Text: John 11:1-45
The Death of Lazarus
11 Now a certain man was ill, Laz′arus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Laz′arus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.”
5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go into Judea again.” 8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” 11 Thus he spoke, and then he said to them, “Our friend Laz′arus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him out of sleep.” 12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” 13 Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead; 15 and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
Jesus the Resurrection and the Life
17 Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus[a] had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles[b] off, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life;[c] he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”
Jesus Weeps
28 When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying quietly, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; 34 and he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Jesus Raises Lazarus to Life
38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. 42 I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
This very significant passage shows us the intersection between Jesus, the human being, and Jesus the Christ. It’s deeply personal story. This is the only place in the New Testament where we specifically read of Jesus showing emotion: “Jesus wept.” That statement is also the shortest verse in the entire Bible, and also one of the most profound.
My goal is always to try to make a connection between the Gospel text and us; but, in this case, when we read “Jesus wept,” we don’t need any theological interpretation – we can relate directly at a gut level with how Jesus felt that day, because we’ve all been there ourselves.
Jesus loved Lazarus like a brother, and Mary and Martha were like sisters to him. We have encountered Martha and Mary before, significantly on the occasions when Jesus was a guest in their home; and, right away in the second verse, John reminds us that it was Mary who anointed Jesus’ feet with oil and wiped it off with her own hair. So, think of your own best friends – the people you hang around with, whose companionship you deeply enjoy, the ones with whom you have almost everything in common – that’s exactly the kind of relationship Jesus had with Lazarus and his sisters.
So the death of Lazarus was for Jesus the same kind of body blow that any of us feels at the death of a close friend or loved one. We have all heard many times that Jesus knew exactly the life we know, and this is proof of it – God feels our pain.
We so often focus on the miracle itself, and miss the importance of those tears shed by Jesus, but also by Martha and Mary. The closeness Jesus had with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, is a reflection of the closeness God wants to have with each and every one of us, which is why Jesus came to us in the first place.
Jesus wept. Jesus knew sorrow and heartache.
But this just makes Jesus’ behavior when he first hears that Lazarus is ill all the more curious. For all that closeness and deep friendship, when Jesus gets the news about Lazarus, we are told that he tarries or abides – that is what the Greek verb μὲνω (meno)[1] used in this passage means – that is, he deliberately stays where he is for two more days. Now, when you or I hear that a friend or loved one is at death’s door or even in a lesser kind of trouble, we tend to drop everything and go to them, right?
But Jesus doesn’t. And Lazarus dies. Mary and Martha are, well, confused, to say the least! They can be forgiven for being, not just disappointed, but, if we read between the lines a bit, even angry at Jesus for apparently dawdling. After all, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus had supported Jesus, fed him, sheltered him, with no thought of any kind of reward – they did it because they loved him and believed in him. So, if anybody deserved special attention from Jesus, it was these three people. But when they needed him, he wasn’t there. So, in addition to being sad, they were also understandably confused, hurt, and not a little angry. They felt the whole range of emotions that people often feel at the death of one they love.
This part of the story shows us the other side of that intersection, the “Christ side.” Fortunately, we have the benefit of knowing what Jesus tells the disciples, as reported by John: “This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.” Yet, again, even with this unshakeable confidence in the power of God, when he stood with Marth and Mary before the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus still felt such deep sadness at the death of his friend that he wept. The fact is that death is real and harsh. No resuscitation of Lazarus from the dead should sentimentalize, simplify, or gloss over that stark truth.
If it was so hard for Jesus to deal with the loss of a friend, even knowing that it would all turn out right in the end, imagine how Martha and Mary must have felt: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” In other words, where were you when we needed you? We were counting on you, man! Where were you? Who hasn’t felt the same gut-wrenching emotions at times? Somebody we have come to reply on – father, mother, sibling, friend, wife, husband, whoever – fails us. And we feel shattered. We aren’t sure how we’re going to move on.
Worse yet are those times when we feel God has let us down. And so we cry out, just like Martha and Mary, “God, where were you when …”? “God, why couldn’t you prevent this?” “God, why did this happen?” “God, how could you let this happen?” Sometimes we reflect in those moments on the missteps and bad choices that led us to whatever sorry state we find ourselves in, or we remember the wrong path a loved one went down that led to their misery. Hindsight is 20/20 in faith just as it is in life; but, more often than not, in such moments, all we can focus on is the emptiness we feel, the loss, the helplessness, and the anger.
