5th Sunday of Lent 2023 John 11:1-45. The raising of Lazarus.
Today’s gospel brings together all the points we have talked about in the last four weeks in this Gospel. His conversations with Nicodemus, with the Samaritan woman, and with the man blind from birth. All about conversations. Today the conversations involve the two sets of Jesus’ closest friends, and his conversations with them. The 12 apostles, whom Jesus calls his friends elsewhere in the gospels, and the family of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, brother and sisters.
We don’t know why Lazarus falls ill and ultimately dies. We just know that when this news comes to Jesus, that we really get a sense of Jesus in deep relationship with those around him. His friends, Martha and Mary, send for him, in hopes that they will save their brother Lazarus, whom Jesus loves. There is deep, caring friendship in this story.
Let’s look first at the conversation with the disciples after they hear the news that Lazarus is sick.
Now Bethany, where Lazarus is sick, is very close to Jerusalem, where, the disciples thought, lay death. They say in effect “You really don’t want to do this, Jesus. Those people in Judea want to kill you!”
They don’t fully understand the picture and to the extent that they do, they’re not happy about the plan. But for Jesus, they’re the key group of friends - and that’s especially true from here on in John’s Gospel. He’s really trying to get them ready for what lies ahead – his trial, death, resurrection, and ascension – and for the work they are to do after Christ returns to the Father. Jesus says to them “for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.”
After all, this is the bunch that will be tasked with spreading the Good News in the years to come. The fate of the message of Jesus lies with them. He’s preparing them for the work that lies ahead, leading them to an understanding of the magnitude of the task, the stakes involved. They are just beginning to grasp the scope of the work, the dangers it brings, its compelling necessity. This episode clarifies all of this for them.
Again I’m struck by how like the twelve we are, full of doubts and fears. They are to continue on with him on this path not because they are fearless – but because Jesus is still forming them, and he does this not from his position as teacher, but intimate friend. It’s the same way he calls us.
Thomas, much maligned, says OK then, let’s go back to Jerusalem with him and die! That’s magnificent, I think.
And they head back, Jesus encounters Martha and then Mary, who tell him that Lazarus has died. We hear Martha’s hurt, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ They have faith, just like the disciples. They believe that things might have been different if Jesus had been on the scene.
But, again just like the disciples, they only have so much faith. They believe that things are done and can’t be undone.
This is what struck me this week quite powerfully this week. With both the disciples and Mary and Martha, Jesus loves them and acknowledges their faith but also takes note of its limitations. They have faith, but it only goes so far. They believe in miracles, but only in small ones. This is embarrassingly like us. Yet Jesus says to us the same thing as we too are his close friends: “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
What does Jesus come to show them – to show us – here? That the path of faith transcends our logic and even our imagination. We are called to believe in big things – to affirm that there is hope even in a seemingly hopeless world, that there can be joy even in the midst of suffering, that our relationships with each other really do matter, that there is the possibility of life-giving love even in the face of certain death.
And look at who we hear proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah – it’s Martha.
Again a person of no status in that society. Throughout John’s gospel, it is the “nothings,” who are called to proclaim Jesus’ mission. It’s the unnamed Samaritan woman he meets at the well that we talked about just a couple of weeks ago. It’s Martha, who lives in this odd household with her sister and her brother. This is who recognizes Jesus. Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.
Then we come to a moment of emotional intensity unmatched in the New Testament. Jesus sees Mary crying and he begins to cry himself.
Jesus cries with Mary. What a powerful example of Jesus’ compassion and what a testament to his fullest embodiment of the human emotional life.
The image we often carry of Jesus as divine, as spiritual being, is a denial of the power of the incarnation. The power of Jesus is in his humanity as well as in his divinity. He carries it in his body. Jesus teaches us fully embodied life – and it makes our disregard for the well-being of the bodies of others all the more a sin. He sees the sorrow of Mary and he cries with her and the others who are grieving.
Think about this – he already knows what he’s there to do – he’s not crying for Lazarus. He sees the great sorrow of Mary and it causes him too to weep. This is truly a sign of the God who loves us, who suffers with us in our suffering, who is present and deeply connected to our hearts.
That’s who Jesus is. Jesus is not distant, aloof, remote. Jesus is right here, holding us in wonderful relationship and acknowledging our pain.
This gospel reading gives us all this, and Lazarus still hasn’t been raised. These human connections are key, but let us not miss what Jesus wants all of those involved – and us – to understand.
The raising of Lazarus gives life to the message of Jesus. The really powerful parallels here are with the Nicodemus story that we also discussed recently, a resurrection story not of physical death but of death to the old self and rebirth into a different sort of life.
The death and resurrection of Lazarus demonstrates the call to new life through Jesus.
For us, in committing to a life following Jesus, we are called to a death of the ego, the perishing of the selfish self, to the end of our embrace of the death-dealing culture, to be replaced by a life of justice and mercy and faith and compassion and joy and community.
We are called from the tomb, the place of death, and into abundant life. Let me pray …