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.’ 4But 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 for 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. 31The 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 for 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 upwards 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.
Sermon
I really love this passage in scripture, it’s a passage both of loss, and triumph, of dashed dreams and sorrow, yet also hope and joy and revelation of something completely new. It has everything in it, and everything that is in it reflects our human condition.
Lazarus is ill, and he is not going to get better. I am sure we all know people who did not get better when they were ill. This is something that we all have an awareness of I think. I know of two people that I went to school with, who became ill and passed away. Human beings are born, they live and they die all the time. And death is something, it seems, that we cannot escape. Lazarus could not escape his death.
And yet, and yet, this passage has in it the characters of Mary and Martha, Lazarus is Martha’s brother. And they are sure, they are sure, that Jesus can do something about death. They are sure that he can reverse the decay. They are sure that he is an agent of some power who can truly save humanity from the inevitability of death. Martha says to Jesus, ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.’
Martha here is doing what many of us do, what is natural to do I think when something tragic happens, she says ‘if only’ ‘if only’ things would have happened differently, if only you would have been here Jesus, Lazarus would still be walking among us.
Lazarus by this point, would have already have had his funeral, as burials usually happened in those days very quickly after a death. his coffin would have been taken through the streets town to the place of burial, there would be loud sad music and wailing. The whole atmosphere would have been one of sorrow. If you have ever seen a funeral procession in the Middle East you’ll know what I am talking about, as that is the way that funerals would have been done in Jesus’ time.
But Mary and Martha, and the people who followed Jesus even after all this seem to believe that through him, Lazarus could in fact escape death. Martha knows that he will rise again on the last day, but there seems to be a deeper hope being demonstrated here, that Lazarus could actually rise again here and now; he could live and walk in the world again. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even through they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”
That is the hope that we have as Christians, whoever believes in Jesus will never die. It is a hope beyond all other hopes, a hope that is in the midst of despair, that no matter what our circumstances, no matter what death surrounds us, there will be a restoration of all things, and it’s through Jesus that this restoration began. Try to find any other philosophy or religion throughout the world that that compares to that. Try to find a story that somehow reaches the same heights. I don’t think that you will truly find it except in Christianity.
In John 16 Jesus says this:
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." Jesus, in overcoming the world, has overcome all that assail our bodies and souls, be it physical ills, social ills, or spiritual ills.
There will be resurrection, there will be a time, an eternal time where our bodies will no longer be subject to disease, aging and decay. We are promised this in the scriptures. Our eternal destination is described as I in the new heavens and the new earth as mentioned in the penultimate chapter of the Bible, Revelation 21. Where there will be no more loss, no more pain and no more sorrow, where every tear will be wiped form our eyes, and we will dwell in the presence of God forever.
It all sounds a bit too good to be true doesn’t it? In fact, I think the story is so good, it is so wonderful that there are those who doubt that this could possibly be true, that God could truly be that good, that kind and that generous to his creation. There are those who will never be certain of resurrection. But Jesus here gives us a foretaste in this story of what it would be like before his own death and resurrection which we will celebrate at Easter at in a couple of weeks’ time.
Jesus sees Mary weeping and he weeps in return at the loss of Lazarus. Some of the Jews responded when they say this, saying “see how he loved him”
But others said, “could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” couldn’t he?
There will always be those moments of doubt I think, doubt that God could indeed be so loving to his creation that he will, in the end, prevent everybody from dying, where he will restore all things, where he will dwell with his creation forever.
Jesus reaches the tomb and tells the attendants, ‘take away the stone’. But by the time Jesus had got to him had been laying in the tomb for four days, by the time the body had begun to decay. Martha warns him even, ‘by this time there will be a bad odour! She says’ she knows that within about three days, and in a warm climate like Israel, if you’ve been you will know what I am talking about, a body will soon decay.
Jesus doesn’t seem to be too concerned, and he calls Lazarus! Come out, and he comes. Risen from the dead.
Nothing is impossible without Jesus, there is nothing that we are going through that cannot be sorted out by Jesus. Martha says to Jesus, ‘Lord if only you were here!’ But the ascended Jesus is now always here among us, he is here by his Holy Spirit, helping us, guiding us. And giving us that assurance that, although we do have troubles in this life, that Jesus has overcome the world and all of its ills, and that we are being, and indeed will be restored to eternal life, a like that is with God now, and at the time when we come to leave this world. I pray that this day, we will know this all the more deeply in our hearts, that it will become a part of our very being, that hope of resurrection.
Jesus says, ‘Lazarus, come out,’ and so he does the same to us, come out, and believe in him, and trust in him, for it is Him and Him alone who can give us resurrection life
Amen.
