It’s easy for Christians to fall into a rut: Church is a thing you do, prayer is a box to check, and faith seems far from “the real world.” This fall we let Jesus himself confront our ruts. “Do you believe this?” he asks (Jn. 11:26).
To believe in Jesus is to experience him. It’s more than logic, argument, and doctrine. It is intimate knowledge of God himself. This fall, let Jesus himself speak to you in his seven “I AM” statements in the gospel of John. How is he changing you? What response is he inspiring in you? To believe in him changes everything.
Invocation
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ponder
Today we ponder the I AM statement: “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” Think about your favorite door – your house, your church, a favorite old building, etc. Ponder all the things that doors do – protect, guard, welcome into a home . . . . How is Jesus a door for you?
Word
John 11:21
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Meditation: If You Had Been Here by Jo Saleska Lange
“Little baby, I’m so sorry for the world we’ve left you to grow up in. I wish things were better.”
These were my sister’s words as she held my newborn son in our hospital room this past July. He’d fallen asleep in her arms, his eyelids pressed into tiny, crinkled crescent moons.
These days, even in our moments of peace, it’s hard not to feel a little hopeless about the way the world is going. We hardly have time to recover from one tragedy before we’re slammed with the next—another war, another disease, another mass shooting, another natural disaster, another frightening diagnosis, another loved one lost.
Death creeps around every corner.
As Christians, we find comfort in the knowledge that when Jesus returns, he will make all things new and perfect. But that knowledge doesn’t do much to extinguish the agony of loss we feel right now, today. Sometimes, I can’t help but wonder where God is amid all the suffering.
Martha wonders, too. “Lord, if you had been here,” she says to Jesus, “my brother would not have died.” When Martha confronts Jesus in John 11, she is in the thick of her grief. Her brother Lazarus has been dead for four days. His body has begun to decay. All hope seems lost.
At first, Jesus’s response to Martha feels a bit like a platitude: “Your brother will rise again,” he says. Like modern day Christians, Martha believes in a future resurrection. She knows that her brother will rise again on the last day. But the promise of future joy does little to ease the suffering she feels today as she mourns the loss of her beloved brother. Martha aches for hope in the present.
And Jesus gives it to her.
“I am the resurrection and the life,” he says.
With these words, Christ reveals something essential about himself: He hasn’t just come to offer hope for a future resurrection. He is resurrection. He is life. And he is present right now, today.
Jesus meets us in our present suffering, too. Just as he weeps with Martha and Mary, he weeps with us. And, in doing so, he draws us into a stronger relationship with him. I love this quote from Rebecca McLaughlin’s Confronting Christianity:
“Jesus knows the end of the story, when he will wipe every tear from our eyes. But this does not stop him from cleaving to us in our pain. In fact, pain is a place of special intimacy with him … We can laugh with anyone. But we cry with those closest to us; and the bond is strongest when their suffering connects with ours.”
Here is our hope in the midst of our suffering: present, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior, our resurrection and our life.
Jesus, when we are suffering, help us always to remember that we do not walk alone in our grief. In times of trouble, let us turn to you. Thank you for the healing you provide now and on the last day. Amen.
Prayer
Jesus, you said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” I often feel left outside, far from you. Bring me in. Welcome me into the home of your presence. Be my door, for you alone are my security. Amen.
Benediction
The Lord preserve us from all evil; the Lord preserve our souls. The Lord preserve our going out and our coming in, from this time forth, and even forevermore. Amen. (Ps. 121:7-8)