The Raising of Lazarus : John 11

Holy Trinity 20.7.03 am

Introduction

Good morning. We’ve been going through the gospel of John, and this morning we reach something of a climax. So far in this gospel John has told us 5 remarkable stories about Jesus.

The first was that he turned water into wine.

The second was that he healed the son of a local government official at Capernaum.

The third was that he healed the disabled man at the pool of Bethesda.

The fourth was that he fed 5000 people with a few small loaves and fish.

The fifth was that he healed the man born blind.

And now we come to a sixth story: Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. If the first five seem remarkable, this one outdoes them all and seems incredible. But try and rewrite the story without the resurrection and you are left with a nonsense. John’s claim is that this actually happened. Do we really believe it – not in the sense that we are happy to go along with it, because we accept that Jesus came to bring life and anyway we’re used to the story, but in the sense that we really think a dead man staggered out of a tomb still wrapped in bandages?? Can we imagine what it would have been like to actually have been there?

Story of a hamster

Well, let’s bring it down to earth a bit. To help us do that I’d like to tell you what happened in our house on 27^th February 1999. On the morning of 27^th February 1999 I went as I always did into Edward’s bedroom to wake him up. Edward at that stage had a hamster called Badger, and as hamsters have a habit of escaping unexpectedly I looked at the cage to check the hamster was still there. It was, but it wasn’t in its bedding, it was curled up in its food compartment. I took the lid off and poked gently. The hamster was cold, stiff and motionless. Now this was Edward’s 4^th hamster, and so I knew about these things. The hamster was dead, like the parrot in the John Cleese sketch; dead, defunct, deceased, passed on, pushing up the daisies; it was an ex-hamster. I groaned in despair and told the bad news to Edward, who just looked at me in silent agony. I thought we’d better say goodbye properly, so I picked the hamster up. I felt upset, and that Edward didn’t need this. Then I thought, we’d better pray. I know the story of Lazarus as we all do. So I prayed, silently but intensely, and with the ridiculous faith of a child who knows no better; please God, let him live. Scarcely had I finished when Edward yelled ‘his whisker moved!’. We watched, and his whiskers were definitely moving. I’ve heard of things twitching after death, so I told myself this must be what’s happening. Then his nose twitched too. He was still cold and stiff with his eyes shut. I turned him over and felt for a pulse in his neck but there was none. I decided to go with it anyway, so we rushed him downstairs and warmed a bean bag to put him on. While it was in the microwave I held him close and suggested to Edward that we pray. I prayed ‘dear Lord, please bring Badger back to us’; Edward jammed up against me with tears streaming down his face said ‘Amen’. I stroked Badger and turned him over again to stroke his tummy. It moved; I took my finger off and he was breathing! We put him on the warm bag and I kept my hand over him as well. And he came back to life. First his nose, then one front paw moved. Then his head, like a new born lifting it for the first time. He moved his mouth. I gave him some warm water from a dropper. Then he opened his eyes. His back half was still stiff and he couldn’t move it. But gradually life spread back down his body, until first he could push himself up on his front paws, then eventually he got back the use of his back legs and pulled them from their spread position back under his haunches. He stood up, and began to explore slowly. Edward said his eyes were bulging, but otherwise he looked fine. He made a full recovery. My hands had gone red-hot like radiators, and they stayed hot well into the morning. And this was a hamster we couldn’t even have taken to the vet; you just don’t take cold, stiff hamsters that have no heartbeat and aren’t breathing to the vet, it makes you look silly.

But this was the faith of children. Beth and Katy were 4 at the time, and they thought it was quite part of the normal order of things for God to make him better. I said to Edward, what do you say to God then; ‘THANK YOU!’ said Edward emphatically. When he came home from school he said it was a good example of a miracle, like the one where Jesus told the dead girl to get up and said she was only sleeping. If you ask him now what it is that makes his faith real, he says that God brought his hamster back to life. You didn’t really pray for the resurrection of a hamster, did you, someone asked in incredulity. But I’m afraid I did. Was it dead, or perhaps only sleeping? Well, I have to tell you that the evidence of my eyes and hands was that it had all the signs of death and none of the signs of life. And I also have to tell you that for Edward it was and still is one of the most significant factors in the growth of his faith. I’ve actually thought since then that this wouldn’t be a bad way to train the prayer for healing team; each person could be issued with a dead hamster and asked to pray for its recovery. But I haven’t quite dared do that yet…

