“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”?