Then there are those other moments of crisis we face where the cause isn’t anything we have done or anything we could have foreseen. We can’t point a finger at anyone else – we can’t blame our husband, or wife, or relatives, or even ourselves. We feel as though the entire universe has conspired to make us personally miserable. These moments truly do make us feel as though we have nowhere to turn. And right after we echo Job and cry out, “Why me, Lord?” we might say something similar to “Lord, if you had been here…”
This might be a good time for us to remind ourselves that God works in his own time and in his own way – God does not work according to our schedules or our timelines. God is not our Cosmic Butler who’s there at our beck and call to do our bidding (as much as we would all love it if he were). Isaiah said it first and best:
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa. 55:8-9, RSV)
Yet Jesus makes it abundantly clear that God is nonetheless always there for us, working on our behalf. When he says to Martha: “Your brother will rise again,” he’s telling her in no uncertain terms that those who call on God will not be ignored.
One interesting article that I came across this week while doing my research for this sermon is one by J. Wallace Warner published on his “Cold Case Christianity” website. Warner, a former atheist, is a cold case detective, and has put his expertise to work on the Bible. Regarding the raising of Lazarus, Warner disagrees with Bishop John Shelby Spong, who claims that John the Evangelist deliberately exaggerated this event to “to counter any attempt to read it literally.”[2] Wallace was initially also a skeptic regarding this, but for a different reason – he wondered why an event of such magnitude was only mentioned in John’s Gospel, and not in the other three. The more he thought about it and researched it, however, the smaller the problem seemed to become: “How could the other gospel writers forget about that? This objection rests, however, on the presumption that a miracle of this nature was extravagant or exceedingly unusual in the ministry of Jesus, and I think this presumption is false. Lazarus wasn’t the only person Jesus raised from the dead. Jesus also brought Jairus’ daughter back to life (Matthew 9:23-26, Mark 5:35-43, and Luke 8:40-56), as well as the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:12-15). John doesn’t mention either of these miracles and Mathew and Mark fail to mention the widow’s son. There is good reason to believe Jesus raised even more people from the dead, given John’s clear statement, ‘There are many other things that Jesus did; if all were written down, the world itself, I suppose, would not hold all the books that would have to be written’ (John 21: 25).”[3] In short, raising people from the dead may well have been a commonplace occurrence for Jesus. What we call miracles, God calls daily events. No exaggeration here. Wallace concludes by telling us that our struggles to understand stories like this one are because of our need to read them through the lens of our modern understanding; but if we take the time and the effort to understand them in their original context, other more accurate explanations will emerge. Food for thought; in order for us to connect with the Gospel, it’s not so much that we need to somehow restate it in modern terms as it is that we need to jettison some of our unhelpful modern thinking and allow it to speak to us in its own terms.
Finally, there is one other connection that must be made: Lazarus is us. Alyce M. McKenzie wrote in April 2011 on the Patheos Christian blog, “This past week, I have had an epiphany. It is probably one you the reader have already had, and if so, I apologize in advance for pointing out what has long been obvious to you.
“The epiphany is that we are to see ourselves in Lazarus and see the miracle of his restoration of physical life as the beginning of our entry into eternal life that begins the moment we accept Jesus’ offer of relationship with us.”[4]
“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”
Fr. Mark Link recounts a resurrection experience Robert McAfee Brown, who became a leading 20th-Century Presbyterian minister and theologian, once witnessed: “Robert McAfee Brown was on a troop ship bringing marines back from Japan. One day they were studying the raising of Lazarus. After the session a marine said, ‘God seemed to speak to me today.’ He went on to explain that while in Japan, he did something that filled him with guilt. He’d even considered suicide. During the session the thought struck him that since Jesus was a man like him, Jesus could understand his situation. And since Jesus was also God, he could help him in the most powerful way imaginable. Jesus could raise him to new life, as he did Lazarus. In short, the marine had discovered in a personal way that Jesus was indeed ‘the resurrection and the life’ – not only in the life to come but also in this life right now.”
And Fr. Link puts to us a question that we need to ponder in these last days of Lent: “How do I want Jesus to be my resurrection and my life, in this life right now?”[5]
May God grant us the answer we seek!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] https://www.studylight.org/language-studies/greek-thoughts/
[2] Wallace, J. Warner, “Is the Raising of Lazarus Fictional?”, Cold Case Christianity with J. Warner Wallace, http://coldcasechristianity.com/2013/is-the-raising-of-lazarus-fictional/
[3] Ibid.
[4] McKenzie, Alyce M., “Lazarus is Us: Reflections on John 11:1-45,” http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Lazarus-Is-Us-Alcye-McKenzie-04-04-2011
[5] Link, Marl, S.J., Jesus: A Contemporary Walk with Jesus, Allen, TX, Resources for Christian Living, 1997