John 11:17-37 - "Sabbath Happiness" (3-9-08)

IF ONLY you had been here… IF ONLY you would have done this, that or the other thing… THAN I WOULD BE HAPPY! Mary wanted to let Jesus know that things would have been different if he would have arrived on time. Martha and Mary had urgently requested Jesus to come to Bethany. “He must be taking his time”, they thought. There brother was alive when the messenger was sent for Jesus. The distance from Bethany to the Jordan River area was about 30 miles or so. How long would it take you to walk 30 miles? Where is he? He’s taking the Jericho road up to Bethany through the town of Jericho. Now he has arrived at a house of mourning four days after the death of Lazarus.

For Jewish custom, the time a person died to the time of burial would have been a short time, most likely 24 hours, no embalming. Now we have a wake after someone dies. Why is called wake? To see if they would… wake! They discovered scratch marks in caskets over 100 years ago in Europe and caskets. They started putting strings on peoples fingers and run it up out of the ground and if they were alive, they would be saved by the… bell! If you stayed over night to listen for the bell, you were working the… graveyard shift.

Maybe people had heard Jesus raised people from the dead up north around the Sea of Galilee, but maybe they weren’t really dead. Bethany was only two miles from Jerusalem. Word would spread about this raising of a dead man. Was he ever dead, four days dead!

Martha heard Jesus was coming and ran out to see him. Jesus meets Martha on his way to their house. People were crying and weeping. It was custom to grieving deeply for seven days and then lighter mourning for another thirty days. Martha is the one that was the responsible one of her and Mary. Martha had met Jesus before when they had him over for dinner. Mary just sat there listening to Jesus and Martha complained to Jesus that she was doing all the work. “I’d be happy if Mary would help me.” Martha wanted Jesus to respond again to her “if only…”. Perhaps Martha gave one of the most human speeches; why didn’t you come. We know that if Martha ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy. Lazarus is dead. Don’t you care? Martha then went back to the house to tell Mary. Mary responded by jumping up finally and had the same greeting to Jesus as Martha. IF only…. Then…

We all have our IF ONLY thoughts that would make us happy. We live in a country where we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.[1] But we might have a right to pursuit happiness but we don’t have a right to be happy[2] any more than we have a right to good luck. The pursuit of happiness means we find happiness not apart from struggles but often in the midst of them.

How did Jesus respond to their search for happiness? He responded with empathy. Jesus gave the reply that Lazarus would rise again. He then replied by weeping, this for only the second time in recorded scriptures. The heart of Jesus is wrung with anguish, like a deep movement of the spirit; he cares. But more than just giving an answer, he wanted to be present. So he asked, “Where have you laid him?” Jesus enters the suffering and the pain. Then he tells them to unbind him and let him go.

When we take time for Sabbath, we are set free. In the rest of Sabbath, Jesus is trying to unbind us from all that ties us down to what we think happiness is all about. We are bound to so many things in our schedule that we forget sabbath rest is a way to be free and to really live. Sabbath forces us to look at ourselves in the mirror and see all the things that bind us down. When we are strapped to our calendars and don’t make time to rest, a little part of us dies. But when we nap on a Sabbath or rest in whatever fashion with family and friends, we come alive. We hand ourselves over to being human, a small death like state where we might don’t wake up.

Jesus entered and set us free from the power of sin and death! Even when we bind our happiness to other external factors, we remember today that Jesus is pursuing us to give us life and life abundantly. Jesus is in pursuit of bringing life; he enters the pain and suffering and then pursues us to bring us life and happiness that begins now and is complete in the future! We get a taste of happiness here in the journey and pursuit.[3]

WHAT ARE YOU PURSUING? What would make you happy? This isn’t a don’t worry… be happy! Thee opposite of depression isn’t happiness, writes Peter D. Kramer in his book Against Depression. The opposite of depression is resilience. Happiness and life is the end goal; but it is not found in filling yourself up with stuff! It is discovered in the midst of the struggles of life; in the midst of the suffering. For we are called to join in the pain and grief of friends and relatives; otherwise we cannot celebrate the joy and happiness of life. When seven of my siblings were present a few weeks ago at a funeral of a family friend, we told stories and laughed. Even in the midst of sorrow, we discovered a deeper happiness when we are set free from fear, death and the grave.

We gather today to find our happiness in this meal because we admit that all the happy meals in the world couldn’t fill us up. Let us pray…Gracious God, we gather to find our happiness here with you. You have pursued us in the midst of life’s struggles and we are happy you have chased us down. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

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[1] Declaration of Independence

[2] See C.S. Lewis’ God in the Dock chapter called “We have No Right To Happiness”

[3] Christopher Gardner (Will Smith) in The Pursuit of Happyness