Lent 5
March 26, 2023
53So from that day on they planned to put him to death.
The Gospel of John tells big stories. Lengthy in content, weighty in significance, full of nuance, metaphor, and the wink of irony. The raising of Lazarus scores all those points.
It’s fifty-three verses long, and spills into chapter twelve (which we’ll hear next week). That qualifies as lengthy in content. It is a story of life and death and life again, which makes it weighty in significance. There are curious nuances – Jesus lingers before traveling to his friend, and his tears strike the onlookers as something other than grief. As for metaphors, “death” is “sleeping,” and faith is a light within us.
And then there’s the irony. John loves to poke us with his irony. Martha says she believes the resurrection will come one day, while Jesus says, “Resurrection is standing on two feet right in front of you.” Some of the neighbors say, “Look at Jesus’ tears; oh, how he loved his friend,” while others say, “If he loved him so much, why didn’t he come and save him from dying?” That opens us to even more irony, as Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.
It is a stunning account, a big story. Like the other big stories of John’s Gospel, it is subject to misunderstanding. Jesus first appears in chapter one, and a wisecracker quips, “Can anything good come from that pitiful Podunk town of Nazareth?” At a wedding in Cana, he transforms water into wine for no deep reason, only because the party ran out of wine, and some goofball says, “This is better wine than anything we’ve ever tasted.”
Nicodemus sneaks up after dark, curious about the very things he should comprehend as a religious teacher, asking, “Does born again mean crawling back inside a mother’s belly?” The Samaritan woman says, “You’re going to give me living water? If you’re so great, where’s your bucket? And then, in chapter five, Jesus commands a man paralyzed for thirty-eight years to stand on his own two feet – it causes a ruckus because the healing happened on the wrong day of the week. Irony, misunderstanding, yet Jesus proceeds.
He keeps working, he keeps speaking, he keeps offering life where life has been taken away. He comes as a gift from God, an unexpected gift, in some ways an unwanted gift. Yet he comes - with the grace and truth of God.
Those who study the Gospel of John suggest at least one reason why he waits until his friend has died before he shows up. That is, of course, one of the strangest details about this story. Why does he wait? His answer is even weirder, when he says, “For your sake (not for Lazarus’ sake) I am glad I was not there.” Why does he say that? Well, the scholars remind us that Jesus according to John is not reactive. He’s not sitting around waiting to take our requests. He shrugs off his mother at the banquet when she tells them there’s no wine.
Instead, he chooses to act as a man on a mission, taking the initiative, healing the blind man who never asked to be healed. (Did you notice that last week?) He comes from God to bring light and life as gifts for those who can receive them. And he acts as if he has all the time in the world – which he does. Maybe you’ve noticed that too.
The first half of John’s book is organized around seven events. John calls them “signs,” Each sign is a miracle, yet more than a miracle. A sign is a miracle with a message. The message is this: God is here. In Jesus from Nowhere Nazareth, God is here. Here are the seven signs:
Water is transformed into wine.
A young boy is healed from miles away.
A paralyzed man stands up on restored legs,
Five thousand hungry people are fed in the wilderness.
Jesus walks on top of the Sea of Galilee
A man born blind is given his sight.
A friend of Jesus is raised from the dead
The stories get longer, the messages get bigger, until the raising of Lazarus leads all the other signs to their astounding conclusion, that Jesus Christ is the life of the world. What we sang in the Christmas carol is now as clear as a bell: “Light and life to all he brings.” There’s no more dramatic moment than a tomb opened on a hilltop in Bethany, another nowhere town. Jesus shouts, “Lazarus, come out of there!” The dead man comes out alive, wrapped in bands of cloth, and Jesus adds, “Unbind him from death. Let him go free.”
What a wonderful, dazzling way to end the seven signs, And it’s only the first half of the book. There is even more to come. For there will be a reaction to this seventh sign, just like all the others. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and “from that day on, they planned to put him to death.” This is the hinge upon which the Gospel of John will turn.
