Practicing Resurrection- Ian Graham- John 11-12: Worship

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Oops, good morning.
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It's good to see you all.
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How many of you were away?
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Had a break last week?
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Do you know they don't give adults fall breaks?
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You're aware of that?
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So congratulations for you.
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Or if they do and you have kids, you just have to manage your kids while you're working.
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Okay.
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We often have a very narrow conception of worship.
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And usually our concept of worship leads us to consign worship to the realm of the irrelevant or the boring.
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I talk to people often when they figure out I'm a pastor, one of their first questions is like, How boring is your life?
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Like, you choose to be in church?
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I'm like, I know, I understand.
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I understand where you're coming from too.
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I aim not to bore you here today, but if you're bored, that's okay too.
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I say this often, but our vision of heaven, if it's confined to an eternal church service where you will for all of eternity be singing, and that's what worship is, if that's your vision of heaven, you might be okay in thinking that sounds a little bit boring.
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Does anybody have that conception, like, okay, if that's what heaven is, like, if I'm honest, singing for all of eternity sounds a little terrible if you'd be so bold as to just say, yeah, that doesn't sound great?
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Doesn't sound great.
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Now, and the other thing is, like, the suggestion is if you don't think that sounds great, then you're self-centered.
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Like, because it's a it's about Jesus, and if you don't want to sing forever, then there's something wrong with you, right?
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Um, and so we have tried throughout the course of our life together to describe worship as something beyond singing, worship as an integrated, holistic life lived in allegiance to Jesus, heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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That the stuff that you do, so let's see, Monday to Saturday, has just as much to say about God and his kingdom as what we do here collectively on a Sunday morning.
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That worship is not just the thing that we just did, even though we call them the worship team, and now they have departed.
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We have not ceased worshiping.
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And so what we're trying to do is expand our horizons of what worship means.
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But today we're going to talk about worship.
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David Foster Wallace, in his endlessly quoted commencement speech given at Kenyon College many decades ago, said this.
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Here's something else that's weird but true.
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In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.
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There is no such thing as not worshiping.
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Everybody worships.
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The only choice we get is what to worship.
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The biblical framing of worship is essentially this we become like what we behold.
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And there are really two paths here.
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If we fix our eyes upon Jesus, as his eyes are fixed upon us, we will be transformed, in the words of 2 Corinthians 3.18, from glory to glory as we gaze upon the Lord, often in ways that are immeasurable or feel counterintuitive, that if we fix our attention on God, he is transforming us into something that looks like Him.
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Now the alternative path is to fix our eyes on the things of this world, on lesser things.
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This is what the Bible calls in its vocabulary idolatry.
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And Isaiah describes idolatry.
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When we fix our attention on idols, we become like them.
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We become those who can't hear, those who can't see, those who can't speak.
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And so, really, two paths diverge, and it's up to us to respond to the gracious path before us.
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We become like what we worship.
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And today we want to talk about this idea of worship, and I want to pose the question to you, as we've been doing throughout this series: what is it that makes worship difficult or hard or not your first response?
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I leave it to you.
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You can speak.
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I remind you, I was a youth pastor for 10 years, so I will wait you out.
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Pain.
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Yes.
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Because if our conception of worship is only happy clappy, what do we do with all the pain?
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Now the Bible has an answer for that, does it, seminary student?
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You know.
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I planted Jaden to lead us.
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But but the category of lament is no less worship.
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But so often we only have vocabulary in our gatherings for that which is good.
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How you doing?
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I'm fine.
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That could be a big big lie.
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But so often we don't give voice to what the Bible gives us extensive vocabulary for.
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And that all is not well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
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So pain, certainly, certainly.
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What else?
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Pride?
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Absolutely, right?
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I don't know who said that.
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Emerson?
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Okay.
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Uh pride, right?
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We, I mean, this is the primordial story of Satan.
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It's that he did not like the worship that was afforded to God and wanted that for himself, right?
