Sunday, March 26, 2023

The Fifth Sunday of Lent

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

The Rev. Clint Brown

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were well-known to Jesus and his disciples, that much is clear. You’ll recall that in Luke’s Gospel, he gives us a glimpse into their world. Here is the bustling Martha, playing the part of the perfect hostess, and there is the contemplative Mary, oblivious to all else except Jesus (Luke 10:38-42). In my mind’s eye, I always picture a scene of comfortable, middle-class domesticity. A well-kept house. Some flowers in pots. Not the richest fare on the table, perhaps, but it is always delicious and hearty, so that you find yourself pushing your chair back from the table and rubbing your belly. For Jesus, it must have been a place of inestimable importance. In the course of his ministry, I imagine he must have dropped in many times whenever he needed respite from the miles of dusty roads and their deprivations. And since it is hard to always be “on” when playing the part of a public figure, he must have regarded this happy home as one of those few places where he did not have to be the great man, but just be himself.

As the story opens, John can assume his reader’s familiarity with the family and their closeness to Jesus. He can make reference, for instance, to the story of Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet, a story which he has yet to tell. And when Lazarus falls ill, it is hardly surprising that the sisters would send for him. It would have been the most natural thing in the world. They know who he is. They know he can heal their brother. No one dies in the presence of Jesus. And so a messenger is sent to summon him and they eagerly await his arrival.

Jesus, at this moment, is in the Trans-Jordan, the region across the river where John the Baptist had lived and worked, but among his little band of disciples things are tense. They are not here to see the sights or revisit scenes of past glory. They are here because they have been forced to. After the incident with the healing of the blind man, Jesus has very nearly gotten himself stoned and arrested and he and the rest are lucky to have gotten out of the city at all. Now they are hunkered down in the relative isolation and safety of the wilderness wondering what Jesus will decide to do next. If the decision was theirs to make, no doubt they would opt to return to Galilee and lay low until things in the capital had settled down a bit.

But then a messenger arrives from Bethany, and, instead of retreating to further safety, Jesus resolves to go back to Judea. It is a death sentence and Jesus knows it. He who has spoken of himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep will now make good on his word. For the sake of restoring his friend Lazarus to life, he will now risk his own. The disciples, having discussed the matter amongst themselves, they, too, know the odds. Finally, Thomas says, “Very well, if we’re gonna go, let’s go. We’ll just have to die with him, too” (v.16). And so the men, full of apprehension, gather their things and catch up to Jesus, who is already a good ways down the road. Now they find themselves retracing the steps they had just taken away from danger, and with each new step are drawing nearer towards it.

By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been dead for four days. The poor man must have succumbed to his illness shockingly quickly, on the very day the messenger had been sent, and he would have been buried the same day. According to rabbinical tradition, the souls of the departed hovered around the grave for three days in the hope of being reunited with the body, but as soon as decomposition set in, it would leave for good. This is why the narrative draws out the fact that it is now the fourth day. The Greek uses here an odd expression. It literally reads that Lazarus is a “fourth-day man,” sounding almost, to my ear, like a proverb. When someone is absolutely and completely beyond our reach, they are a “fourth-day man.” Searching for a similarly apt expression, a later writer in a later time would find them in the words, “Old Marley was dead…dead as a door-nail.” Lazarus is dead and there is no way to bring him back.

And now Jesus, standing beside the grave of his friend, utters into this hopeless situation words that, but for knowing the one who speaks them, would convince anyone that the speaker is mad. Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἀνάστασις καὶ ἡ ζωή. “I am the resurrection and the life” (v. 25). And, in this the greatest of his signs in this book of signs, to prove that these are the words of God and not just the preposterous ravings of a lunatic, Christ commands the stinking, decaying corpse to come out of the tomb. 

And so, in the same way, Christ stands at the entrance of whatever tomb you find yourself in today – whatever heartbreak and disappointment, whatever hopelessness, whatever shadow of death – and he recalls you to life. Despite being already dead for four days, despite being a stinking, decaying mess, despite being bound up and in the dark, the power of Christ is available to bring you life where before there seemed only unpitying, unconquerable death. I pray that you might know and accept this power and the love of the one who speaks it, the one who has rushed to your side knowing it will cost him his life, the one who weeps with you and for you, the one who says, In me death is certain to live, and the living is certain never to die.[1]

[1] After F. Godet, quoted in Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, vol. 2 (Maclean, VA: Macdonald Publishing Company, n.d.), 203.