“And Jesus said, I am the resurrection and I am life.  If a man has faith in me, even though he die, he shall come to life; and no one who is alive and has faith shall ever die.”

John 11:25-26 (N.E.B.)

One of the most obvious changes that I notice having taken place at Idlewild since I retired five years ago are the security measures that have been adopted for the protection of the building and the people.  I see a lot more locks on doors.  I hear about more rigid rules for scheduling activities and of greater care taken in many ways to safeguard property and human life here at Idlewild Church.

But of course, this is not a problem peculiar to Idlewild.  I read in the local press and in church papers and bulletins from various congregations across the whole city of deplorable acts of vandalism, theft, and even violent atrocities committed against people in church buildings.  This is symptomatic of a general cultural change affecting our society where homes and businesses, as well as schools and churches, find it necessary to inaugurate tighter security measures.

When I called a friend two or three weeks ago to tell him of my distress at hearing that his home had been burglarized, he quickly replied, “It’s good of you to be concerned and to call, but all our losses are replaceable.”

My friend’s remark reminds me of that more urgent security we all seek above all else – security for life itself.  What about security from accidental death – an automobile or airplane crash?  What about security from death by one of those unapprehendable mystery killers like heart attack, cancer, or stroke?

But even if we escape accidents and cancer and heart disease and the rare mystery killers who take us away before our three score years and ten, there is still that enemy the natural aging process, however slowly it may operate in our case, that is relentlessly grinding on from birth to maturity to decline and death and corruption and dissolution.  Are there possibly any security measures to safeguard that most precious possession we have – life itself?

It is to just such crucial, ultimate life security that Jesus’ startling statement points in our text this morning: “I am the resurrection and I am life.  If a man has faith in me, even though he die, he shall come to life; and no one who is alive and has faith shall ever die.”  It is this ultimate life security which is the crown jewel of the Christian faith and the main theme of the Lenten season which climaxes on Easter Sunday.

C.H. Dodd said, “Resurrection is the reversal of the order of mortality – an order in which life always hastens toward death.  The Hellenistic society of the first century to which the Gospel of John was directed was haunted by the spectacle of _____ – ‘Corruption’, or ‘perishableness,’ or ‘decomposition,’ the process by which all things pass into nothingness, and which engulfs all human existence.  It was a large part of the appeal of Christianity that it gave assurances of a divine principle of ______________ – ‘life-making’ implanted within the historical process and countering the reign of _______ .  This assurance was grounded upon an instance in which resurrection actually took place.  Christ overcame death by dying.” (The Fourth Gospel on text by C.H. Dodd)

The incident of the death and resurrection of Lazarus is a further illustration of the intrusion of this life security measure into human experience.  Word is brought to Jesus about his friend, Lazarus, who is gravely ill.  Jesus delays going to him.  When Jesus finally arrives at Bethany Lazarus has died and been buried four days.  The sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, each greet Jesus with the same words – words which William Temple says they have undoubtedly been saying over and over to each other ever since their brother died: “Master, if only you had been here, our brother would not have died.”  Here is a measure of their affection and their faith in Jesus as a healer and giver of life.

But Jesus responds: “Your brother will rise again.”  And Martha, good Pharisee that she is, believing in the ultimate resurrection of the dead, said: “I know that he will rise again in the last day.” But Jesus responds, “Not just that, Martha.  Now your brother will rise. . . I am the resurrection and I am life.  If a man has faith in me, even though he die, he shall come to life; and no one who is alive and has faith shall ever die.”

Jesus brings the new imperishable quality of life to man – eternal life – the kind of life that resides in God, the giver of all life.  This life can never be destroyed by death.

The Johannine writings present this amazing life security measure as available for everyone under three descriptive characterizations which, if we are to possess such security, we must understand clearly and apprehend for ourselves.

First, eternal life is the gift of God through Christ.  It is not achieved by anyone, nor is it the universal natural equipment of human beings in this lost and dying world.  It is the gift of God through Christ to those who will receive it.  “I am the resurrection and I am the life,” says Jesus.  “No man cometh unto the father but by me.”

In a religious service held on the eve of the trial of “the Catonsville Five” in Baltimore some years ago during the Vietnam War, William Stringfellow, a Christian attorney, made a talk.  In his remarks, he deplored what appeared to him in those stressful times as a destruction of “due process,” the eroding of civil liberties, the absolutizing of federal powers, and the militarizing of the police.  And then he concluded with these words:

“Remember, now, that the state has only one power it can use against human beings: death.  The state can persecute you, prosecute you, exile you, execute you.  All of these mean the same thing, the state can consign you to death.  The grace of Jesus Christ in this life is that death fails.  There is nothing the state can do to you or me which we need to fear.”

Some silence followed these remarks. Then there was an ovation which, Stringfellow confessed, surprised him until a friend pointed out that what the people were applauding was the failure of death.

