It's About Time | Dr. Thomas Long

0:00 It's good to be back at First Press Wheaton. I was here 20 years ago. You wouldn't remember that, but I do, and I remember it very fondly. And it's good to be back in this pulpit. Our scripture lesson for this morning is going to be from the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John. That's on page 1307 in your pew Bibles if you want to follow along. You may know that scholars call Matthew, Mark, and Luke the synoptic gospels. That's the word that means they see the same way. They're very similar in structure and plot. John is different. One scholar calls John the maverick gospel. And one of the differences is that while Matthew, Mark, and Luke like to tell the story of Jesus in little bite-sized, paragraph-long chunks, John favors the long-unfolding narrative.

0:56 In fact, almost the entire 11th chapter of John is given over to one story. The story of the day that Jesus raised his dear friend Lazarus from death. I'm going to read that story to you now, but I'm only going to read part of it because it's a long story. And it's a familiar story. And you know how it ends. Listen.

1:29 A certain man, Lazarus, was ill. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary, and her sister Martha. This was the Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair. Her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, saying, Lord, the one whom you love is ill. When Jesus heard this, he said, This illness isn't fatal. It's for the glory of God, so that God's Son can be glorified through it. Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus. And when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was. After two days, he said to his disciples, Let's return to Judea again. The disciples replied, Rabbi, the Jewish opposition wants to stone you, but you want to go back?

2:30 Jesus answered, aren't there 12 hours in the day? Whoever walks in the day doesn't stumble because they see the light of the world. But whoever walks in the night does stumble because the light isn't in them. He continued, our friend Lazarus is sleeping, but I am going in order to wake him up. The disciples said, Lord, if he's sleeping, he'll get well. They thought Jesus meant that Lazarus was in a deep sleep, but Jesus had spoken about Lazarus' death. Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died. For your sake, I'm glad I wasn't there so that you can believe. Let us go to him. Then Thomas, the one called Didymus, said to the other disciples, Well, let us go too that we may die with Jesus.

3:26 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was a little less than two miles from Jerusalem. Many Jews had come to comfort Martha and Mary after their brother's death. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him while Mary remained in the house. Martha said to Jesus Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died Now, I stopped reading the story right at that point, not simply because it's a long story and a familiar story, and you know how it ends, but also because I want to fasten our attention on this very poignant moment in the story when a deeply grief-stricken Martha, the sister of a now very dead Lazarus, confronts the one person in the world she thought she could have depended on.

4:29 when she said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. we have to admit Martha's got a point. I mean, already in the gospel of John, Jesus has given sight to a man who was blind from the day of his birth. Already in the gospel of John, Jesus has gone to the pool of Bethsaida where there was a man paralyzed for 38 years, 38 years. And he said to him, pick up your mat and walk. And he did. already in the gospel of John a desperate young father has come all the way from Capernaum to Cana in Galilee to beg Jesus to come home with him it's my son I'm losing my little boy please come quickly we're running out of time and Jesus said you go home your son will be well and that very hour he was.

5:31 Martha's got a point. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. We understand the sound of being betrayed in her voice. Some of us understand it very personally. Many, many years ago now when I was a graduate student at Princeton, I went home for the Christmas holidays to Atlanta. After the holidays were over, I flew back to Newark, and I was met at the airport by a classmate of mine who had some tragic news. Another one of our classmates had also gone home for Christmas, and at the Christmas dinner table, he felt a strong headache coming on. He got up from the table and went back to the bedroom to lie down for a little while, and he never got up again. A brain aneurysm took his life at age 28, leaving a wife and two small children.

6:29 I said to my classmate, that's tragic news. How are Sue and the children doing? This is hard, he said. I said to myself, I need to go see Sue, but I won't go now. She's got family around and I don't want to interrupt. When the family left, I said, I need to go see Sue, but I won't go now. This is the first moment of solitude she's had, and I don't want to bother her now. And I kept saying, I need to go, and I never went.

7:06 The reason I never went is that I was afraid to go. I wasn't afraid of death, necessarily. I was a pastor. I had done funerals. I had seen death, but I'd never seen it come so close. Mortality at my own age, that I was running out of time.

