406 From M.T. to Empty

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From M.T. to Empty”, originally shared on April 1, 2026. It was the 406^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    The Gospel of John in the Bible spends over 50% of his gospel on the last week of Jesus’ life. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   I saw a meme online a few years ago in which what looked like a granddaughter was escorting what looked like her grandmother toward her home.

   The grandmother said, “Netflix used to come in the mail!”

   The granddaughter replied, “Sure grandma. Let’s get you to bed.” 😊

   When people say to me, “Age is just a number,” I just say, “Yes, but I’m getting to a big number!” I’m not bothered by that number, but every once in a while something happens that drives it home.

   Sally and I took my car to the dealership for maintenance last week. While we were talking with the service agent, I mentioned that we had bought Sally’s car from the same dealership.

   I said that we had traded-in my milk caramel-colored Ford Explorer, but that it was hard to let it go. I had driven that car for so long that the steering wheel was worn to the shape of my hands!

   We keep our cars until they are falling apart, and that one had a cracked engine block and was burning so much coolant that I had to top it off after every time we used the car. 

   Still, I said, when we took the Explorer in for the trade-in, I felt like I was taking Old Yeller back behind the barn.

   She stared blankly and smiled politely. I realized that she had no idea what I was talking about. Age comes, and death. But, for Jesus, death came at a small number. He was 33 years old.

   This week is Holy Week, marking the last week of Jesus life on earth. It’s a big deal. It’s about a death. And the life that it brings.

   Maundy Thursday is the day in Holy Week in which we see the Last Supper, Jesus last meal with his disciples with the Institution of Holy Communion, Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus’ commandment to love each other has he has loved them, and Jesus being betrayed by one of his disciples to his death.

   There’s a lot going on this Thursday! 😊

   Though, some churches have given up on foot washing, when the pastor removes his or her robe and members of the congregation who wish come forward and the pastor washes their feet, which I did for my 41 years of parish ministry before my retirement.

   I understand that it’s not being done in some places. It might seem too personal to some. I mean, when Isaiah writes, in Isaiah 52:7a, “⁷ How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,

who brings good news,” he certainly never saw my feet. 😊

   Maundy Thursday ends with Jesus’ praying so intensely in the Garden of Gethsemane that he literally sweats blood. He prays for a way out, for another way other than being tortured and crucified to restore the living relationship with God for which humanity was created.

   But, he says, he would follow God’s will. He would empty himself. He would become a servant.

   The word “maundy” is an Old English word from the Latin word “mandatum”, in modern English word “commandment”, as in the “new commandment” that Jesus gives to his disciples.

   But hold on! Can love be commanded? Jesus thought so. But how can that be?

   Jewish people will be celebrating a seder meal during their season of Passover, which lasts from April 1^st to April 9^th this year. It will overlap Holy Week this year, as it usually does. The seder meal at its center commemorates their liberation from slavery in Egypt.

   That seder supper was not celebrated in its current form until many years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. But the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples was held during Passover in Jesus’ time, and it had many references to liberation from slavery, including the bread and wine presented as Jesus body and blood.

   As well as to the last plague, the blood of the spotless lamb that was painted over the doors of all the households of the people of God in slavery in Egypt. The angel of death visited every home at night, and the first-born son died, except in those homes where the blood of the lamb was painted over the entryway. Those homes were passed over. Hence, Passover.

   Only, Jesus is the Lamb of God, and we are freed from sin, death, and the forces of the devil by his blood freely given on the cross. Those references make the Last Supper the first celebration of Holy Communion, on the night in which Jesus was betrayed. The washing of the feet of the disciples by Jesus was a witness to serve one another as we have been served by Jesus Christ. The giving of a new commandment by Jesus is an expression of what the Christian life is: we love sacrificially because God first loved us.

   “Maundy” is an Old English word rooted in the Latin word “mandatum”, which means “commandment”, or “mandate”. That new commandment comes from who we are, and who we are comes from whose we are.

   The whole text is in John 13:1-17, 31b-35, but Jesus gives the new commandment at the end, in verses 34-35,

³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   We cannot be commanded to love. That love would be meaningless. It would be like those Chatty Cathy dolls you might remember from years ago that were programmed to speak to you, like with a primitive artificial intelligence, I suppose.