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And so pride gets in the way of so many things, the way we see each other and the way we see the Lord.
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And oftentimes that pride can manifest itself in all sorts of different ways.
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Right?
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It doesn't just have to be that you're completely obscured and eclipsed by yourself.
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Could be your cynicism, could be your, I don't like this song, I'm not singing.
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Like that, whatever it may be, but pride so often trickles into our interactions with both the Lord and with each other.
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What else?
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Intangibility, like not tangibly.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Or or like again, if we kind of revert it back to if worship is singing, who doesn't like singing, if you'd be so bold?
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Don't like singing, just don't like it.
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That's okay.
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It's great.
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You're welcome here.
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It's okay.
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Church is like one of the only places in the world where we get everybody in the room, and the first thing we do is just like, let's just start singing.
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Have you ever invited somebody?
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And you're like almost explaining the singing part?
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You're like, hey, listen.
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Uh and especially like, I mean, thanks to be to God, like we have this amazing group of musicians up here.
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It's not like this everywhere.
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Some of you know.
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Some of you know.
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And so, like, you're almost having to apologize.
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You're like, hey, there's gonna be some singing.
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They might explain things as to why I invited you here, or they might not, but let's just get through the singing together, right?
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But the intangibility, I mean, some people just would rather do other things.
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And the idea of that as worship, you know, Paul tells us we can do everything to the glory of God.
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But we we so easily build up these categories in our mind of like, this is holy, this is other.
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And what Jesus comes in his incarnation to show us is, through especially through the parts that we don't know about of Jesus' life, all the 30 years that amassed when we don't know what he's doing, he's saying every moment is holy.
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Every moment can be devoted to the Lord.
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Jesus was no less devoted to the Lord in the moments that we don't know about, in the moments of obscurity and enemity than he was when we saying, the sovereign Lord, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the captives and freedom to the poor.
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Like it's all, all worship.
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All right, one more.
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Anything else?
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I can hear.
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Time.
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Time, right?
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Right, in a very similar vein, like sometimes we have to we we can see if we have to stop what we're doing in order to turn our attention to the Lord.
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And there's this beautiful dance that begins to play itself out in our lives when we actually begin to see that the Lord is present in every moment.
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We can turn to Him, and there'll be times where we need to cease and to stop, especially in our world, stop the noise.
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But so often, too, we just don't have this wide enough conception, I don't have it, where it's like, Lord, what I'm doing right now is important and is holy and can be done in your sight, and I sort of live out of my own strength or my own giftedness, which is limited, as it turns out.
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All right, so worship has some frictions with the way that we actually live our lives.
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You know, one of the things I think is very difficult for us, you think about God, and just the concept of God.
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He could have orchestrated the world in a myriad of different ways.
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And the thing that he wants most from us is for us to reciprocate the abundance, the lavishness of his gifts with our thanksgiving, with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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That's how he set the architecture of the world up.
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That we would respond to him as his children.
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He could have made us servants.
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Hey, I created you, now go do my bidding, go run along and do what I ask you to do.
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But that's not what God does.
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The architecture of the way that he orchestrated our life in the world is joy.
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The thing that he desires from us is worship, is praise.
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That's an astounding thing.
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And I think one of the things that we miss about worship itself, whether it be singing or whether it be the infinite other number of ways that you can worship God, is that it's all grounded in joy.
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If you go to a major sporting event, you'll likely see a whole bunch of people who don't consider themselves the kind of childlike, emotional people who would worship.
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And yet, a ball gets intercepted in return for a touchdown, somebody hits a three-pointer, a fastball gets turned on, deposited in the left field seats, you will see grown men and women jumping up and down, high-fiving each other, worshiping.
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We were made to worship.
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There's no such thing as not worshiping.
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Roger Angel, one of my favorite reflections on sports fandom.
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So if you will, if you're not a sports fan in here, raise your hand.
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You don't like it.
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All right.
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Forgive me, forgive me.
