Lazarus Was Dead

Lazarus was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
His sisters knew he was dead. The people who'd buried him 4 days ago knew he was dead.

There is no doubt that Lazarus was dead. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story in today's Gospel.

• Ezekiel 37:1-14  • 
 
• Psalm 130  • 
 
• Romans 8:6-11  • 
 
• John 11:1-45

Easier Said Than Done

If there’s one thing that’s easy said than done, it’s the old adage: “Good things come to those who wait."

Patience may be a virtue, but it’s certainly not an easy one to acquire or maintain.

Our lessons this morning show us two very different responses to the temptations and impatience. Adam and Eve chose one way, Jesus chose the other.

• Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7  • 
 
• Psalm 32  • 
 
• Romans 5:12-19  • 
 
• Matthew 4:1-11

Repentant Snowflakes

While every snow is beautifully unique, the one thing that all snowflakes have in common is that they're dirty at the core.

Snowflakes start as tiny dust particles in the clouds which collect moisture. And as the moisture freezes into crystals which then fall sparkling white to the ground. But that tiny bit of dirt remains at the center of each snowflake.

And so there’s a similarity between us and snowflakes.  Because while each one of us is uniquely and wonderfully made by God in his own image, at our core we are stained with the dirt of sin.

And this Ash Wednesday, each one of us will be marked with a visible reminder of that inner stain in the black ashes we'll wear on our forehead.

Jesus' Marshmallow Test

As I’ve mentioned before, my wife is a psychology professor at UCO.And one of the advantages of having your own live-in psychologist is that you get to hear interesting stories about various kinds of experiments that have been done over the years.

And one of my favorites that she’s told me about is the marshmallow test.  The original marshmallow test was done about 40 years ago, but it’s been repeated many times since.  In fact, if you go to Youtube and type in “Marshmallow Test”, you can actually watch the test in action.

The test itself is pretty simple.  Researchers will bring in 4 year olds one at a time and seat them at a table in a plain room.  And then they put a single marshmallow on the table in front of the child and the researcher makes some excuse for leaving the room.

But before they go, they tell the child, “You can eat this marshmallow now, or if you can till I get back you can have two marshmallows.” And then they leave.

As soon as they’re gone, the researchers monitor the kids through a closed circuit camera. And what they find is that some kids grab the marshmallow right away, while others will hold out for a few minutes before giving in.

But then there are some who are determined to wait.  The promise of two marshmallows is just too good!  And so they do whatever it takes to hold out.  Some will cover their eyes.  Others put their heads down.  Some will sing or distract themselves with a game.  And a few even went to sleep.

The point is, they did whatever it took to keep from eating that marshmallow, because they knew that if they waited they’d get two!

And if you do go on Youtube to watch it you’ll get a good laugh at watching what these kids do to avoid eating the marshmallow.

Now the point of the original marshmallow test was to determine whether or not the patterns that are instilled in us when we’re young affect the way we’ll behave later on in life. And so after the original experiment was done, the scientists waited 10 or 12 years for the kids to grow up and then went back to interview them while they were in high school.

And what the researchers discovered was pretty remarkable.  Almost uniformly, the kids who’d waited for the marshmallow tended to be better adjusted, more popular, more adventurous, more confident, and overall more dependable teenagers.

While, on the other hand, the kids who’d given in to temptation and eaten the marshmallow tended to be lonelier, more stubborn, and more easily frustrated.  The researchers found that they kids didn’t handle stress as well as the ones who’d waited, and so they tended to shy away from challenges.

Perhaps you’ve already figured out where I’m going with this in relation to our gospel lesson this morning.  Because in a lot of ways, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness was his marshmallow test.  It happened at the very beginning of his ministry, and so we can use it to gauge how he’ll do later in life.

The Holy Spirit had led him into the wilderness to fast and the devil came and tempted him to break the fast.

Obviously Jesus waited for the marshmallow, and so based on the research we can be pretty certain that later in life Jesus will be more confident, more dependable, better able to handle stress, and more willing to take risks than someone who’d given into the temptation.

And if we fast-forward to the Garden of Gethsemane and the cross, we can see that Jesus proves to be all those things.

When he comes face to face with the cross, he didn’t shy away.  When the salvation of the whole world depended on him, Jesus showed that he was dependable.  He could handle the stress, and he was willing to take the risk.    He didn’t take the easy way out.  Instead he prayed, “Not my will, Father, but yours be done.”

And so we come to you and me.  And I want to suggest to you that at one level our Lenten journey is our marshmallow test.  It’s a controlled experiment; 40 days of fasting. Can we hold out till Easter?  

Can we live without our coffee, or desserts, or television, or whatever it is we’ve decided to give up?  Do we have the kind of spiritual discipline it takes to resist temptation when it matters most?  Will we prove to be confident and dependable when the rubber hits the road?

I can only speak for myself, but that’s something I’m hoping to grow in this Lent.  I’m praying for the Holy Spirit to give me the patience and discipline I need to keep the fast.