   My sister had one. She’d pull the ring attached to a string on the back of the doll’s neck and it would say things like, “I love you.”

   But did it love you?

   No. It had no choice. It had no agency.  

   Fun fact: that’s why God gave Adam and Eve the ability to say “no” to God. And they did. And we do. And that’s why evil entered and continues to enter the world.

   We think that the world revolves around us, and it gets us every time.

   Years ago, there was a restaurant/drive-through in San Dimas called “Bravo Burgers”. There’s still one in Pomona, but I still miss it being close-by.

   Most of their food packaging had “Phil 4:13” written on it. Philippians 4:13 says,

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

   The owner said that he put that verse on his packaging out of gratitude to God.

   But, he said, “There isn’t a day that goes by when someone doesn’t come in and ask, ‘Who’s Phil?”

   Philippians 4:13 is often seen and quoted as meaning that, in anything I want to do or don’t want to do, God strengthens me. But that’s not what it says at all.

   Here’s the context of that verse, in Philippians 4:11-13,

¹¹ Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. ¹² I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. ¹³ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

   Paul is writing to the Church at Philippi to answer their concern for him by saying that serving Jesus Christ is all that matters. Our personal need or lack of need is not relevant to our service in Jesus Christ.

   How can that be?

   It’s because Christian behavior is not rooted in the requirements of the law, but in the new Creation we have been made to be in Jesus Christ. Our new selves are rooted in the love for one another that comes from our love for God. Our love for one another is an expression of our new selves.

   The mandate of which we are reminded on Maundy Thursday is that we live in love to serve one another, as Jesus came to serve us.  

   It’s at the very core of what it means to be a Christian. Paul nailed this down in an earlier part of his letter to the church at Philippi in Philippians 2:2-8, from a passage we read last Sunday, 

⁴ Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

   Can love be commanded? Yes, not in our behavior alone, but because we have been fundamentally transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ demonstrated on the cross, the love that shapes us in the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water within us, and the love of the Church, the Body of Christ, expressed through us.

   On Maundy Thursday, Jesus removed his outer robe and washed the feet of his disciples, the job of the lowest servant in the household, the job that nobody could mess up.

   He modeled who he is and what his disciples are to be to one another, and Judas went out to betray Jesus to the authorities.

   The only way to go where Jesus is going is obedience to God in response to and through Jesus Christ. That is the work of the Holy Spirit within us, it is not our wisdom.

   Every religion has its wisdom and its wisdom traditions. They are everything in some other religions. They are the least important thing in Christianity.

   C.S. Lewis wrote, in his book “Mere Christianity”, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

   The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Selfless and sacrificial love. It is lived in us as an outcome of a living relationship with the one true living God. It is the relationship for which we were created.

   It is our worldview:

   God made us for a living relationship but without making us to be simple robots. We needed to be able to say “no” to that relationship in order for our “yes” to mean something. The first people disobeyed God. They said “no”, and evil entered the world.

   People only came back to God when they needed something. So, God set them free by coming to them, in the form of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human being, to show His love by suffering and dying for us on the cross, so that we might know the abundant eternal life for which we were created in the beginning.

   What does that life as the disciples of Christ look like? How do we make sense of what we believe to the world? How do we love one another in obedience to the command of Jesus? How do we serve one another sacrificially as Jesus did on the cross?

   Paul says, in Galatians 5:6b,

“the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”

   That’s the message of Maundy Thursday.

   Maundy Thursday reminds us of Jesus’ mandate, Jesus’ command, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

   The world thinks that it’s impossible to compel someone to love you, or to compel someone to love someone else, because we first and primarily think of love as something romantic, or maybe patriotic, or directed toward our family or friends, or, most commonly, about us.

   But the love that Jesus commands is something entirely different: it’s selfless, it’s a kind of love that can only come from God.

   And it does come, and it is who we are because it comes as the result of whose we are. We are saints and sinners, and we are God’s new creation!

   We are not the people we want to be. But, by God’s grace, we are not the people we were.

   On Maundy Thursday we see how we can be commanded to love by becoming who we were always created to be.

   On Maundy Thursday Jesus is both preparing us for his death on the cross and showing us how to live in response to it. Our power comes from his love.