Second, the Johannine writings present this life security measure not only as the free gift of God through Christ, but as a possible present possession.  Over and over in the fourth Gospel it is made clear that “the real moment of transition to the new order of being in which there is perpetual life security is not the moment of physical death, but the moment of spiritual rebirth. . . When in this life a person comes to know God a far more radical change has taken place in his soul than will take place when he passes from this life with God on earth to the admittedly much fuller life with God in the world beyond.” (The Life Everlasting – John Baillie)

Frederick W. Robertson declared from his Brighton pulpit on Easter Day in 1853:  “There are men in whom the resurrection begun makes the resurrection credible.  In them the spirit of the risen Saviour works already; and they have mounted with him from the grave. . . Their step is as free as if the clay of the sepulcher had been shaken off; and their hearts are lighter than those of other men; and there is in them an unearthly triumph which they are unable to express.  They have risen above the narrowness of life, and all that is petty, and ungenerous, and mean.  They have risen above fear – they have risen above self. . . The resurrection in all its heavenliness and unearthly elevation has begun within their souls and they know as clearly as if they had demonstration, that it must be developed in an eternal life.” (Ibid.)

Carl Walter told me that, as he sat by his father in Jackson, Mississippi, during the last hours of his father’s earthly life, his father’s breathing became very difficult and speaking was almost impossible.  With great effort his father said, “Carl, simple.”  And he repeated it several times, with emphasis, “Simple, Simple.”  Carl said he wasn’t sure whether his father meant that he wanted the funeral to be plain and simple; or whether he was saying that he was finding the transition through the experience of death simple, or whether he was affirming that the essential values and choices of this life are really quite clean cut and simple.  But Carl said he knew how appropriate his father’s word was for any of these aspects of his life of faith and obedience.

Carl’s words reminded of that day I saw Bland Cannon during Larry Kinney’s last illness.  Bland said, “I’ve just come from a visit with Larry and he told me: “Bland, I’m drawing near to the end of this life and I have discovered that I am the man that I thought I was.”

The ultimate Christian security measure of living this life in the faith of Jesus Christ is God’s free gift of Eternal life as a present possession now, and every step of the way.

But there is a third, clear, descriptive characterization of this life security measure in the Gospel of John: not only is it the gift of God through Christ, not only is it received now, but it is of such an order that to be effective in one’s life now it must be poured out as an offering to God.  This is the real meaning “of believing in Christ” and “having faith in Him.”  This is the actualizing and the validating of that oft-quoted scripture promise: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and ye shall be saved.” Anything less is sorcery.

The Old Testament story of David and his three warrior chieftains points us the way.  These three loyal comrades in arms heard their commander, in a nostalgic reverie one night, sigh: “Oh, that someone would give me once more water to drink from the well by Bethlehem’s gate.”  And the three heroes left their safe place of hiding in the hills above Bethlehem, fought their way through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well at Bethlehem’s gate, recrossed the deadly enemy line, and brought to their beloved leader with bleeding hands water from the well in Bethlehem.  But the scripture story tells that when David saw what his brave, devoted men had done for him, he would not drink it.  “Is it not the very blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their lives?” cried David.  He would not drink it, but as the record runs, he poured it out as an offering to God.

Each of us knows in his own heart how we have been brought the good waters of life by those who went in jeopardy of their lives that our wishes and well-being might be served: our parents’ sacrificial daily drudgery endured, teachers who patiently persisted through our unresponsive lethargy, very young warriors who perished in the defense of our precious freedoms, underpaid domestics, police officers — yes – “the fuzz” – “the pigs” – who daily risk their lives to maintain some semblance of order in which we live our protected lives.

But all this is nothing – only a shadowy symbol of the deed of that brave, loving, courageous Son of God who fought his way through to the gates of hell and came back again, and with bleeding hands put before us the chalice of the water of life everlasting.

What your life and mine is all about is meeting every moment, every person, every event – tragic or beatific – with an awareness of its sacramental nature – seeing that it is all given in the goodness of God, stained with the blood of the savior – to be handed on with the love of Christ, illumined by the mind of Christ, guided by the obedience of Christ to the Father’s will.  This is the pouring out of the gift of life unto God.  This is believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and so finding salvation.

And, of course, this is no small task, no automatic action on our part.  And how can it become a realization for us?

In his lifetime Sir Walter Scott always stopped his carriage on top of Bemersyde Hill to admire the view.  It is said that his horses out of habit did the same when they were pulling his hearse to the funeral.  It has become known as “Scott’s View.”

Our dumb human nature, always called by St. Francis, “Brother Ass,” needs, oh so much, to have made as habitual as possible our viewing of the noblest vista of the life eternal along the roadway of our life.  We must bring the whole carriage of our life to a complete stop, now and then, to drink in the beauty of life eternal in Jesus Christ.  St. Paul put it this way:  “We all. . . beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, transfigured by the spirit of the Lord into his own image.”

I take it that the planning committee for all the Lenten services for the Idlewild congregation have this pre-eminently in mind, that we be afforded every opportunity to view that noblest vista of the life eternal contained in the life, teachings, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright believed that we take with us into the other life beyond — as immortal and imperishable from this life — just those moments, those encounters with others, where we are wholly there in concentration of thought, in meeting spirit with spirit our fellow human beings, and in focusing our best and highest emotions on that moment of time.  These are the imperishables, she believed, and that all else vanishes into nothingness. I can accept Mrs. Wright’s principle as valid, if there is added the New Testament insight of being there with the Living Christ, His love, His saving purposes for the world.  Then our moments, which may have in themselves no more substance than soap bubbles, become strung together on an unbreakable silver string as eternity’s pearls of great price.