Rebecca McLaughlin on Jesus Through the Eyes of Witnesses

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Rebecca McLaughlin
So funny story earlier today I was chatting with my fellow countrymen, Andrew Wilson, who some of you may know. And he looked at the brochure for today. And he said, Is this just a massive misprint because it says Jesus through the eyes of witnesses instead of Jesus through the eyes of women. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, this is looking at Jesus through the eyes of women and also witnesses and confronting Jesus as we go. So this is going to be like a kind of, mish mash up if you have read, either confronting Jesus or Jesus through the eyes of women. But most importantly, I hope that all of us would just be fixing our eyes onto this a little bit more clearly in the next few minutes, especially me. Two months ago, I had to fly back to England because I had the privilege of speaking at my grandpa’s funeral. My grandpa grew up in the north of England in a very poor family. And it was a Catholic family. He was the eldest of seven children. He left school when he was 14, in order to get a job to help his parents provide for the other kids. And my grandpa was a wonderful storyteller. And one of the stories that he liked to tell through the generations was over time before he left school, when he was in a swim meet at his little school, and he was swimming the breaststroke. Now, his last name was Mick Poland, and his nickname all his life was Mac. So his friends were standing on the banks of the swimming pool, and they were shouting, come on, come on Mac. But he was swimming the breaststroke. So what he heard was, Come back, come back. And he stopped swimming, and turned around and started swimming back to the beginning, because there must have been a full stop. My grandpa had this beautiful sort of Northern England accent, which you have to fully appreciate to really get the force of that story. And I would never quite dare to replicate. And I told this story as part of my eulogy at my grandpa’s funeral. And afterwards, one of his surviving siblings, his younger sister, Eunice came up to me, and she said, I remember the day when that story happened. She said Peter was actually winning the race. Until he thought that he was being called back. Now my grandpa, in all the years of telling that story, had never mentioned that he was winning the race. He just told her there’s this funny story. But here I was confronted with an eyewitness of his early life. And as I talked with her, I realized that I just spent the last few hours with a host of eyewitnesses of my grandpa’s life. Some like my great aunt Eunice had known my grandpa since before not only I was born before my mother was born. Some white my mother and her two sisters had grown up with my grandparents, their dad, some like my grandma had known him as Max, since they were both 16 When they first met, and since they married in their early 20s. And some like me, were his grandchildren, or even his great grandchildren, who had memories of our grandfather from the latter parts of his life. So we open the four Gospels in our Bibles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We are confronted with the testimony of many witnesses of the first century Jewish rabbi known at the time of Jesus of Nazareth. The this afternoon I want to spend a little bit of time thinking about what we learn from these eyewitnesses about Jesus. And there are four things that I want to focus on. The first is that the gospels were actually written within the lifetimes of eyewitnesses. Second, that the Gospels give us their individual names. Third, that the Gospels show us intentional differences. And fourth, that the Gospels make incredible claims. And as we look at these four things, need to have in our back of our minds, what John tells us toward the end of his gospel, but all these things have been written so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life in his name. So first, the Gospels are written within the lifetimes of the witnesses. Now, don’t if you have ever heard, the skeptical scholar Bart Ehrman, and his illustration to help us think about what the Gospels and our Bibles are, he tells a story and some other skeptical scholars and writers have told this story as well, of saying it’s a little bit like the telephone game you know, when kids sit down in a circle. And the first one whispers a message to the second one. And the second one whispers a message to third one. And so the message goes around the group, until the last kid says what they think they heard. And everybody laughs at how different it was. Generations, people have talked about the Gospels as if they were the product of an oral tradition, something like that. And how, of course, the gospels we have in our Bibles, are just sort of scrambled versions of whatever the original eyewitnesses thought that they saw or heard. But in actual fact, if we look at the datings, for the four Gospels in our Bibles, even according to scholars who aren’t coming from a Christian perspective, the general consensus that Mark’s gospel was written between 35 and 45 years after the events that are records that John was most likely written about 60 years after the events of Jesus’s ministry, death and resurrection. And the Matthew and Luke fall somewhere in between. Now, when I talked to my great aunt Eunice and heard her memories of that moment in her brother’s life, she was recalling something from over 70 years ago. And she was remembering it like it was yesterday. It’s about