7:28 Several weeks later, I ran into my classmate again, and I said, how are Sue and the children doing? He said, about as well as can be expected, I suppose. I saw her last night. She asked about you. Asked about me? Yes, he said, I think she would like to have seen you. Lord, if you had been here, but you weren't.

7:52 And it's not as if Jesus had a good excuse. It's not as if he could have said, Now, Martha, you know I would have been there. Nothing would have meant more to me than to be at Lazarus' side in his hour of need, but I was feeding the multitude in the wilderness. No, the writer of the Gospel of John makes it clear that the reason Jesus didn't go is that he never intended to go. What the writer says is, even though Jesus loved Martha, and even though Jesus loved Mary and Lazarus, when he heard that his dear friend Lazarus was ill, he decided to stay right where he was. He intentionally waited until they ran out of time. Lord, if you'd been here. but you weren't, and we ran out of time. Now, running out of time is a theological sign over this broken and dying world.

8:59 We are a culture anxious about running out of time. We want a government that brings justice and prosperity and peace. We want a government that makes just laws and sound institutions. But we've got a government that can't talk to each other. And it's getting worse and more acrimonious. We want justice, but we're running out of time. We like an economy that allows for the flourishing of everyone, that gives people hope. But we have an economy where the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and we're running out of time. We've got many families in our culture that are troubled, marriages under stress, parents and children who are estranged from each other. They want things to be harmonious, to be better. But we're running out of time. And of course, standing at the end of every corridor in life is old death. It's yellow face wagging an alarm clock.

10:18 I am the Lord of time. Eventually you come to me. I visited a friend of mine in the hospital in Atlanta recently. What happened was he had his annual physical. There was trouble with a test. They gave him another test, more trouble. So they decided to do surgery. And I visited him after the surgery. And when I walked into his room, he said, the news is not good, Tom. It's all through me. I've told my surgeon, I just want five years. That's all I'm asking for is five years. I want to see Melissa graduate from high school. What did your doctor say, I asked. He said everyone would be working as hard as they could, but there were no guarantees. Tom, I just need five more years, but I'm running out of time. Lord, if you had been here.

11:14 But you weren't, and we ran out of time. it is precisely when they ran out of time that Jesus said to his disciples, we are going in. And he went into the tomb of Lazarus. The disciples didn't want him to because they said, you can't go in there now, there's death in there. But Jesus said, this isn't about death. This is about the glory of God. and he called out to Lazarus with a loud voice, come out, and he came out full of life. It isn't death who is the Lord of time. It's Jesus Christ who is the Lord of time.

12:00 Now, the great theologian Karl Barth once said, if I give you my money, I give you my money, But if I give you my time, I give you all that I have, all that I am. And in Jesus Christ, God makes time for us, has time for us, takes time for us, is time for us. The curious thing about the Gospel of John is that if you want to know what time it is in the Gospel of John, you can't have just one watch. You need two. Because with one watch, you tell ordinary time. It's a Sunday morning in November 2019. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

12:54 We're running out of time. But in John's Gospel, there's also eternity. eternal time or eternal timelessness in which Christ is all in all and every tear has been dried and death and pain is no more and the glory of God fills the world. And Jesus refuses to operate by the atheistic anxiety of a world that believes that it's running out of time. and with glory in his eyes, he goes to the deepest places of darkness and death. It's not life that's running out of time. It's death running out of time. It's not justice running out of time. It's injustice that's on the clock. It's not hope that's running out of time. It's despair.

13:49 Some of the most beautiful music composed in the 20th century was first performed nearly 80 years ago in the unheated barracks of a Nazi concentration camp. It was played by prisoners in the camp on beaten-up old instruments. It had been composed by another prisoner in the camp, a French Christian by the name of Olivier Messiaen. And he wanted to compose some music that would announce the triumph of resurrection and hope, even in a death camp. He was sick of the Nazi bootstrap. Hut, two, three, four. So he decided to compose this music according to that beautiful verse in the French translation of the book of Revelation, in which at the end of all things, the angel announces, all time has come to an end, meaning all of the unfolding historical time and circumstance has been gathered up into the glory and victory of God.