   Gas is unbelievably expensive today. It’s around $6.00 a gallon for regular where I live.

   I remember in the 70’s, though, when there were gas shortages twice in that decade, both also stemming from conflicts in the Middle East! There were long lines of cars at the gas stations, and some cars would run out of gas waiting in line and drivers would get out of their cars to help the driver with the empty tank up to the pump.

   We are running on fumes ourselves, more or less, today.

   The last week of Jesus’ life, Holy Week, is the climax of the story of our salvation. That’s why it takes so much of John’s gospel.

   Jesus emptied himself. He was fully human being and fully God, and he washed feet, he commanded us to love as he loves, and he demonstrated that he came as our servant and our friend from M.T. (Maundy Thursday) to empty.

   On this Good Friday, we will see the fullness of that selfless love poured out. For us.

405 Three Parades

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Three Parades”, originally shared on March 25, 2026. It was the 405^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Parades were once an expression of community identity. That they have become fewer in number and less substantial is not surprising. Today, we’re going to look at three that create Christian identity.

   This coming Sunday was once a big deal. It was Palm Sunday in mainline protestant and Catholic churches. Then it became either Palm/Passion Sunday or, in the Lutheran denomination of which I am a member, Passion/Palm Sunday. Palms don’t even get first billing anymore.

   Why? Because people weren’t coming to Good Friday services (crucifixion) much less Maundy Thursday services (foot washing, beginning of Holy Communion, giving of the new commandment to love one another as God loves us, and the stripping of the altar).

   Palm Sunday has followed the downward trend that parades have, and for the same reason: the loss of our identity.

   Do you like parades? There are two parades that have shaped our lives forever. And a third one that will. And all three are all about our identity as children of God.

   I’m sure you have seen parades. Have you ever seen one live? Have you ever been in a parade?

   Have you ever seen a parade that started because people were so excited that the whole community was in turmoil? That’s the one we’re going to focus on today.

   I love a parade! Especially one with marching bands. They are why I started playing drums.

   I remember watching the Memorial Day Parade in my hometown, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, as a child. I remember standing at the curb, hearing the rumble of the percussion coming closer and closer, and my excitement growing.

   I remember feeling the thumps on my chest as it drew nearer, the staccato pulse of the snare drums, the crash of the cymbals, and the massive thud of the big bass drums.

   I wanted to do that!

   I tapped out rhythms on every surface I found in front of me for years. Actually, I still do that. 😊

   I made my own drums out of empty cardboard boxes, Quaker Oats containers, my legs, whatever I could find. I destroyed the child’s drum set my parents bought me for Christmas when I was in 5^th Grade playing “Rock Around the Clock”.

   I played a violin for a year because our school system started its orchestra program a year before its band program, and I thought it would help me learn to read music.

   When I couldn’t play drums because I didn’t own a concert snare drum, I played mellophone (a French horn with trumpet valves) for a summer until my dad talked with the high school band director, who sold him a surplus used drum from the high school band.

   I started practicing on a practice pad and played that snare drum. I moved immediately into first chair and stayed there for four years, all the way through high school. I still have that drum.

   I became that guy who played the drums, marching down the same street where I had been a spectator, but now I was in the parade.

   When I chipped my left wrist vaulting over a “horse” in gym class, I wore a groove into my cast and played in the parade anyway.

   I saved up and bought a Ludwig “Super Classic” drum set with the silver sparkle finish, just like Joe Morello’s, the drummer with The Dave Brubeck quartet.

   I took it to college and played in jazz bands through college and seminary and beyond. Playing drums had become a part of who I was, my identity.

   And it all started with a parade. Today, we’re going to see the Christian message in three of them.

   Parades bring people together, whether they are in the parade or watching it. They create a sense of focus, an expression of identity, and a common experience, even a common cause.

   That brings us to today’s first parade: Jesus entered Jerusalem at the head of a parade. He would be dead in just a few days, but for that shining moment he brought people together, at least some of the people anyway. He knew that he would die there, but he rode into town like a champ.