twice as long ago, as the time lag between when Jesus died on the cross, and when Mark’s gospel was written down, and longer than the time lag between when Jesus died on the cross, and when John was likely written down. Now many people would say, Listen, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast last Tuesday. How could people possibly remember with accuracy things that happened decades ago. Of course, none of us remember everything that happens in our lives. I, for instance, do not know what I had for breakfast last Tuesday. But all of us remember the conversations and the events that changed our lives. And meeting Jesus was a life changing event. What’s more, rather than it being like the telephone game, where one person heard about Jesus and just pass it on to the next person, next person, next person or someone around? Instead, we know that Jesus had many witnesses of his life and ministry of his miracles of his death, of his burial of His resurrection. We learn in the Gospels about his 12 chosen apostles, sometimes called the disciples 12 Jewish men have chosen to picture God’s new kingdom like the 12 tribes of Israel, but recapitulated but it’s also clear in the gospels, that there were many other disciples who traveled with Jesus, who listened to what he said he watched what he did. And in particular, we hear about a number of women who were Jesus’s disciples in the fullest sense. Luke tells us at the beginning of Luke chapter eight, that when Jesus went on a preaching tour, a number of people went with him, including the 12, and many women who have been healed from various diseases and sicknesses. And he tells us, in particular about three men. First, you mentioned Mary Magdalene, from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons. But he mentioned Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager. And third, he mentioned a woman named Susanna. So do you see how here we’re hearing about individual names, of eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life and ministry not only the 12 disciples, aka the apostles, but also named witnesses among the women who traveled with Jesus. And if you look at Luke’s Gospel, actually, from the beginning to the end, you will see women paying particularly significant witnessing roles. But let’s home in for a minute, on these three whom Jesus names Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the wife of chooser, Harrods, house manager, and Susanna. Now, Mary Magdalene has gone on to become by far Jesus’s most famous female disciple because of the role that she played in witnessing Jesus’s resurrection. She had by far the most common name among Jewish women of her time and place. If you read through the Gospels and look out for the Mary’s, you will find Mary’s everywhere you look. So this Mary was identified by the place she came from Mary Magdalene.

Next, Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager. Now, I don’t know about you, but for years of reading through the Gospels, I think I just sort of breezed past this particular verse. I had no curiosity about Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager. Then I read an incredible book by a man named Richard Bauckham, who if you’re ever interested to know more about Jesus through the eyes of eyewitnesses, I highly commend Richard welcome to you And he points out that we can actually learn quite a lot about this second woman from the description that Luke gives us. So she has the one of the most common names of Jewish women of our time and place not quite as common as Mary. But certainly there are many do and so she needed more identifiers. And her husband choose the being Harrods household manager would have been quite a significant figure inherits court. So this is a high status wealthy woman who has left the court to travel around the countryside with Jesus on his preaching tour. This would have been quite shocking, quite extraordinary. And third, we hear about Susanna, and we’re just given her name, a less common name for Jewish women at that time. Now, why is Luke telling us about three women who said there are a bunch of women, he could have just left it at that? Well, in Jewish legal context, having three witnesses for any situation was was seen as the gold standard. And so Lucas, particularly pointing us to these three women, as witnesses of Jesus’s ministry. If you scroll back to the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, you’ll find that you encounter three female witnesses there, as well. So most famously, of course, we have Mary and other Mary, Jesus’s mother. And we’re dependent on her testimony, to know the conversation she had with the angel Gabriel, and extraordinary things that Gabriel told her about what her son would be like, and the role that he was going to play. But then, we have Mary meeting with her relative Elizabeth, John the Baptist smother. And we see Elizabeth being filled by the Holy Spirit, and recognizing who Jesus is, even when he is in Mary’s moon. Who am I says, Elizabeth, that the mother of my Lord should visit me. And famously, at that moment, we hear Mary, bursting out with this extraordinary hymn of praise to God, for everything he is going to do, this massive revolution that he is going to work through her son, Jesus. So that’s two female witnesses. And then as we follow Jesus to the temple, when his mother and Joseph take him to be dedicated, there we meet Anna, from the tribe of Asha, a prophet s. Again, just a very brief description, but a very significant one. If you think about it chronologically, Anna