As they approach this suburb of Jerusalem they are expecting the police to appear at any moment and arrest them all. In fact on the way Thomas has been writing his will and making his final phone calls. Remember he’d said – let’s go to Jerusalem so we can die with him.
Jesus will be doing all he can to make sure his disciples do not suffer – but he knows that he is entering the last week of his life. Important events stretch out in the week ahead.
And here is what is so beautiful.
On that day, at that moment, none of the week ahead was important. At that moment only one item was on Jesus’ agenda.
Mary’s broken heart.
He wants to reach out to that heart. Her grief is important to him. Her depression is important to him. Her sense of being let down is important to him. He is not the type to say – oh, she’s just emotional, she’ll get over it.
He wants to reach out first to Mary – then all the other things. Mary’s broken heart is his priority.
That’s what the story is teaching us.
In our darkest days – our broken heart, our feeling of being let down by Jesus, that is not something Jesus ignores. He sees it, and he waits outside the village, because that is his priority.
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out to show his love and surprise us with hope.
That’s the first characteristic of Jesus’ call here. A broken heart is his priority.
The second…
PRIVATE & PERSONAL (28/30)
There’s something else odd and very beautiful about what Jesus does here. OK – he wants to reach out to Mary. Mary is sitting in her home mourning with the rest of the family and friends. Jesus could have entered the village with Martha and when he got there he could have comforted Mary. That would have been easier.
Easier – but useless. That village house would have been packed. In the East everything stops when someone dies. Everyone comes to see the family. The rooms would have been heaving. There would have been no privacy.
And Jesus wants privacy with Mary. He wants to talk to her – even if it’s just for a few brief minutes – alone.
And he wants to be personal. He wants her to know that he specially wants to see her. If he just arrived at the house…well that’s his duty. There would be nothing personal
And so he sends a message with Martha…
Martha returns into that packed room. There is her sister, still with her head bent, her body shaking with grief, those daggers digging into her heart. Watch Martha now as she bends down and whispers into Mary’s ear: a picture of privacy, something completely personal, a message just for Mary.
And what a beautiful and simple message it is:
The teacher is here – and is calling for you.
For Mary these simple words push away the dark boulder of doubt that was weighing on her heart. He is calling – for me. He cares about me. He is not here for my brother, he is not here for the crowd, he is not here for some important programme. He is here for me. He is calling for me. He wants to see me, alone. He cares about our relationship. She is reassured of his love and see the impact – verse 29 – she heard the message and rose quickly and went to him.
Because she goes quickly, it takes a bit of time for the rest of the mourners to work out what’s going on. This means that she can have those few precious moments with Jesus alone.
So we see him – standing outside the village, waiting because she is his priority; waiting because he wants to deal with Mary in a special, personal way; waiting because he wants a few private moments with her.
That is Jesus. That is God in human flesh. That is his character.
And now we see Mary, almost running, tears streaming down her face, tears of grief, tears of anger, tears of relief.
The writer wants us to take note of Mary. She is a disciple to emulate. He wants us to see her in her darkest hour leaving her family and friends, and not going to the grave, but going out to Jesus. That is the right place to go.
In January my mother died. She was 88. She had had a good innings. But a mother is a mother. One grieves. I was grateful for the funeral, she had a good send off; I was grateful for the people who came to see me – but when we as Christians mourn there is something else we need to do. The comfort of the mourners and the comfort of a funeral is not enough. We need to hear Jesus say –
The teacher is here and is calling for you…
And we too need to go outside to where He is.
Because this is what the story is teaching –
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out to show his love and surprise us with hope.
When Mary and Jesus meet there is something else that we learn about how Jesus deals with us
He deals with us with POIGNANCY. (32-35)
Mary arrives and just collapses in front of him: a bundle of human grief and emotion. Jesus feels the tears of a woman on the skin of his feet. For several moments nothing is said. Just Jesus standing, Mary at his feet sobbing.
Then the cry of anguish, the same thing her sister said, but oh so emotional.
If you had been here my brother would not have died!
Maybe we have been where Mary has been. If you had answered my prayer, my brother would not have died; if you had come my brother would not have died; if….
Mary teaches us to empty our hearts at his feet.
