The Raising of Lazarus

John’s Gospel 11. 1-46

20th February 2011 St Mary’s Battersea

The Rev’d Adam Boulter

Todays gospel is long and it is strange, and I don't want to make it any less strange, the best stories are strange and we know this. We have a bit of a tendency, I think, to want to explain everything, to rationalise every thing away, to make it safe, so we don't have to think about it any more, its a human trait. This story resists this the whole way through. Every thing about it is odd, you answer one question and you get five more, and I assure you the more you study this the more it does this, this is a very extra ordinary story. I am going to be going through it, but first of all I want to point out some thing that isn’t obvious in the story that is odd about this text. Which is that this story comes at the pivotal point in St. Johns gospel, this is the point where the Pharisees decide they really have to get rid of Jesus, this story leads on to that. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem in the gospel of John is triumphal precisely because he has just raised Lazarus. That story has spread to Jerusalem and they welcome him, and story spreads to the Pharisees and they seek to have him killed. This story leads directly to the crucifixion in Johns gospel. Its is absolutely pivotal, and yet it is not in any of the other gospels. Not only is it not in them but there isn't a gap where you can easily insert it. So there is a mystery before we even look at the story, three of the gospels do not have this story and one has this in the pivot of the whole narrative of the gospel. Very odd, indeed.

As we will see the story gets odder and odder as we listen to it. But I want us to live with this because the world is odd, things are strange, we like to think we understand how reality is, when we don't and we can’t. Part of what we are lead to do as Christians is to recognise the oddness of being, that when God is active in things they are mysterious. We not only don’t understand, we can’t understand, if we give our selves all our best machines and best minds for all of the rest of eternity we still will not understand. This is important, because humans don’t like to think this and I don’t like to think this. Todays gospel is partially about that: helping us to recognise the mysterious, Gods ways are beyond our understandability, it is no that we have not got bright enough yet, or that we haven't tried enough yet, it is not possible.

To the story. The story begins with Lazarus falling ill. Lazarus is one of Jesus’s best friends, Mary and Martha are close friends of Jesus and they crop up a few times in the gospels, and Lazarus is their brother. It clearly says he is beloved, Jesus loves this man. And he hears he is ill, so what does he do? Nothing, how peculiar, how bizarre. He doesn't got to see him, he doesn't send a message, he doesn't try to heal him from a distance (as he has before), he doesn't pray about it, all he says is this is meant to happen to show the further glory of God and I am staying here. Its a strange reaction. It is not a reaction that most of us would think is a good reaction. If our close friend were ill we would feel pretty guilty if we did this. Yet that is what Jesus does, strange. Then Lazarus dies, which is what often happens if you have a serious illness, particularly if you don’t have any medical care. The message comes to Jesus that he has died and what does Jesus do now? He decides to go to see him. So having not gone to see him while he was ill, he is now going to see him now he has died. Not only is he going to go to see him, but he is going to go and see the body in a place where they have tried to stone him to death before. The last time he went to this place he nearly got killed. So he decides to go back at exactly the time when all the people who tried to kill him will have gathered for the funeral. This is very peculiar, he is going to see him when he can’t be hidden, when he could have gone subtly when he was alive and then he could have done something about the illness. Its a strange story. He says he must do this because, there are twelve hours of light in the day and those who walk in the light don’t stumble, and by implication those who walk in the darkness do. In other words things are as they are, the time will be when the time will be, it was not the time to go to him before but it is the time to go to him now. This is Gods time I am going now, if its is dangerous so be it. This is radical handing over of your life to the will of God, to the point of doing things that are socially totally unacceptable and frankly upsetting and odd. His disciples say after this OK we will come with you, even if it means we are going to die. That is worth noticing: this is the point where the disciples really commit to being prepared to go with Jesus to his death to put their own lives on the line. After this story there lives will be at risk and after Jesus’s death and resurrection most of these disciples will die martyrs deaths. The decision is made here, some how what Jesus has said and his behaviour has inspired them to that level of commitment, even though his behaviour reads as very odd. There is a radical handing over of his life here that has inspired his disciples.

Then he goes and he turns up and the village is not very far away from Jerusalem, and just out side he waits. Martha comes to meet him, in the other great story about Mary and Martha, Martha is the one who is more interested in the pots and pans than in listening to Jesus. Yet in this story what becomes clear is that Martha completely understands who Jesus is, and what faith is. She comes and talks to him with a mixture of rebuke and faith, she gives him a bit of a hard time, and then shows total faith. She says why weren't you here (its a good question) this wouldn’t have happened if you turned up a week ago like we asked you to. But you can do what you can do, and what ever you say is going to happen. Jesus says your brother will be resurrected, and she says the completely orthodox Jewish statement of the time which is: of course he will be he will be resurrected at the end of time. That is a pretty normal statement for the period, then Jesus say something really radical Jesus says: I am the resurrection and she says: yes you are, you are the Messiah, you are the living walking talking resurrection that is what you are.