is the first person in the Bible to be identified specifically as a prophet, since the Old Testament prophets. She is from the tribe of Asha, one of the northern tribes. And she is continually in the temple. She’s very elderly lady. And she speaks about the redemption of Israel is going to be wrought through Jesus. So the beginning of Jesus’s life. According to Luke’s account, we have these these three female witnesses. And right in the middle, we have these three named witnesses as well. Now, again, I’ve learned so much from just reading Richard Bauckham. So this may be very familiar for those who’ve already had the pleasure of reading Richard Bauckham. But one of the things that he points out, is that ancient history is like this, we’re we’re very much dependent on eyewitness testimony. And when people are named in these documents, it’s kind of like saying, This person can vouch for this message. And if you don’t believe me go and ask Mary Magdalene. And then explains why as we read through the Gospels, we will find that there are some named figures and some unnamed ones. And sometimes we sort of wonder why somebody’s been named. For instance, when Simon of Cyrene is holding on to carry the cross for Jesus, and the common is made that he is the father of Rufus and Alexander, we read that we think well, okay, who are reverse and Alexandria and what do they have to do with anything? Well, most likely, these two sons of Simon, sort of carrying his testimony and sharing his story with anyone who wants to hear because you see, after Jesus’s extraordinary life, after his death, after his resurrection, this team of eyewitnesses went around telling everybody they knew the stories about Jesus. And actually, it’s likely that the gospels were written down precisely because these eyewitnesses were starting to out. And it was really important to preserve their testimony. So that people a century, two centuries, three centuries, even 2000 years later, like us, will be able to read the stories about Jesus and know them with accuracy. written well within the lifetime of these eyewitnesses, and written with individual names given guaranteeing their stories, a little bit like, my great aunt Eunice, who gave me that extra insight into a story that I’d hold heard for generations in our family, but where I’d never heard the detail that she was able to bring. Now, we might conclude from this that, okay, if I’m reading through the Gospels, and I come to a named person, that means they’re really important. And the unnamed people are not so important. It’d be a reasonable hypothesis to have. But actually, if you read through the Gospels that doesn’t stand up. This is a straw ordinary story that Luke tells us. About a time when Jesus was invited to dinner by a man he was identified as Simon the Pharisee. Now, usually, as you’re reading through the Gospels, the Pharisees are usually not impressed with Jesus and not inviting around for dinner and usually complaining about who is having dinner with. But on this one occasion, a Pharisee named Simon has invited Jesus around for dinner. And while they’re having dinner, Luke tells us that a woman of the city who was a sinner comes in no name, a woman who is notoriously sinful. Now, you might first think, Okay, well, Luke is clearly making Simon the Pharisee out to be more important than this anonymous woman who is known only for her sin, right? This woman walks in and she starts crying, weeping on Jesus’s feet, washing them with her tears, wiping them with her hair, pouring ointment upon them. And what Simon’s reaction, he says himself, If this man were a prophet, He would know what kind of woman this is. If Jesus really knew about this sinful woman’s past, he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. And yet Jesus is letting this woman Touch his feet and pour out her love on him. It’s Simon’s mind, this means that Jesus cannot even be a prophet sent by God. But then Jesus tells a story, which Seamus, Simon, and lift this woman up as an example of love. So let’s not be confused. Yes, we are told the names of specific eyewitnesses in the gospels that guarantee the authentic testimony that you and I today, 2000 years later have access to actual eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s life, ministry, miracles, death, and resurrection. But let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that those anonymous people in the Gospel stories don’t matter. Because often, when we look through their eyes, we see Jesus for who He really is. I have a five year old, who is about this tall. And often he is wanting me to look at things through his eyes. On Sunday, last Sunday, he was I was holding him in my arms. And he was noticing one of his friends up on the balcony behind, and he literally grabbed my head and like forcibly turned my head around so that I would be looking at this person, it was quite painful, I don’t recommend it. Other times, he’ll be looking at something and he’ll make me get down on my knees, so that I can look up from his perspective, through his eyes to see what’s happening. And until I get down on my knees, I can’t actually see the angle that he has asked me to see. If you read through the Gospels, what you’ll often find is that the people who are standing up in front of Jesus kind of like this cannot see who Jesus is. Whereas the people who are down on their knees, who have thrown themselves down in front of Jesus, who are maybe pouring their tears on his feet and wiping them with their hair. Those are the people who can see Jesus for who He really is.

