We See Signs by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Patti Lusher)

Do you pay attention to signs?

Yes, I hope when you are driving you watch for the signs. When we prepared to make this building our home as a church we thought carefully about directional signs that would help people find where to park and how to find us at the back of this theater. People need actual physical signs to give them direction or they will get lost. Or worse yet, when they are trying to find some new place, they will give up and just go back home.

John’s gospel, is the last of four books in the New Testament that tells the story of Jesus. The book of John is known at the book of signs because over and over again there are signs, or miracles, that cause the people to believe and put their trust in God. The signs are meant to point the people to God. They point the people to a power greater than themselves – to an anchor, a grounding. The signs point the people to the source of all love and joy in our world. When the people see Jesus and the amazing transformation that he can cause in the lives of people, they believe. They have faith. They move from darkness to light, from sadness to joy, from doubt to trust in God.

So a sign from Jesus in John is more than just something that gets you to a physical destination, it is something that moves you. A sign takes you on a journey of transformation.

Have you ever seen a sign that has changed your life? I have two friends who lived in New Jersey in September 2001. They were going through a rough patch in their relationship. In fact, they were on the verge of breaking up on the morning of September 11. They lived just across the Hudson Bay from Manhattan. When those planes crashed into the World Trade Center, my friends saw a sign. They saw a sign that life is fragile and unpredictable. They saw a sign that told them: we need to consider what is really important. They both went home that night, thankful to both be alive, because, you see, one of them worked frequently in the city. Anything could have happened that day. You just never know how things could have turned. Like everyone else in NY and NJ, they knew people who were affected first hand. My two friends went on to be married and asked God to bless their life together. They adopted children, older kids who are often hard to place in adoptive homes. They are surrounding those kids with love. They have built a life together. My friends saw a sign. They chose joy over sadness. They chose light. They turned toward love; they turned toward God.

In our scripture for today, the people also see a sign and they have a chance to turn toward God. Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, becomes ill. He is near death. These people are dear friends of Jesus. A message is sent to Jesus and his disciples to come to them in Bethany.

Jesus gets the news and remains for two days in the place where he is before going to Bethany. He tells his disciples that the illness will be an opportunity to glorify God. He is saying this will be a sign.

When they get there, they are told Lazarus has been dead for 4 days. This is significant because they believed, at that time, that the spirit leaves the body after 3 days. Martha is distraught. She kind of blames Jesus for not coming sooner. She says: “If you had been sooner my brother would not have died.” Then I think she catches herself and tempers her words with this: “But I know that whatever you ask God will give you.”

Martha might be asking for a sign – a miracle. Even as she knows it cannot happen.  Because when Jesus says “Your brother will be raised up,” she replies:

“Yes, he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”

Then Jesus says: “You don’t have to wait for the end: I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”

What can Jesus mean? For goodness sake. The man has been dead for 4 days.

Then sister Mary comes up and also shares her disappointment with Jesus “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When he sees the weeping of Mary and the other people, he weeps. Then the crazy stuff starts happening. He tells them to remove the stone from the tomb. They did not have modern day embalming techniques back then. So Martha says: “Jesus, it has been 4 days. There will be a stench.”

Jesus is losing patience now: “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? Remove the stone!”

Jesus prays to God and then says: “Lazarus, come out!” And of course, out walks Lazarus, looking like a mummy, wrapped from head to toe in burial cloth. Jesus tells them: “Unbind him. Let him loose.”

Scripture says: “That was a turnaround for many of the Jews. They saw and they believed!” They put their trust in God.

This is one of the more dramatic scenes in the New Testament. This sign, this miracle, is pretty amazing. Jesus restores life to a man dead for 4 days. He told the people all along that Lazarus’ illness was all for the purpose of glorifying God. He waited an extra two days to go to Bethany. Mary and Martha were two of his closest friends in the whole world. And they were mad at him. I think it is safe to say they were mad at God, just like so many people have been mad at God so many times. (And by the way, we don’t all get our loved ones brought back as a sign of God’s power. This was a one-time thing.)

