Nov 4 2012 Rev Dr Thomas Long Its About Time

0:07 And good morning to all of you. It's a wonderful thrill for me to be able to be with you in worship and to share in Orville's ministry. I want to read a passage from the 11th chapter of John's Gospel. It's a long story. It takes up the whole 11th chapter. I'm not going to read all of it. But it's about a family of siblings, Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. If you remember the story about the woman who anointed Jesus with perfume, John tells us that was Mary in this family. And Lazarus, interestingly enough, was Jesus' best friend. Jesus, it is said, loved Lazarus. And here's a story about a crisis in that family. Listen.

0:58 Now a certain man was ill. Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair. Her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, Lord, he whom you love is ill. but when Jesus said it heard it he said 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 accordingly even though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus after having heard that Lazarus was ill he stayed two days longer in the place where he was then as the story goes they get word that Lazarus is dead so Jesus decides to go to Bethany when Jesus arrived he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days now Bethany was near Jerusalem some two miles away and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

2:31 now look I stopped reading the story right at that point 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 confronted the one person in the world she thought she could have depended on when she said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

3:03 Martha's got a point. Already in the Gospel of John, Jesus has given sight to a man who was blind from the first day of his birth. Already in the Gospel of John, Jesus has been to the pool at Bethsaida, and there was a man there who had been paralyzed for 38 years, 38 years. And Jesus said to him, pick up your bed and walk. And he did. Already in the Gospel of John, a desperate young father has come all the way from Capernaum to Cana to beg Jesus to come home with him. It's my son. My boy, I'm losing my boy. Come, please. Come quickly. We're running out of time. To which Jesus said, you go home in peace. Your son will be healed. And that very hour he was.

3:59 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. Years ago when I was a graduate student at Princeton, I went home to Atlanta for the Christmas holidays. When the break was over, I flew back to Newark, New Jersey, and I was met at the airport by one of my classmates who had some tragic news. Another one of our classmates had also gone home for the Christmas holiday, and at the Christmas dinner table, he started feeling a headache coming on. It got worse. He got up from the table, went back to the bedroom to lie down for a while, but he never got up again. A brain aneurysm took his life at age 28, leaving a wife and two small children. I said to my friend, that's terrible news.

4:59 How are Sue and the children? He said, this is hard. This is very hard on them. And I said to myself, I need to go see Sue. But I won't go right now because she's got family around and I don't want to intrude on that. When the family left, I said to myself, I need to go see Sue, but I won't go now. This is the first moment of solitude she's had since the death. I don't want to interrupt that.

5:27 I kept saying to myself, I need to go see Sue. I didn't go. The fact of the matter is, I was afraid to go. It wasn't just death. I had already been a pastor. I'd done funerals. I'd seen death. But I had never seen death come so close in someone my own age. Someone who reminded me of my own mortality, that even though I was in my 20s at the time, I was running out of time. Several weeks later, I ran into my companion who had met me at the airport, and I said, how are Sue and the children doing? He said, about as well as could be expected. 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.

6:23 And you know, it's not as if Jesus had a good excuse. It's not as if he could have said, oh, now, Martha, you know I would have been there. Nothing would have meant more to me than to be at my friend Lazarus' bedside in his final hours. But I was feeding the 5,000 in the wilderness. no the reason Jesus didn't go according to the writer of the gospel of John who makes this very clear is that he never intended to go the way the writer of John puts it even though Jesus loved Martha and even though Jesus loved Mary and even though Jesus loved Lazarus when he heard that his friend Lazarus was ill, he decided to stay exactly where he was. He intentionally waited until they'd run out of time. Lord, if you had been here, but you weren't, and we ran out of time.

7:20 Now, of course, running out of time is the theological sign that stands over the whole of the Gospel of John and over our lives too. We're running out of time. In our society, the division between the rich and the poor gets wider and wider and wider. It doesn't matter who's in power. It continues to get worse, and we're running out of time. In many of our families, there are broken relationships, marriages under strain, children we're alienated from, people we're kin to that we haven't spoken to. We wish it were better, but we're running out of time. And of course, down at the end of every corridor of life stands old death, leering face, wagging an alarm clock. Eventually you come to me. I am the Lord of time and you're running out of time.

8:26 I went to visit a friend of mine in the hospital in Atlanta recently. He had simply gone in for a routine checkup, and there was something troubling about one of the tests. They had another test, and there was more trouble on that one, and so they did exploratory surgery, and I went to see him after this surgery. When I walked into the room, I'd hardly gotten to his bedside when he said, Tom, the news is not good. It's all through me. I said, I'm sorry. He said, I told my doctor, I just want five more years. That's all I'm asking for. I just want to see Melissa graduate from high school. I just need five more years. That's all I'm asking for. What did he say, I asked. He said that everybody would be working as hard as they could, but there were no guarantees.

9:22 Tom, I just want five more years. But I'm running out of time. Lord, if you had been here, but you weren't, and we ran out of time. Interestingly, it is precisely at the moment that they had run out of time that Jesus said, it's time to go in. To which his disciples said, no, no, don't go in now, there's death there. To which Jesus said, this is not about death, this is about the glory of God. And he went to the doorway of Lazarus' tomb as he goes to the doorway of every tomb of human despair and announced in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. It is not death that is the Lord of time. I am the Lord of time. It's not life that's running out of time.