Again in this story Jesus does not react in the way we would expect. Again there is something odd and beautiful. We might expect him to bend down and try and give Mary a theology lesson, or at least some words of comfort ‘Don’t worry, it will all be all right in the end; don’t worry, Lazarus is in a better place.
But Jesus doesn’t say anything. Her question erupts into the hot Middle Eastern afternoon. And hangs. There is no reply in words from Jesus.
His reply is much more beautiful. Much more poignant.
He too is emotional. He shares the grief. The shortest verse in the Bible:
Jesus wept.
There is no slot machine Christianity here. We regularly put in a bit of prayer, a bit of obedience, a bit of worship and out comes some heavenly wisdom wrapped up in some Amazon packaging for us to live our lives with.
Jesus is not the absent God, throwing down two plus two equals four answers from a distant heaven. No. He stands in the midst of the grief and weeps with us. The teacher is here. Incarnation; not education. Empathy; not theories.
We Christians have no pat answer to suffering…but we have this. Our God weeps with us. Our God feels with us. Our God is emotional with us.
Our God is poignant and that reassures us of his love.
A couple of weeks ago my wife went to visit one of our students, a beautiful twenty five year old woman. She has an aggressive form of cancer. If the doctors manage to perform a bone marrow transplant she has a twenty percent chance of living. In the midst of this journey Jesus has reassured her, not that she will be healed, but that He is with her. She loves to sing, but one Sunday her mouth was so painful from sores she could barely whisper. And then it came for the time of Holy Communion. To eat the bread would be agony, but she thought, what I will suffer is nothing compared to what He suffered. Let me share in the suffering. She partook. The next morning she woke up – the sores had gone. She was reassured of His love. Jesus is with her. One night she woke up and needed to take some medicine. She did not have water and was too weak to get up and get it for herself. She called for her mother, no response. Her mother was exhausted. Then she noticed that her dog, who usually keeps an eye on the door, was looking behind her bed. And she said someone came into the room, her glass was filled with water and she took her pills. The next morning her mother – aware that there had been no water – asked how she had had water. They believe it was an angel.
She is not healed, but even in the valley of the shadow of death – He is with them.
Because that is what this whole story is about
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out to show his love and surprise us with hope.
There’s a final characteristic about how Jesus call us, how He deals with us…we are his priority, he deals with us personally, privately, with poignancy,
And finally
AND WITH PRACTICAL PURPOSE (v34)
There are tears. But there is more. Jesus wants to know where the corpse is. He asks a very practical question.
‘Where have you laid him?’
He wants to go there because He’s got a plan, he’s got a purpose. And Mary and Martha will be blessed by that purpose.
In this story Jesus’ priority is first healing Mary’s broken heart, getting her to trust him, letting her know that he cares for her and feels for the situation.
He is the comforter.
And He is more. He is the raiser from the dead. He is the re-creator of heaven and earth. In the presence of Jesus death is defeated.
He goes to Lazarus’ tomb with a purpose – to raise Mary’s brother from the dead.
He is going to surprise Mary and Martha and everyone else with hope. The hope of the physical resurrection.
We often leave this story with Lazarus being unwrapped, but how about this morning if we leave the story with Lazarus stepping out of his grave clothes, hugging Martha, then hugging Mary – and as brother and sister embrace, so Mary looks up – and smiling at her is Jesus Christ. The man she oh so wrongly thought had not come because he didn’t love, the man who wasn’t really ready to put things right.
But he does love – not even Mary knew how much that love would cost him. Her brother’s resurrection, caused Caiaphas to issue Jesus’ death sentence. Lazarus is raised, the fatwa for Jesus’ execution is issued.
And he does put things right. She really has her brother back. Not a floating spirit, not a fading memory. He is there in flesh and blood. That’s the Christian resurrection. A situation put right in a way we can understand.
Jesus loves. Jesus puts things right.
CONCLUSION
All of us will have dark days like Mary. When they come, the same Jesus who cared for her, cares for us.
He sees our broken hearts and this is his priority.
He doesn’t come into the busy room full of sad people. He wants to see us alone, in private. So he waits outside the village, and calls for us. The teacher is here and is calling for you.
