Dealing with Death (John 11:1-45)

            Fresh off the plane, I made a decision.  If I was going to have any “free time”, I had to make my own before the conference started.  Just outside the airport, I found the trains leading into the city and headed in.

            Dreadfully jetlagged and not quite for certain what time of day it was (my body would much rather still be sleeping), I managed to make my way into the heart of the city.  Hopping off the trolley, I found myself in the line of people waiting to get in to the place I wanted to go.

            What would motivate me to do this?

One word:  Rembrandt.

            When I was in the Netherlands two years ago for the Baptist World Alliance annual meeting, I knew that if I did not go to the museum in Amsterdam first thing on the first day, I would miss seeing the Rembrandt collection.

            It seems counter-intuitive, going to museums when you’re far from home, operating on lower energy, or on a tight schedule.  Somehow, over the years, Kerry and I have made it work out to visit museums.  We go because we enjoy, even if time is scarce, seeing the great cultural treasures.  Even if I need a gallon of coffee to stay upright, it would be a shame not to go and experience beholding a great work of art.

             Today, we encounter a great passage from John’s gospel.  If we were to invite leading New Testament scholars to speak about this passage, they would speak for hours on the importance of this text and the role the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead plays in John’s gospel. 

            Instead, churchgoers on Sunday morning quietly pray that we won’t listen to a sermon that covers every single verse of this lengthy scene. We’ve come to church this morning after a long work week, loads of laundry still to be done by the end of the weekend, and wondering if it’s worth fighting the crowds at the grocery store later this afternoon. 

We feel more like the bedraggled tourist on vacation, bleary-eyed and wondering which end is up.  Standing before the vast canvas of John 11, the raising of Lazarus from the dead can seem a bit overwhelming.  Do we just look for a minute and then head to the next thing on our list of things to do?

 Despite a love of telling stories about Jesus in lengthy scenes, the gospel of John aims to be a story set in the midst of the world.  Jesus talks in lofty language, yet as the gospel unfolds, the reader begins to see why John’s gospel is oft-quoted, especially passages like John 3:16.  In his own way, John is fulfilling what he sets out to do:  to tell the story of the Word that became flesh and dwelled among us.  

John writes such vivid characters:  Mary, the mother of Jesus, brings a bit of family drama to the scene as she gives Jesus a hard time that he hasn’t made with the water into wine yet.  The Samaritan woman at the well is in the midst of her daily routine, taking care of household needs when she encounters Jesus.  Theology (belief in God, Christ, and the Comforter who is promised) is expressed in terms of “vines and branches”, “water” that quenches thirst and “bread” that fills one’s needs now and forevermore.  Lofty language, yet the gospel according to John is told in terms so familiar, so ordinary and so able to dwell in the midst of us, so much so that even the most common experience in all Creation is not left out:  death.

             This past summer, I got on another plane and several hours later found myself in a different time zone, feeling exhausted as I made my way to the baggage claim.  Why did I drop everything to get on a plane with just the briefest of warnings to book a ticket and head out?

            A death in the family.  It’s the only thing that stopped me in my tracks.  Work kept at a high pace all summer.  I felt like I was lucky to sleep some nights, just trying to keep up.  Yet when that call came, I knew that all of the stuff piled up would have to wait.  Death makes us pause and realize that we may have grand plans or goals, yet when death comes for a loved one, you cannot help but be stopped by news of its coming.  The pretensions of what’s important just dissolve.  It’s time not for spreadsheets and schedules.  It’s time to cry.

             If you were to stay for the longer, guided tour of John 11, I would love to show you around.  The brushstrokes of the gospel’s narrative are fine and masterful.  There is such artistry in John’s weaving together themes and motifs to be celebrated.  But I can tell you are drawn to the same thing that everyone who beholds this story, even for the briefest of glances:  the spectacle of a dead man walking.

