Latest / St. Paul Podcast / Surprise!, 3.22.2026

Transcript

Surprise!, 3.22.2026 · St. Paul Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone and welcome to the St.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Neethammer, Senior Pastor at St.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church, located in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Greater Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right here, each week, you will find beautiful music and a message of hope and good news to guide your life.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am hopeful that this podcast can inspire you and help you on your journey of faith as you grow in love and trust in our God.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: It might be familiar to you, or maybe not, or maybe you have some vague memory or recollection that at least at some point you know Jesus raised someone from the dead.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's so, um, here's the story that we'll hear.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit lengthy, as is often the case with John, who likes to include lots of details in his story.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna hear a slightly kind of abridged, short, shortened version of the story.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And as you listen, I encourage you to try to listen as though you've never heard this story before, whether you have or not.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um like all of this is just brand new information to you.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were any of the people in this story, how do you think you would be feeling as these events are unfolding?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: What might be the dominant emotion you're feeling?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Would it be grief, confusion, hope, excitement, maybe just pure shock, whatever it is, just take note of what stands out to you.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: How you think you might feel as you would experience this firsthand.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're going to come back to unpack that a little bit more.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: But first, here is our story from the Gospel of John, chapter 11.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now a certain man was ill named Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the sisters sent a message to Jesus saying, Lord, he whom you love is ill.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Though Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed back at home.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Martha said, I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: But Jesus replied, I am the resurrection and the life.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: When Jesus saw her weeping, and the friends who had come with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Where have you laid him?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: They said to him, Lord, come and see.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus began to weep.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Then Jesus came to the tomb.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was a cave, a stone was lying against it.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And Martha said to him, Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said to her, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So they took away the stone.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus looked upward and said, Father, I thank you for having heard me.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the dead man came out, his hands and feet unbound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to them, Unbind him and let him go.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, now that we've heard this uh bit intriguing story of Jesus calling Lazarus out from the death and the tomb, let's give some thought to what this story might mean for our own lives of faith.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Take a listen.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, friends, I want to invite you this morning to try to think of the last time you felt surprised.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Surprised, amazed, taken aback, however you want to describe it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: As I was thinking about what I might say, I had a little bit of a tough time coming up with a good answer.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine some of us maybe felt a little bit surprised on Monday as we looked out our window at eight inches of snow on the ground.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: They told us it was coming.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't want to believe it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose that might have been a surprise to some of us.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: When I was doing laundry last week, I was surprised when I opened the dryer to discover someone, I won't name names, left a tissue in one of the pockets.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now there were little bits of Kleenex that I had to pick off of every article of clothing.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: That might have been more annoyed than surprised.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: I might notice it the most right now, living a bit vicariously through our kids, who are delightfully surprised, of course, by all sorts of things.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have been watching some of our favorite movies from when I was little, that I, of course, almost know by heart, but are new to them.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So this past Christmas, we watched The Grinch for the first time.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the kids were both entertained and a little bit distraught by all of the Grinch's antics stealing Christmas, and they were almost in tears when they watched Cindy Lou invite the Grinch into her house for Christmas dinner at the very end of the movie.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Who knew that the Grinch could be loved after all?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: His heart could grow three sizes.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was wonderfully unexpected for these two.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you think about it, I think there's often very little that really surprises us as adults, anyway.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: A good movie or book might keep us in suspense for a little bit.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: There is the occasional surprise party or gift that has some fun planning.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: But surprise isn't typically an emotion we experience with great regularity, anyway.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're generally creatures of habit.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: We more or less know what to expect in the day-to-day or what is expected of us.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're not too often caught off guard, I think.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Which was at least my experience as I sat down this week to read the uh gospel story that I just read for you this morning.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I read that very first line.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now a certain man was ill named Lazarus.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe like you, after hearing just those few couple a couple of words, my next thought was, oh, it's the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I honestly, to admit to you, uh didn't even feel the need to keep reading much of the story to remember some of the fuzzy details of what happens next, because I generally knew the gist.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Lazarus had died, the sisters were distraught and a little bit upset that Jesus didn't arrive sooner.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, he does show up, he raises Lazarus from the dead, he's resurrected.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone rejoices.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: End of the story.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me think that sometimes we are so used to not being surprised by things we already know, stories that maybe are at least somewhat familiar to us, that we completely forget how unexpected, how actually amazing these things really are.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Which is exactly what I think we're tempted to do with a story like this one.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because of course, this is not your average everyday event.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not every day that someone is brought back to life from being dead.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we might know the ending of the story, but Mary and Martha, these sisters or the other friends who are gathered there, they were not expecting a resurrection.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't thinking that Jesus was literally going to bring their brother back from the dead.