Devotion on John 11:1-41

I encourage you to read the passage first.

One literary and dramatic device is to have the main character die at the beginning, and then see how they have some “unfinished business” that they, after death, have an opportunity to resolve. Think of the movies like Ghost, Heaven Can Wait, and Just Like Heaven. Think of the Television series Dead Like Me. Think of Mitch Albom, Five People You Meet When You Get to Heaven. Yet, the point is what life is like after we die, or that we wait until death to receive our second chance at life. The point is, if we reflect upon the brevity of our lives, we can take consider the pattern our lives are weaving. Are we satisfied with the pattern?
The point is, we dare not sleepwalk through life.
As much as it may seem that much of American society simply seeks the pleasure of the moment, moral questions keep arising. While one message of the culture is to live only for oneself, another message of the culture is to consider the moral side of the fact of our death. Such dramatic devices invite us to reflect upon our lives by looking at the end, death, and reflect upon what its reality means for how we live today. In such stories, people receive a second chance to learn what they could have learned, had they only paid more attention. Such stories also remind us of the impact, not only of death, but also of eternity.
In the Gospel of John, the death of a friend, Lazarus, awakens emotion within Jesus, for Jesus wept in such a way that others noticed how much he loved Lazarus. Jesus had done other signs. In turning water to wine, in healing people, in offering new birth of the human spirit, in offering living water, in being the bread of life, in being the light of the world, Jesus meets some of the deepest human needs. Yet, when Jesus says that he is the resurrection and the life, he addresses our deepest anxiety, and desires to free us from it. As final as it sounds, “Lazarus is dead,” life will have the final word, rather than death. Death casts its shadow over our lives. As Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics, III.4, 594 and IV.2, 228) says it, as temporal as our lives are, bounded as they are by the facts of birth and death, Christ is our hope, the divine assurance that God clothes are temporal lives with eternal life. The battle of Jesus is the cause of humanity, and in this act, we see that the God ordains this creature of God for life, not death.