AND DIDN’T HE RISE…GRAVE

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from John 11:1-45

March 9, 2008

John 11

¹Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ²Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. ³So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” ⁴But 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.” ⁵Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, ⁶after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

⁷Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” ⁸The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” ⁹Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. ¹⁰But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” ¹¹After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” ¹²The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” ¹³Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. ¹⁴Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. ¹⁵For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, ¹⁹and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

²⁸When 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.” ²⁹And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹The 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. ³²When 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.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep. ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

³⁸Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹Jesus 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.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “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 upward 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.” ⁴⁵Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

What is Jesus crying about? You heard the scripture, “Jesus began to weep.” Knowing what he knows, why is Jesus crying?

Occasionally we Americans get nostalgic and we long for the good old days when the Bible was read at the start of the school day in every public school in the nation. We yearn for those times when our children were touched by its vast wisdom, when the Word of God would burn its way into the hearts of our schoolchildren and guide their behavior and increase their character. Well, I lived back in those days and I will tell you that didn’t happen. In our high school homeroom before the day’s classes began, in order to abide by the school district’s policies, the teacher would call on the next person in the row of desks to open the Bible, select at least one verse and read the scripture to the rest of us. Every kid in my homeroom was a Bible scholar—only in the sense that every one of them knew John 11:35. It is the shortest verse in the Bible. In the Kings James Version and the Revised Standard Version is reads: “Jesus wept.” Just two words. Read EVERY day at White Station High School. Chosen not for its impact but for its brevity. My school was about 30% Jewish and even the Jewish kids in my homeroom chose John 11:35 instead of an Old Testament selection. It was the shortest—plus it has Jesus crying. For some of my blasphemous buddies that was a double win!

But the question remains: why was Jesus crying? He knew what was about to happen. He sensed Lazarus’ death even before he went to Bethany to help him but described it as simply falling asleep, saying that he was going there to awaken him. He told an anguished and angered Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” But when he saw sister Mary weeping and her group of supporters and mourners weeping, he became greatly disturbed in spirit, deeply moved…and he began to weep also. This is what I love about Jesus. He sees beyond our human borders, but he remains by our sides. He can see eternity but he knows we can’t…and so he hangs in and hurts with us.

When told that his son’s death in a car accident was the will of God, William Sloane Coffin disagreed vociferously and said, “When the waves closed over that sinking car, God’s heart was the first heart to break.” Jesus knows what we feel and feels it with us. Jesus is the way God experiences humanity. So the first thing I would want you to learn from this scripture is that Jesus hurts when you hurt.

But that is not the main point of the passage. I have always had some concerns about this Lazarus situation. Jesus brought him back to life. But did he want to come back? What if death had been a relief for him, a release from suffering? When he waddled out of the tomb, hands and feet still wrapped in burial cloths, did he walk out a younger, healthier man, or did he simply start his second earthly life where he had left off? Plus, his rising from the dead made him a target for the corrupt religious authorities. Just a few verses later in 12:10 it says, “So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.” “Hey”, he might have said, “I didn’t ask for this, you know.” And of course the thing that has always stuck in my mind is that Lazarus would die again, would have to die a second time. Scholars tell us that Jesus was close friends with Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. Some friend this Jesus was! He lets Lazarus die when he could have hustled along and healed him. He gets Lazarus unwrapped from his burial shroud but all wrapped up in Jesus’ battle with the deadly high priests, makes him a marked man, you might even say a dead man. So what exactly is this text saying?

None of this was about raising Lazarus from the dead. His death and second chance at earthly life were incidental. The point was to prove the glory and the might of God, to prove that death has no lasting power. Even though we die, yet shall we live. And those who live and believe in Christ shall never die. It was show-and-tell, it was a visual aid, it was a real-life lab experiment. Jesus shows us, by the involuntary effort of Lazarus, that life is larger than our human borders.

I am no doubt preaching to the choir here today since, according to a 2005 CBS poll, 78% of Americans believe in an afterlife. At one cemetery the graveside service had barely finished when there was a massive clap of thunder, followed by a tremendous bolt of lightning, accompanied by even more thunder rumbling in the distance. The little old man looked at the pastor and calmly said, “Well…she’s there.” Yes, most of us believe in an afterlife. But when its not some pollster calling, when we are face to face with the inevitable, when we stand beside the casket which holds our loved one, do we remember what we believe? That’s why we preach about it, that’s why this passage in John rolls around every three years in the lectionary, that’s why this is one of the most frequently read scriptures at funerals. We are reminding ourselves what we believe. Some people are better at it than others.

Everett Cecil writes,

“My sister Eleanor

Was visiting our

93 year old

Grandpa Hafer

In the hospital.

‘Grandpa,’

She said,

‘I want to

Tell you

How much you

Mean to me…

I never got to

Tell Mother that….’

With a chuckle

He said,

‘I’ll tell her.’

So in the

Life to come—

The unsaid

Will be said.

The unspoken

Will be spoken.

The unheard

Will be heard.

It will be

A joyous

Reunion!”

It is a message that we need to give to each new generation and to those who have never heard it… or who have missed the message for their generation…or who only believe it in polls.

We mortals think of death as the end…the tomb where Lazarus’ body will rot until nothing remains except memories. But, Jesus tells us, that death is really a new beginning—a beginning that this time has no end. Woody Allen, the humorist and playwright, says, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying!” Me too, Woody. So, check out what Jesus said to Martha, “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.” Lazarus found that out—twice. And Jesus himself, the one who experienced everything we experience, lay in his own tomb for three days, and then…didn’t he rise?