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Okay?
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I try not to impose that which I love upon you.
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But humor me for a moment.
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He writes this it is foolish and childish on the face of it.
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I've got the whole quote, you're gonna get part of it.
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To affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team.
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And the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut, I know this look, I know it by heart, I do too.
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Is understandable and almost unanswerable.
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Almost.
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What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring.
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Caring deeply and passionately, really caring, which is a capacity or an emotion that is almost gone out of our lives.
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And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved.
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Naivette, the infantile and ignobile joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
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Malcolm Guite is going to usher us into our text for today, so as I read this poem, I invite you to turn to John chapter 11.
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Malcolm writes, Come close with Mary, Martha, Lazarus.
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So the candles stir with their soft breath and kindle heart and soul to flame within us, lit by these mysteries of life and death.
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For beauty now begins the final movement in quietness and intimate encounter.
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The alabaster jar of precious ointment is broken open for the world's true lover.
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The whole room richly fills to feast the senses with all the yearning such a fragrance brings.
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The heart is mourning, but the spirit dances here at the very center of all things.
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Here at the meeting place of love and loss, we all foresee and see beyond the cross.
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At the beginning of John chapter 11, Jesus has been informed that his dear friend Lazarus is sick at home in Bethany.
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Bethany, less than two miles from Jerusalem, is a dangerous place for Jesus at this point of the story.
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The religious leaders who are entrenched in Jerusalem are plotting against Jesus, but Jesus, upon hearing the news, determines that he and his disciples will go to Jerusalem.
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By the time that Jesus arrives in Bethany, Lazarus is no longer sick, but he's dead.
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And today we're going to look at the story and the one that follows it in a series of three interactions.
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There are three interactions that Jesus has with two different people.
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And we want to look at them in such a way that it leads our hearts to see God for who he is, and to perhaps respond to him in the only appropriate way in worship.
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Verse 17.
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On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
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Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews, reminder, Jesus was a Jew, as were Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
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Many Jews had come to comfort Mary and Martha in the loss of their brother.
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When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him.
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But Mary stayed at home.
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Lord, Martha said, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
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But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.
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Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again.
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Martha answered, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
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Here we hear the disappointment in Martha's voice.
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As she goes out to meet Jesus as he's approaching the village, she goes out to him.
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And here she is grieving, and here's the one who in her mind could have prevented the cause of her grief.
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Lord, if you only would have been here.
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Now I wonder how many of us have had that exact same response to the Lord.
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Lord, if you only would have showed up, this would not have happened.
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Lord, where were you when that happened?
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Have you ever voiced this kind of disappointment with God?
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I think it's interesting that for so many of us, we conceive of ourselves as the kind of people that struggle with prayer.
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But I wonder if Martha's aching disappointment isn't the beginning of prayer.
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Prayer is not offering that which you don't have to God, but maybe offering that which you do have.
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And all sometimes we have is, Lord, if you would have been here, where were you?
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She says to Jesus, even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.
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But it's immediately made clear that she doesn't really mean that.
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Like, not the full extent of that.
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I'll give you whatever you ask if it be your will.
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But things like resurrection, that's a little beyond the pale.
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Verse 24.
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Her hope for Lazarus' life extends to the very distant future, at the resurrection, at the last day.
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Or maybe she doesn't think that Jesus is the kind of type to ask for things such as resurrection from the hand of the Lord.
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Martha's orthodoxy is profound, but bound to her limits that she's imposing upon Jesus.
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But Jesus will not accept her limits.
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Yes, I know my brother will rise again at the resurrection at the last day.
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And Jesus says to her, I am the resurrection and the life.
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The one who believes in me will live even though they die, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.
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Do you believe this?
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Yes, Lord, she replied, I believe.
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That you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.
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When Moses first hears the divine name in Exodus chapter 3, he's hiding his face because he's afraid to look at God.
