Sermon Archive

The question “Do you believe?” and its variations - do you believe in Jesus?, do you believe in eternal life? - may be the most anxiety provoking question of church life. Scarier than: “Do you pray?” Possibly more nerve-wracking than: “Do you pledge?” In fact, since we’re polite, and pastoral, it’s not a question we ask each other very often.

I’ve learned, through experience, not to go out with friends on a Saturday night before I preach. They always ask what I’m going to talk about the next day. In their innocence, most of them not being Christians, they assume that since I’m going to be preaching into a microphone, in front of 100 or so people, it must be something I’m comfortable talking about. Something I’d be glad to share with them over tiramisu and coffee. But it’s one thing to talk from the safety of the pulpit. You all are sitting at a safe distance, and everyone knows you’re not allowed to interrupt. I get to wear a robe. It’s understood I’ll use words like Messiah, eternal life, and resurrection without explaining them. And by the time we’re done with the offering and the final hymn, the benediction and the postlude, it’s hard to remember exactly what I said and to hold me to it. In the dozens of sermons I’ve preached, no one has every come up to me afterward and said, “Did you really believe that stuff you said about the second coming?” And in the hundreds of sermons I’ve heard, I’ve never gone up to a preacher with such an intrusive question. But on a Saturday night at Starbucks, it’s not long into my sermon explanation before somebody asks, “Do you believe this?”

It is a fearsome question. First, it’s hard to talk about Christian belief in ways that sound reasonable and convincing. We tie ourselves in knots trying to explain how Jesus is fully human and fully God. We try and talk about God or eternal life, and fall back on images from childhood we know aren’t right – a heaven with pearly gates, a God who bears an uncanny resemblance to Burl Ives. Or we become so vague – talking about God as non-gendered spirit – that we wonder if we’re saying anything at all. And we ask ourselves, “Do I believe this?”

“Do you believe” also goes to the question of whether or not we belong. Do we believe enough to be legitimate members of the church? In the Inquirers Class last week, someone asked, “What’s the bottom line? What do we need to believe before we make a profession of faith?” And as Byron was offering a suggestion of what that Christian minimum might be, I began wondering, do I believe this? Am I adding to many qualifying mental footnotes? And I’m the director of the education program.

Or maybe we have a different problem. We assent to Christian doctrine. We believe that the miracles in the Bible really happened. But our hearts are cold. We don’t feel like believers. Do we deep-down really believe this?

And what makes this all so painful is that we yearn to believe. In times of despair and loneliness, we want to believe that Jesus loves us. We want to raise our children in faith. When we lose friends – and we’ve lost dear ones in the congregation this year – we want to believe that they’ve joined the communion of saints, that they’re still, somehow, here with us. When we’re at the bedside of a friend who is dying, we long to believe that their life will not end with their death, and that their life and ours will continue in Christ. And it’s not just for ourselves and those close to us that we yearn to believe; we long to believe that God loves the whole world. That all the children in Africa who have died of AIDS, all those in Afghanistan who have been killed in the war, and all who perished on September 11th – that their lives, too, will continue.

So we yearn to believe, but we feel like inadequate believers, so we tiptoe around the question. (Session and confirmation class?) But John, the writer of our gospel, is not so timid. For John, the question “Do you believe?” or rather, “Do you believe in Jesus?” is THE question, the life and death question, and he never lets it go. The verb “believe” appears 94 times in the NRSV translation of John, as opposed to 9 in Luke, 11 in Matthew. John tells us plainly he wrote his book so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in his name (20:31). Jesus performs miracles so that people will believe in him, including the miracle of Lazarus. Jesus did love Lazarus, but he didn’t bring Lazarus back because he loved him, or because Mary and Martha missed him. He declared it from the start. Lazarus became ill so that the Son of God could be glorified – so that people would believe in him and in the One who sent him.

This emphasis on believing can be intimidating and may partly explain why John is not a favorite book of liberal Christians. But what’s wonderful about John is that he doesn’t just exhort us to believe – he shows us believers in action. Martha and Mary, the disciples, even Lazarus. And the interesting thing about these believers is that they’re struggling, too. Their belief isn’t perfect, or total. They don’t fully understand who Jesus is, and they have reservations about some of his plans. When he tells the disciples he’s going to Judea to wake up Lazarus, they think he’s touched. But when Jesus then tells them that Lazarus is dead – so presumably he’s still going to wake him from death – they still don’t seem to expect anything unusual to happen when they go to Bethany, except, perhaps, that they’ll all die. “Let us also go,” says Thomas, “so that we may die with him.” Remember the conversation between Jesus and Martha? Jesus tells her that Lazarus will rise again, and Martha says yes, I know he will rise again in the resurrection – she’s a devout Jew like Jesus. Jesus tells her that he is the resurrection and the life, and that all who believe in him will never die. But when he asks her if she believes that, her response is curious: she says yes, but then she goes on to explain that she believes he is the Messiah, the Son of God, the One coming into the world…not necessarily the resurrection and the life (she was probably wondering what he was talking about). Then there’s that moment at the tomb. Jesus says, “Take away the stone,” and even Martha, who just made her profession of faith, isn’t eager to see what this Messiah will do. She says what everyone is thinking, “You don’t want to take away that stone. He’s been dead four days and the smell will be awful.” Son of God or no, Martha has her doubts.

So these believers are struggling – but they do something important. Even when they wonder if Jesus knows what he’s doing, they’re willing to follow him, to gather up their courage and go. They stay in relationship with him, as we might say, even when they have reason not to. The disciples went with Jesus to Bethany, even though there was danger. When Jesus stayed away for two days after getting Martha’s message, she could have said, “I want nothing to do with that man anymore.” But she didn’t. She went to greet Jesus, she spoke her mind, and they talked. When Jesus asked Mary and Martha and the other mourners to show him where they had laid Lazarus, they said, “Come and see” – words that Jesus usually said. When Jesus tells them to move the stone, Martha demurs, but when Jesus asks a second time, they do it. And Jesus calls to Lazarus, and they see it: the sign, the irrefutable, amazing, incredible sign that Jesus does have power over death, a power held only by God. Lazarus walks out, still wrapped in his burial cloths. They are so stunned no one moves. So Jesus finally says, “Unbind him, set him free.” And many who were there believed in Jesus.

Jesus did not expect people to believe in him just because he said so. He gives them signs – he changes water into wine at a wedding, he feeds thousands with a few loaves and fish, he gives sight to the blind man, he raises Lazarus from the dead – and there were many more signs that John didn’t even put in his book. After all, even those early disciples didn’t believe once and for all after the first miracle – if that were the case, the story would have been much shorter. And the church believes that Christ is alive, and that the risen Christ continues to give us signs. They may not be miracles, like the raising of Lazarus. They may not be obvious or dramatic, but they are there.

Perhaps this story of Lazarus is a sign for you. I was talking with Cliff Frasier about the scripture last week – many of you know him as a fairly liberal interpreter of Bible. And he said to me, “I love that story. And when it comes to the raising of Lazarus, I’m a fundamentalist. It happened.” And if it’s not a sign for you here today, perhaps it will be years from now when you hear it in another church or another place. Or perhaps the birth of a baby and the love you feel for them – a daughter or son or niece or grandchild – has been a sign for you. Or maybe it’s hearing a talk between an Israeli and a Palestinian who have both lost loved ones and are seeking a way out of violence. Or maybe it’s a sense of peace and rest at the bedside of a friend that is a sign for you, a sign of eternal life in Christ.