Then she goes to get her sister. Who is in the house mourning. Now the word for mourning implies to us that some one is a bit upset, it would not have been like that, this would have been full scale screaming and shouting for a few days. This is not a polite affair, mourning in this culture it is loud it is public and it is full on heart rending grief, that is what she will have been doing. So Martha goes and gets Mary from that and the other people who have collected to support Mary in that, think she is going to the tomb and follow to carry on mourning with her. But she doesn’t, she goes to Jesus, so they are with her. He sees her so upset and they both land up screaming and wailing, there is this phrase that turns up once or twice about Jesus, that Jesus is disturbed in spirit. It is not a great translation, the word is very hard to translate into english, what it really means is something like: ERRRN!. It is an unintentional uncontrollable guttural wail, that is what the word means, it doesn't mean I am a bit disturbed in spirit it means ERRRN!. He does this on a couple of occasions and once you realise that is what it is: an extreme uncontrolled sign of passion, this becomes very vivid and even stranger. Because this gospel is written for the purpose of converting Greeks, that is what John the gospel writer is trying to do. Well the Greek understanding of God is that God has to be apathetic, apathy is a greek term that was applied to God and it means that gods do not have emotional responses to things. This is one of the prime attributes of God in Greek understanding, and here is this this man who is God on earth getting so upset that he uncontrollably gutturally screams. This is God with passion, with care with love, with emotion going through what we go through. To Greek ears that would have been extraordinary, that would have been the bizarrest thing in this whole story. The rest would not have seemed anywhere near as odd to them as it does to us, but that would have seemed bonkers. Like calling black white and white black, gods just don’t do this, and here is Jesus, God incarnate doing that. He gets so upset, and the response is very mixed, half are looking on saying: clearly he really loved him, and the other half are saying: sure but he didn’t do anything for him while he was ill did he. He gets a mixed response, which is real, this is what happens in life we get mixed responses to things, particularly extreme emotions elicit mixed responses whether you like it or not.

So Jesus goes to the Tomb, and the tomb would not have been and English graveyard like out side. If your thinking of a head stone in a nice green plot, that is the wrong mental image. We are talking about a cave, this is a hot country so you put bodies in caves because caves are cool, so the body doesn't go off so fast, then you carve ledges in the cave, so there would have been more than one body in there. There would be a stone in a grove that you would roll in front of the cave when you wan to seal it up and roll away when you need to enter it. They go there and it has been four days, and in four days in Palestine (which is hot) bodies smell, they smell appalling, rotting human flesh is not a nice smell, and this is what we are told it smells of. There is also an ancient Jewish custom and belief that the soul hangs around the body for four days after death, and it departs after four days because the face has rotted to a point where it is not recognisable, so the soul gives up and moves on. This is four days latter. So we are not talking about a pristine preserved boy in the grave, we are talking about a half rotten corpse that stinks. This is physical and guttural and messy. He says roll away the stone, and they say: why? there isn't going to be a face to see, you are not going to recognise your friend he is half rotten. They will have been popping in and out over the last few days mourning they will know he is half rotten. He commands the stone to be rolled away and it is, then he makes the incredible statement. He turns to God first of all and he speaks to God ,and prays, he makes it clear it is God who is being glorified here, not him. Then he commands Lazarus to come out by name, and he always calls people by name it is a regular thing naming people, this is what God does he calls us by name. And Lazarus comes out, still wrapped in the grave clothes, still with the cloth over his face, and he walks out stumbling because he is still bound and they unwrap him. This is extremely weird, we then know that the response to this is extreme. A whole lot of the people there immediately come to faith in Jesus, and a many turn so much against him that they shop him to the authorities, and start the process that begins Christ's death. But also we need to notice that this resurrection does not mean that Lazarus doesn't die. Lazarus is resurrected to live out a normal life span he dies as we all die, Lazarus is not still alive now he died about 2000 years ago, he was resurrected to live out a normal life.

This is the first sign of the greater transformation of the resurrection, of the whole of heaven and earth being made one. This is the process by which heaven becomes integrated with earth, and death ceases to have power, this is the beginning of that process, not the end. The end hasn’t happened yet in the story, it hasn’t happened yet now, we live in the in-between time. The time in which God is working extraordinary things, that is what we believe. That means that God is deeply imbedded into reality, God is not contained by reality God doesn’t need reality, but God has chosen to be in this stuff to be changing the nature of what it is to be alive, to change the nature of what death is. That is the mystery that this story is about, and I can’t explain that mystery to you any more, except to ask you to keep pondering these stories that unpack and reveal deep layers of truth and meaning. And as we live them out in our own lives and dramas, we start encountering this extraordinary life changing force, that mysteriously makes every thing different.