We see Jesus most clearly through the eyes of those people who are down on their knees. So in the gospels, we are encountering testimony that was written well within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses. We’re hearing the individual names of people who can guarantee it and that becomes particularly significant when we come to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Because famously, the Gospels point us to the testimony of women, when it comes to Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection. But we also, if we read through all four gospels together, we noticed that there are differences between the Gospel accounts. So what are we to make of that? No, some would say, Well, if there are differences between the Gospels, especially when they’re telling the same story, and they maybe have different details, then that shows that these are really authentic eyewitness accounts, or at least that they are not reliable eyewitness accounts. That brings us to our third point, which is that the Gospels actually offer us intentional differences. Don’t about you, I’m big fan of The Lord of the Rings, I read the books growing up, I’ve read them to my children multiple times. And I absolutely love the films that were generated around the Lord of the Rings. But as a Lord of the Rings, book enthusiast, there are certainly moments when we’re watching the films, when we sort of feel sad about the things that have been left out, right. Because the Lord of the Rings films are trying to capture these massive these three sort of massive books telling this extraordinary story, and boil them down into three films that even though they’re very long films, I think, you know, up to three hours, each one, if you’ve watched the extended edition, there are so many things that have to be cut out. And if you think about the process that the gospel authors went through, when they sat down to write their accounts of Jesus’s life, they were trying to condense three years of public ministry, in some cases, starting even at the very beginning of Jesus life on Earth 1000s of potential stories that they could have told, from the many eyewitnesses that they were consulting, they were trying to cram that all down into books that can be read, in the same length that it takes you and me to sit down and watch a feature film. If you think about it, Jesus probably healed hundreds, perhaps even 1000s of people in the cost of his public ministry. And the Gospels tell us a handful of those stories. Jesus preached hundreds, possibly 1000s of sermons in the course of his ministry. And the Gospels preserve a handful of those for us. So we have to recognize the ways in which the gospel offers needing to edit and scrunched down to tell us the stories that they most particularly want us to hear in the way that they most particularly want us to hear them. And sometimes that that means that they will tell us different stories. And sometimes that means that they will tell us the same stories in different ways. One example of this is one of my favorite stories in all of the Gospels. It’s a time when Jesus is asked to come and heal a 12 year old girl who is very, very sick. Her father is a synagogue ruler. Again, we’re sort of surprised that a synagogue ruler is actually coming to Jesus for help rather than trying to stand up against Jesus but but this time a synagogue ruler, named Jairus, combs and nails before Jesus, and pleased with him to come and heal his daughter who is very sick. And Jesus starts immediately to go with Jairus to heal this little girl. But while he’s on his way, a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and had spent all her money on doctors and hadn’t got better, but only worse, thinks to herself. If I could just touch his garment, I will be healed. Now, it’s hard for us, I think, to get our minds around the full magnitude of her situation. So she’s, she’s been bleeding for the last 12 years. She’s actually been ceremonially unclean for that whole time. And if she comes and touches Jesus, she’d be making him ceremonially unclean. She’s taking a big risk here. And it seems like her plan is she’s just going to kind of sneak up on Jesus in the crowd, touch him get healed, and then melt away back into the crowd. And the first part of the plan goes really well. She sneaks up on Jesus, she touches his clothes, and she’s immediately healed. But there’s a problem. Jesus stops and he says, Who touched me? Feels the power go out of him. Is it safe to say, well, what are you talking about? You’re in the middle of a crowd. Everybody’s touching you. How can you ask who’s touching me? She says, no, no, no, some somebody somebody touched me. He starts looking around for this woman. She comes trembling and falls in front of Jesus, and confesses what she’s done. She’s evidently expecting Jesus to rebuke her. Now, what does she think she was doing, touching him and her condition. But Jesus says to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. She’s the only person in the gospels whom Jesus calls daughter. Of course, she has the right to touch him. She’s family. And it feels like a happy ending and that moment. But then messages come from a synagogue, realist house, and they say, your daughter is dead. Don’t trouble the teacher anymore. Jesus says, to join us, don’t be afraid, only believe. And