Fifth Sunday in Lent
John 11:1- 45
Sermon Nuggets by Lindy
March 9, 2008
SCRIPTURES
SCRIPTURES
-So we have come full circle since Ash Wednesday, when we were reminded that we were but dust, and now we know what the Lord can do with a pile of bones and dust Nan Stokes
- The prophet's vision is proclaimed to a people cut off by exile. Yahweh identifies the newly revived bones as the House of Israel. Yahweh will revive the Israelites and restore them to new life from their current hopeless and deathly existence in Exile.
-The name Ezekiel means, "God strengthens." This name is the hope-filled message of the prophet.
SCRIPTURES (John 11:1-45)
"I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."
-story of the raising of Lazarus is intentionally placed on the last Sunday of Lent, so that we might anticipate what lies ahead and be given strength and hope for the next part of the journey. Just as John would have us believe about another kind of water and a different way of seeing, so now he would have us comprehend another kind of life. In this text John dares to assert that there is a greater marvel than coming back from the dead. It is the life, resurrected life of the baptized, that you and I are asked to live now. "All those who believe in me, though they die, will come to life; and all who are alive and believe in me will never die." deJong
-Maybe that is why the lectionary gives us John's story about Lazarus on the fifth Sunday of Lent. It is a kind of rehearsal for what lies ahead, in which Jesus does for his friend what God will do for him. It is his and our assurance that there is power loose in the universe that is stronger than death, stronger even than our fear of death, which is able to call us out of our stinking tombs into the fullness and sweet mystery of life. / Lord, I believe, but help thou my unbelief, because I still do not want to die. I believe Jesus has power to raise the dead, only I do not want him practicing on me / resurrecting us from our big and little deaths, showing us by his own example that the only road to Easter morning runs smack through Good Friday. BB Taylor
- Isn't it curious in the ministry of Jesus, how new life leads to death? Wilimon
- This story is not found in the other gospels.
- Not the facts of life but the facts of death
- Most of the defenses in our world assure us that the dead stay dead. Willimon
- Eternal life begins not at the end of time, or at the time of death, but right now in this moment. Jesus did not say, "I will be the resurrection," or "It is coming soon." He said simply, "I am the resurrection." Here and now
-John Dominic Crossan has commented on this text that he doesn't think any one, anywhere, at any time brings dead people back to life. But he sees the process of resurrection in the life of this text. Jesus brought life out of death for folks all over Galilee. They would not have described it as a heavenly future, but an earthly present. He writes, "Life out of death is how the people would have understood the Kingdom of God, in which Jesus helps them take back control over their own bodies, hopes and their own destinies.
-some of us may need to die to specific things in our lives--perhaps to a behavior that has become destructive or dysfunctional, perhaps to a relationship that has ended or gone bad, perhaps to an unresolved grief or to a stage in our life that it is time to leave, perhaps to our self-preoccupation, or even to a deadness in our lives.
-The story of the life of a Christian is not a story about life after death. Our stories are about life coming out of death. Not about life after death but about life and death. We can live resurrected lives each day of our living. "Shall these dry bones live?"
-God has woven resurrection into our daily lives so we can learn the shape of it and perhaps learn to trust the strength of it when our own time comes. BBTaylor.
-We can know the resurrection from all that is deadly in life. For we have seen hope in the midst of despair, love triumph over hate and apathy, faith outliving doubt, and life emerging from that which is dead within us. deJong
- DeJong Describes this scripture as the "Bottomless Cup" .
-When we face physical or spiritual death, there is only one antidote: Resurrection and life
SERMON IDEA Life is a process With the quotes below and some of your own, try building a sermon reminding everyone that Life Is a Process Lindy
-Death is life; life is death...two aspects of the same thing. Joseph Campbell
-Death ends a life but not a relationship
-"Though we die, yet shall we live." I Thessalonians 4:13-18.
-No endings, only discoveries
-Death is not leaving but returning
-The power to find life through death makes the seed nobler than the diamond. Sheen
- Death…the hinge of life. Emily Dickenson
- Is there life before death!?
- May you live all the days of your life Jonathan Smith
-Everyone dies but not everyone lives.
-From womb to tomb and visa versa! Lindy
-He died living"
-The new life would not really be new life if it did not come from the complete end of the old life. Paul Tillich
-Rather have them say, "There he goes" than "There he lies."
-The symbolic meaning of the resurrection is to die to one’s smaller self and then discover one’s larger self
-The body is not a home but an Inn and that only briefly. Seneca
-"If a man die, will he live again?" Job 14:14
-Life is eternal and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. Rossiter Raymond
-A terminal condition called mortality John Jewell
-Death is not extinguishing the light, it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come. Rabindranath Tagore
-- Death is on both sides of the grave.
QUOTES
-"it is in dying that we might live." St Francis
- The challenge is to view life through the lens of death; to look backward at life from its end point rather than always forward; to recognize that while death comes to us all, we should prepare for that death not by fearing it but by facing it.
