But the challenging reality of being death and resurrection people is that even as we anticipate resurrection, we face death.
Lent 5A. John 11:1-45, Ezekiel 37:1-14, Romans 8:6-11
Grace, mercy and peace to you in the name of the one who calls us forth and gives us life. Amen.
Here we are in the last week of Lent. Next week the story shifts as we focus on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the last supper with his disciples, his betrayal and arrest, his trial and crucifixion, and then his resurrection. That’s where we’re headed. And in John’s gospel, this story today about Lazarus is the situation that sets all those pieces that are coming into action. In other gospels there are other events that particularly shift the story towards Jesus’ experience in Jerusalem; but in John it is this story about Lazarus that causes the authorities to really begin plotting Jesus’ arrest.
I mean, to be fair, Jesus hasn’t been in good standing with the religious leaders for a minute. Last week we heard the story about Jesus restoring the sight of the man born blind, which caused all kinds of questions and confusion. The heat has been rising for a while, as religious leaders become more and more uncomfortable with what Jesus is saying and doing. But in John’s telling of the story, the raising of Lazarus from the dead is the last of Jesus’ signs and after this—while some people continue to believe in him, the opposition and resistance increases enough to lead to all the events of what we now call Holy Week. In fact, at the very beginning of this story when Jesus suggests to his disciples that they go to Judea, his disciples caution him because they’re aware of the rising tension.
So this is a pretty significant story. And it’s not told in any of the other gospels—which means it plays a particular role in supporting this gospel’s understanding of Jesus’ identity and message. In that sense it’s helpful to keep in mind how John sets up the message and ministry of Jesus. For John it’s important that Jesus is the incarnated word of God—or the embodied word of God…the word of God with skin on. He’s not just another teacher or another prophet or another rabbi. As Martha professes in this passage, Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
This story about the death of Lazarus and Jesus’ response to it is about a lot of things. It’s foreshadowing what’s about to happen in Jesus’ own life. It’s demonstrating in concrete and tangible ways something about what it looks like for the Word to be made flesh and dwell among us, which we read in John chapter 1. It’s about the complicated and multi-layered relationship between grief and faith. One scholar noted that in John we don’t learn what grace IS as much as we get examples of how grace is experienced. So that’s going on in this passage as well.
It’s hard to read this passage and not talk about grief, but it’s hard to talk about grief because everyone’s experience is unique and personal. And it’s especially hard to talk about grief because most often we don’t experience what Mary and Martha experience in this story—we don’t get to see our brother, our spouse, our friend, our child, again. So many expressions of death and loss in our lives don’t have easy solutions or quick resolutions. So I don’t want to simplify either this story about Lazarus or whatever your experience with grief might be. Grief is messy and complicated and often an ongoing process.
But one of the gifts I see in this story is that community and relationships are deeply meaningful in times of grief and loss and confusing circumstances. I wonder if, even though Jesus knew that it was becoming less safe for him to be in certain places because of the rising tension with the religious authorities, he chose to go be with his friends because he just needed to be with his friends. We get a lot of references to the relationship between Jesus and Mary, Martha and Lazarus in this story that just speaks to their love and care for one another. We get a glimpse of the community’s rituals of mourning when someone dies. And don’t we know that when we are going through hard times, having friends to be with us in those hard times really makes a difference? Don’t we as community create rituals to remember, commemorate, and mourn together? The disciples know that the heat is rising around Jesus, and they stay with him. Jesus knows that his friends are grieving and he chooses to go see them. When we are going through hard times, having friends stay with us in those hard times makes a difference.
If you were here on Wednesday for the Lenten study, you might remember talking about this idea that as people of faith, we are what we call ‘death and resurrection’ people. These next few weeks in our liturgical life together will lift this up particularly…we are death and resurrection people. In Jesus we discover that death IS part of the story…but it is not the end of the story. In Jesus we discover that God’s promise of life is more powerful than the realities and bonds of death.
I’m not going to claim that I fully understand what Jesus exactly knew about his identity as the ‘Son of God.’ The gospels use different lenses to explore how aware Jesus was of what God was up to in and through his life. But John’s lens is that Jesus’ humanity and Jesus’ divinity are interchangeable. To know and experience Jesus was to know and experience God. We’re told from the first chapter that Jesus is the ‘Word made flesh,’ that was with God in the beginning. Jesus’ life and ministry is regularly inviting people to believe that to know and experience Jesus is to know and experience God. And so, in this story where Jesus comes to Mary and Martha, engages with them in a conversation about death and resurrection, feels the grief and pain of their loss deeply enough to be moved to tears himself, asks to get even closer to the stench of death, and calls Lazarus back to life, we get a glimpse of what God is about to do in Jesus’ own life…and what God does in our lives.