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Here in John chapter 11, Jesus looks Martha in the eyes with all of her grief and says to her tenderly, but with authority, that same divine name, Yahweh, I am, I am the resurrection and the life.
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And then immediately poses the question to Martha: I am the resurrection and the life.
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Martha, do you believe this?
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Yes, Lord, I believe.
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We move to the next episode.
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Lazarus had two sisters.
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After she had said this, verse 28, she went back and called her sister Mary aside.
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The teacher is here.
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She said and is asking for you.
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When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.
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Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.
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When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
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When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said something that's going to sound familiar.
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Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
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In Mary's disappointment, we hear the same words, but we see a very different posture.
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We can envision that Jesus' interaction with Martha took place face to face.
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But notice Mary can't even look at Jesus.
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Mary didn't run out to see Jesus when she heard he was approaching.
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She stayed where she was.
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She pulls herself up to go to Jesus and then she falls at his feet, overcome with grief.
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She falls down at Jesus' feet in the bitter anguish of loss, of pain.
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Have you ever been so disappointed with God that you couldn't even seek him?
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You see, Martha's holding on to something.
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I know my brother will rise at the last, the resurrection.
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Mary doesn't have that kind of hope that she is trying to project onto Jesus.
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If you'd have been here, my brother wouldn't have died.
00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:17.279
Period.
00:18:18.799 --> 00:18:25.440
Here in John chapter 11, we see that it's the depths of our despair that often reveal the very heart of God.
00:18:25.839 --> 00:18:26.799
Verse 33.
00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:36.000
When Jesus saw her weeping, and those who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
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Jesus is deeply moved.
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He is agitated.
00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:42.319
Why is he agitated?
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I know there are many that suppose he is annoyed at the lack of faith, that people don't suppose that Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, could raise Lazarus from the dead.
00:18:52.960 --> 00:18:54.400
I know there are people that say that.
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I don't think that's correct.
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You see, in my mind, I think Jesus' agitation is like that of the great hero and a great epic as they finally stare down their true enemy.
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Jesus, the author of life, looks upon the grave, the great spoiler of creation, ruiner of lives, the curse.
00:19:14.400 --> 00:19:20.400
Paul tells us to know in certain terms in 1 Corinthians 15, the last enemy to be defeated is death.
00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:27.200
And when Jesus stares death in the faith, he sees all that is anti-life, anti-God.
00:19:28.240 --> 00:19:32.480
David Bentley Hart says this ours, after all, is a religion of salvation.
00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:47.440
Our faith is in a God who's come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces, whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chants that shatter living souls, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred.
00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:49.039
Jesus hates death.
00:19:49.279 --> 00:19:50.480
And you can too.
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It's holy hatred.
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And what does Jesus do in the face of his great enemy?
00:19:58.480 --> 00:20:04.960
Now, if you're familiar with the story, and this is one of those stories that even if you didn't grow up in Sunday school, you tend to kind of know where it's going.
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You're familiar with the story, you know that there is a miracle coming.
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A miracle that incidentally Jesus is not hurrying along.
00:20:16.799 --> 00:20:21.359
But I think here at Bethany, there are two miracles that unfold.
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It's easy to miss the first one, the second one, unmistakable.
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The first miracle, verse 34.
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Where have you laid him?
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He asked.
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Come and see.
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Verse 35.
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Jesus.
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And this is so far from the ancient Near Eastern, ancient philosophical conceptions of what a great man is like.
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Farther still than the ancient conceptions of what God is like.
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Think of Zeus with his lightning bolt sitting high on Mount Olympus.
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And here you have the God of Israel in flesh, standing outside the tomb of his friend, seeing his friends desolate and overcome with grief.
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And he stands there with all the power of life in his hands.
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And what does he do?
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He weeps.
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This is a God who calls us friends, who joins with us in our plight, enters into our grief and our curse.
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That all the tears that we cry, and they are profound, are mere tributaries of the great river of life.
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The earth loses a negligible amount of water each year, especially compared to the unfathomable volumes of water that are present in the oceans and in the atmosphere.
