If someone asked you, could you say what was the “high point” of your life?

Could you define the moment you reached the peak, the pinnacle, the top of the heap, “A-number 1”?

That’s probably so broad that it’s too difficult. Maybe if you broke the question down, some moments might begin to come to mind. What was your best job? Perhaps the high point of your school experience. Maybe the best meal you ever ate. Or your best sports moment.

I can pinpoint with absolute certainty the high point of my baseball pitching career. This is not too difficult, because the only pitching I ever did in a game was to three batters my freshman year in high school.

And let me tell you, it was a high point!

We were getting killed, so there was no point in wearing out one of our real pitchers. So I got the call for one inning of work.

My very first pitch to the very first batter got him out. He popped up, and somebody made the catch easily. And then…and then…I struck out the next two guys I faced!

Yes, my career stats as a pitcher are a 0.00 ERA, no hits, no errors, no one reached base, and I struck out 67% of the batters I faced.

Why, you may rightly ask, am I not making millions of dollars as a pitcher in the big leagues today?

Because my high point as a pitcher was at the same time the exact moment when everybody realized I would never, ever be a real pitcher.

What I neglected to mention was how the last two guys struck out. I was so slow that the first guy’s swing was literally almost finished before the ball even got to the plate. I’m serious. My catcher started laughing so hard that the umpire started to laugh.

The next pitch, the guy had started to get my timing. Fortunately, he was still ahead of me, so he pulled it foul.

No, that doesn’t quite describe it. The guy hit the ball farther than we had seen a ball get hit that year. Like I said, it was foul, but when it went past the fence it was at least 20 feet in the air. He absolutely crushed it.

I struck him out on a ball that he wanted to hit so badly that I think he stepped on his own tongue as he was drooling, waiting for it to get there.

The very moment where I reached the high point of my pitching career was the exact same moment that we all knew it was over!

Life can be like that. We call it bittersweet, ironic, Murphy’s law, bad karma, all kinds of things. Most of the time, when something really good is happening, right when we’re hitting the top, something else is conspiring to bring us down.

John chapter 11 is like that for Jesus. It’s the height of his power, and the place where the wheels are set in motions to bring him down. What are some of the things you see that show the height of his power? [ASK] That they are going to bring him down? [ASK]

He comes to the absolute pinnacle, the height of his miracles in ministry: he calls a man who has been dead for 4 days out of his tomb and returns him to new life with his family. Jesus shows absolute power over supposedly unconquerable death.

And right at the height of power, right at the moment where he does without a doubt what only God can do, he gets a death sentence.

This is the turning point in the book of John, the turning point in Jesus’ ministry.

Really smart people who study this stuff call the first half of John the “Book of signs,” signs that Jesus does to show us he and the Father are one, signs that are to lead us to believe and to follow him.

Raising Lazarus from the dead is the biggest sign, the crescendo of the book of signs.

Those same smart people call the second half of the book of John the “Book of glory,” the part of the book where God’s glory flows all over and through Jesus.

But it’s a weird kind of glory. It’s hard to understand. It’s a glory that seems to come out of failure, out of sacrifice. There isn’t a straight path to a happy ending.

The very people who are with Jesus struggle to understand.

Would you open your bibles to John 11? As you look at it now, or as you remember it from reading this week, who are some of the people who misunderstand Jesus? [ASK]

The disciples are playing their usual bumbling selves. Go to Judea? That didn’t work out so well last time, Jesus, what are you thinking? Lazarus is sleeping? Good! We’ll stay away and let him get some rest!

Martha misunderstands. Jesus is trying to clue her in to the fact that he’s going to exceed her wildest hopes, and she does her best to not get it. “Yes, yes, I know, we’ll all be resurrected at the end.” “No! No! Not the stone! It’s gonna smell!”

But in the very middle of these misunderstandings, there are some amazing jewels that shine brightly.

Martha calls Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who has come into the world from God. She speaks out one of the clearest statements of faith in the whole book.

But it’s Thomas that shines the brightest. Not because he figures everything out…he doesn’t. Not because he has great faith and hope…we don’t see that.

No, Thomas shines the brightest because of his courage and his choice in the face of the little bit he DOES understand.