he goes with Jairus to his house. He sends everybody away except for Peter, James and John and Jairus and the little girl’s mother. And then it goes to this little 12 year old girl. And he says to her and their shared mother tongue of Aramaic Tabitha Kumi. I say to your little girl, get up, he raises this little girl to life. It’s a beautiful story, not least because of the parallel between the woman had been bleeding for 12 years and a little girl who had been alive for only 12 years, Jesus bringing life and healing back to both of them. But if you read the accounts for Matthew’s Gospel, and from Mark’s gospel together, you’ll find some significant differences. Interestingly, whereas Marcus is by far the shortest of the Gospels, so often markets that have scrunching things more even more than the other gospel authors. In this instance, it’s Matthew has scrunched things. Because in Matthew’s account, from the first, the message is that the little girl is dead novice she was sick, but she is dead. Whereas in Mark’s account, we get this the different scenes along the way as firstly sick, then the woman with the issue of blood comes and touches Jesus, and then the message comes that she’s dead. Now again, as we look at these two accounts, side by side, we don’t need to say, well, Matthew was wrong or Mark was wrong. Because in fact, Matthew is, is condensing the story for his own particular purposes. If we look over at John’s gospel, we’ll often find that John is telling additional stories, different stories, from the stories that typically told them in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And we might think, why is that some people will say, Well, John has written so much later. Maybe John is, you know, making stuff up at this point, there’s 60 years after these things have happened. I’m not sure that there’s good reason to think that John had access to Mark’s account, or certainly heard many of the stories. And so there are times when he’s telling other stories, to fill the accounts of Jesus life out. And there are times when he’s even telling the same story. But with significant details added. Another wonderful story in the gospels, I feel like I probably shouldn’t, it’s all the stories in the gospels are wonderful. Let me be clear. But as I think about each one, I think, Oh, that’s such a wonderful story. The wonderful story of when Jesus, not long before he is arrested, and executed, and gloriously raised from the dead, when a woman comes and pours perfume on him. And in this case, it’s his disciples who criticize this woman. They say, Look, this was a really expensive perfume, an ointment, it could have been sold for a lot of money that money could have been given to the poor. What a waste, to pull it out on Jesus like she has. And Jesus defends this woman. She says that he says, Oh no, she’s done a beautiful thing for me.

Wherever the gospel is preached, her story will be told. She says that she has prepared his body for burial. But it’s not until John’s account of this, that we find out the woman’s name. Turns out this was Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. And it’s not until John’s Gospel that we’re given a particular name of the disciple who criticized her as Judas Iscariot, who John tells us had been stealing from the moneybagg he wasn’t really concerned for the poor. He was concerned for his own gain. And in that moment, we see that Mary is the disciple who Judas Iscariot really ought to have been pouring out her loved one Jesus, recognizing that he is worth everything. Not thinking, how can I gain from him? But recognizing how much Jesus had done for her. We see these, I would say intentional differences that that don’t need to alarm us as we read through the Scriptures, but should invite us to think, what is it that this gospel author is wanting me to focus on? What are they especially trying to draw out of this story? How are they using this story, to show me that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and so believe by believing I may have life in his name. And as we read through all four of the Gospel accounts, we will find that they are making incredible claims. Now, this may seem like an obvious thing to point out. But the reality is that the historical evidence for the Gospels is so strong, that if they weren’t making completely extraordinary, incredible miraculous claims, they would have been generally agreed to just be accounts of history, things that obviously happened. The reason they are so controversial today, the reason there are many today who don’t believe everything that the Gospels tell us, is because of the sheer magnitude of the claims that they’re making about Jesus of Nazareth. And there are so many stories in the gospels that we could go to, to see that they are making incredible claims. But I’m going to pick up on just a couple. Now, of course, there is the absolutely incredible claim that this first century Jewish rabbi who died on a cross was then raised to new life physically on the first day. And as I mentioned, that all the Gospels pointed to the fact that women were the witnesses of the crucifixion. We see women as witnesses of Jesus’s burial. And then we see women as the witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection. And once more, I love what John does, with the eyewitness accounts that