14:59 It was called the quartet for the end of time. How do you compose music that has no time? Well, the meters keep changing. The rhythms are irregular. The musicians cannot play simply by being in isolation and counting out their parts. They have to attend to each other and play in communion with each other. In fact, in the margins where a composer would normally write, play slowly, play moderately, play quickly, Messian wrote, play with tenderness, play with ecstasy, play with love. Because Jesus Christ is the Lord of time, and it's death that's running out of time. We can live our lives with tenderness and ecstasy and love. A couple of years ago, I was leading a preaching conference on the western side of Atlanta.

15:56 We had an afternoon off, and I didn't want to fight Atlanta traffic to go all the way back to my office. So I decided to use the afternoon to get a haircut. I went looking for great clips or fantastic Sam's or one of those places you could just walk in. And I found one. And when I sat down, the woman who was about to cut my hair came over and said, I don't recognize you. Have you been in here before? I said, no, I haven't. I'm at a minister's conference at the retreat center down the road. She said, I'm a Christian too. I said, good. She said, I go to Creflo Dollar's church. My heart sank. You don't know Creflo Dollar. He's Atlanta's latest incarnation of the God-wants-you-to-be-rich gospel. He has a bevy of limousines and a collection of mansions, all paid for with tithes and offerings.

16:52 He's now being given by the church a $65 million Gulfstream jet so he can do his ministry effectively. I thought, I am already getting a bad haircut. I am now going to get bad theology. But she had the razor, so I played along with it. And I said, oh, really? Have you gotten your blessing yet? Yes, she said, I've gotten my blessing. And I expected her to tell me about the diamond bracelet in the scissors drawer, the jaguar she had parked in the parking lot. But instead, she said, twice a week, I get to volunteer at a shelter for battered women. women. I was one myself, and they trust me there. I have a great ministry. And I thought, my God, Jesus is loose in Creflo Dollar's church.

17:49 And he does it in such typical Jesus fashion. He waits outside until they've run out of time, and it's too late, and the church has become so compromised, nothing good can come out of it. It's then he says, I'm going in. And his disciples say, don't go in there. That church is dead. Can't you smell it? It stinks. He said, this is not about death. It's about the glory of God. And he goes in and finds a $9 an hour hairdresser and ordains her to a ministry of the Lord God Most High. Let me tell you, it's not life that's running out of time. It's death that's running out of time. Now, maybe you saw several years ago in the New York Times the same little squib that I did about a Manhattan physician, Dr. Joyce Wallace, Yale educated. With that pedigree, she could have had a Tony Upper East Side practice, but no.

18:49 Her medical clinic was a van that she drove around Times Square taking care of women who had fallen into prostitution. prostitution. She would give them medical care. She would give them a word of encouragement and then a word of liberation. You don't have to live this way. There are people who will help you, you know. The New York Times reporter was impressed, but a little skeptical, because he said, well, that's all fine and good, but don't most of your patients still die of drug overdose and AIDS? Must be very discouraging. Dr. Wallace said, well, that's one way to look at it. But my mother taught me another way to look at it. She was, for all of her career, a special ed teacher for children with brain damage. And she taught me, Joyce, don't look at the damage. Look at the image.

19:42 Don't look at the damage that time has done. Look at the image of God that nothing can take away. The time I understood that best was when they asked my mother's class to provide the program at the meeting of the PTA. And so my mother rehearsed her students singing songs from the Broadway musical, My Fair Lady. It never occurred to my mother, said Dr. Wallace, that the parents would burst into tears. because it never occurred to my mother not to let a little girl with brain damage roll across the stage in her wheelchair singing, I could have danced all night. I could have danced all night. And because Jesus Christ is the Lord of time, dance she will. And so will all of us.

20:37 Living the Christian faith in this kind of world isn't easy. It's a long story. It's a familiar story. But we know how it is.