To know Jesus is to know God.
Maybe later when Jesus is getting arrested and crucified, and those around him again wonder where God is in the midst of suffering, they have this tangible memory of Jesus being with them in their grief and reminding them that death is not the end of the story. Maybe that gives them the courage to be present with Jesus in his pain and suffering, and to be present with each other in their confusion and grief, as he was present in theirs. Maybe it gives them the capacity to hold out hope that the story was not over with Jesus’ body being wrapped in cloths and laid in a tomb. And when they begin to hear about the empty tomb and the resurrection sightings, maybe they are able to say, “yep, we could have expected as much.”
We are death and resurrection people, partly anchored in what Jesus says in his conversation with Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life.” This is one of the “I am” statements in John, which is another way that John connects Jesus to the broader picture of what God is up to in the world. If you shake off the dust of your Sunday school lessons, you might remember that in the Old Testament when Moses comes across the burning bush and the voice of God tells him to go back to Egypt because God was going to use him to free the Israelites from slavery, Moses says, “who will I tell them has sent me?” and God says, “I am has sent you.” So when Jesus makes that statement to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he’s locking into this deeper presence and promise of God for restoration, release and relationship.
But the challenging reality of being death and resurrection people is that even as we anticipate resurrection, we face death. I love that in this story Jesus asks to be taken to the place where Lazarus has been buried. People caution him about getting too close, because Lazarus has been dead for four days…which is the author’s way of making sure the audience knows that Lazarus is really dead. But Jesus steps towards the stench and smell of death with a word of life.
To know Jesus is to know God.
How often do we hesitate to bring God too close to the stench of death in our lives? We do this by emphasizing faith practices and rituals that only celebrate the good things in our life, by thinking we have to always be happy and always ‘have it together’, and by avoiding being honest and vulnerable with ourselves and others about those experiences that feel like death for us. We’re not sure it’s okay to say directly to God, “if you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened.”
But Jesus steps toward the stench and smell of death. He holds space for the confusion and questions about why bad things happen. He weeps when he witnesses the grief of those he loves. He stands in the entrance to the cave where his friend has been buried. He hangs on the cross.
Jesus doesn’t avoid death. But he also doesn’t let death have the last word. He invites Martha and Mary into a deeper understanding of what God is up to when things don’t immediately go the way they hoped. He reminds the disciples that God is doing something that isn’t yet entirely clear. He calls Lazarus to come forth and instructs the community to unbind him from the burial cloths.
We know in our own experiences that bad things happen, that death is real, and that hope in the resurrection can be hard to hold onto sometimes. If we think about where we are in this story, we could be in a variety of places. We could be in the crowd weeping as we witness the grief and suffering of others. We could be with Martha and Mary crying out for Jesus to do something and struggling to hold on to faith when things don’t go the way we want them to. We could be with the disciples concerned about the changing social realities and anxious about the implications for the one we’re following. We could be with Lazarus in the tomb, bound by the weight and reality of death.
Wherever you are today, God is with you. Jesus is with you, and holds you close in love and care with a promise that resurrection is a not something distant and disconnected from our reality. Resurrection is made real in and through relationship and community. Resurrection is made real through the rituals of weeping and lament. Resurrection is made real through confessing a faith that most days we struggle to believe on our own strength. Resurrection is real when we face the stench of death directly and declare that life is still possible.
Dear friends in Christ, as we surround one another in our daily experiences of death, grief and loss, may we be a reminder to one another of the hope of the resurrection. When we share a word of peace, we share the hope of resurrection. When we show love and care for our neighbour, we share the hope of resurrection. When we share from our abundance with those around us, we share the hope of resurrection. When we create and hold space for grief and lament, we share the hope of resurrection. When we declare that life is possible even when those around us see death, we share the hope of the resurrection.
To know Jesus is to know God, so as we turn from Lent towards Holy Week, and as we hear the stories of Jesus’ journey towards the cross, I pray that we are reminded that in Jesus God has entered fully into the messiness of human experience…including the messiness of death…so that death no longer has the final word and so that we might experience—today and into eternity—the gift of resurrection life.