The story of Lazarus : joining the dots

Well, let’s come back to John 11 and the story which inspired that incident. We’ve heard the story today, and we’ve heard it many times before. Lazarus is ill. They send a messenger. Jesus waits for 2 days before setting out for his village, takes another day to get there and arrives to find he’s been dead 4 days and is now in the tomb. Mary and Martha his sisters are upset, Jesus is upset too, and he commands Lazarus to come out. Lazarus does, still wrapped up in his bandages, and Jesus announces he is the resurrection and the life. We know the story, as we know all the others. Our task is not to know the story but to make it real, to get it out of the dull familiarity of our subconscious belief system and let it come alive. That’s why I’ve told you our rather ridiculous story of the hamster. This story is just as ridiculous, as Dave and Debs showed us with their representation of a tied up Lazarus jumping and groping his way out of a sealed tomb. We’ve got to get it out of our take-for-granted minds and into the mind of the child who sees it happen for the first time.

How can we do that? How can we do that with any of these familiar old stories? This is an ancient text. We’re used to the immediacy of television, to the vividness of film, to the emotion of modern fiction. The problem is not just that we know these stories backwards, but that here we don’t get any of that. We just get a fairly straightforward account of a sequence of events. It’s all a bit clinical, a bit hard to get into.

So before we try, let’s carry on for a moment with the approach of the child; for it was a child that Jesus commended for its approach to faith. I’d like you to think for a moment of those dot-to-dot pictures that you did as a child, and your children probably do now. What you get is a scattering of little numbers, and when you join them up in order you get a picture. Often you can see what the picture will be even before the dots have been joined; but the picture emerges fully only when you’ve joined them. And once they are joined, you can colour the picture in and it all looks much better.

I think it’s the same with the gospels, and especially with John. John gives us a dot-to-dot account of a particular event. He tells us the main things that happened, and the main things that were said. But he leaves little gaps everywhere, and it’s only as we fill in the gaps that we really make the story come alive. We have to draw the lines to complete the picture. Often there isn’t a precise path the line must take, it’s enough for it to be approximate, and as long as it gets from one number to the next the picture will be fine. So there’s some margin for error. But there’s no margin at all for not trying; if you just look at the numbers and protest that you can’t draw straight, you won’t ever get to colour the picture in.

Vs 1-6: God’s purposes

The story starts with some simple facts. Lazarus is sick. He comes from a village near Jerusalem called Bethany. His sisters live there too, and they are called Mary and Martha. Mary and Martha are close friends of Jesus, and so they send him a message: our brother is ill. At this point John begins to prepare us for the idea that this story is going to be about something that’s bigger than the events it contains, just as for Edward the meaning of the healing of his hamster was bigger than the fact of the healing itself. So we are told that Jesus said, ‘this sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.’ And then we’re told he loved Martha, Mary and Lazarus. And then we’re told what he did. What did he do? Nothing. He stayed exactly where he was for 2 more days. Already you’ll have noticed that there are some gaps between the dots. Lazarus won’t die? But he did die. It’s for God’s glory? How? Jesus stayed where he was for 2 whole days? Why? Was he busy? Didn’t he care? What did he spend those days doing?

Vs 7-16 : Jesus’s priorities

After 2 days Jesus suddenly says, right, let’s go back to Judea. Hang on a bit, say the disciples, it’s dangerous, they’re out to get you back there, have you forgotten? No, no, says Jesus, it’s quite safe. Then he comes up with a nice euphemism. He says Lazarus has fallen asleep. Oh, that’s OK then, say the disciples, panic over – he’ll wake up again! At this point Jesus remembers John Cleese and says no, I mean he’s DEAD. Get it? Dead! Defunct! Deceased! Pushing up the daisies! An ex-Lazarus! And then he says he’s glad he wasn’t in Bethany at the time, so they will get the chance to believe. Well, I’ve told you about the hamster and the increase in Edward’s faith, and how that couldn’t have happened if he’d not died. But the disciples haven’t had the benefit of that story, so they are completely confused. Are we talking metaphor or reality here? What is going on?

