Among the self-portraits Jesus sketched in those sayings of His in John's Gospel that begin "I am ..." we come to the word He spoke to Martha on the road outside her house: "I am the Resurrection and the Life."

Her brother Lazarus had died, and clearly, the Lord's purpose in the episode John records in ch.11 was to demonstrate His God-given mastery of death.

News reached Jesus that His friend Lazarus was ill, and John tells us, "So when Jesus heard that he was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was." Even if He had gone at once, He could not have reached Lazarus before he died. When He did arrive, Lazarus had been dead four days; He had delayed only two. The reason? ... so it should be clear beyond all doubt that Lazarus really was dead. He stayed two days longer in the place where he was, and Lazarus died - so that Martha might know ... and Mary ... and the disciples ... and you and me ... that for those who believe in Jesus, death itself is not the last extremity.

Always, Christ can be relied upon to come before we have passed beyond our last extremity. That is the truth. Beyond even death itself, He can be relied upon to come to us, and summon us to stand before His face, and be loosed to live again in freedom.

And so this saying of Jesus requires us to face the fact of death.

You may prefer that the subject were avoided, and I understand very well why you might feel that. But we all must die. In another 60 years or so, every one of us here, save for children, will be only a memory to those then living. The time to prepare for our death is in the midst of life. "It is better," runs an old Chinese proverb, "to light a candle than to curse the darkness."

Into the darkness of death we all must come; so let us seek of God together a lamp to light our way that shall not be put out. Tennyson, in one of his poems, says of a certain character,

He faced the spectres of the mind - and laid them.
Thus he came at length to find a stronger faith his own.

The spectre must be faced, for soon or late, death will reap his harvest of us all.

IT IS A UNIVERSAL REALITY

There is no form of life to which death does not come.
The summer flower must wither at his touch; the fox must meet him in his lair.
He will roam the open places where men fancy themselves free and strong: he will creep up narrow stairs to the lonely aged, and stride through the palaces of kings.
Sometimes he will lash out in seeming fury, striking indiscriminately on every side; sometimes he will come on tip-toe, closing with a gentle touch of his finger the tired eyelids of another sufferer, leaving on their face a quiet smile.
But however he comes, there are none who can escape his final visitation.

Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, had a slave to whom he gave a standing order which was his one duty. Every morning of his life he was to come into the King's presence and address him in a loud voice, no matter what the King was doing; he was to say, "Philip, remember that thou must die."

IT IS A BEWILDERING REALITY

And not only must we face up to death, we must make sense of it if we are to make sense of life. All our talk about the meaning of life is idle chatter unless it takes account of death. Of what use is it to seek for meaning in our life if we can find no meaning in its end?

It is the apparent absence of all meaning in it that makes death so disturbing to us. Far from making sense of life, it seems only to make nonsense of it. It ends it. And in ending life, it seems to end everything of value. "Everything before men is vanity," said the preacher, "since one fate comes to all; to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and unclean, to the religious and the irreligious. As is the good man, so is the sinner; and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that one fate comes to all ..." (Ecclesiastes 9:2-3)

Left to himself, mankind can find nothing else to say in the face of death. It mounts a defiant question mark against all our endeavour. For not only must we die - in the midst of life, we know that we must die. All our dreams, all our striving must come to this one end. To what purpose, then, is our living?

IT IS A TRAGIC REALITY

For man persists in thinking he was not made to die. "He has immortal longings in him." If we are meant to perish, why are we tormented with dreams? Why, above all, are we tormented with love, which makes bereavement our immemorial pain? Where is there any real assurance that death does not reduce all things to a still and empty silence?

THE BIBLE'S ANSWER

There is no doubt of the answer given in the scriptures of the New Testament. Nowhere in all the writings in the world is there found so joyful an assurance that death, though it is admitted to be the last enemy, has no more any final power to hurt us. Paul had a surprising thing to say to his friends in Corinth. He told them: "All things are for your sake, whether Paul or Apollos, or life or death" ... or death? In what sense can death be regarded as "for our sake" ... for our advantage?

Try to face the challenge of this astonishing statement a moment. Death was seen by Paul to be for our good. St Francis of Assissi, you may remember, thanked God for "our bodily sister death." How can death be seen as a thing so good that God is to be thanked for it? If death really is the end of us, then all such talk is nonsense.

But the pages of the New Testament are arustle with two convictions which answer to our deepest needs: the need of assurance and the need for meaning.

Let us attend to them each in turn.

i. Assurance

First, the assurance that death is not the end.

Let us be clear about this. No such assurance is given us - none at all - save the promise of God spoken to us by Jesus: "He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live." Aside from that, we have nothing but a wish, a hunch maybe, backed by nothing better than bits of spooky nonsense in darkened rooms. We have no proof, nor shall we ever have.

All we have is this word of Jesus.

And even that is worthless to us unless we know that He is to be trusted.