Why did he do it? And why did he do it in this way?

He told us why. “It will become an occasion to show God’s glory by glorifying God’s Son.” These people were living without hope. Remember, they were living in a country that God had given to them. God sent the people of Israel to the Promised Land, but now they had become occupied by a foreign government, Rome.

Imagine what we would feel like if our country were invaded by Russia or China and we no longer had any say in the way things are. We just think our government is bad. The Jewish people needed some SIGNS. They needed some miracles – like a dead man coming back to life after 4 days kind of signs. They needed to see the power of God. That is why Jesus waited an extra two days.  They needed some drama.

And it had to be with a family he loved. Because Mary and Martha? They were mad. And they were heart-broken. And Jesus was heart-broken. That’s why he wept with them.

And so when Lazarus came walking out of that tomb – the people rejoiced. I mean EVERYONE REJOICED. THE WHOLE VILLAGE. It was life restored.

It’s like seeing your partner safe and sound after you have watched the World Trade Center come tumbling down just across the Hudson River from where you live. That is a second chance. That is a time to put things in perspective and put our trust in God. That is a time to put aside sadness and look for joy. That is a time to walk out of the darkness into the light.

Those people in Bethany had nowhere else to put their trust except in God and in God’s Son Jesus. They needed a Saviour who would turn their upside down world right-side up.

Do you need a sign? Do you need a Saviour? Is your world upside down? Is there some sort of mess in your world that only God can fix? What is it?

I don’t know what all your particular situations are, but scripture gives us some language to help us discern how to experience transformation. We can move from darkness to light. Where are the dark places of your life that you are afraid to go? These are the things that we keep ourselves busy and distracted from with other stuff so that we don’t have to dig deep and see them. But when we bring these dark places to God, God will shine light and bring healing. If the things are too scary, we might need a professional counselor to walk alongside with us as we find our healing. But sometimes we just need to name for ourselves some things that make us feel bad and we need to ask God to release us, just as Jesus called Lazarus to walk out of the tomb and be unbound from his grave clothes. We may need to let go of some pain inflicted on us, or some sin in the past, so that we can live in the light, healed and restored. So one of the signs Jesus might be holding up for us is a sign that says “light.” Come into the light. Don’t live in the dark past anymore. Don’t live in the shame. Let it go. Be forgiven. Be unburdened and come into the light and be free. That might be the sign Jesus has for you.

Another shift we can make is from sadness to joy. We all have reasons to be sad. Sad things happen. We need periods of grief after we experience loss or disappointment. But God does not want us to live there forever. God also wants us to experience joy. Joy comes when we pay attention to God’s blessings in our lives. Gratitude is a spiritual practice that helps us find our joy. Being grateful each day for something: waking up; the beauty of creation; a relationship that brings us joy; something that makes us laugh. We can cultivate joy in our lives by doing things that we know will bring us joy. Jesus might be holding up for us a sign that says “joy.” Step into joy.

Finally, we can make a shift from doubt to belief or trust. In the story, it says that people came to believe because they saw what Jesus did. They came to trust in God. When life gets hard, it is the human condition to doubt God. Mary and Martha were doubting Jesus’ care for them when he did not arrive in time. When we are hurting, and we feel alone, we begin to doubt the presence of God or the faithfulness of God. How soon we forget all the ways that God has blessed us. We forget that God gave us life. We fail to recognize that all people go through ups and downs. We have not been singled out. We forget that God gave us all human will to make choices. We are not puppets. Jesus is holding a sign that says “trust God.” We are not alone. God is inviting us to trust. We are invited to know that God is there for us.

So, what is the sign that Jesus is putting in front of you today? What message do you need to hear? Do you need to step from darkness to light? From sadness to joy? From doubt to trust? Or something else?

I’m going to invite you in a minute to make a sign for yourself.

When you do, remember the promise of Jesus. He does these signs to point us to God. His work is all about God. Jesus wants to draw us to God, to glorify God. The signs are all around us, drawing us closer to God, to God’s light, God’s joy, so we can trust in God. We just have to look for the signs.