   Here’s what happened, in Matthew 21:1-11

¹When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, ²saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. ³If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” ⁴This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, ⁵“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” ⁶The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; ⁷they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. ⁸A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. ⁹The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” ¹⁰When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” ¹¹The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

   I don’t know if there were any bands in that parade, but I imagine small children watching, running along with it on the sides. Caught up in the excitement, finding branches to throw in his donkey’s path. Asking their parents if they could throw their outer clothing onto the path for Jesus’s donkey, like they saw that some of the adults were doing, and hearing a firm, “No”.

   I imagine that it was exciting, but that it was also kind of scary. Who were these people? Crowds can become mobs, and mobs can go out of control, they can get destructive.

   But here he came, Jesus. The Messiah? The one they had been waiting for for 1,000 years? A deliverer, but from what? Deliverance from the Roman empire’s army of occupation (the empire threw palm branches to greet successful military leaders)? Something else?

   Was the excitement contagious, or did many look at it with horror, or indifference? Did they think that the Messiah was coming as a military leader to organize a violent resistance against the Roman occupation: one quick surprise attack to knock them on their heels and get rid of them?

   How did Jesus feel, riding into Jerusalem like that? What did he think about the cheers of the crowds?

   Was it big news in the big city?

   Today, “Breaking News!” barely registers. It’s usually a new twist on old news. Unless it’s something truly life-changing, it will be forgotten after the 24-hour news cycle. He did seem to draw a crowd, though.

   But Jesus knew that crowds are fickle.

   Jesus knew what was about to happen. He knew about the deadly violence that he was about to experience.

   Jesus knew that much of that crowd that was shouting “Hosanna!” on Sunday would be shouting “Crucify him!” on Friday.

   I wonder if Jesus felt a momentary urge to just end the chain of events that he knew was coming, right there. To just stop with the cheers, and spend the rest of his life as a popular rabbi, a miracle worker.

   But he didn’t.

   Someone posted a poem on a Facebook page for Lutheran pastors a while back that began,

“We want the war horse

Jesus rides a donkey”

   In Jesus’ physical time on earth kings rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a war horse, to show that they came in peace. Palm branches were waved as a sign of goodness and victory.

   Why did Jesus ride into town on a donkey? Was it a conscious reference to the Old Testament prophecy, as we read in Zechariah 9:9?,

⁹ Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
    Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
    triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

   I think that he had a particular kind of triumph and victory in mind, just not what the crowds expected.

   He chose to ride a donkey as a symbol of humble service: death on the cross, because he resisted the temptation to take the easy way.

   He got that donkey when the disciples just went and untied it and, when the owners asked them to explain, they said “The Lord needs it”. And they said, “OK”!

   How did that happen?!

   Either I’m missing something, or it was another world back then.

   Did they know about Jesus? Was he that respected, that popular? Jesus had a lot of disciples outside of his inner circle of twelve and his second circle of seventy.

   The Bible says that a “multitude” of his disciples began to loudly praise God. Right there. In broad daylight. In public. It says that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil. What would it take to put a whole city in turmoil?

   Jerusalem at the time of Jesus had an estimated population of 55,000 under normal circumstances, and 180,000 (some estimates go much higher) during major festivals like Passover, which was going on when Jesus was crucified. That’s a lot of turmoil!

   But it’s easy to follow Jesus when he’s there at the head of the parade. Top of the charts.

   It’s harder when he’s headed to the top of the cross.

   That brings us to the second parade, the parade of Jesus to the cross.

   The governor’s soldiers humiliated and tortured Jesus. Then this happens in Matthew 27:31-37,

³¹ After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

³² As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. ³³ And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), ³⁴ they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. ³⁵ And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; ³⁶ then they sat down there and kept watch over him. ³⁷ Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

   Do you know how many of the “multitude” who were in or who watched the Palm Sunday parade followed Jesus all the way to the cross?

   Zero. That’s right. Zero. The power of that parade, the one we celebrate as “Palm Sunday”, was very temporary. Jesus knew that.

   His humble service would change everything. It would lead to the salvation of all who put their trust in Jesus to save them, to transform them, to produce a life of love for others in response to the sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ for us. But that’s a story for next week, a week of love and shame. Holy Week.

   I don’t want to say much more than that today, I encourage you to go into the valley next week, the valley of Holy Week, with Jesus. Find a Maundy Thursday service and worship God there. Find a Good Friday Service and worship God there. Find your identity. Let the Holy Spirit restore you as a Christian. Steep in it. Feel it. It’s the only way to understand the glory of Easter!

