Bible Reading: John 20:1-10
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.” John 11: 25. This saying is part of a strange dialogue between Jesus and Martha, one of the sisters of Lazarus who had died four days earlier. She had chided Jesus that if he had got there earlier, her brother wouldn’t have died. Jesus replied that her brother would ‘rise again’. Yes, she knew then. As, a good believing Jew of the first century, she looked for general resurrection ‘at the last day’. But excellent as that might be as a theological principle, it wasn’t much comfort at that particular moment. She wanted her brother now, not at the last day.
The response of Jesus was this astonishing claim. The last day was not the resurrection. He was. ‘I am the resurrection and the life’. We recite it at every funeral service and the words are as well-known as almost any in the Bible. But does the enormity of his claim get to us through the mists of familiarity? Jesus doesn’t say that he can, or will, raise Lazarus from the dead (tough very shortly he does). He doesn’t say that at the last day he will be the agent of resurrection and the judge of the living and the dead. He simply says that he is ‘resurrection and life’. Within him, as part of his very being and nature, is the principle of resurrection and the principle of life. It echoes another claim he made, that the Father has ‘life in himself’ so ‘he has granted the Son to have life himself’, and to be the agent of life for others. Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life (John 5: 24-27).
This is the message of Easter- not simply that Jesus rose from the dead, but that the Son of God has authority from the Farther to raise those who believe in him from death to life. When Jesus went to the cemetery to raise Lazarus from the dead, he called in a load voice’, Lazarus, come out!’ Someone has suggested that if he hadn’t specified who was to come out, he might have emptied the graveyard. That is what Easter means to Christians: the final enemy has been destroyed. Let us therefore friends not only hear the words but also see the actions. Let us stand where the disciples stood and see the events of the Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter with fresh eyes. And then like them, in the new life of Easter Day and the power of Pentecost, go out in the weeks and months ahead to live and work to praise and glory.
Alleluia! He is Risen.
Solomzi