March 8 & 9, 2008 - A Heart for People: Tender Heart

A Heart for People: Tender HEART

by Randy Spleth, Senior Minister

March 8 & 9, 2008

Text: John 11: 1- 45

Weekly Bible Study: Bible Study Blog

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It is all about response time. If you are having a heart attack, the operative time is 90 minutes. It is hard to live in Indianapolis without knowing this. Last summer, St. Francis Hospital and the Indiana Heart Physicians published a paper about the response time to a type of heart attacked called ST-segment myocardial infarction, or an attack caused by a completely blocked heart artery. The recommended response time for emergency angioplasty is 90 minutes but in the United States only one in three patients receives treatment this quickly.

St. Francis established a new protocol called EHART. EHART stands for Emergency Heart Attack Response Team. This new protocol is so effective it is being sent all over the world. They significantly reduced the response time from entering the hospital to the treatment in the catheterization lab, cutting the average time by 28 minutes. This dramatically improves patient care, reduces the size of the heart attacks and decreases the amount of time spent in the hospital. St. Francis is so proud of this achievement that they ran a two page advertisement in the Indianapolis Star last Wednesday ( March 6, 2008) demonstrating that when it comes to our country’s hospitals, they are at the top of the list. They are better than the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins or the Cleveland Clinic. They are the quickest to respond.[1]

It is all about response time. We knew this before St. Francis developed their protocol. We know that when a loved one is having a heart attack, you respond quickly. We know that when you hear that someone you love is dying, you don’t delay. There is urgency. Schedules change instantly. You don’t worry about anything else but getting there. You become fixed and focused on your response time.

It is the first thing that is curious about this story. Word comes that Lazarus is ill. This is someone whom Jesus loves. His response time is poor. He doesn’t drop everything and head immediately to Bethany to be with Lazarus. Clearly the message would not have been sent to Galilee if it wasn’t urgent. The disciples understand what this message means. Lazarus is about to die but Jesus waits two days. It feels cold hearted. I like a tenderhearted Savior. I know I’m influenced by Fanny Crosby’s hymn. Do you remember it? “Jesus is tenderly calling me home, tenderly calling today.” What do you make of the bad response time? Why did he wait? It feels calloused and coldhearted.

Verse four provides an explanation but one that is equally cold if taken at face value. “But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (John 11:4) Surely Jesus isn’t saying he was waiting until Lazarus dies so that he could raise him from the dead and get credit for the miracle.

It is the first clue that something larger is at hand than a story about a friend dying and Jesus raising him from the dead. There is nothing about Jesus that is coldhearted or self-serving. The story reveals this; in fact, it shows how tenderhearted our Savior is. This is the third lengthy narrative from the gospel of John in as many weeks. It is forty-five verses layered with clues about what is ahead for Jesus and his disciples. If the story was simply about raising Lazarus, it could be accomplished in a few verses.

When it comes to the Bible in general, and specifically to the gospel of John, it is important to remember that taking scripture at face value may mislead you. This sermon series has addressed this each week as we recognize that the Bible seldom uses the word heart to mean the physical organ that is pumping blood through your veins right now. Rather, in the Bible, the heart is the spiritual center of your being, your core personality which goes deeper than conscious acting, feeling or thinking. There are over a thousand references to this heart and if, when you read them, you think of the physical heart addressed by the EHART protocol, you’ll miss the point.

We know this because we use the word “heart” to describe something other than our physical organ. Some of the expressions of the Bible resonate with modern heart expressions. When Paul writes “…be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32), we know that he isn’t talking about the physical heart. When we read in 1st Peter, “Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (1 Peter 3:8), we know he is talking about our spiritual center, our core values as followers of Christ. This is who Jesus was. He had a heart for people. This makes it hard to understand why he waits two days and lets Lazarus die.

Let me point you to the deeper truth. In the gospel of John, whenever there is language about glorifying the Son, it is John’s way of speaking of Jesus’ death and return to God. Jesus says, “the Son of God may be glorified through it (Lazarus’ death)” (John 11:4b). Jesus is saying the death of Lazarus is going to lead to his death and it does. The raising of Lazarus creates such an uproar in Jerusalem that the city’s leaders were disturbed, “so from that day on they planned to put him (Jesus) to death” (John 11:53). Jesus waits for two days not because he is coldhearted. It is because he is tenderhearted. He knows that Lazarus is going to die. He knows that he will raise him from the dead and he knows what will happen because of this miracle. The news is more than he can bear; it overwhelms his tender heart. He takes a couple of days because Jesus knows the end is near.

John as much as says this in the next scenes. As Jesus arrives in Bethany and talks to the sisters of Lazarus, Jesus “was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” (John 11:33b) Again, at face value this makes sense. It is hard to have a heart for people and not feel their pain. In one of my congregations I had a woman who worked for a month in a funeral home. She seemed to have all of the gifts. She was as kind and tenderhearted with a heart for people. But she was so sensitive that when she saw people grieve, she would grieve with them. She couldn’t help herself. She would weep with the mourners to the point that she couldn’t perform the duties of her job.

