He Shall Overcome

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.” But 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 [on the other side of the Jordan].
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? Thos 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 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, “K 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 [Mary] 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. The 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 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 upward 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.”. . . .

~ ~ ~ ~

Today is the 5th Sunday in Lent, a season that prescribes reflection, self-examination and repentance… for 40 days. That’s a tall order for modern people, some of whom will say “I want to feel good when I go to church. Lent is for people who are morose by nature; who tend to be blue, maybe a bit depressed, but I’m looking for an upbeat, positive experience that doesn’t dwell on the negative.”  I understand that.

If all we get is a dreary, “you-can-never-measure up” message, why bother? On the other hand, if all we get is a gospel of “you deserve to “feel good”, “enjoy success” and “how to be happy all the time”, I would suspect the church has become detached from the reality of people’s pain – be it loneliness, mental anguish, relational troubles, the trauma of accident or illness, hunger, homelessness, and the list goes on. We’ve joined in the great denial, in the great anesthesia of materialism Besides you’d have to ignore huge sections of the Bible that speak of sorrow, and lament and the sinful side of human nature.

The words of the preacher in Ecclesiastes come to mind: “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance… a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to be born and a time to die. . . .For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Lent is a season for facing ourselves and acknowledging our humanity and, further, for recalling not only the depth of human sin, but also our inability to solve our own problems -- not the least of which is death.

Ah, but some sharp, ecclesiastical mind might point out, the 40 days of Lent do not include Sundays. And they would be correct. Sundays in Lent provide a bit of respite, of relief from the “heaviness” of Lent, a breather parceled out weekly during these 40 days. Every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection in some sense. That is especially so on this Sunday when the scripture reading, a great dramatic narrative, is the one prescribed passage in the lectionary. Some have called the story a preview of Jesus’ own resurrection, but there are some other important teaching points unique to this account of the raising of Lazarus.

For one thing, it’s not a resurrection in the sense of Jesus’ resurrection. Lazarus, the dear friend of Jesus, will have to endure something very few, not even Jesus, would face: he will die a second time. I suspect that if the reports we hear from modern people about N.D.E., near death experiences -- the accounts of those who were clinically dead -- the prospect of death for Lazarus the second time would hold no fear.
Let’s push the rewind button and go back to the beginning of the story. Jesus was on the other side of the Jordan River when word arrived from Martha and Mary that their brother Lazarus was ill. Maybe no one knew at the moment that the illness was terminal, but it was clearly serious enough to motivate the sisters to summon the master from a considerable distance.

What catches the attention first is that Jesus didn’t drop everything and race to Bethany. Two days he lingered… 48 precious hours. How could he? The delay was not insensitivity or Jesus lack of awareness of the severity of the problem. He knew what would happen and what he would do. He would bring life to the dead… to Lazarus… and to countless others over the centuries. But, for him to do so meant having to overcome no little resistance. No one, it seems, understood, expected or grasped who this Jesus was or what he was about… at least at that moment.

First, his disciples exercising due concern for his safety and well-being cautioned him about returning to Judea. Funny how things go astray and get ugly when people feel they must protect God. Inquisitions, divisions, conflict and accusations have happened all the way down through history to this very day. The disciples once again miss the meaning when Jesus says “Lazarus is asleep” and add that to their case for not re-entering harm’s way. “Well, if he’s sleeping, there’s no reason to risk being stoned or worse.”

“Lazarus is dead,” Jesus said forcefully and no doubt more than one disciple thought “Then what’s the point?” It was Thomas who spoke up with a shrug and resignation, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” No one really got it. But Jesus persisted.

When Jesus arrives at Bethany, Martha with a note of accusation says, “If you’d been here, he wouldn’t have died.” “Your brother will rise again,” said Jesus. “Sure, in the resurrection… but fat lot of good that does now…” (I took some poetic license there.) She didn’t get it. But Jesus persisted.

Martha went and fetched Mary, who was just as disappointed as her sister. Even the Jewish mourners who had gathered to console the sisters did not share any sense of anticipation; they were even irritated that Jesus did nothing to prevent Lazarus’ succumbing. No one understands. No one expects that life can come out of death. No one grasps that Jesus is the life-giving power of God. But Jesus persists. But not with steely eyed resolve that has no regard for people’s grief.