Vs 17-27 Martha

Eventually Jesus gets to Bethany, only to discover that Lazarus has been dead 4 days. That’s a way of saying completely dead, irrevocably dead – apparently the Jews believed the soul hung around a bit after the body had died, but by now even the soul has moved on. Martha comes to meet him. And here we need to imagine the encounter and join up the dots. She says to Jesus that if he’d been there, Lazarus wouldn’t have died. Mary says exactly the same thing later. They aren’t complaining that he hasn’t come in time, just lamenting that if only he’d been there it’d have been all right. They must have seen Jesus heal lots of people, and they know he can do it. Their messenger will have taken a day to reach Jesus, Jesus waited 2 days, and he took a day to get back; they must have spent all that time worrying as Lazarus got worse and worse, hoping that Jesus would get there before it was too late. But perhaps Martha is still hoping against hope that it’s not too late, because she says rather cautiously that she knows that even now God will give Jesus whatever he asks. Lazarus will rise again, Jesus says. Yes, I know, on the Day of Judgment he will rise, she agrees. Not much faith, perhaps. But what would you have thought if he’d said that to you? What do you think when you read the promises Jesus makes? When he says, you will have not life but abundant life, what do you make of it? When he says, the truth will set you free, what do you make of it? When he says, my peace I give you, what do you make of it? All these things John reports Jesus as saying. Usually we respond exactly as Martha responds – yes, Lord, one day. One day we will be in heaven and we will have abundant life, perfect freedom and total peace. We don’t expect it now. We believe it in theory, but we don’t really believe it in practice. We don’t really expect to get it. So we’d have said what Martha says; I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. I know will have freedom, peace, and life – in heaven. Not now. It’s a promise for the future, a figure of speech, a statement about eternal reality; it isn’t actually meant for now.

A lot of people do that with the whole gospel, don’t they. It’s metaphorical. Jesus didn’t physically rise from the dead. He metaphorically rose from the dead. You can try it here. Lazarus wasn’t actually physically brought back to life, it’s just a parable to illustrate Jesus’s statement that he is the resurrection and the life. This is one of the passages where Jesus teases the modern liberal theologian. He’s fallen asleep, says Jesus. Oh, great, say the literal minded disciples, then he’ll wake up again. No, says Jesus, I’m speaking metaphorically! But when I use a metaphor, it actually stands for a reality! so when I use a metaphor to say he’s dead, I mean he’s dead. Not metaphorically dead - really dead! Then he goes on. But. I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and however lives and believes in me will never die. So did Jesus mean, he who believes in me will metaphorically live? Or did he mean really live, actually rise from the dead? Do you believe me, he asks Martha? Yes, she says. But I still don’t think she expects anything to happen.

Vs 28-32 Mary

Enter Mary. Mary’s a quieter sort than her sister, and instead of charging out to meet Jesus she’s stayed at home. But when Martha fetches her she comes. She says the same thing as her sister: if you’d been here he wouldn’t have died. She’s crying. Jesus cries too. But there are two words for crying in this passage. One is a formal word to designate official mourning, and that’s the one used of Mary and the people who are keeping her company. It’s a kind of wailing, the cultural equivalent of dressing in black. The other is more emotional; it’s what you do when you fall over and hurt your knee. When it says, ‘Jesus wept’, it means not the first but the second. It means this: Jesus burst into tears. He minds. He identifies with her pain and cries with her. He’s upset because she is upset.

Vs 33-38 Jesus’s response

But that isn’t the only emotion Jesus has. ‘Jesus wept’ is a lousy translation, really, because it takes away the emotional intensity of it; it makes it seem formal. Wept just isn’t a word we use. And it’s the same in verses 33 and 38, where it says Jesus was ‘deeply moved’. That sounds kind of literary, very epic, tragic, careful and considered, doesn’t it. It wasn’t. The verb John uses is the one normally used for a snorting horse. It wasn’t literary, epic, measured at all. When applied to people it meant anger. It actually means Jesus was absolutely furious. So here’s another gap between the dots. Why was he furious? I think there’s only one explanation that makes sense. He was furious because of the intrusion of death into human affairs, because of the pain inflicted by Satan on human beings. This was never the plan. It wasn’t how God meant it to be. I don’t know about you but I identify with that. Sometimes when people tell me the awful experiences they’ve had, it makes me upset and angry too. I feel their pain and I feel anger at the powers of evil which try to destroy us. Sometimes if a person is being oppressed or possessed by evil spirits I feel angry, and I tell them in cold fury to get out. I think that’s how Jesus is feeling here.

So what does he do. Remember he’s in an almighty strop. He’s feeling defensive of his friend who is in pain. He’s angry with the powers of death which have caused that pain. So he advances on the tomb, draws himself up to his full height, and yells: Lazarus, come out! Martha, always so practical, says hang on a minute, Lord, he’s been in there 4 days, he’ll stink by now. Jesus ignores her. Jesus doesn’t seem to have taken much notice of practical people who told him what was normal and proper. So Lazarus comes out. Again let’s join some dots. The verb John gives us is just that, come out. But try and imagine the scene. Lazarus has both legs bound together with bandages. His head is wrapped up in more bandages. That means he can’t see and he can’t walk. This isn’t a slow motion movie of biblical proportions, this is stand-up comedy. Their eyes must have been popping out of their heads as he jumped out, half falling over and bumping into things. Give him a hand, says Jesus, take the things off, come on now, wake up, snap out of it! It wasn’t a dream or a poem, it reallly happened. Try to imagine the story without the final resurrection. Could it have happened? Lazarus dead, Jesus talking about being the resurrection and the life, and then everyone going back to the house to do some more mourning? Would I have told you the story about the hamster if the hamster had stayed dead and Edward had just felt a bit better because we’d prayed? I think not.