   It’s also a story that doesn’t end with Holy Week. In fact, it doesn’t come to its end at all but to its beginning, a beginning that happens much later.

   That brings us to the third parade, the parade of those who are in the end being saved through faith by Jesus Christ for all eternity. The parade of the multitudes who believe and are baptized, who do not desert Jesus at the end, but the multitudes who are received into his perfect presence forever.

   We get a glimpse, in Revelation 7:9-10,

   9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

   Salvation belongs to God and God gives it to all who receive it in faith, in a living relationship with the one true living God that transforms lives.

   So, as community identity flounders and parades decline in number, participants, and crowds, we offer three parades. They form our identity as the children of God and, as long as our focus is on them and on what they tell us, we have something better to offer the world.

   We offer a way of living that is truly life. We offer what we have first received by the grace of God in Jesus Christ on the cross.

   We provide the communities we serve with the sense of connection and transcendence that our culture so desperately needs. We live by it, we offer it, we communicate it, and we grow by invitation to it. We serve others in response to it.

   We introduce Jesus for a second chance, a new life, for transformation through a living relationship with God for to all who will receive it!

   That is the gift of God in Jesus Christ shown to us in three parades: the one where Jesus triumphally enters Jerusalem, the one where Jesus goes to be the only acceptable sacrifice for the sins of humanity, and the big one, the big parade, the one where, having received the gift of God in faith and in trust in Jesus as our only savior, and are thereby drawn to him before the throne of God, forever.

   Three parades: Palms, Passion, and Perpetuity!

   This coming Sunday we will enter the valley.

   Holy Week will arrive, but Easter is coming!

   Share the good news.

 

404 404 Error Code

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “404 Error Code”, originally shared on March 18, 2026. It was the 404^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   The Emergency Food Pantry in the church that I served in Compton had a bumper sticker stuck to the inside of its door. It said, “If you feel far from God, guess who moved?” Today, we’re going to find out what that means.

   When the pandemic got to the point where we were pretty much confined to our homes in 2020, Sally and I asked ourselves what we could do.

   We decided to produce YouTube videos with messages for connection and encouragement that would provide a means to reflect on what it meant to be a Christian in the LA area and beyond.

   We called them “Streams of Living Water”, because we were never alone in the Holy Spirit and, well, the videos were being streamed, get it? 😊

   Those developed into a blog, “Words of Living Water”, and into a podcast, “Living Water Radio.”

   This week, we are producing the 404^th episode of each.

   Last week, I received the “404 error” message when I was searching for a website on my computer. That’s not a good thing.

   The 404 error code appears, according to Google, when your browser is connected to the server but the specific webpage, file, or resource requested could not be found. Also known as the “not found” code, it usually means that the URL you’re using is misspelled, or the page was deleted, or the link is broken.

   It’s a variation of the ancient computer principle, “Garbage in. Garbage out.”

   And, it’s frustrating. Like our weather.

   We were getting torrential rain a few weeks ago.

   This week, we are having record heat, and most of the rest of the country is having record snow.

   It seems like a disconnect.

   It seems like the way Mary and Martha must have felt when their brother, Lazarus, died.

   They were faithful people. They were probably Jesus’ best friends on earth, and Jesus didn’t seem to be caring that Lazarus was dying, at all!

   That is, they had a connection to the server, but the answer they sought was not found. They were experiencing a 404 Error Code! 😊

   The three siblings Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus lived with one another in the village of Bethany, just over the Mount of Olives, and about two miles east of Jerusalem. It appears to have been Jesus’ favorite place on earth.

   They were his close friends who were not among his close disciples. We have no record of him teaching publicly there. He just went there to relax and hang out with people who loved him and whom he loved.

   Then, one day, Lazarus was very sick and the sisters sent a message to Jesus to let him know.

   Jesus said to his disciples, in John 11:4b,

^4b“This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

   Phase One: “Oh, he’s just sick.” Lazarus is sick, but Jesus starts by doing nothing. Though he loves Lazarus and Mary and Martha, he stays put for two days. There’s some kind of plan. But what’s going on?