Of course, if I fail, or if you fail in your fast, it doesn’t mean we’re bad people or doomed to hell. With Christ, grace abounds.  He’ll always be there to lift us up, dust us off, and start us on our way again.

But he’s also here to lean on before we give into temptation. Before we eat the marshmallow.

Unlike the kids in the experiment, we’re not in the room alone.  We have Christ.  We have his Holy Spirit to strengthen us.  And we have his Word and his Sacrament here this morning to sustain us.

As we journey through Lent this year, let us look to Christ for our example and for the strength we need to keep the fast.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11  • 

   

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16  • 

   

Romans 10:8b-13  • 

   

Luke 4:1-13

The Dangers of Sippin' Sin

During the last century, there was a Methodist pastor in New York named Ralph Sockman.  From 1928 to 1962, he appeared regularly on a radio show called, National Radio Pulpit.  He also wrote several best-selling books on the Christian life, and in 1961 Time magazine called him, “The best Protestant preacher in the U.S."

In one of his articles, Pastor Sockman recounted an experience he had one day while he and his family were visiting Niagara Falls.  It was a clear, cold March day, and while the river had begun to thaw, there were still chunks of ice on the river and parts of the Falls were frozen.

Pastor Sockman and his family watched as some birds swooped down and snatch a drink from the water rushing over the edge of the falls. And while he was watching this, a man standing next to them told Pastor Sockman how he’d seen birds drown doing this maneuver.

It seemed that each time the birds would dip down for a drink, tiny droplets of ice would form on their wings, and if they kept coming back too many times all these droplets would accumulate until finally the ice would weigh down their bodies and they could no longer rise back up above the water.

The man told Pastor Sockman that when that happened, the birds would flap their wings furiously but it was too late.  There was nothing they could do. They’d gone back to the water one too many times and now they were trapped in the water; doomed to go down with the falls. Today in the Word, October, 1990, p. 14

Well, when Pastor Sockman heard this, he immediately realized this was a perfect metaphor for our sins. 

Very often our sins seem to start innocently enough. We go in for a little sip.  And we think, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”  And so we go in again, and again, and again.

But each time we go back, the sin clings to us a little bit more and begins to weigh us down.  Until finally, we’re trapped and can’t escape.

King David’s story is a good example of someone whose sin started innocently enough.  But before he knew it his sin had him trapped.

One day King David was up on his roof surveying his kingdom, when he happened to notice a woman on her roof taking a bath.  Sure, it was inappropriate for him to watch, but he wasn’t really hurting anyone. And so he watched.  He went in for that first sip. And the droplets of sin began to accumulate.

Well, finally he got tired of watching from a distance, so he sent some of his servants to go bring the woman to his house. And they did. And David went in for another sip.     And this time the sin clung a bit more.

And when the woman, Bathsheba, was brought to him, he liked what he saw.  In fact, he lusted after her.  And so he took another sip by committing adultery with her.  And the sin clung more and more.

Then Bathsheba got pregnant, and David didn’t want her husband, Uriah, to find out. So at first he brought Uriah back from the war where he was fighting and tried to get him to go be with Bathsheba so that Uriah would think the baby was his. 

But Uriah was an honorable man. He told David that it wasn’t right for him to enjoy the comforts of home while his comrades were fighting on the front. And so Uriah didn’t go home to see Bathsheba.  Instead he camped out in front of David’s house and waited for his King to send him back to the war.

So David thought he had no choice but to go back in for one more sip.  He sent Uriah back to the war, but at the same time he told his generals to make sure Uriah got killed in battle.  The final sip. 

David’s sin now had him. And so God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his sin.  And it was then that David realized he was trapped and that he couldn’t escape –

He so he penned the psalm hat we read together at the beginning of our service here tonight, “Have mercy on me, O God. Deliver me from my bloodshed.  I’ve been a sinner since from before I was born”

It’s David’s mea culpa.  His declaration that he’s doomed to go down with the falls unless God rescued him.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.”

My friends, you and I are no different from David.  Each one of us from sin just like he did.  And the accumulation of that sin is upon us.  Which is why we’re here tonight.  To confess our sins before God the way David did.  And to ask God to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Often times, Lent is mischaracterized as a time to for Christians to be depressed and to wallow in our failures.  But that’s not what Lent is really for.

Yes, we confess our sins and admit that they’ve got us trapped.  But when we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And so that means Lent is also a time for us to enjoy our salvation. “Restore to me the joy of your salvation,” David prayed.

Lent is a time for us to enjoy the freedom Christ came to give us. Freedom from sin, death, and the power of the grave.

And so Lent is about more than just admitting our sin.  It’s about actively struggling against temptation, and removing the sin from our lives.

And that’s what our Lenten disciplines are about.  Whether it’s fasting or prayer, our Lenten disciplines are intended to help us break free from the weight of sin.  Their aim is to help us stop going back in for one more sip of sin.

And so as we ask God to forgive our sins during Lent, we should also ask him to help us struggle against the temptation to sin so that we can enjoy the freedom he came to bring us.

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17  • 

   

Psalm 51:1-17  • 

   

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10  • 

   

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21