Perhaps you hear the irony. Jesus raises a man from the grave and the authorities decide to put him in the grave. It is a sad revelation of what people with power will do when they feel challenged. They turn against the very things that are making people well. We’ve heard it since in the second paragraph on page one in John’s book: “He came to his own people, and they refused him.” John said it again in chapter three, “Here is the crisis of the world: light came into the darkness; the world preferred the darkness and said, ‘Snuff out the light.’”
As Holy Week gets closer, let’s chew on this a bit. It is a recurring description of the human situation. Our world is enchanted with its own destruction. Those who can grab the upper hand will do anything to push away those who disrupt their control. Truth is spun, lies are disseminated, whether it’s the notion that cigarettes are good for you or more bombs will make you more secure. To cut to the quick: don’t question us if we are in charge. And don’t ever let the truth be told about what we have done.
It's all here in the story of Lazarus. “We must kill Jesus,” conspire the religious leaders, “because he brought somebody back to life. Now everybody’s going to believe in him.” What a vain, intoxicated, insane thing to say! It’s right out of the headlines of this – or any other – year. The world keeps getting it wrong in ten thousand different ways.
“From that day on, they planned to put Jesus to death.” Because he brought Lazarus back to life. Because it has always been his gift to give us life. Because, in the faith of this Gospel, all things were brought to life in Jesus, and, through him, all things were created. He come from God to give life to the world – to the world, to the corrupt, anxious, fearful world.
And don’t miss this one truth, most of all: he chooses to do this. He chooses to give life to Lazarus, to us. As someone puts it, “Apart from trust in God, the world is a cemetery, but into the world God has sent in Jesus Christ the offer of resurrection, the opportunity to pass from death to life. Just as the crowds wanted bread and he offered Bread, so here the sisters want their brother returned and Jesus acts to restore the world to life. To act in this larger life-giving way means Jesus must move to his own death, and so he does.”[1]
Jesus gives life, even if that means giving his life. For Lazarus, Easter comes before Good Friday. His resurrection will send Jesus to the cross. The machinery is set in motion. And Jesus chooses this.
As you know, there’s more to the story. Much more. John’s book is only half-finished. Death will lead to resurrection – for Lazarus, for Jesus, and for us. And maybe that’s why John tells this grand story sixty years after it happened. He knows the world tried to shut down Jesus – and he knows Jesus was raised from the dead.
This is how the Gospel unmasks the folly of the world. This is how the Truth about us is revealed. The Giver of Life has come – and the world wished to take his life. But Jesus comes back alive, every time. He’s the One through whom all things have been created. He’s not going anywhere. You can push him away, but he’s still here. You can go your own way and he will wait you out. You can deny him, but he stands in silence, reflecting your indifference as a mirror. You can nail him to a cross – and he comes again, full of life and breath, scarred and wounded yet vitally alive.
Jesus grants Easter to Lazarus. That leads to Good Friday for Jesus, which is also Good Friday for the world. Then it’s Easter for all of us, even for the world that can’t yet believe it. Of all the life lessons to extract from that, there is one above all others: trust God, who loved the world so much that he sent Jesus into the world to breathe it with life.
On my bookshelf, there’s a thin volume of poetry. I
picked it up because a radical friend recommended it. It’s good to have a
radical friend. Radical friends never let you play it safe. They never let you
become intoxicated by your own delusions or consumed by your own fears.
The poetry comes from Julia Esquivel, a human rights
activist from Guatemala. She loved the poor and remembered those who had been forgotten.
Julia was exiled from her native country because she kept writing Easter poems.
One of those poems goes like this:
I am no longer afraid of death
I know well
Its dark and cold corridors
Leading to life.
I am afraid rather of that life
Which does not come out of death,
Which cramps our hands
And slows our march.
I am afraid of my fear
And even more of the fear of others,
Who do not know where they are going,
Who continue clinging
To what they think is life
Which we know to be death!
I live each day to kill death;
I die each day to give birth to life,
And in this death of death,
I die a thousand times
And am reborn another thousand
Through that love
From my People
Which nourishes hope![2]
First time I ever
heard that poem, it sounded like Jesus. Just like Jesus.
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