I am the Resurrection and the Life
We find (the Resurrection)
Scripture
“When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’”
(John 11:17-27, but read the whole story of Lazarus in John 11:1-44 for the full context of this name of Jesus)
Reflection
You will not find Rochester, Minnesota, on any pilgrim’s map. But the Mayo Clinic is a place of pilgrimage unlike (and like) any other.
People come here from all over the world seeking healing. Often they have exhausted every other option, or spent their life savings chasing hope, and they arrive here on a wing and a prayer. Desperation is a driving force.
The last go first here—the sick, the weak, the old, the young, the dying. Every elevator reads “Please allow patients with wheelchairs to go first,” and everyone does. The city is strewn with wheelchairs: waiting at hospital doors, lining the skyways between buildings, parked outside hotel rooms, pulled into restaurant tables all over town without the staff batting an eye.
Miracles happen here. Everyone has heard a story. Wealthy patients donate plaques, statues, fountains, even whole hospital wings in thanksgiving for healing that happened within these walls. Today’s sick-and-suffering cast a glance at their shining words of gratitude and glory, hope and resurrection—or ignore them as they walk by, drenched in sorrow.
Prayers are pressed on every square inch of the place. You can taste the anxiety, fear, and desperation when you walk among the wounded, but you can also feel—and almost touch—their tsunami force of hope slamming against every wall. Please, please, please.
It is a holy place. A hard and terrible place, but still holy. Things happen here that happen nowhere else. Things happen here that cannot be explained. Healing does not come for everyone, of course, and you know that risky truth when you walk through the gleaming glass doors, wondering will it happen for me?
But hope is enough to bring the masses here. The hope of resurrection and life.