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Atmosphere and in the ground.
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The salty tears that Jesus cried there at Bethany some 2,000 years ago are still with us today.
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Psalm 56 tells us the Lord keeps all our tears in a bottle.
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They're precious to him.
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Revelation 21 tells us that the sea will be no more.
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As it also tells us in the same breath that there will be no more tears.
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I can't help but think that all the accumulation of all human sorrow joined with the oceanic grief of God, the tears that have been poured out through all the years, image in that ancient chaos, the deep, are that which is finally dried up, vanquished, the sea will truly be no more.
00:22:42.640 --> 00:22:55.359
As God forever dries up all that which seeks us harm, the curse and all of its manifestations are broken as Jesus makes all things new.
00:22:56.480 --> 00:23:07.680
The tears of Jesus here are no mere prelude to a prestige where God's like, let me build the tension, let me make it real emotional, and then I'm gonna bam! Raise him from the dead.
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They'll talk about that forever.
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The tears of Jesus, the revelation of the glory of God and the power of God.
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Verse 38.
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Jesus once more deeply moved, came to the tomb.
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It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.
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Take away the stone, he said.
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Here we see again Martha's true belief.
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But Lord, said Martha, the sister of the dead man, by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there for four days.
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Then Jesus said, Did I not tell you, if you believe, you will see the glory of God?
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So they took away the stone.
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Then Jesus looked up and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
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I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you have sent me.
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When he said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.
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And the dead man came out.
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His hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face.
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Jesus said to them, Take off the grave clothes and let him go.
00:24:17.839 --> 00:24:26.160
The last episode leads us to the next chapter in John's Gospel, John chapter 12, and leads us to the last week of Jesus' earthly life.
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Mary, Martha, and Lazarus host a dinner party for Jesus.
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It's a bit of a funny scene to imagine, right?
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What kind of dinner party do you host for the fellow who raised you from the dead?
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Yes.
00:24:40.079 --> 00:24:42.799
Dan, I'd like to introduce you to my friend.
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Jesus, Dan works in finance.
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And Dan says, Jesus, what do you do?
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Oh, you know, a little bit here and there.
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Raise the dead.
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Why didn't Lazarus immediately pen a bestseller?
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Like heaven is for real?
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Sheol is for real, I don't know.
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Verse 1.
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Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus has raised from the dead.
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Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor.
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Martha served while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.
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Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume.
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She poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair.
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And the house was filled with the fragrance, fragrance of the perfume.
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Here again, Mary has assumed a similar posture.
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She's fallen at Jesus' feet.
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But this time she's not fallen in despair or disappointment.
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She's fallen in worship and in gratitude.
00:25:50.079 --> 00:25:56.000
Luke 7 describes this scene in a much different context, a different house altogether, doesn't name the woman.
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We're just going to draw some parallels within the biblical text.
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In Luke 7 describes the unnamed woman who does this, wiping Jesus' feet with her own tears, joining her tears with that of the Saviors.
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In Luke 7, the woman falls down because she's been forgiven much.
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In John 12, Mary falls down in costly gratitude and honor.
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She has seen the one who is the resurrection and the life.
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And there is no offering too costly for the one who is ultimately worthy.
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I think in many ways Mary is the original Christian artist.
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And hers is a vocational call to all the artists among us here today.
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To respond to the majesty, the love of the Savior, to adorn the feet of Jesus so that we might see him.
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Judas objects, but Jesus rebukes him.
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And he says, It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial.
00:26:55.039 --> 00:26:59.200
This week I sat with some Ecclesians in different settings, as I normally do.
00:26:59.279 --> 00:27:03.680
And I have some anointing oil that I carry around because I'm a charismatic at heart.
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The oil is spiked with uh frankincense.
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And when I use it, no matter how long, how many times I wash my hands, like I just I smell it.
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I can sense it for days.
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I'm just like, there it is.