Let’s go to him and fall at his feet with our wounded hearts. He won’t lecture us. He will cry with us.
And then he wants to go to whatever the graveside is, to put things right.
You say…but…we don’t see any Lazarus’ coming back to life, the dead remain dead, it was only Mary and Martha, the widow of Nain, and Jairus and a few others in church history who got their dead back. Our dead stay in the grave.
They won’t stay there.
Fast forward just a week from this story: another Mary, weeping in the face of death, and then running with the news. Jesus of Nazareth has risen from the dead.
In the resurrection of Jesus Christ God has given us a clear sign post. The dead will rise again physically. As it was for Lazarus, so it will be for us. Jesus will wake us up and we will rise again – physically, with a new body.
He will put things right.
So – let’s go out to Jesus…for
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out to show his love and surprise us with hope.
If you’d been here…
Even as adults we can have that sort of feeling about people…if you’d been here.
And deep down many of us have had that feeling about God…
If you’d been here…
That was certainly the emotion burning in the hearts of two sisters in a village near Jerusalem.
They had sent a message to Jesus about their sick brother. Jesus hadn’t come; and their brother Lazarus had died.
Now their house fills up with mourners and we see Mary, her head down.
Her heart pierced by two daggers. The dagger of the death of her brother; the dagger of Jesus not coming. They had sent a message. He hadn’t come. Her brother was sick. Jesus heals. So they called him. He didn’t come. He could have come. He didn’t come. He didn’t come, because…and here the dagger keeps on twisting in her heart, poison seeping from its blade, because…at the end of the day Jesus is like all other men…there is a lot of talk, but when she Mary needed to see his love – it wasn’t there. It didn’t happen. It was a no show.
About an hour or so ago everyone knew that Jesus was on his way. Martha had pulled at Mary’s hand to go and meet him. That’s what happens in the Middle East when an important guest comes to visit your house. You don’t just sit and wait for him to come. You get up and go and meet him outside the village and escort him in. This is what Martha wanted to do. She is the practical one. She likes to do things properly. So she is pulling at Mary’s hand to get up and go.
But Mary wouldn’t go. She is too upset. She is what Iranians call ‘ghar’ with Jesus. She is not talking to him. The relationship is wounded. So she sits and Mary goes.
She is sitting with the mourners.
But then she receives a message.
Read John 11: 28-36
I see a simple but important truth in these verses. It is this:
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out – to heal our hearts and surprise us with hope.
He calls us out…out from where we are sitting, out from our families and friends
What are the characteristics of this calling out that we see in this story?
I see four things here
1. A broken heart – the PRIORITY (v 30)
There is something odd and very beautiful about what happens after Jesus has talked to Martha. She has come out to escort him back into the village. He is on his way to the village to see Mary and Martha and the whole family. So – we should now see him walking into the village.
But he waits. The writer underlines that in verse 30. He doesn’t move. He just stays where Martha met him.
Why?
Because Mary’s broken heart is his priority. He knows it. He probably guessed it as he travelled. Mary and Martha will be very upset with me. But then when he sees just Martha coming out by herself, it is confirmed. Mary’s heart was broken. That dagger was twisting away in her heart, the poison breaking down her trust in his love.
So here we come to something very beautiful about Jesus Christ – as we see him here in this story. He is a man surrounded by pressure. The men who are with him are – quite rightly – stressed out. As they approach this suburb of Jerusalem they are expecting the police to appear at any moment and arrest them all. In fact on the way Thomas has been writing his will and making his final phone calls. Remember he’d said – let’s go to Jerusalem so we can die with him.
Jesus will be doing all he can to make sure his disciples do not suffer – but he knows that he is entering the last week of his life. Important events stretch out in the week ahead.
And here is what is so beautiful.
On that day, at that moment, none of the week ahead was important. At that moment only one item was on Jesus’ agenda.
Mary’s broken heart.
He wants to reach out to that heart. Her grief is important to him. Her depression is important to him. Her sense of being let down is important to him. He is not the type to say – oh, she’s just emotional, she’ll get over it.
He wants to reach out first to Mary – then all the other things. Mary’s broken heart is his priority.
That’s what the story is teaching us.
