Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26 (NIV)
Do You Believe This
The beds have no color in them at this hour. A man who keeps a garden is out in it before the light, going by the shape of things and by what his hands find, pinching back what needs it, running a thumb along a stem to locate where the wind snapped it. The birds start before he can see. Then the gray lifts off the ground and the beds have color again.
Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He said it out on the road, where Martha had walked out to meet him, and the first thing she’d told him was that if he’d been there her brother wouldn’t have died. She had a resurrection she believed in and she said so plainly: he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. She had the doctrine, and she was standing in the road with it and her brother was dead anyway.
The one who believes in me will live, even though they die. Dying is still going to happen to them, and he promises life past it. Whoever lives by believing in me will never die.
Do you believe this. He put that to a woman with the grief still fresh on her, and he waited, and she answered him: Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world. She had nothing in front of her to go on except the man asking.
Some people are reading this alone today, and for a few of them it’s the first Easter with a chair at the table that stays empty. The woman he asked was in that same position, out on a road, before there was anything to see. He asked her anyway, and he expected her to answer. Today is the day the claim he made on that road held.
The gardener has the whole bed in front of him now. The stem he found by touch is there with the break plain in it, and he can see exactly where to cut. He’ll still be out there at ten with the light all the way up.
A Prayer to Remember
It’s Easter morning, and there’s a question in front of us that you asked a woman on a road. Ask it here. Don’t wait until we’re ready, because we’ve been getting ready for years. Give us her answer, and let us mean it the way she meant it.
In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