   Then this happens in verse 7,

⁷Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”

   Which, the disciples say, is kind of crazy since he was just there and some of the people were trying to kill him. Jesus brushes-off their concern and explains that they just don’t understand who he is.

   He describes Lazarus’ situation in Phase Two, in John 11:11b, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”

   What?! The disciples want to know why Jesus is going to risk his life, and maybe theirs, to wake Lazarus up from a nap? This makes no sense to them.

   Phase Three: Jesus explains the situation, in John 11:14,

¹⁴Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 

   Jesus is then ready to go.

   [Sidebar: What do you think of when you think of the disciple named Thomas? Doubting Thomas, right? Look at his behavior here, in verse 16,

¹⁶Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

   Bold, huh? Thomas is a stand-up guy!]

   The story continues with verse 17,

¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 

   People were already coming to console Mary and Martha. Martha hears that Jesus is coming and goes out to meet him and says, in John 11: 21b,

^21b “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”

   That had to hurt like a punch to the gut, even as Martha speaks to Jesus with humility and faith.

   Then comes the central message of this passage, in John 11:23-27,

 ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

   Martha goes and tells Mary that Jesus is near and is calling for her. Mary finds Jesus, kneels, and greets him with the same stinging words as her sister, in verse 32b,

 ^32b “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

   Now, I’m not normally much of a crier. Maybe more so now that I’m older and the estrogen is kicking in. But the floodgates open up if I see   people crying. That’s it!

   I remember sitting in the front row at my mother’s funeral. She had died of complications of breast cancer at age 53. I was trying to keep it together. That’s kind of the Norwegian way. Stoic. And I did, until I looked to my left and saw one of my best friends since childhood sitting with his wife, looking at me. His father had died when we were in our early 20’s. And he looked stricken, and his face was pale and wet. That was it for me.

   That’s why I’ve usually looked over the heads of people at the funerals I have led. I need to stay focused on the needs of others, not my own.

   Jesus wept. I don’t know if Jesus cried often. He lamented over Jerusalem. He was fully God, and he was fully human. Look what happens here, in John 11:33-35,

³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep.

   There is it. John 11:35, “Jesus began to weep.” In some translations it’s, “Jesus wept.”, the shortest verse in the Bible.

   Do you ever picture Jesus crying? I don’t. He seems to be above that kind of thing. He’s God. Doesn’t he see death all the time every day?

   Why would Jesus weep over anything? He knows how it will all turn out.

   Is death so unfamiliar to him? So unexpected?

   Queen Elizabeth II once said, in a statement of condolence to the families of the British who were casualties on 9-11, “Grief is the price we pay for love.”

   Grief is the price we pay for love.

   Was that it? Were Jesus’ tears the expression of the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were all created and which now Jesus appears to have lost with Lazarus? At least in this world?

   The next verse tells us, in verse 36,

 ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 

   Others, though, were not so empathetic. Some questioned how Jesus healed the man born blind but didn’t heal his friend, Lazarus. Jesus was again in grief and went to the cave-tomb. A stone was lying against it. Sound familiar? Like another death and burial that we know is coming?

   Some protested when Jesus said, “Take away the stone”, pointing out that after four days there would be a stench. The King James Version of the Bible translates this passage, “Lord, by this time he stinketh”! Much of Christian art of this event shows people holding their noses.

   Jesus brushed all of that off and says, in John 11:40b-41a,

^40b “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone.

   Jesus prays with thanksgiving, and then this happens, in verses 43-44,

⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

   Wow! What a moment! What must it have been like to be there at that moment? Did all Creation hold its breath? I wonder what the people who were there took away from this?

   Well, we find out in the last verse of this passage, John 11:45,

⁴⁵Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

   That’s easy to understand. But what can we take away from this? Four things.

   First, that there’s a reason that the verses at the center of this event are so often heard at Christian funerals, John 11:25-26,

²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

   It is the very foundation for our hope in the new life in this world and the new heaven and the new earth in the life to come in Jesus Christ.

   Second, the answer to the question, “Who killed Jesus?”

