I’m not talking about the red phone in the Oval office. I’m asking you to think about the nature of 3 a.m. phone calls for those of us who don’t have a staff of trained advisors, armies to mobilize or weapons to deploy. Have you ever made a 3 a.m. phone call? Have you ever received a 3 a.m. phone call? Take a few seconds and think about what it was like.

As a pastor, you might think that I’ve received my fair share of such late night interruptions. I think that’s one of the mystiques of my profession. Pastors typically have the reputation either of being on call 24 – 7 or of only working ½ day a week on Sunday mornings. Those who see the clergy as a never-ending job tend to think that every phone call is an emergency. From my perspective, it’s not so much so. But I do count on interruptions. I want to be notified of important events in the lives of people or in the business of the church. However, the true emergency phone calls are rare, and the ones that happen in the wee hours of the night are the kind where the adrenalin kicks in super fast.

It’s 3 a.m. and the phone starts ringing…

Even as a heavy sleeper, I jump to the sound of a late night phone – only because I know what kind of news happens at that time of the night. It’s never good. At 3 a.m., most people are sleeping soundly, or if not they’re flipping through channels or counting sheep – not picking up the phone. Calls at 3 a.m. come from people who have just received bad news or who cannot breathe in the situation they are currently in. Calls at 3 a.m. come from police stations and emergency rooms. Calls at 3 a.m. announce that what you assumed to be true is no longer true. At 3 a.m. I’ve heard from the angry crying spouse of a recently convicted drug dealer. I’ve been called to do a walk-through of the church with the police when they found the church doors wide open and thought vandals had been inside. At other more reasonable times, I’ve receive d the other emergency calls about an approaching death, or about test results, or about a terrible car accident.

The phone rings and the person on the other end of the call is reaching out for help. Who’s going to answer that call? Emergency responders come from all sorts of life roles. The pastor is only one such person. When we find ourselves in a grave situation, we call upon our most important reserves. We contact immediate family, best friends, and a very close circle of people. At 3 a.m., you don’t call everyone you know with your problems – not if you want to keep some of those people on your “five favorites” list. Instead, you call the people who are capable of addressing the immediate need – be it physical, emotional, or spiritual. You call the people who won’t hang up the phone or let it go to voicemail. You call the ones who loved you before you got the tragic news and that you know wil l be with you as your whole life changes.

In today’s scripture reading, Mary and Martha called Jesus. Their brother Lazarus was nearing death. They could tell their brother had more than just a passing illness. But they also knew Jesus’ reputation for healing. If Jesus came, he might not die. But Jesus was traveling. The story makes it sound like he could have been there in time, but chose not to go. This was Lazarus, someone who had also been like a brother to Jesus. But he dallied on the road. “In God’s good time,” he said.

No wonder there was some anger when he arrived a few days after Lazarus had died and even been entombed. “If you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened.” In times of crisis, we can all rationalize every sort of reason why something should be different. Mary and Martha were just like us in that regard. Now what? Could Jesus do anything now? Their grief was already full blown. They were turning to their Savior. Who was going to answer that call?

Jesus did answer, but he answered in an unexpected way. There aren’t many believable stories out there of people being raised from the dead – even in Holy Scripture. Jesus does more than brew a pot of tea and pat his friends on the head. He calls their brother out of the tomb – to show the glory of God. Well, that it did. It blew away all the onlookers. Not to mention that it was one heck of a weird day for Lazarus.

Jesus does this as recorded in John’s gospel for a particular reason – to show that he not only will be resurrected himself – but so he can make this grandiose theological claim saying, “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” WHAT? It takes one monumental self image to proclaim something as bold as that – unless you really look at the tradition from which Jesus came. If we take a long look back, and since we’re 2000 years past Jesus, we can also a long look forward – resurrection is a lynchpin of the Judeo-Christian narrative. God is always promising life beyond death. For Adam and Eve, it’s life outside the garden. For the Israelites, it’s life outside of slavery in Egypt. For the Hebrew people in exile, it’s a return to life at the center in Jerusalem. For the prophets, it’s a resurgence of God’s justice and mercy. For the disci ples, it’s life found in following a saving Messiah. For Paul, it’s new life after being a persecutor of Christians. I hope you’re getting my point.

One of our familiar lines in worship says, “Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. The old life has gone; a new life has begun.” We pay lip service to this ongoing theme that God rattles around our dead dry bones and causes life to form again. I’m here to tell you today that resurrection happens in the Christian life. Resurrection happens in this particular faith community. But resurrection also brings us face to face with the crisis moments. Resurrection implies that what was dead now lives. We like the “now lives” part – but are reluctant to claim the dead and dying part. This is not life as it always was, but the kind of life that I can only imagine Lazarus had after he walked out of his grave.

Renowned preacher Barbara Brown Taylor shares a story about Reynolds Price, one of her favorite novelists who now writes from a wheelchair after having nearly died some years ago from a rare spinal cancer. Price documented his illness and the healing vision of Jesus that he believes saved him in his autobiographical work, “A Whole New Life.” Then in an interview about his experience he told the Oxford Review, “When you undergo huge traumas in middle life, everybody is in league with us to deny that the old life is ended. Everybody is trying to patch us up and get us back to who we were, when in fact what we need to be told is, ‘You’re dead. Who are you going to be tomorrow?’” (Leaving Church, p.221)

Taylor reminds her readers that “this is the gospel truth – as true of the church as of her members.” Scripture announces repeatedly and boldly that new wine cannot be put in old wineskins. In just a short amount of time, doing so will ruin both the wine and the vessel. The quote from Reynolds Price serves as a poignant reminder of what is revealed in the Christian story, “You’re dead. Who are you going to be tomorrow?”

The crisis moment that, for the individual, is a 3 a.m. phone call is harder to hear in the life of a church – a collection of people at varying stages and ideas about who we are to be. In one sense, the church seems to be in ongoing crisis from the Pauline letters through the Reformation and on to today’s woes about relevance and growth. Maybe that kind of tension is too much to live with. However, particular churches, like people, ebb and flow, with times of clarity and forward movement and then with times of experiencing crisis and the calls to action which follow. The church, like its people, has a time of birth, growth, maturity, and decline. But with recognition of those later stages, an acknowledgement of death, we can also be assured that God has promised resurrection and new life. Mother Church didn’t die – even through periods of historical turmoil and sometimes downright cruelty. New forms of the church arose, and the message of God’s grace to us in times of trouble came through.

“Who are you going to be tomorrow?” It’s an interesting question. Who do we get up to be after our whole world has changed? Who will we be when we follow Lazarus out of the tomb? Who will we be on Easter morning when the power of death is no more? Who will we be as individuals who follow the living Christ? Who will we be as a church that places its faith in God’s power over death? Who are you going to be – tomorrow?

Amen.