            It’s near Easter, when we tell the story of an Empty Tomb and befuddled disciples hearing words about resurrection they cannot quite comprehend, let alone believe.  It’s not quite time for Thomas to have his most famous of appearances, insisting on placing his hand on Jesus’ wounds in order to see proof.  The story of Lazarus’ raising from the dead seems pre-emptive, a teasing image of what is about to be told in two weeks. 

Again, the scholars lingering around John 11 would talk at length about how this story is placed here for good reason.  Before the Lazarus story, the gospel builds up as Jesus performs sign after sign, showing his power and claiming such things in the name of God’s glory.  Then after Lazarus has been raised, the story takes an increasingly somber cast, as Death prepares to come for Jesus himself.

Despite the spectacle of the signs, despite the teachings that reveal the mission of Jesus, sent to the world by God who so loved the world, despite the recurrent talk of the gospel bringing the light to the world, there comes this great crash in the midst of it all. 

Word comes:  Lazarus is ill.  Then: Lazarus is failing, could you please come?  And finally, as they prepare to travel, Jesus himself tells it plain:  Lazarus is dead.

 I know many grew up in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School with this emphasis on memorizing scripture verses.  (Usually, the kid who memorized the most verses by the end of VBS got some sort of prize.)  We all knew that one verse:  John 19:35—“Jesus wept”.

We thought it an easy addition to our list, where far more complex and challenging verses awaited.  Yet, as I come back to it, I wish we had not been encouraged to trivialize such a short verse.   Now as I look at, with eyes somewhere between that of a person trained by New Testament scholars taking delight in John’s artful way of telling a good gospel and that of a person who has now lived a few years, experienced a few of what will be many bumps along the way called life, I turn to that verse and its brevity speaks volumes. 

            In the midst of his work for God’s glory, in the midst of his mission to share his word with the people, in the midst of escalating religious disagreement, the one called “Word made flesh” weeps.  He weeps for a dear friend buried.  He weeps with a family overcome by grief.  He weeps because “the Word made flesh” means just that.

              The raising of Lazarus captivates people (or prompts them to wonder if biblical mythmaking is in progress) as the story ends differently than we know it should.  When Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, the gospel writer does not leave much to the imagination.  Dead is dead.  (Jesus even agrees with Lazarus’ present state.)  The tomb is sealed.  The characters acknowledge what happens to a body after four days in absence of our modern penchant for embalming and cosmetics. 

            The New Testament scholars again gather around and point to the dialogue between Martha and Jesus.  Jesus lays claim to his identity:  “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.”  And Martha offers up a confession of faith:  “Yes Lord, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”  Scholars also point out that later Martha is the hesitant one when Jesus asks the stone to be rolled away.   Nobody, save Jesus, is really prepared to accept that the story as they know it is about to be revised.

             The story as John tells it continues:

 ⁴⁰Jesus said to [Martha], ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴²I 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.’ ⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’

⁴⁴The 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.’

Here, we find ourselves transported from the obituaries to what is surely the lead story that grabs the headline.  The life that we race through, yet find ourselves eventually and equally at finitude’s doorstep, has been given an unexpected plot twist.  Striding (as best you can while tangled up in burial clothing), the dead man walks away from his final resting place. 

Is this story fanciful fairytale or wish fulfillment in Sunday school guise?  What do we make of a story that is decidedly unlike the story about death that we eventually must concede our understanding?   This story has a dead man walking, yet still wrapped in the burial cloths.  Later, this same gospel writer will depict Jesus dying by the hand of religious and political powers. 

Jesus is said not to remain in his tomb.  Indeed, the story claims something even more challenging to our modern sensibilities:  resurrection, not just “raising up”.  Jesus will be described as fully overcoming death, surely bearing marks of his wounds, yet the burial cloths are left completely behind.  

The gospel leaves Lazarus’ eventual fate vague, capable of dying again.  The only other appearance Lazarus makes is in the next chapter, still in his burial cloths. When the disciples find the tomb empty, John’s gospel notes that the only burial cloths are left. 

Jesus walks free of death on Easter morn.