   The award-winning and Oscar-nominated film “The Fabelmans” is based on the life of director Steven Spielberg. It contains a scene from when he was in high school being attacked for being a Jew, “because the Jews killed Jesus”. The actor responds, in part, by saying that he wasn’t around 2,000 years ago. 😊

   It is true that some Jews are shown in the Bible calling for Jesus’ crucifixion, but not one of them is alive today. And I’ve always wondered why there isn’t more anti-Italian prejudice directed at the descendants of the Romans who actually conduced the trial and did the crucifixion. “Jews” didn’t kill Jesus any more than “Italians” did.  

   Others say that the answer to the question “Who killed Jesus?” is “You did.” and “I did.” Jesus died to be the only acceptable sacrifice for our sin, to restore the created relationship with God that our sin had broken. He would not need to have been killed if it wasn’t for the fact that humanity had messed things up.

   But the fact is, and it is the record of scriptures, that, ultimately, nobody took Jesus’ life. He gave it.

   In John 10:17-18, where Jesus speaks about being the good shepherd and how the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, Jesus says,

17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.

   We see God’s power over life and death in Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead. We see it in the gift of God in Jesus Christ, that Jesus gives his life on the cross as fully God and fully human being, and that he then he takes it up again in the Resurrection.

   Third, that we have good news to share: that Jesus is the Resurrection and the life. Our lives are transformed, they are made new, through a living relationship with the one true living God that we call “faith”. Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus, but he is given new life, eternal life, in Jesus, and that is much more important.

   Lazarus would die again, eventually. His eternal life is assured in Jesus. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” The question that follows is, “Do you believe this?”

   A colleague, a predecessor at a congregation I served, told me about the night he had a Church Council meeting, and he knew it would be a late evening. He called his wife and told her not to make a dinner for him. He would just stop by MacDonald’s on the way home, which he did. But, as he got out of his car to order inside, someone jumped out at him, pointed a gun at him and told him to give him all his money or he’d kill him.

   He told me, “I wish I could say that I was brave, but the truth is that I was just tired, and I said, ‘You can’t kill me. I’ve already died in Jesus Christ.’”

   All the color drained from the other person’s face, and he turned and ran away!

   That brings us to the Fourth lesson, that we have already died. We died in our baptism. Death is a past-tense experience for us. Does that mean we are the “Living Dead?”

   In a sense, it does.

   Paul writes, in Romans 6:3-5,

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

   And Fifth, that God suffers with us in our suffering.

   Jesus wept. He was greatly distressed. He was “disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” That in itself is a sign to us pointing to the nature of God.

   I remember very clearly when my father was dying. My brothers and sister and I were at the hospital. Our dad was in and out of consciousness. His organs were shutting down. We took turns sitting with our dad while the others sat in the hallway.

   I’ve been in that space countless times as the pastor. I’ve struggled with the right things to say in that moment.

   I remember when the pastor from our hometown church, our dad’s pastor, came to visit. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The look on his face said everything. We so appreciated his visit, his empathy and his concern. He just had to be there to express all of that.

   People say weird things when people have died. Even Christians. Things like, “I guess God needed another angel”, or “Everything happens for a reason.” or “Don’t cry, they’re with the Lord now.” or “God won’t give you any more than you can handle.” But none of these reach us at the point of our pain. But I don’t criticize people for saying them. People just don’t know what to say in their grief, in the face of death, and they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing.

   The best we can do is to be present in the hallways of people’s hearts. To sit with them. To share their grief even in the midst of our hope.

   This is what God does. God loves us at the point of our pain. God weeps at the point of our loss and reminds us of His eternal promises in our suffering: love everlasting.

   We have no need to fear death. It’s just a transition to another way of living. But we feel that pain in the pain of others even as we rejoice in the promise of eternal life given to us by Jesus Christ on the cross.

   The question is, do you believe it? Do you believe that the key to life and death is Jesus Christ? That true life is not something we achieve, but something we receive as the gift of God in Jesus Christ?

   That he gave his life and then took it back again? That Jesus has set everyone free from the effects of sin, death and the power of the devil who believes and is baptized?

   Sometimes we may feel that we have experienced a “404 Error Code:, that we are disconnected from the server, that we are far from God. But that’s not on God.

   Jesus has restored us to our true selves!

   Jesus has unbound us, and let us go!

   “Do  you  believe  this?” Share the good news.