Click play to listen:
The song I shared in today’s episode is also available here.
Transcript
Episode 2.08 When Jesus Asks You to Reopen a Tomb
(Musical intro)
Intro: Welcome to the Encounter Jesus podcast, also known as the ‘feel like Jesus is hugging you today’ podcast. I’m Elizabeth Ellynshaw, and today we are continuing our discussion of the death and resurrection stories that God writes in our lives, as displayed in the story of my favorite Bible character, Mary of Bethany, who is always found at Jesus’ feet. It is in Jesus’ interaction with this Mary, as she was weeping at His feet over the death of her brother, that Jesus revealed His emotional side to all if us. It is in her story that we find that famous two word Bible verse, “Jesus wept.”
But today we press a little further on into the story and find that Jesus did more than just weep the tears of God with Mary as she cried. He also called her into the risk of resurrection. After Jesus and Mary had a good cry together, He gently led her back to the tomb, and asked for it to be opened. This was a huge risk. As Martha pointed out, Lazarus had been dead for four days and should be decaying and smelling bad by now. Why would you reopen a tomb like that? We all know what life experience tells us: dead people in tombs always stay dead.
If Jesus asks you to do something that all your life experience up until now contradicts, do you do it?
If, like Peter, we’ve fished all night and caught nothing, do we go back in because Jesus says to try again?
There are tombs in our lives that we don’t want to open by ourselves. There are things that are dead and rotting and will only cause more pain and problems if we reopen them. But everything is different when Jesus is initiating and leading the process. Revisiting moments of trauma is different when Jesus is holding your hand. Going back to a person we had a painful relationship with to ask for or offer forgiveness is different when Jesus is leading you to do it. When Jesus takes you by the hand and says, “Lead me back to that place where you got hurt and open it up and show Me,” it won’t be like it was when we went alone. Mary and Martha didn’t go around opening up tombs and pulling out rotting corpses. But when Jesus said, “take Me there. Take Me back to the yucky place, the scary place, the place of the worst memories. Show it to Me. Open it to Me. Give Me access to it. Let Me do something for you here,” they took the risk of letting Him into that place. And they certainly had no regrets!
(Musical transition)
Prayer: Lord of resurrection, Jesus, the resurrection and the Life, we welcome you to step into our stories today and change everything. I pray for the person listening to this right now that whatever step of risk, of faith, of trust, of courage that You are asking them to take in order to receive what You want to do next in their story, that they will have the faith Mary and Martha had to do it, and that through it, they will see just how good You are. In Jesus’ name, amen.
(Musical transition)
Content: I don’t have much to say today. I think this part of the story speaks for itself. This story doesn’t end with Jesus and Mary weeping. This story ends with Mary laughing her head off as she tries to get Lazarus out of the grave clothes and get his head free so Martha can give him a snack and get his arms free so she can give him a hug. This story ends with a holiday, a kind of holiday we don’t know how to celebrate yet, because we’ve had so little experience. We have lots of traditions for birthdays, and lots of traditions for death days, but we don’t have any traditions for celebrating resurrection days because they’ve hardly ever happened yet. But the day is coming when we will all have a resurrection day to celebrate, as well as a birth day and a death day to remember, and Jesus gave this family a taste of that.
I also see how important it was that Jesus chose a trusted friend with strong faith to trust with the story of resurrection instead of just healing, because the people who don’t want to believe in Jesus actually plot to try to kill Lazarus to suppress the evidence. The proof is so undeniable, you either have to believe Jesus is Lord or try to get Lazarus back in that tomb again. Interestingly, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha don’t seem to be that troubled by this. Once you’ve experienced death and resurrection, what’s left to be afraid of?
But in order to receive the gift of resurrection, they had to open the tomb. In order to get their happy ending, they had to trust and obey. They had to take a risk to get a resurrection. Not because Jesus was mean and holding out on them, but just because that’s what letting Lazarus out required. Jesus doesn’t ask us to do any difficult things because He’s mean. But sometimes, holding tight to His hand and letting the light shine into a dark and scary place and make it not so scary anymore is the only way forward.
So I’ve had Jesus remind me of this moment in the story of Mary of Bethany and her family when I had to go back and face things I was afraid of, like relationships in knots of conflict that I couldn’t untie or memories of pain that I couldn’t make better, and let Jesus show me what He could do when He was the one leading me to show it to Him. And do I need to say those famous words, “and He did it!” To tell you that He really was able to take the situations I couldn’t do anything about except leave them sealed off like a tomb, and He could and did make it better beyond my wildest dreams?
In the midst of those experiences, I wrote another song about this moment in Mary’s life in Bethany and the courage it takes to expect something from Jesus that you’ve never experienced before. I’ll play it for you here, again recorded with the help of my friend on the guitar. I clung to this song and sang it over and over and over again when I was afraid. I pictured, as the song says, that Jesus had wrapped the weeping Mary up in His hug as He called out the words of power, ‘Lazarus come out!’ and that she could feel Jesus arms around her, feel His chest and His ribcage rising and falling under her ear as He spoke, feel as well as hear the command of resurrection emerging from the One who speaks to raise the dead. I clung to that picture of that feeling of security in His arms and intimacy with Him in the moment of resurrection. I hope that the picture in this song of being hugged by Jesus as He commands the dead to rise again, that picture of security and safety and intimacy with Jesus in the moments that might feel scary as death turns into resurrection, may help you too in any moments where you need it most. Remember, Jesus is here and the story isn’t over yet!
You wept with me
I wept with You
Outside this tomb
Where You had not come
But now You’re here, You say,
“Roll this stone away.”
But he’s been dead four days…
And I say, “Lord, don’t You know what we’ll smell?”
And You say “Child, didn’t I say what you’d see?
The glory of God
If you believe?”
I thought I knew what to expect of tombs.
The dead rot there, and that is all.
But who knew what to expect of You?
The dead come back to life when You call,
The dead come back to life when You call.
Lord, I never come here
Because there’s nothing I can do.
What do I do with what You said?
It’s dark in there! He’s dead!
And it’s creepy! And it’s scary!
And…. It’s You.
And I trust You.
And now I’m sitting on the grass
In the circle of Your arms
Watching as they roll the stone away.
I lean my ear against Your chest
I hear Your heartbeat giving rest
I feel the rumble in Your ribcage as You say,
“Lazarus! Come forth!”
I thought I knew what to expect of tombs.
The dead rot there, and that is all.
But who knew what to expect of You?
The dead come back to life when You call,
The dead come back to life when You call.
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