To Martha Jesus said, "Your brother will rise again. Do you believe this? He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. Do you believe this?" And in the end, we all must come to stand where Martha stood that day - where there is no-one with us, save Jesus only, and we hear Him say to us, "He who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" Either we do believe, simply because we know that He who says it to us is to be trusted, or we have no protection against our fears.

His Word ... or nothing.

He who speaks that word is the same who Himself died and rose again, and has therefore won the right to say it to us. "I am He who lives, and was dead. And behold, I am alive for evermore. I have the keys of death." (Revelation 1:18) He, as no other, is qualified to make this astonishing claim. "Since we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even so, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep." (I Thessalonians 4:14)

"The hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." (John 5:25)

Yet though Lazarus was raised, and Christ Himself be risen, we have only His Word for it that He will so remember us. His love and His power are beyond dispute ... but His wisdom? Is that beyond dispute? Suppose we do believe Him. What answer does He have for our deeper question about the meaning of death?

Let me try to spell it out.

ii. Meaning

Death, when it comes, reduces us to total helplessness.
When our time comes to die, there is nothing we can do. There is no remedy available to us then - or to anyone - save the remedy that God has promised us in Christ. That remedy is altogether out of our hands, and altogether in His hands. If He should fail us, all is lost.

Why does God allow death to bestride our path like this ... leaving us with nothing but a word, though it be from God? Is this the provision of a loving Father? Is this "for our sake, for our good?"

Yes it is. For death challenges us as nothing else can do to trust God! That is why He allows it to remain. In the face of death, there is nothing left we can do but trust God.

That is why He has given us only His Word. Had He given us any other thing, it would have been that other thing we pinned our faith to - not God Himself. And it is here - right here - that the hidden meaning of our life appears. Death shuts us up to one necessity - the necessity to entrust our selves wholly to God; but so to trust Him is the whole meaning and purpose of life!

To live in whole-hearted reliance upon God as the only supplier of our true good - that is the true law of our being. There is no other way to be whole, now or ever. There is no other way to find meaning in my life.

To live my life trusting God for the continued gift of it ... trusting Him for daily bread, trusting Him for daily light, trusting Him for daily care, trusting Him for daily guidance, trusting Him for the daily task ... this, and this alone, gives meaning to all my life.

Death, by the demand for faith which it makes upon us, lights up as with a great light the whole meaning of our life.

The meaning of my life does not consist in what I can achieve in it, but in what God gives me in it. I can pursue nothing that will yield up to me any true or lasting good that is not pursued in this faith. That is as true in my daily life as it will be at my death. Death therefore does not make nonsense of my life; it illuminates the meaning of my life - which is to walk with my hand in the hand of God, content, like a child, for Him to lead me and protect me and sustain me.

The meaning of life and the meaning of death are both one. Like the bread which nourishes my body's life, the truth which nourishes my spirit unto eternal life can only ever be the gift of God. In life and death, I am dependent for my very being upon God and the steadfastness of His love.

To walk in that faith is to be freed from the fear of death. Life ceases to be a frenzied flight from its overhanging threat: it becomes a calm walk with God toward the lights of home which shine already from beyond the gate of death.

We do not walk that path alone. Christ has already walked it before us, cleared it of all danger, and returned to take us by the hand and lead us in it.

THE WORD OF CHRIST

He comes to us, and speaking in His Father's Name, He says to us, "My child, you must trust me - me. I give you no proof, my child; I give you my Word. There is no proof: there is only I. Come to me, come with me, and all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Peter, or the world, or life or death, or things present or things to come - all are yours as you are mine and I am God's.

"I know the plans that I have for you - plans for your welfare, and not for evil, to give you a future and an eternal hope.
"I have suffered for you, I have died for you, I am risen for you; and in my dying and rising for you I have vanquished all the power of sin and of death so that nothing can harm you while I am at your side: and I will never leave you nor forsake you.
"I command you to believe that my love for you is steadfast and sure. Loving you, I have made my own the burden of all that distresses you - your grief, your pain, your sins, your fears, your bewilderment. I it is who will save you from all these things. I have made your eternal welfare my whole endeavour, and I will bring you home to the security and the splendour of my Father's house.
"Now put your hand in mine, and we shall walk together, fearless, into the opened future. Have I not said to you that if you believe in me you will see the glory of God?
"I am the resurrection and the life. Believe in me, and though you die, yet shall you live.
"Live your life trusting me, believing in me, and you shall never die.
"I am the Bread of Life. I am the True Vine. I am the Light of the World. I am the Way - the True and Living Way. Follow me, and you will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. I am the Resurrection and the Life."

CONCLUSION

Believers in Jesus, when they meet the grim, grinning skeleton of death, do not cower in fear and hide their faces. They smile - for when the light of Jesus and His resurrection shines upon that spectre, then ... the way it happens when the lights come up in a theatre after the spectres have danced in a violet light ... he is seen to be but a painted angel, who opens the gate to a richer life! Death is indeed a blessing.

And remember, the new life we have in Christ was born, with His resurrection, in the tomb of the old. Over the dark horizon of this death-ruled world the light is already shining; soon "the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in His wings," and the morning will grow to perfect day.