There is that one sentence that makes us know that He is in this with us. “Jesus began to weep,” behavior uncharacteristic of a strong leader… or not?

Still greatly disturbed, he instructed that the stone be removed. And practical, hyper-responsible Martha said, “Lord, there will be a stench.” But Jesus persisted.

He prayed and then with a loud voice, an authoritative voice, he summoned Lazarus. And he came out! Still wrapped in the burial clothes! “Unbind him and let him go.” And many believed.

What a dramatic moment! Restored to family! Joyous reunion! And yet there is that narrator’s note: the raising of Lazarus didn’t please everyone; some went and told the Pharisees… and we read a little later (vs. 53) that “…from that day on they planned together to kill him.”

John has a flair for irony… perhaps because many of life’s defining moments are ironic, sometimes stunningly so. Case in point, in this story, as hard as people fight illness in an effort to say alive, when life is given back, it becomes not just a celebration but a collaboration… to reintroduce death by killing Jesus.

Further how odd of Jesus to raise his friend from death only to enroll him in a brief venture that would get them both killed. The cynic asks, “What’s the point?” but for those whose definition of life has been expanded to include resurrection, death loses its power. The grim reaper has been rendered toothless, powerless. Maybe Jesus is saying if we can pull the camera far enough back, “so much for ordinary dying from disease, accidents, or plain wearing out; so much for living with the sole agenda of not dying and desperately extending our days. Let’s go instead to where we can give our lives away.” To the one who has surrendered his/her life, nothing can take it away. Come die with me… an act symbolized in the Christian faith by baptism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it this way, “When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.”

Don’t think for a moment I am oblivious to how entirely counter, how opposite this is to the strongest human instinct – self-preservation. As Fredrich Niedner writes, “A generation ago, Ernest Becker taught us that the fear of dying is the mainspring of all human behavior.” Everything from a college education to seat belt laws to funding Medicare is a related act. But here’s another irony: what good is it to extend mortal life if it’s only to waste what we have mostly on ourselves? Never mind that many don’t know what to do with all the extended life/years. As the late British novelist Susan Ertz observed, “Millions who long for immortality don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

A final though not exhaustive ironic note: remember that when Jesus when saw the power of death to devastate he wept, an act of identification; then, with defiance, he called Lazarus forth.. Episcopal priest Robert Morris points out that the word for resurrection in the original Greek is anastasis, which he notes means literally “standing up again.” It implies that in view of the resurrection, that singular event we look forward to celebrating in two weeks, lies the basis for us to use Wendell Berry’s phrase – “practice resurrection”, be defiant in the face of the multiple ways death in all its forms would put us down. We all get knocked down, but it takes a measure of defiance to stand up again. “The resurrection does not wait for Easter.” It happened for Lazarus… and it happens on a daily basis when individuals find the faith and hope to get up when they’ve been knocked down.
A woman, writing last summer in the personals section of the newspaper, was looking for more than a fling. This is what she wrote:

“I’m a 58 year-old woman with, doctors tell me, one year to live. I would like to spend that year doing something meaningful, interesting and fun. I like PBS, Bill Moyers, Times crosswords, Anna Quindlen, and New Hampshire. I don’t like R. J. Reynolds, Howard Stern, computer talk, rigid fundamentalists or California. I have limited stamina and resources. Have you any idea how I can spend this year making a difference?”
Do you hear the note of defiance in that woman’s ad? I don’t know if she was a woman of faith or what she believed about the actuality of resurrection, but it strikes me she is saying “yes” to life, to anastasis, rather than shrinking from it out of fear of death.

There’s no denial there, only a defiant courage. Are there tears? Sure. Are there moments of deep discouragement? Yes. Are there times when on feels defeated and alone? Uh-huh. But there is anastasis. Resurrection is now. Here. Every time you find courage to defiantly stand up against evil, fear, prideful, selfish, self pity and corrupt forces within and without, you give evidence of resurrection -- you practice resurrection!

AMEN

He Shall Overcome

A Sermon by

Dr. J. Lawrence Cuthill

March 9th, 2008

Winter Park Presbyterian