John 11:1-44
Fifth Sunday in
Lent
“So from that day on,” John’s Gospel tells
us, “they planned to put Jesus to death” (John 11:53). “They,” being the chief priest and
Pharisees. “From that day”—the day they convened
an emergency meeting of the Sanhedrin to answer the question, “What are we to
do?” (Jn. 11:47). Do about what? Do about Jesus
and what he did just outside Jerusalem, in Bethany, about raising Lazarus from
the dead. If the religious authorities
were furious over the healing of the man born blind (Jn. 9), which they were, with
the raising of Lazarus they’re apoplectic.
Not only are they seething toward Jesus and scheming to kill him, the
chief priests are also planning to put Lazarus to death (Jn. 12:10). They want to remove any evidence of Jesus and
his miraculous signs, because people were beginning to trust Jesus, they we starting
to see with their own eyes and believe him when he said, “I am the resurrection
and the life” (Jn. 11:25).
In John’s Gospel, the raising of
Lazarus is the catalytic event that leads
to the crucifixion. We’re told that after
raising Lazarus, Jesus “no longer walked about openly..., but went out from
there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he
remained there with his disciples” (Jn. 11:54).
He “no longer walked about openly.”
It was too risky.
Raising
Lazarus was an enormous risk for Jesus—and he knew it. His claim about being resurrection and life
provoked his death. His use of power,
his enactment of resurrection, of life, led directly to his death.
In
John’s Gospel, Jesus is fully in command of the situation; there’s
intentionality around everything he says, everything he does. He’s driving the
narrative. Jesus knows exactly what he’s
doing. And in this story, and throughout
John’s Gospel, it’s Jesus’s love
that’s guiding his every step.
Love
permeates this story. Jesus loves
Lazarus and even though Jesus delays his visit to Bethany for two days, it’s love
that determines his decision to stay behind.
Love leads him to Mary and Martha, lost in grief. He appears on a scene drowning in tears and
sorrow. Lazarus is dead. It’s been four days. In Jesus’s time, the dead were buried
immediately. The mourners came
later. And Jewish belief held that the
soul hovered near the body for three days and then departed. John tells us, twice, that Lazarus has been
in the tomb for four days, so there’s no chance of resuscitation. Lazarus is truly dead.
Martha
is the first to see Jesus. “Lord, if you
had been here, my brother would not have died”!
Why did you not come sooner? Jesus assures her, “Your brother will rise
again.” Listen carefully to what Martha
says, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last
day.” In other words, Yes, I believe in the resurrection, but
that’s no consolation for me, now, today, in my grief, for my brother is dead. And what does Jesus say in response? “I am the resurrection and the life.”
Yes,
Jesus agrees with Martha about a future resurrection of the dead. But he’s also pointing to something else. Claiming
for himself the divine name I AM, first revealed to Moses in Exodus (3;14), Jesus
says, “I am”—not I will be, I am—“the resurrection and the life.” He is
resurrection, now, not in some far-off future.
His entire life embodies resurrection. And resurrection is available to us—now—in him.
What
is resurrection? Yes, it refers to
renewed life, life where once was death, physical death. But resurrection also means more than this
for Jesus. Just as there was more than
physical healing going on in the story of the man born blind (Jn. 9), so, too, here
there’s more going on here than bodily resurrection. The physical resurrection is affirmed, but
the physical is an entrée to something beyond the physical, which includes the
physical.
It
is significant that Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” “Life” here is zōē, one of the most important theological words in John’s
Gospel. He uses it thirty-six times. The verb form zaō occurs seventeen times. In the previous chapter of John we
find Jesus saying, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”
(Jn. 10:10). This life, zōē, is full life, meaningful life, purposeful
existence; it’s about more than breathing.
John tells us, “In him was life and the life was the light of all
people” (Jn. 1:4). Jesus says, “I am the
light of the world. Whoever follows me
will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn. 8:12). This zōē-life is God’s life embodied in
Jesus. He is full life, brimming with life that is here and now infused with
God’s love. And this what John means by “eternal
life”—it’s not only experienced in some far-off distant future, but also here
and now. “Eternal life” refers to a quality of life, life touched by
eternity. This is resurrection—everything
that calls us to zōē-life!
Martha
leaves Jesus and then Mary arrives. She falls
at his feet exhausted from grief. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would
not have died.” Jesus sees her
weeping. He sees the others also
weeping. Jesus allows himself to be
affected, to be touched by their grief.
The Greek here is very strong.
Jesus is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” He’s deeply troubled, to his core. The Greek suggests that Jesus was shuddering,
shaking with grief.