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine maybe they'd hoped that Jesus would have been there a little bit earlier to console them in their grief, maybe to provide some compassion, care, to weep together as they did in kind of mutual sadness.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they were a little disappointed that Jesus didn't bother to show up show up sooner.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But for Jesus to bring Lazarus back to life, for them to see their brother right in front of them alive, the whites of his eyes, a smile on his face that they hadn't seen since before he was sick, that was beyond surprising.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's shocking even.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Completely outside of their expectation.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder in that moment how surprised they were by how things were unfolding once Jesus showed up.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes, because we've heard the story before, because we'll celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Himself in just a few weeks, it's easy to feel like this is just another description of yes, God's great work, miraculous even, but predictable, expected.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So often in our language of faith, we use words that imply that kind of reliability of God.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: God is a rock, our sure foundation, unchanging, ever-present.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And all of those things are true.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe one of the greatest gifts of faith is that we also get to be surprised by God.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: We can be astounded at what God is doing all around us.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: We can expect the unexpected to believe that God is capable of incredible things.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: If only maybe our hearts and our minds are open to seeing it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is not just about a man named Lazarus and his grieving sisters.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: The story tells us this truth that God is able to take what seems dead and bring it back into new life.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Take what looks like the end and offer a new beginning.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Some great preachers have said before, where we are tempted to place a period, God places a comma.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Having a God of resurrection means that the story is rarely over when we think it is.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the truth is that God can show up in all sorts of beautiful ways.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: As one example, a while back I was looking through a photo essay that was produced by the New York Times to mark the 30-year anniversary of the genocide that happened in Rwanda.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: You may remember where millions of people were violently killed.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And in the last uh 10 years or so, there has been a uh reconciliation project from the government that laid out certain guidelines to try to mend uh many of these broken relationships.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: That those who were imprisoned for these war crimes could actually be released under a few conditions.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: One, that their victims were willing to reconcile.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Second, that the perpetrators were willing to admit their wrong, to seek forgiveness.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And third, that both parties were willing to have conversation, to mend something there, to live a new life together in some sort of way.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to share a few photos from that um essay that uh both of uh these uh photographer went over to Rwanda and took pictures of both the victims and the offenders participating in this program together, talking about their experience of reconciliation.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Here's one.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is Gottfried on the left, a man who burned down the woman's house on the right, attacked her family.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Her name is Vesta, the victim.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And she said in this uh interview, I used to hate this man, but when he came to my house and asked me for forgiveness, I was moved by his sincerity.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if I cry for help, he comes and he rescues me.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: When I face any issue, I call him.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Here's another one.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh Francois on the left, who is part of a gang responsible for killing the woman's son on the right.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Epiphany is her name.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: After hours of conversation together in this program, this woman has now adopted him as her own grown son.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: She makes dinner for him at least once a week and they eat together.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or one more.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Dominique on the left said in his interview, the day I thought of asking forgiveness, I felt unburdened, relieved.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: I lost my humanity because of the crimes I committed, but now I am like a human being again.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And Silday is on the right, she said.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Ever since our first conversation, I've started to feel better.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was like a dry stick.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: But now I feel peaceful in my heart.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: As I was reading those interviews, I tried to fathom how I could possibly speak such words of forgiveness or reconciliation with those who were so filled with violence and hatred.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't, I couldn't imagine it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's unbelievable.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, I want to believe in a God who can bring about reconciliation in the most unlikely people or places.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: A God who can move us from violence to peace.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: A God as we hear today who can turn a funeral into a party for Lazarus.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't have to travel halfway around the world to bear witness to those incredible works that God is doing.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: We don't even have to look at such extreme circumstances as those, but we can look at our own lives if we're honest.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of us are so wrapped up in grief or anger or anxiety and we cannot imagine how we can ever find our way out.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, surprise.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: We get to be surprised every time bread is placed in our hands.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, in fact, God is merciful and forgiving again.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing we can do that separates us from the love of God.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: That is no small thing.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: We can be surprised by the way the words of a hymn speak to the very ache of our hearts.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then sit on the edge of our seats as we get to wait and watch in anticipation to believe that with God all things are possible.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my hope for each of us this morning is that we might let ourselves be a little bit more surprised to discover it again for the first time that God is always busy creating new life.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's quiet our hearts and minds now as we pray these beautiful words of the Lord's Prayer.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Give us today our daily bread.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Wherever you might find yourself in the coming days, I hope you might let yourself be a bit more surprised.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: May you be amazed, astonished even at the incredible work of God within you and all around you.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you've enjoyed this podcast and thanks for your support of the ministries of St.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Our commitment to endeavors that lend hope to other people stretches across the country and around the world.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that in a good way you feel a part of that reach.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tune in next Thursday for another edition of the St.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.