What people believed about life after death, about resurrection was a live question in Jesus’ time. It was the subject of debate in theological circles and there was a range of opinions about it amongst everyday Jewish believers. It is clear from many of the Old Testament writings that for most of that period there was no expectation of life beyond earthly death. There was some idea of Sheol, a place of dead shades, a bit like the Greek Hades, but no expectation of resurrection to new life with God.
This idea does begin to develop through the Old Testament, we see examples of this in Daniel 12 and Isaiah 65 and 66, but it is not a settled question amongst Jewish believers at the time.
We see this clearly in a the interactions that Jesus and Paul had with a group of Jewish religious teachers representing the Sadducees.
In Matthew 22 we read that,
“That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question…”
Some years later, when Paul was on trial in Jerusalem in front of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jewish people, he stirred things up as we read in Acts 23
“Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, ‘My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.’ When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)”
Jesus, we might not be surprised to hear, was clear that there was the possibility of life beyond death. In his answer to the Sadducees who challenged him about this he said,
“Jesus replied, ‘You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead – have you not read what God said to you, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.’
All of this live debate is in the background of the conversation that we heard Jesus have with Martha in John 11.
Jesus had heard that Lazarus was ill some days beforehand, but had chosen to wait to come to Bethany, he had delayed so much that by the time that he got there Lazarus had already been dead four days. Long enough that the vigil has been kept, the body has been prepared with ointment and bandages, and has been put into the tomb. He is truly dead, well past any hope.
Well, perhaps not past any hope. Martha greets Jesus with a faith filled rebuke – “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
I find this to be such a poignant combination of frustration, anger, complaint, and trust. “Lord, I feel like you’ve let me down, but I still trust you. My disappointment in you flows from my belief that you could have done something, and doesn’t overwhelm my faith that you can still do something.”
She’s asking him to do something now.
His response seems to me to suggest that it isn’t the right time, that there will be resurrection, when he “rises again” a formula for the general resurrection at the end of time.
Martha acknowledges this, and her belief in that. She was hoping for “now”, but has faith in the fall back position of “then”.
In response Jesus makes an astonishing claim,
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
“The resurrection isn’t just a future event in time, it is present in me.” says Jesus.
I am the resurrection – Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die.
I am the life – whoever lives by believing in me will never die.
Jesus response to Martha’s “If you had been here he wouldn’t have died”
is to say.
“I am here and he isn’t dead”
He is reassuring Martha that her faith is well founded, and challenging to believe in the reality that she cannot see. Can she see through her brother’s earthly death, beyond the stone across his tomb, to the life that he already has in Jesus? Does she believe?
She says that she does, in terms that remind us of Peter’s proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah, the chosen one of God. She then goes to find her sister Mary, who comes and greets Jesus in almost exactly the same terms as Martha had.
Jesus weeps with them, moved by their grief and pain, and goes to the tomb. He directs them to move the stone, but Martha objects – it’s going to reek, he’s been dead for four days.
How much do I recognise myself in Martha’s reaction. I say I believe, I want to trust Jesus, mostly I do, but when the big ask comes, when
I have to face doing something that will only work if God is who he says he is, when obedience might cost me something, I put up the objection – it’s going to reek.
Now it’s Jesus’s turn to rebuke Martha. You said you believed. Do you really?”
And so they move the stone. Jesus calls Lazarus out to life, and he comes out to be freed from the winding cloths of death.
Martha’s faith is vindicated, Jesus demonstrates his authority over life and death, and God’s glory is seen.
Jesus truly is what he says he is when he says, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
On first glance this “I am saying…” is qualitatively different to the others that Jesus made such as, “I am the bread of life”, “I am the good shepherd, “I am the vine.”
These are all physical things that you can point to and touch that are metaphors, illustrations, parables of who Jesus is.
But resurrection isn’t seem to me to be like that. It isn’t an everyday thing we can touch. Maybe Lazarus’ resurrection gives us a physical example of it the Mary and Martha could touch, but it’s still not an everyday thing.
However, there is a way in which it is entirely consistent with the other sayings.
John 6: I am bread of life
John 8: I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life”
John 10: I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
John 14: I am the way, the truth and the life
John 16: I am the true vine – this is less explicit, but implicit in teaching that those who don’t remain attached to the vine wither, and are thrown into the fire and burned is the implicated contrast of life for those who remain attached.
The theme of life runs through all the I am sayings – and also what Jesus says about giving living water to those who are thirsty, which while not an “I am” saying has many of the hallmarks of one.
These all tie in with John’s emphasis on life which we see throughout his eyewitness account of Jesus’ life and teaching. The word “life” appears twice as many times as it does in any of the other gospels.
In the first paragraph of the first chapter: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all people.”
John 3:16, Jesus teaching about his understanding of why he had come to us, “For God loved the world in this way that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
In John 10, as Jesus expands on what it means for him to be the good shepherd, he talks about his authority to lay down his life and take it up, and explains that he has come “that they may have life, and have it to the full”
This life that Jesus brings is eternal, but that is more than life that goes on forever in time, it has a different quality, it is life that is best understood relationally, as Jesus says on the night before he dies, praying for us, in John 17:
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
This isn’t “know” in the intellectual sense – this is “know” in the intimate sense. This is seeing and being seen, loving and being loved, embracing and being embraced. This is eternal life. And that we might have this life is why John wrote what he wrote.
John 20:31, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that be believing you might have life in his name.”
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Because of this, we can have this depth of relationship with him now. The depth of relationship which can be honest about our disappointments and failures, which shares our griefs, that challenges us to step beyond what we can see to what Jesus assures us is real. And so, we are left with the question that Jesus asked Martha. “Do you believe this?”
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