Vs 45-53 The Sanhedrin

So Lazarus came out. Loads of people became Christians. And the priests and Pharisees were furious. They call a council meeting. ‘We aren’t getting anywhere, they cry. This man is performing miracles! If we don’t act, everyone will believe in him!’ Good grief, we can’t have that now, can we!! The Romans will have to deal with it, and they’ll take action. By that they meant, against the priests and the temple, against the religious power structure of the nation. It’s a common reaction. Come on now, religion should be decent and in order, done under the proper authority and according to the usual rules. This guy is working miracles! It’s got to stop! He’s jeopardising their power and control. Like Wesley in the 18^th century, charging around the country on a horse preaching by the power of the Holy Spirit. The bishops didn’t like it at all. They complained that he was being inappropriately enthusiastic. Not decent at all. The Pharisees didn’t like it either, so from this point on they intensify their plot to kill him, never suspecting that that will make it all a lot worse and bring about exactly what they fear.

The story of Lazarus : colouring the picture

So there we are. I hope that puts us in touch a bit with what it must have been like to be there. We’ve filled in some of the gaps and joined up some of the dots, and we’ve got a rather better picture than we started with. So what do we need to do next? We need to colour the picture in. We need to think about the meaning, to turn it from a black and white picture, a photo taken a long time ago, into a colour picture, a picture of life today. We could do that in lots of ways, and everyone has their own. But I thought perhaps if we look at 2 questions it will help us get going.

1. Why does Jesus delay?

Firstly, why does Jesus delay? Why did he wait two days before even setting out? Even if he wanted Lazarus to die so that he could raise him, why leave Martha and Mary grief-stricken for 4 whole days after Lazarus had been buried? It wasn’t that he was busy. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. Why was it?

Well, I think that’s a question we often ask ourselves today. Why does God leave us in our pain for so long? Why does he not heal now? Why not send someone now? Why not provide an answer now? Why wait so long to fulfil his promises? We believe in a God who cares for us – so why does he leave us to suffer when a single word could solve our problem?

Jesus seems to give 2 reasons. First, it’s for God’s glory. Raising a dead hamster convinces a child of the power of God much much better than a poorly one getting better. And second, it’s for the benefit of your faith. Waiting and trusting, and then finding that God delivers you, does wonders for your faith. It builds you up. The testing of your faith, says James later, produces endurance. And endurance has the effect of making you mature and complete, so that you lack nothing. (James 1.3-4).

Often I pray for people who have been in pain, physical or emotional, for a long time. Often I have been in pain myself for a long time. Our natural instinct is always to take the pain away. Jesus himself had that instinct. He saw his friends cry, and he cried with them. When I am in pain, I want the pain to go. When I see another person in pain, I want their pain to go. Now. But often it doesn’t work that way. Why haven’t you taken this pain away, often I ask. But I have learnt, in my own experience and as I have prayed for others, that often God doesn’t take pain away. He doesn’t want to take it away because he wants us to grow by going through it. You become much stronger by going through pain and coming out the other side than you do by being spared pain. I have been through all sorts of painful things; but in each one I have grown. I am no longer afraid of pain. We want instant answers. God knows better.

So first of all, pain makes us grow. Second, it makes us glorify God. The longer and the more we have suffered, the more we realise our dependence on God, and the more we realise how miraculous his intervention really is. In Tanzania we often pray for a people who have been ill for years. Sometimes they are healed, and then the whole community hears about it. God is glorified in a way that he isn’t here, where we take healing for granted and look to doctors to provide it.

2. What does it mean that he is the resurrection and the life?

The second question is, what does it mean that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? He’s gradually been raising the temperature, hasn’t he. He made a lame man walk at the pool of Bethesda. Then he made a blind man see. Now he’s gone the whole hog and made a dead man live. Are we getting the point here?

So what do you think about death? This is what the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell thought:

There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.

This is what Woody Allen thinks:

I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

What about you? Are you afraid of death? You shouldn’t be. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Not metaphorical life. Real life. It’s yours.

Amen.