00:27:18.079 --> 00:27:23.519
And I wonder if like people that are around me are like, like, guys, like we could get some more expensive cologne here.
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Like, there's some really cheap stuff you're wearing here.
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And Jesus says explicitly that the extravagant offering of perfume is his anointing for burial.
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Jesus on the cross will be stripped of his clothes.
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He will have all earthly dignity and beauty taken from him through violence and disfigurement.
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The only earthly thing that Jesus will wear is the perfume of worship and gratitude poured out on Jesus' feet.
00:27:51.440 --> 00:27:56.960
Other than the cross, the crown that is placed upon Jesus' head by our curse.
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Our worship is not something we have to generate or conjure up.
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Our worship is seeing God.
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Seeing the face of God who has ever, always seen us even through tears.
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Seeing him anointed for death and burial, seeing him risen, even in the midst of our doubts, like Thomas, and falling at his feet and saying, My Lord and my God.
00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:26.799
We worship him when we give thanks for all the goodness that he has placed in our lives.
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We worship him when we bring our doubts and disappointments.
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Lord, if only you would have been here.
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We worship him when we see him among the poor, the outcast, and the marginalized.
00:28:38.400 --> 00:28:41.839
Jesus tells us that whatever we do to the least of these, we've done to him.
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We worship him when we make beauty.
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For the mere sake of it.
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Reflecting his beauty.
00:28:52.319 --> 00:29:00.240
As we pray for the Holy Spirit to come, I'm going to invite you just to the simple act of responding to the face of God here.
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In worship.
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I'm going to invite our worship team forward as it goes.
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We pray, come Holy Spirit.
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Jesus, as we shift postures and move our chairs and or would you just have our fixed attention in this room?
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God, sometimes it is because of our tears that we can't see you.
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And Lord, we ask by the power of your incarnate Son revealed at Bethany, Lord, that we would see that our tears mingle with yours, God.
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Is yours.
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God often is it's our shame that keeps us from seeing you.
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Our vision gets clouded and obscured because we think all you see is that which is broken within us.
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God, and we miss the extent to which you have taken our sin and shame from us as far as the East is from the West.
00:30:37.359 --> 00:30:42.079
Lord, that when you look at us, you don't see our worst moments.
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You don't see our biggest flaws.
00:30:44.240 --> 00:30:48.880
You don't see that repetitive thing that we keep tripping into over and over again.
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You see your beloved child in Christ.
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God, throughout the Gospels, when people see you for the glory that you have, God, unveiled, or they fall down in fear and in wonder.
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And we often trip on the idea of worship because we have too narrow a conception of it, or we just think it's something that we should do, God.
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But we miss that worship is a response to seeing you.
00:31:28.559 --> 00:31:31.279
So Lord, would you reveal your glory in this place?
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Lord, through the power of song, Lord, through the face of others sitting around us, through the wonder of your word, through the power of your Holy Spirit, which fills this room, God, would you show us your glory?
00:31:49.279 --> 00:31:51.759
The resurrection and the life, God.
00:31:52.079 --> 00:31:56.799
Help us to believe so that we can see the glory of God more clearly here today.
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:06.559
Would you tenderly remove shame from those who need unburdening, God?
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Would you issue summons and vocational call to those who need to make beauty in response to what you've done, God?
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Would you be here in this place?
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Have your way.
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We pray these things in the power of your blood poured out for each one of us.
00:32:22.880 --> 00:32:27.440
And in the testimony of the empty tomb that makes all things new.
00:32:30.400 --> 00:32:31.759
We pray these things in your name.
00:32:31.920 --> 00:32:33.359
In the beautiful name of Jesus, we pray.
00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:33.839
Amen.
00:32:34.000 --> 00:32:36.000
Equosia, I'm going to invite you to stand.
00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:39.759
Let us worship together in the power of the Holy Spirit.
00:32:39.920 --> 00:32:42.799
In just a moment, we'll come worship together at the table.