10:14 It's death. It's not justice that is 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 that's running out of time By the way, if you want to know what time it is When you're reading the Gospel of John You have to wear two wristwatches With one, you tell ordinary time It's November the 4th, 2012 Tick-tock, tick-tock We're running out of time But with the other watch, there's God's time eternal time the time in which God is all in all and all that God has willed is brought to perfection and Jesus refuses to participate in the atheistic anxiety of a world that believes that it is running out of time because Jesus Christ is the Lord of time The theologian Karl Barth said this one day, he said, if I give you my money, I give you my money.

11:25 But if I give you my time, I give you everything I have. All that I am. And in Jesus Christ, God gives us God's time. God makes time for us. takes time for us, is time with us. And Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

11:54 Some of the most beautiful music ever composed was played for the first time nearly 70 years ago in the unheated barracks of a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. It was played on beaten up old instruments and played by prisoners in the death camp. The music was composed by another prisoner at the camp, a French Christian by the name of Olivier Messiaen. And he wanted to compose some music that would bear witness to the fact that even in a death camp, God's eternity shines and God's resurrection power wins the victory. He was sick and tired of the Nazi jackboot. Hut, two, three, four.

12:45 So he decided to compose the music according to that beautiful translation in the French Bible of a verse from Revelation in which the angel announces there is no more time. Meaning that all historical time has now been gathered up into the eternal victory of God. It was called the quartet for the end of time. How do you compose music that has no time? Well, the meters are irregular. The rhythms keep changing, which means that the musicians cannot play in splendid isolation from each other, simply counting out their parts. They have to pay attention to each other. They have to play in communion. They have to play in ensemble. In fact, in the musical notations where a composer would usually say something like, play slowly, play rapidly, Messiaen wrote, play with tenderness, play with ecstasy, play with love.

13:56 This is, by the way, what we mean by All Saints Day. In the saints, not just the ones on the calendar, but our loved ones who have gone into eternity, we see in their lives, their faith, the places where they played with tenderness and ecstasy and love.

14:19 Not long ago, I was leading a workshop for ministers on the west side of Atlanta. My office, my university is on the east side of town. and we had an afternoon off. I didn't want to fight Atlanta traffic and go all the way back to my office so I had a free afternoon. Had to decide what to do with it. I needed a haircut so I decided to find a Fantastic Sam's or a Great Clips or one of those places you could just walk in and get a haircut and I found one and when I went in the woman who was about to cut my hair looked at me and said, I don't recognize you. Have you ever been in this shop? And I said, no, I haven't. I'm a seminary professor, a minister. I'm leading a workshop for ministers at the retreat center down the road. She said, oh, I'm a Christian too. I said, great. She said, I'm a member of Creflo Dollar's church. Well, I groaned inside. If you have ever heard of Creflo Dollar, he is Atlanta's latest incarnation of the God-wants-you-to-be-rich gospel.

15:27 He has a fleet of limousines, a private jet at his disposal, a number of luxurious mansions, all paid for with tithes and offerings. I was already getting a bad haircut. Now I was going to get bad theology. but she had the razor So I decided to play along with it. Well, I said, have you gotten your blessing yet? Oh yes, she said, I have gotten my blessing. I expected her to tell me about the diamond ring in the scissors drawer or the jaguar that she had parked in the parking lot. But instead, she said, Two nights a week, I get to volunteer at a shelter for battered women. I used to be one, you know, and they trust me there. I have a great ministry.

16:25 And I thought, my God, Jesus is loose in Creflo Dollar's church. And he does it in the typical way that he does. He stands around in the parking lot, refusing to go in until the church has so compromised the gospel that it's dead. And right when it's run out of time, he says, I'm going in. To which we say, Jesus, don't go in that church. That church is dead. It stinks. Can't you smell it? To which he said, this is not about death. This is about the glory of God. And he goes in there and finds a $9 an hour hairdresser and ordains her to the ministry of the Lord God most high. Let me tell you, it is not life running out of time. It's death that's running out of time. It's not justice running out of time, but injustice, not hope, but despair. I read a number of years ago in the New York Times about a Yale-educated physician in New York City, and with that education, she could have had a Tony Upper East Side practice. But no, her medical clinic was a Ford Econoline van that she drove around Midtown Manhattan looking for women caught in prostitution.

17:51 When she found them, she would give them medical care, a word of encouragement, and a word of liberation. If you want to break free from this, there are those of us who will support you. The reporter for the New York Times was admiring but somewhat skeptical. She said, well, that's wonderful, Dr. Wallace. Her name was Joyce Wallace. That's wonderful, Dr. Wallace. But you know, most of your patients still die of AIDS or drug overdose. It must be very discouraging. Dr. Wallace said, well, that's one way to look at it. But my mother taught me another way. My mother was, for all of her career, a special education elementary school teacher who taught brain-damaged children. And she said, Joyce, don't just look at the damage. Look at the image.

18:47 Don't just look at the damage that history and circumstance have done. Look at the image of God that is preserved in eternity. She said, I learned that best one night when the PTA asked my mother's class to provide the program. And so my mother had rehearsed her students on singing songs from the Broadway musical, My Fair Lady. She said, it never occurred to my mother that the audience would burst into tears. because it never occurred to my mother not to let a little six-year-old brain-damaged girl 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 we, with tenderness and ecstasy.