- "Choose life" Deut. 30:19
- We are all teminally ill
-- The art of life is to die young as late as you can W.S. Coffin
-Consult your death. Thomas Merton
-"We know that the abyss of love is deeper than the abyss of death." W.S.Coffin
- Death is life; life is death...two aspects of the same thing. Joseph Campbell
-"Though we die, yet shall we live." I Thessalonians 4:13-18.
- Be resurrected to a new relationship with God
-Death ends a life but not a relationship
- No endings, only discoveries
-Death is already dead. Martin Luther
-Death is not leaving but returning
-Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. Norman Cousins
- Death…the hinge of life. Emily Dickenson
-Everyone dies but not everyone lives. .
- Epitaph: "He died living"
-The power to find life through death makes the seed nobler than the diamond. Sheen
1. Eugene O’Neill once wrote a play entitled LAZARUS LAUGHED. The play deals with the Biblical story of Lazarus but the plot focuses on what happened to him in the years after Jesus called him back to life after four days in the tomb. In the play Lazarus comes out of his grave laughing...not a scornful, bitter kind of laughter, but a soft, tender, all-embracing sort of sound that seems to well up from a joy that is utterly bottomless. There is a radiance emanating from him that makes him look younger than when he died. There is a peace and serenity about his being that is absolutely tangible. As soon as Lazarus gets home and emotions have calmed down a bit, his sisters ask him the inevitable question: What is it like beyond the grave? Lazarus says, There is only life. There is only laughter...the laughter of God soaring into the heights and the depths. There is no death really. Death is not the end, it’s not an abyss or the entrance into nothingness or chaos or punishment. Death is a portal, a passageway into deeper and brighter life. Eternal change, everlasting growth...that is what lies ahead. There is only life sisters, nothing but life. the grave is not what you think it is. It is literally empty...a doorway, not destruction. As the play unfolds Lazarus goes on to live a life in which he is freed from the fear of death.
2.I believe that if you were to ask those first believers...people like Paul, Peter, John... to compare their life BEFORE they knew Christ to their lives AFTER they met Him and made Him Lord...I am sure they would say that in comparison, life BEFORE Christ WAS more like DEATH than LIFE. Redland Baptist Church
HUMOR
-In 2003, a funeral company in Brazil released ads on local TV containing the motto: “Our clients have never come back to complain.”
-It's only when our body dies that we truly become a noun
-Rather have them say, "There he goes" than "There he lies."
-There's got to be more to life than sittin' here watchin' 'Days of Our Lives' and foldin'your Fruit of the Looms. Mama's Family
-There are people who pray for eternal life but don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy day
CHILDREN
- Bring in some uncooked macaroni and compare it to the dry bones
Ezekiel saw. (elaborate) Then compare how the macaroni
"Comes to life" when we boil it and add cheese, etc. Many things
in life seem hard and sometimes we feel they will never get better but
they do...they have "New life" That's what the sstory of Dry
Bones is all about. As God brought life to the valley of dry
bones with the breath of his Holy Spirit - so God can make the worst
things better in our lives
too. And he will - when we trust him for it.
- Ezekiel scripture. Bring in some bubble mixture and bubble wand. Using the word transformation, talk about the change that your breath makes to the bubbles. Comment on how the Holy Spirit is sometimes called God's breath and also makes amazing changes. Explain that God wanted to tell the Israelites that Gods' Spirit would make changes -- new life and hope to everyone.
--"A Savior Who Weeps," Charles Kirkpatrick, Sermons4kids.com
PRAYER PHRASE
...In the face of death, defeat, and despair, you bring us new life. Help us not to submit to the forces of death. Call us forth to life. Give us the courage to join in your revolution, to take our place in the great victory that you offer to rise with you. For all the ways that we betray your victory of life over death, forgive us. Help us to follow you forth to the future that you offer. Amen. (Willimon)
-- Mold us, transform us, encourage us, inspire us.
-- May Christ’s joy be ours and his promise of abundant life be fulfilled in us.
- Give us the eyes of faith that can see the way despite life’s mystery and the worlds discordant noises.
To that end lift us above the immediate and set our live in the wide horizons.
-Re-center our lives around faith instead of fear.
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SERMON
“ We are like those who have eyes but cannot see”. Oh God help us with our vision.
Sometime our vision is too close. We see only that which is near to us. May we see the grand horizons , gain a greater perspective on things around us.
Sometimes our vision cannot penetrate our own darkness. We refuse to change, to grow, to learn new ways.
Sometimes our vision does not see past that which is physical. Past the secular. .the worldliness. find the spiritual which is hidden in and beyond the physical
Sometimes what we see behind our own eyes distorts what we see in front of our eyes. bigotries, hatreds, ignorance. There are things which are unfinished within us.
Help us with our blindness. .open our eyes, open our windows that we might see what you have revealed to us. .that we might be
like they who “have eyes and see”.
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