he has of Jesus’s resurrection. Because we know there was a group of women who went on that first Sunday morning, with the intention of anointing Jesus’s body, properly preparing him for burial. But in John’s account, he’s sort of tunes out the other voices for just a minute. And he focuses in on the one Mary Magdalene. Now, if you think about it, as you go about your normal life, and there’s you tell stories and report things to to other people, you and I actually do that quite frequently ourselves as well. We will edit out people in a story that we’re telling if they sort of extraneous to our purposes. I remember a couple years ago, I had a playdate with a dear friend of mine named Julie. She has four children, and I have three children. And we spend most of our time when we’re together at playdates, where it’s sort of our combined posse. And that night, I came back to tell my husband, Brian, I said, Oh, I saw Judy by herself for the first time in ages today. And he said, where are all the kids? Today with her as well, but but they were irrelevant from my perspective, because I was getting to have an adult conversation with Julie by herself for the first time in ages is a little bit like that what John does in his account of of Jesus resurrection, because he focuses in on this one, witness, Mary Magdalene. And interestingly, he emphasizes the fact that Mary was weeping. Now, it’s not striking to us in our with our 21st century, it isn’t sensibilities, that women were the first witnesses of the resurrection, because in our minds, the testimony of a woman will be just as good as the testimony of a man. In the first century cultural context that the Gospels are written into, that wouldn’t have been the case at all. Actually, it was kind of embarrassing in terms of the credibility of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection, that it was women who are witnessing the resurrection. In particular, women were thought of as being unreliable and overly emotional when it came to religious matters. But John, rather than being embarrassed by their sins, sort of lean into it, he tells us repeatedly that Mary’s weeping, in fact, seems like she’s weeping so much that when she encounters Jesus in the flesh, she doesn’t even at first recognize who he is. She thinks that he’s the gardener until he speaks her most common of all, Jewish name’s Mary. And then she realizes who he is. And she goes back and she reports to the other disciples, I have seen the Lord. It’s very simple message, but an incredibly profound one. In that moment, as he records, Mary’s words, John is inviting us to see Jesus through her eyes. To see her as an eye witness, in particular, of Jesus’s resurrection, I have seen the Lord. And the extraordinary claim of the resurrection is filled out in John’s gospel, by an earlier story that we’re told about another Mary. It’s possibly my favorite story in all of the Gospels. And I know I sound like the sort of person who all the stories in the gospels are their favorite. But truly, this might be my favorite story and all of the Gospels. It’s recorded for us in John chapter 11. And it’s that famous time when Mary and Martha of Bethany, two of Jesus’s close friends and disciples, send Jesus the message because their brother Lazarus is very sick. The message is this Lord, the one you love is sick. No, just not. Lazarus, not our brother, but the one you love is sick. Then John, emphasizes for us that Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And then he tells us that when Jesus got the message, he didn’t come. It doesn’t make any sense, right? You know, you think it would make sense. If Jonah told us, Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And so when he got Mary Martha’s message, he dropped everything and came at once. Or it would make sense. If John told us, Jesus didn’t really care about Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and he was busy with some other stuff. And so he just, you know, put off coming. But no, John tells us very specifically that Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and that Jesus very deliberately waited until Lazarus was dead. And then he came. Marfa came out to meet him. And she said, Lord, if you’ve been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, He will give you did you hear this woman’s faith? Her brother is dead and buried and even now she thinks that Jesus can save him. Jesus gives her a theological answer. Your brother will rise again. And many Jews of Jesus’s day believe that there will be a resurrection of God’s people at the end of time. But that wasn’t my Mary and Martha would call for Jesus. Martha responds, I know, Lord, he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day, you can almost hear her thinking, What about now Jesus? What about now? Why won’t you help me now. And then Jesus looks into this grieving woman’s eyes. And he says some of the most extraordinary profound and incredible words ever spoken on this planet. He says, I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me even though he dies will live and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Martha thinks that her greatest need is for Jesus to raise her brother from the dead. But Jesus stands in front of her and says Now, her greatest need is Jesus Himself. Jesus is not a means to an end. He is the end.