In our darkest days – our broken heart, our feeling of being let down by Jesus, that is not something Jesus ignores. He sees it, and he waits outside the village, because that is his priority.
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out to show his love and surprise us with hope.
That’s the first characteristic of Jesus’ call here. A broken heart is his priority.
The second…
PRIVATE & PERSONAL (28/30)
There’s something else odd and very beautiful about what Jesus does here. OK – he wants to reach out to Mary. Mary is sitting in her home mourning with the rest of the family and friends. Jesus could have entered the village with Martha and when he got there he could have comforted Mary. That would have been easier.
Easier – but useless. That village house would have been packed. In the East everything stops when someone dies. Everyone comes to see the family. The rooms would have been heaving. There would have been no privacy.
And Jesus wants privacy with Mary. He wants to talk to her – even if it’s just for a few brief minutes – alone.
And he wants to be personal. He wants her to know that he specially wants to see her. If he just arrived at the house…well that’s his duty. There would be nothing personal
And so he sends a message with Martha…
Martha returns into that packed room. There is her sister, still with her head bent, her body shaking with grief, those daggers digging into her heart. Watch Martha now as she bends down and whispers into Mary’s ear: a picture of privacy, something completely personal, a message just for Mary.
And what a beautiful and simple message it is:
The teacher is here – and is calling for you.
For Mary these simple words push away the dark boulder of doubt that was weighing on her heart. He is calling – for me. He cares about me. He is not here for my brother, he is not here for the crowd, he is not here for some important programme. He is here for me. He is calling for me. He wants to see me, alone. He cares about our relationship. She is reassured of his love and see the impact – verse 29 – she heard the message and rose quickly and went to him.
Because she goes quickly, it takes a bit of time for the rest of the mourners to work out what’s going on. This means that she can have those few precious moments with Jesus alone.
So we see him – standing outside the village, waiting because she is his priority; waiting because he wants to deal with Mary in a special, personal way; waiting because he wants a few private moments with her.
That is Jesus. That is God in human flesh. That is his character.
And now we see Mary, almost running, tears streaming down her face, tears of grief, tears of anger, tears of relief.
The writer wants us to take note of Mary. She is a disciple to emulate. He wants us to see her in her darkest hour leaving her family and friends, and not going to the grave, but going out to Jesus. That is the right place to go.
In January my mother died. She was 88. She had had a good innings. But a mother is a mother. One grieves. I was grateful for the funeral, she had a good send off; I was grateful for the people who came to see me – but when we as Christians mourn there is something else we need to do. The comfort of the mourners and the comfort of a funeral is not enough. We need to hear Jesus say –
The teacher is here and is calling for you…
And we too need to go outside to where He is.
Because this is what the story is teaching –
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out to show his love and surprise us with hope.
When Mary and Jesus meet there is something else that we learn about how Jesus deals with us
He deals with us with POIGNANCY. (32-35)
Mary arrives and just collapses in front of him: a bundle of human grief and emotion. Jesus feels the tears of a woman on the skin of his feet. For several moments nothing is said. Just Jesus standing, Mary at his feet sobbing.
Then the cry of anguish, the same thing her sister said, but oh so emotional.
If you had been here my brother would not have died!
Maybe we have been where Mary has been. If you had answered my prayer, my brother would not have died; if you had come my brother would not have died; if….
Mary teaches us to empty our hearts at his feet.
Again in this story Jesus does not react in the way we would expect. Again there is something odd and beautiful. We might expect him to bend down and try and give Mary a theology lesson, or at least some words of comfort ‘Don’t worry, it will all be all right in the end; don’t worry, Lazarus is in a better place.
But Jesus doesn’t say anything. Her question erupts into the hot Middle Eastern afternoon. And hangs. There is no reply in words from Jesus.
His reply is much more beautiful. Much more poignant.
He too is emotional. He shares the grief. The shortest verse in the Bible:
Jesus wept.
There is no slot machine Christianity here. We regularly put in a bit of prayer, a bit of obedience, a bit of worship and out comes some heavenly wisdom wrapped up in some Amazon packaging for us to live our lives with.