I can understand this. There are times when performing a funeral, the grief of those around me greatly disturbs my spirit and deeply moves me. I understand these feelings but I don’t understand them in Jesus. He knows he is about to raise Lazarus from the dead. So being “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” cannot be about Mary and Martha and those grieving. He is about to give Lazarus back to them.

Once again, look more carefully at the text. Jesus asked “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see” (John 11: 34). “Come and see” is like “glorifying the Son.” It’s more of John’s code language. “Come and see” is the language used to call people to follow Jesus, to invite people into Jesus’ world. In the gospel of John, he doesn’t say to his first disciples “drop your nets,” he says, “come and see.” When the reluctant potential follower Nathaniel says to Philip, “‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see’” (John 1: 36) The woman at the well, whose heart was enlarged by Jesus, leaves her water jar, runs back into the village and says, “Come and see.” Always come and see is about following Jesus, about entering his world and seeing what he has to offer. Until this time, it is always an invitation to others about Jesus. This time it goes the other way. This time, Mary and Martha say to Jesus, come into our world, “come and see” and the response is “Jesus wept” (John11:35).

I know that wasn’t what was read but it is the way it should be read. I do not know what the translators of the New Revised Standard Version Bible were thinking when they changed the verse to read “Jesus began to weep.” Maybe they didn’t like John 11: 35 being the answer to a trivia question, “What is the shortest verse in the Bible?” Maybe they were like that sensitive church member, so tenderhearted that they couldn’t stand the pain of the raw emotion of “Jesus wept.” In every other translation, it is “Jesus wept.”

Come into our world Jesus. Come and see what we are dealing with. Come and see all of our struggles, all our disappointments, all our failed dreams, all our shattered hope, all our pain and suffering and yes, come and see our death. “Come and see. Jesus wept.”

God sent Jesus into the world not just to save us from our sins but to identify in every way with being human, to understand the struggles that we have in this world. Our Savior is caring and tenderhearted because he was fully human, because he walked in our shoes.

In every life there is disappointment over things that don’t go as planned or people who let you down. In your life and mine, there is shame, for things we shouldn’t have done; there is humiliation we didn’t deserve. You and I have been betrayed by people we thought loved us or were loyal to us. And you cannot live this life without experiencing the pain and suffering of the death. “Come and see. Jesus wept” because he knows that the next few weeks of his life he will experience disappointment, shame, humiliation, betrayal, pain, suffering even death. This story foreshadows the days ahead; it points to what Jesus will experience.

There is an image that I have in my mind, one that I’ve seen before but I cannot locate a copy of it. It’s of a homeless man lying on a dirty city street. Above his head a brick wall, the graffiti reads, “Jesus wept.” “Yes, that’s right,” I thought. There are so many places it can be written, in our world and in your life. Scrawl it with a crayon on the hallway of an orphanage: Jesus wept. Tattoo it on the arm of the abusive husband striking his wife. Jesus wept. Embroider it on every hospice pillow. Jesus wept. Spray paint it on rubble in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. Jesus wept. Nail it on the posts outside the refugee camps in Darfur. Jesus wept.

Screen it on the t-shirts of the couple fighting over children. Jesus wept.[2] If you have an open heart, if you have a heart for people, there will be tears. Jesus wept. Of course he did and does. We have a tenderhearted Savior who in everyway understands the world we live in.

They take Jesus to the tomb and he asks them to move the stone. Then, “he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go’” (John 11:43-44). They must have done this but John doesn’t report it. He doesn’t tell us what Lazarus said or how he responded to Jesus or who untied him. The only thing we know is that a couple of weeks later, Jesus dines at his house. Lazarus is at the table. It seems to me that if this story was about raising Lazarus, we would have at least heard a word from him, a “thank you” or a “praise God.” Maybe because John has so many other things going on in this story, images of the death and resurrection of Jesus and a description of the nature of Jesus heart, maybe, just possibly, this last part of the story is as much about you and me as it is Lazarus. Let me explain.

Over the past five weeks of preaching on this theme, I have continued to ask myself and you, this question. “Do I have a heart for God and a heart for people? “Do you have a heart for God and a heart for people?” I like to think I do but I also know this. When you have a heart for people, there will be tears. A heart for people is a vulnerable heart, it’s tender. It is tender enough to hurt for others but it is also tender enough to be hurt by others. Sometimes my heart becomes so tender from caring so much that it hurts. My response is to bind it up, insulate my heart as surely as I’m wrapped up like Lazarus. When that happens, I find myself in a place of death, not a place of life.

I think that happens to you too. You want to have a heart for people, you want to be perceived as a tenderhearted person, but sometimes your heart is so tender, you can’t stand the thought of it being touched again. So you bind it up, bandage it like Lazarus and retreat to a protected place where you think you are safe. But a heart that is bound up, protected from people isn’t a place of life. It’s a tomb.

So if that image resonates with you like it does me, you’ll agree that just maybe this story is as much about the new life Jesus offers us as it is the new life he offers Lazarus. That means when he is calling, he’s not just calling Lazarus to come out. He’s calling your name, tenderly calling you today, to come out of that place of death and unbind your heart and go. And how shall you go? You know the answer by now. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).