“Where
have you laid him?” he asks. “Lord, come
and see.” Then Jesus begins to weep. And the mourners say, “See how much he loved
him!”
Nowhere
else in scripture do we see Jesus so emotional, vulnerable, so human. The place where he is most vulnerable, overcome
by grief, is exactly the place where the crowd sees his love. And what happens
next is the strongest expression of his love, and its power. Then he acts.
“Roll
away the stone.” In, with, and through
love, Jesus confronts death and cries, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man
comes out.
“Unbind
him,” Jesus says, “and let him go.”
Resurrection. Life.
Love. They’re almost synonymous.
Jesus’s life, like God’s life, is the outflow of love. Love flows into life, which generates life, new
life where life had been lost or absent, yielding resurrection. Resurrection is both an event and a force; it’s
an experience that flows from the depths of God’s love.
And,
this isn’t sentimental love—there’s nothing sentimental about this story. Neither is it romantic love. This love is more than a feeling. It’s a force and it’s fierce and it’s strong.
This is how the Mexican priest in Graham Greene’s (1904-1991) novel, The Power and the Glory, talks about
God’s love. It is often unrecognizable,
he says, “it might even look like hate, it would be enough to scare us—God’s
love. It set fire to a bush in the
desert, didn’t it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the
dark.” And it’s powerful. It’s
unsettling. It’s disturbing. It’s never what we expect. “Love is as strong as death” (Song of Solomon
8:6). Stronger, even. In the strength of this love, Jesus cries
with a loud voice, yells into death,
into non-existence, into nothingness; Jesus shouts into the void itself and
commands: “Lazarus, come out!” And then
the “dead man came out”.
Poet
Maya Angelou (1927-2014) once said, “Love liberates. It doesn't just hold—that's
ego. Love liberates. It doesn't bind.”[1] She knows.
That’s what God’s love looks like in our lives.
God’s
love confronts death. This love speaks
life into dark places, places of deterioration and decay. Love speaks into death itself and forces it
to yield life, to yield resurrection. God’s love summons us into life. Love liberates. It sets us free. It releases us. This love doesn’t hold on, doesn’t
possess. It doesn’t limit and narrowly define. God’s love is not confining. It doesn’t bind. Instead, this love unbinds us from that which
seeks to destroy and obliterate us. This
love unbinds us from the hold of death, from all that is lifeless in us. God’s love releases us from the past, from
events of the past that bind and hold us.
Just as love unraveled the strips of burial cloth inviting a dead man to
walk out from death, alive and free, God’s love continues to unravel that which binds us, that holds us, which holds us back, setting us free and giving us life.
Love
liberates Lazarus. Love liberates Mary
and Martha. Love even liberates Jesus
from his grief. This love is fierce and
strong. It’s often unsettling, disturbing,
because it has the power to conquer death. Then, why is it such a threat? Because there are plenty of forces and individuals
and ideas and even religious communities that want to keep people wrapped up, bound
in lifeless tombs.
Love
liberates us! This is the gospel. This is the good news! And we are called to share the good news by
liberating one another. Jesus says to
the crowd, to the community around him witnessing resurrection, you (plural),
or better, y’all, “Unbind him, and let him go” (Jn. 11:44).[2] It’s our task as a community to do the
unbinding. We are here to unbind one another. We are called to release one
another from that which binds us, so that we can walk free and unbounded into
God’s light and life. This is what God’s
love continues to do in us and through us.
As
we move closer to Holy Week:
Where
is God calling you out by name?
What’s
needing liberation, unbinding in your life?
What’s
needing liberation, unbinding in this church?
Who
do you need to unbind?
Who
needs freeing to walk out into God’s light and life?
Image: Raising of Lazarus, twelfth century, Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens, Greece.
[2] I am grateful to Jaime Clark-Soles
for this insight in Reading John for Dear
Life: A Spiritual Walk with the Fourth Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2016), 77ff.
1 comment:
Jesus called me back in 1984-85 out of the sinful world I was living in. The devil was my master, and my flesh controlled me. Jesus had mercy on me, and delivered me from my sin and death. I was on the broad and wide and headed for hell and God's holy judgment. Now I am a saint/sinner by His precious blood alone, for he is the propitiation for my soul, and i am on the straight and narrow by His gracious mercy and grace.
Why Jesus would die for me is unknowable. The Scriptures tell us Jesus died for for His sheep, and He will bring all His sheep into His pasture. But there are sheep that are not his, and i should be one of those.
I thank Jesus every day for for His love and mercy.
All for the Cross gal. 6:14
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