I am the resurrection in the life. Anyone who believes in me, even though who dies will live and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Do you hear the incredible claim that Jesus is making there? Jesus is saying that if you are alive today and you do not believe in Him, you are in fact dead. And if you believe in Him, then even when you die, you will become gloriously alive. Martha responds, Yes, Lord, I know you are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming into the world. And then Mary comes out She says the same words, Lord, if you’ve been here, my brother would not have died. And Jesus goes with these women, to their brothers too. And then we read another extraordinary claim. We read that Jesus wept. Some of the people who are watching, see this, and they say, look how much he loved Lazarus. But other people say, wait a minute, couldn’t hear you open the eyes of the blind man also stop this man from dying? And the answer is yes. Jesus has deliberately let Lazarus die. And yet, he weeps with Mary and with Martha. What what do we learn about Jesus as we look at him through their eyes in this moment, we learn that it is not the case that our suffering doesn’t matter to God. Our suffering, brings tears to the eyes of the Son of God, even though he has allowed it, and even though as we see, as the story progresses, he is one day going to wipe every tear from our eyes. Jesus meets with us in our suffering. But if that was where the story ended, it wouldn’t be quite the incredible claim that it is. Because in that story, we don’t just see Jesus saying extraordinary things about himself. And we don’t just see Jesus weeping with these two grieving women. We also see Jesus saying, roll the stone away from Lazarus, this tomb, and then calling out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And we see this man who is dead, come out, with his grave clothes still on him. When we meet Jesus in the gospels, we are being confronted with the one person who can call you and me out of our graves a few years ago, I was driving past a local cemetery with my daughters. And one of my little girls said to me, mummy, is that where all the dead bodies are? I said, Yes, she said, Oh, that’s gross. I said, Don’t feel too superior, because you’re gonna be one of them one day. But I said, if you have put your trust in Jesus, then long after you are dead and buried and rotting in your grave, Jesus will call out to you and he will say, Miranda, come out, Eliza, come out. And you will walk out of your grave to everlasting life with him. This is the incredible claim of the Gospels. The Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Here’s the one who made us in the first place. He is the One who sees every moment of our lives. He’s the one who knows how many hairs there are in our heads. He’s the one who holds us as we weep. And here’s the one if we put our trust in Him, who were raised from the dead, because he stood in our place and took our penalty for us. These are the credible claims of the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke, and John. And if we can believe the eyewitness testimony that they give us, then their claims that have to change everything about our lives today. They’re not claims that we can just put on the fringes of our lives, their claims that must shake us to the core. The privilege of few months ago, getting to know a woman named Molly worden, who is a professor of history at UNC Chapel Hill. And as a professional historian, she has been on a really interesting journey in the last year or so. Because she came to the point of realizing that she believed that Jesus had in fact, been raised from the dead. And she realized is that if that is true, that it must change absolutely everything. She’s put our trust in Jesus, because she has come to the conclusion that yes, he not only claimed that he was the resurrection and the life, but that he also proved that he is the resurrection of a life by rising to new life.

Two months ago, I stood next to my grandpa’s graveside as his body was lowered into His grave

My hope for him is that one day he would hear the voice of the Son of God saying to him, come on Mac, and that he will get up out of his grave and walk into resurrection life for Jesus. Brothers and sisters if you have put your trust in Jesus Christ, whatever happens in this life today, however much you fail, however lonely you feel, however useless your life may seem, all that’s going to matter is that one day, Jesus will call your name just like he called Lazarus. Lazarus, come out and you will get up out of your grave and walk into his arms forevermore. Thank you.