Jesus is not the absent God, throwing down two plus two equals four answers from a distant heaven. No. He stands in the midst of the grief and weeps with us. The teacher is here. Incarnation; not education. Empathy; not theories.
We Christians have no pat answer to suffering…but we have this. Our God weeps with us. Our God feels with us. Our God is emotional with us.
Our God is poignant and that reassures us of his love.
A couple of weeks ago my wife went to visit one of our students, a beautiful twenty five year old woman. She has an aggressive form of cancer. If the doctors manage to perform a bone marrow transplant she has a twenty percent chance of living. In the midst of this journey Jesus has reassured her, not that she will be healed, but that He is with her. She loves to sing, but one Sunday her mouth was so painful from sores she could barely whisper. And then it came for the time of Holy Communion. To eat the bread would be agony, but she thought, what I will suffer is nothing compared to what He suffered. Let me share in the suffering. She partook. The next morning she woke up – the sores had gone. She was reassured of His love. Jesus is with her. One night she woke up and needed to take some medicine. She did not have water and was too weak to get up and get it for herself. She called for her mother, no response. Her mother was exhausted. Then she noticed that her dog, who usually keeps an eye on the door, was looking behind her bed. And she said someone came into the room, her glass was filled with water and she took her pills. The next morning her mother – aware that there had been no water – asked how she had had water. They believe it was an angel.
She is not healed, but even in the valley of the shadow of death – He is with them.
Because that is what this whole story is about
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out to show his love and surprise us with hope.
There’s a final characteristic about how Jesus call us, how He deals with us…we are his priority, he deals with us personally, privately, with poignancy,
And finally
AND WITH PRACTICAL PURPOSE (v34)
There are tears. But there is more. Jesus wants to know where the corpse is. He asks a very practical question.
‘Where have you laid him?’
He wants to go there because He’s got a plan, he’s got a purpose. And Mary and Martha will be blessed by that purpose.
In this story Jesus’ priority is first healing Mary’s broken heart, getting her to trust him, letting her know that he cares for her and feels for the situation.
He is the comforter.
And He is more. He is the raiser from the dead. He is the re-creator of heaven and earth. In the presence of Jesus death is defeated.
He goes to Lazarus’ tomb with a purpose – to raise Mary’s brother from the dead.
He is going to surprise Mary and Martha and everyone else with hope. The hope of the physical resurrection.
We often leave this story with Lazarus being unwrapped, but how about this morning if we leave the story with Lazarus stepping out of his grave clothes, hugging Martha, then hugging Mary – and as brother and sister embrace, so Mary looks up – and smiling at her is Jesus Christ. The man she oh so wrongly thought had not come because he didn’t love, the man who wasn’t really ready to put things right.
But he does love – not even Mary knew how much that love would cost him. Her brother’s resurrection, caused Caiaphas to issue Jesus’ death sentence. Lazarus is raised, the fatwa for Jesus’ execution is issued.
And he does put things right. She really has her brother back. Not a floating spirit, not a fading memory. He is there in flesh and blood. That’s the Christian resurrection. A situation put right in a way we can understand.
Jesus loves. Jesus puts things right.
CONCLUSION
All of us will have dark days like Mary. When they come, the same Jesus who cared for her, cares for us.
He sees our broken hearts and this is his priority.
He doesn’t come into the busy room full of sad people. He wants to see us alone, in private. So he waits outside the village, and calls for us. The teacher is here and is calling for you.
Let’s go to him and fall at his feet with our wounded hearts. He won’t lecture us. He will cry with us.
And then he wants to go to whatever the graveside is, to put things right.
You say…but…we don’t see any Lazarus’ coming back to life, the dead remain dead, it was only Mary and Martha, the widow of Nain, and Jairus and a few others in church history who got their dead back. Our dead stay in the grave.
They won’t stay there.
Fast forward just a week from this story: another Mary, weeping in the face of death, and then running with the news. Jesus of Nazareth has risen from the dead.
In the resurrection of Jesus Christ God has given us a clear sign post. The dead will rise again physically. As it was for Lazarus, so it will be for us. Jesus will wake us up and we will rise again – physically, with a new body.
He will put things right.
So – let’s go out to Jesus…for
In our darkest days Jesus calls us out to show his love and surprise us with hope.
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