Lent 5

John 11:1-45

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb 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.” When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 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.”
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Years ago I was given a book titled, The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal, a WW2 Nazi concentration camp survivor. The book tells his story of coming face to face with a German soldier on his death bed, searching for forgiveness from a Jew for all of the terrible things he had been responsible for, both by his own hand and by the knowledge of what was happening in the Nazi camps and doing nothing to stop it. In the beginning of the story, one of Mr. Wiesenthal’s companions in the prison camp makes a simple and profound observation: God is on leave. What other explanation could there be for the situation in which they find themselves—they, the chosen people of God, now being exterminated by the thousands at the hands of greed and power. How could God be sitting by and watching what was happening to them and not intervene on their behalf as God had done so many times before? No, God must not have known what was happening. It’s the only explanation that made sense.

“I once read somewhere that it is impossible to shake a man’s firm belief,” Mr. Wiesenthal reflects. “If I ever thought that true,” he goes on, “life in a concentration camp taught me differently. It is impossible to believe anything in a world that has ceased to regard man as man, which repeatedly ‘proves’ that one is no longer a man. So one begins to doubt, one begins to cease to believe in a world order in which God has a definite place. One really begins to think that God is on leave. Otherwise the present state of things wouldn’t be possible. God must be away. And He has no deputy…we live in a world that God has abandoned[.]”*

I hear an echo of those words in both Martha’s and Mary’s desperation when they each confront Jesus as he makes his way to their home. “Lazarus is already dead. Thanks a lot for nothing. I thought we were friends,” they must have been thinking. Martha shows some kind of level-headed reflection on the death of her brother when she tells Jesus that she believes what she has always been taught about death—that it will not be the ultimate end. We’ve come to expect things like that from Martha—responses born out of pragmatic belief and dogma. But Mary’s response does not seem as forgiving: Why didn’t you come?

The death and the rising of Lazarus calls to our attention that day toward which we labor during Lent: resurrection day, Easter. There are so many connection points for us in this story: human pain that occurs at death; stages of grief; hope that death is not the end; frustration with the apparent ignorance of God to the human situation; amazement at the power of Jesus.

Many of us may be able to relate to the frustration of Lazarus’ sisters who do not understand why Jesus did nothing to prevent Lazarus’ death. He waited too long to get involved, in their opinion. He gave up on Lazarus and, therefore, them. It is easy to feel that, because life does not always progress the way we want it to God has forgotten or is ignoring us or is just concentrating on other things or people. If you have ever been in this situation, when a loved one has died and you had prayed for it not to be, then you know exactly how these women feel. Those of us in the church live in the knowledge that death is not the end, that the ones who have gone on before us will be raised and will live again. But when death comes to our home, we can hardly bring ourselves to accept that there is anything else past it. It feels very final, doesn’t it? And we feel a little more alone, don’t we? And we often have a lot of questions, like why did this happen? Where is God, really, in death? What are we supposed to believe? Are we supposed to be happy, or is it ok to be sad and angry and frustrated and afraid?

I think we can understand what Mr. Wiesenthal and his friends felt in the Nazi camp. While we know God well enough to know that we are never left alone by God, we may wonder why God is not answering the prayers we have said for things to change, for something to get better, for life to keep going, for a miracle to occur. Where are you, God, we may ask? Where are you? And why can’t we understand what is happening in our lives? Why does it have to be a mystery? Why do we feel so alone? Why do we hurt? Why are we left only with our questions?

The beauty of the gospel of John is the mystery John weaves for us of the presence of Christ, both with God and with us—Immanuel. Jesus is both like us and unlike us. He is human being and divine being in one. Therefore, he experiences what we experience, but the parameters for him are far less limited than for us. In fact, there are none. All things are possible. Jesus is life-giving power, and death is not a terminal issue with him. In fact, the reversal of Lazarus’ death indicates the power Jesus has over death and, therefore, over all things we can grasp and that which we cannot. It is a scary proposition he puts forth in the calling of Lazarus to come out of the tomb on his own: he shows us that there is nothing that cannot be reversed by the power of God. Nothing.

Is that a frightening or reassuring message for us? In our deep moments of grief, it is a message of hope that things will get better, that God trumps whatever hand we have been dealt in life—whether our own doing or by someone else’s. In our moments of arrogance and challenge to God’s power, we sometimes respond to hardship by blaming God for not doing anything or not doing enough, as if we trump God’s decisions and actions in the world or in our lives. A less confrontational response is to simply disbelieve in God when difficult times come our way. It is, however, no less arrogant.

How can we hear the message of John 11 as painting a portrait of what can be, of the power of God to reverse the things that threaten us, as a call to participate with God in life-giving instead of trying to take that power away from God? How can this story serve as a conversion to assurance and peace in the care of God in a world so full of control freaks? So full of death? So full of circumstances that would convince us that God has taken leave, and we have no idea when God’s return will be?

It takes a lot of courage to come to church during Lent; the lessons are hard to hear and hard to live with when you leave this place, and they have been for so many generations before us. These stories we hear during Lent as the shadow of the cross grows longer and longer on the ground before us may begin to crack away at our hearts so that they are good and ready to break when that Friday comes along that we dread. Our feelings and responses are real, and Jesus had them, too. The Greek words used in the story to describe what Jesus felt when he encountered the grave they had fixed for Lazarus’ body help us to understand that he was truly and fully human, just as we are. He was greatly disturbed. He was moved in his spirit. Tears fell from his eyes. Anyone who has stood at the grave of a loved one can relate to these feelings of lament and a troubled spirit. And it is sometimes out of those feelings that our questions rise: where are you, God? Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t things turn out the way I thought they should or could or would?

It’s not always the response that we want—the one that God gives in our hours of deep questioning. Mary and Martha and the others wanted to know why he didn’t prevent this from happening, why he took leave of them in their greatest hour of need. They did not really seem to care what he would do about it now. The people watching wanted to know why he stood there and cried when he knew this was going to happen; they didn’t care what he had to say now. After all, shouldn’t and wouldn’t his words just add to those of the others gathered around the grieving family? “I’m sorry. He was a good man. I loved him so much.” Could there be anything else that he would say or do?

“Lazarus, come out!”

It wasn’t just a call to life for Lazarus, though it certainly gave us an idea of those things of which God is capable beyond our own imaginations. It wasn’t a way to prove that it was ok that he hadn’t come earlier, that his judgment was sound. It wasn’t a last ditch effort to keep the family from experiencing heartache. It was a full-blown demonstration of the life-giving love and grace of God.

Lazarus, come out of death and into life.

Martha, come out of your stone-like recital of what you have been taught happens to us when we die, and actually believe that death is not the end.

Mary, come out of your situational response to God not answering your demand for Lazarus’ life and realize that because of his death, the promise of life for all people is beginning to be made real and clear.

You people all gathered around the tomb, come out of your skepticism and experience even for a moment the powerful presence of God which is able to turn your assumptions and expectations into dreams and visions of how good things could really be.

And it is a call for all of us in this place to remember either for the one hundredth or even the first time that there really is nothing that we can do to get life wrong that cannot be made right by the hand of Jesus. Absolutely nothing.

These last days of Lent are not a time to hide in our self-discipline and question God. They are a time to be called out in the presence of God. Come out. Jesus and the others have almost made it to Jerusalem. And even the stuff that happens there will not be the end.

Thanks be to God for what will come.
Thanks be to God for the never-ending, never-dying promise of Immanuel.
Thanks be to God for calling us out.
In the name of the one for whom death will have absolutely no power, Amen.


*The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. Simon Wiesenthal, Schocken Books, Inc. New York. 1998. pp. 7-8.