Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
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Original Manuscript:
In C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, four children journey into the mystical land of Narnia as the White Witch gains control. One of the children, Edmund, betrays his brother and sisters and joins the White Witch. While he returns to his family with the help of Aslan, the lion, the White Witch still lays claim on him. Aslan takes Edmund's place, and she puts him to death at the Stone Table. Without Aslan to help, it all seems hopeless. The White Witch will continue to reign in Narnia with no one powerful enough to stop her.
The two sisters, Susan and Lucy, are there with Aslan at the end. They keep vigil with his body until the sun rises. They walk for a bit to mourn until they hear a great crack. They run bad, worried that the followers of the White Witch have done something with Aslan's body.
When they return, Aslan's body is gone, and as the wonder at this, they turn around to find Aslan, alive once more.
They ask how this is even possible, and Aslan says this: "the Witch knew the Deep Magic but there is a magic deeper still which she did not know.... If she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned,.... She would have know that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."
In using something old, Aslan is working something new. That is what we hear about this morning.
For in the new heaven and the new earth mentioned in The Revelation of St. John the Divine, we hear that God will do the very thing spoken of in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, that He would wipe every tear away, and that He will comfort us in all our sorrow.
But in the old, those things planned long before we knew them, God is now, as we hear in Revelation, "making all things new."
What God is working new is what we see in our Lord Jesus Christ through the Gospel this morning. His dear friend Lazarus is dead, and for Lazarus' family and friends, that is the end of the matter. But Jesus does something they would never have expected. He calls out to Lazarus and death starts to work backwards. Lazarus rises to live a new life, a resurrected life.
The irony is that this is the miracle that helps seal Jesus' fate. It leads the religious leaders to bring Jesus to trial, and to assure that He Himself is put to death.
But through that death, Death itself really is able to work backwards. Through His death, Jesus is able to work something new in this world, and what He is working is for us.
Jesus' death paves the way for us back to God. It is what allows us, as Revelation tells us, to have God dwell within us. What God has done is to give us back our bond with Him. God is giving Himself, and thus giving us that which brings us life, and hope, and peace.
God has given us the tools to make us all saints. For the saints are not those who are the best of the best. They are not the ones who live a perfectly moral and just life. Jesus has taken care of righteousness because we never could.
What makes us saints is that we are the ones who belong to God. We are the ones that God gives life to. We are the ones with whom God dwells.
God is working something new in the world. God is working something new for us, and we should let Him. So be willing to let God in. Be willing to be saints of God.