Sunday's Sermon

“Raised to New Life”

April 6, 2014

Background: The Gospel of John is one of the four canonical gospels  in the Bible. This particular gospel begins with the witness and affirmation of John the Baptist and concludes with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

Scholars have proposed the development of a tradition from which the gospel arose. The discourses seem to be concerned with issues of the church-and-synagogue debate present at the time when this gospel was written around 90 – 100 AD.  It is notable that, in this gospel, the community appears to define itself primarily in contrast to Judaism, rather than as part of a wider Christian community. Though Christianity started as a movement within Judaism, Christians and Jews gradually became bitterly opposed.  That was the situation when this gospel was written. 

And the gospel is unique. Only in John does Jesus talk at length about himself and his divine role, often sharing such information with the disciples only. Against the background of the synoptic gospels, Mark, Mathew and Luke, John focuses largely on entirely different miracles (including the resurrection of Lazarus), which are given as signs which were meant to engender faith. Synoptic gospel elements such as parables and exorcisms are not found in John. 

Since it was such a late record, the vast majority of scholars do not believe that John or even one of the original apostles wrote this gospel, and trace it instead to a "Johannine community" which traced its traditions back to John. The gospel itself shows signs of having been composed in three "layers", reaching its final form about 100 AD. 

Many of the stories found in this gospel point toward Jesus as the Logos, God’s supreme gift to humanity.  By this time in history, Gentiles had entered the early community and we see signs of the compromises that the early Christian community was making to accommodate them. The story of Lazarus’ resurrection, therefore, in this story, seems to point toward Jesus’ resurrection.  

The term “this illness does not lead to death” refers to the final resolution, not to the immediate result of Lazarus’ illness. In the same way, a deeper meaning lies behind the words “so that the God may be glorified through it”.  The weeping of Jesus illustrate sto the Gentile community a  knowledge of a God whose heart is broken with anguish for his people. Unlike the Greek gods, and even those of the Romans, who were without passion, compassion or emotion, Jesus brought the news of a God who cares, loves and is compassionate.    

This lays a responsibility for exhibiting the power of God on the believer. God designs that every one of us should be a living proof of God’s power with the believer. Our task is to demonstrate in the most amazing way what God can do in all of us as individuals, even the most sinful of us. For us, every crisis should be an opportunity.  

This power was illustrated in many of the stories shared at our recent women’s retreat.

We not only discussed our blessings in our small groups, we also shared our brokenness. Most of us are broken in some way. To many of those 45 women, sharing confidentially their brokenness seemed to initiate healing.  But that took courage many of them did not know they even had.  They confessed they felt they had been given new life and the power to overcome that brokenness.  

When we are raised to new life, as was Lazarus, we are called to be courageous. Real courage means being perfectly aware of the worst that can happen, many times being sickeningly afraid of it and yet going ahead and doing the right thing. We then are living proof of the power of God that resides within each of us.

Think of what wonders we might experience if we ceased acting for just ourselves and instead made discovering God’s will for our lives and ways to bring ministry to others our central focus. 

An important question is what part of the Community of Christ  theology can build on this Christ-centered theology of peace and justice? Let me start by quoting Burton L. Mack, “The excitement created by talk of the Kingdom of God [by Jesus and his disciples] may be difficult for some modern readers to grasp. This is because the Christian religion is often thought to be solely about personal salvation, not the vision of a "sane society.”   We all have this vision as a part of our heritage, but we also have the baggage of old ideas. In many churches today, congregations have muted their proclamation that the good news of the gospel was  God’s kingdom of peace and justice and instead have substituted preaching that the good news is that “Jesus died for our sins.”

On the positive side, we have the Doctrine and Covenants.  We need to recognize the insight of those in our past who changed its title from the Book of Commandments, and include this concept of ‘covenant’ in our search to define peace and justice….in other words God’s Kingdom.  The book is rich in insights about this gospel of the kingdom. Within it’s pages, the stated reason for our being as an organization is to restore this gospel of the kingdom to the earth. In our past, we have suggested that the church should become this kingdom, and our attempts were not too successful. But maybe the church’s responsibility is not to be the kingdom but to promote this gospel of a sane society based on a righteous theology of peace and justice.

We need to read once again the advice for church members to be in the forefront of those organizations committed to bringing the ministry of Jesus into the lives of others.

Possibly the writer of Acts stated our task in the order of priority “ . . . proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching the facts about Jesus. .”. This was no small undertaking in 1830 when our church was begun and may be an even greater challenge in the twenty-first century when Christianity seems to be failing many people and the churches are mostly empty. …ours included.  

Andrew Kirk wrote, “It is the churches which visibly demonstrate the righteousness [justice] and peace of the kingdom which will make the greatest evangelistic and social impact on the world.” So let us each ask ourselves: “What binds us?”  Who are we called to unbind and release into freedom?   With whom do we share God’s message of peace and justice? How do we raise society and ourselves to “new life”?

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