What Thomas sees ahead is not the hope of God’s power blazing through Jesus. What Thomas sees is the fact that Jesus barely escaped with his life the last time he went to Judea, and now, after he waited around and let his friend Lazarus die, now for some reason Jesus wants to go back.

Some people see the glass half full, some people see it half empty. Thomas can’t even find the glass!

Does God ever seem that perplexing to you?

Do you look at your life sometimes, desperately waiting for Jesus to show up and do something, daring to hope that you might be his friend like Mary and Martha and Lazarus, daring to hope that Jesus might come and break in and do something in your life…but instead, things just seem to go from bad to worse?

The person you love DOES die. The layoff you were fearing DOES come. The test results come back, and it IS your worst nightmare.

Have you felt like the two sisters, asking Jesus for help, and then helplessly watched your world fall apart before there’s any sign of Jesus?

Have you felt like Thomas, wondering why Jesus doesn’t act, and then hearing something from Jesus that makes absolutely no sense and has no hope?

Most of us have been there.

Most of us have experienced what it’s like to have Jesus seemingly wait too long, what it’s like for hope to die…what it’s like for the crying to start.

That’s where Thomas shines as our bright example. It’s right in that moment…that moment of grief when all his hopes for who Jesus could have been have died…it’s right in that moment that Thomas models for us what it means to truly be a disciple, to truly be one who follows Jesus.

“Let’s go, too–and die with Jesus.”

The glass may be worse than half empty; the glass may be completely gone and out of my sight.

But I know, says Thomas, I know that I must go with Jesus. Even if I have to die with him, my place is at his side.

What is it that Jesus says right before Thomas has his shining moment? [ASK]

“This is going to give you another chance to believe in me.”

Following Jesus often pushes us beyond our limits.

To really see the complete power of God in Jesus, to really come to a place of trusting our lives to him and following him no matter what, we often have to go beyond the end of our rope.

Thomas, and probably most of the other disciples, didn’t think this was the entry into the second half of the book. They thought it was the end.

They come to that point of despair and they STILL go with Jesus. If they hadn’t, these disciples wouldn’t have seen Jesus show power over the one thing that conquers every person… death.

“Let’s go too–and die with Jesus.”

Instead of dying with him, they see Lazarus’s death die first.

They watch Jesus love his friends and weep with them. They watch the power of God pull victory from defeat. They watch dead and buried hopes breath again.

Jesus shows that God’s power is beyond any limit or doubt or fear that we see. When the disciples watched Lazarus walk out of the tomb… when they maybe even got to be ones who pulled those grave clothes off of Lazarus…can you imagine the hope and strength and confidence they had in Jesus?

Go and die with him? Who needs to fear death?!? Through despair and fear, they have come to a deeper understanding of who Jesus is than ever before.

They have followed Jesus through the fear of death to unimagined hope in his power.

And it’s this very act of power and hope that seals Jesus’ fate with the Jewish leaders.

"The Jews" have been angry with Jesus already, but now Caiaphas, the chief priest, makes it clear that it is only Jesus' death that will satisfy.

I love how that part of the story gets told. Caiaphas in his plotting has it all figured out. We’ll just kill this guy causing us trouble, and save the nation. It’s so ironic! What he says is true! Jesus will die as one man to save the whole world, but it’s true in such a different way than Caiaphas could possibly imagine!

Because once again, God’s power is at work in and through Caiaphas, snatching victory from seeming injustice and defeat. God speaks to and works through the very person working against him!

But it’s a difficult victory, isn’t it?

Why does Jesus choose to die? We’ll look at it carefully next week in chapter 12, but we’re forced to begin facing it here.

If Jesus could raise someone from the dead...if he has power over life itself...then there can be no question in our minds that his own death on the cross is only because of his willing choice. For the rest of the book of John, we'll see Jesus willingly choosing to die for humanity's good.

And we, we have to wrestle with Thomas' words, words which are supposed to be our model as disciples: "Let's go, too, and die with Jesus." How do we die with Jesus? What sacrifices are we called to make?

What fears and defeats and times of God seeming to be silent will we have to walk through to see God’s redemptive, healing power? In our time of open worship, let God speak to you through Jesus, and Thomas, and Lazarus, and his sisters. How will you follow Jesus?