Lazarus had been dead four days…Jesus got word of his illness but stayed where he was for two days. Before Jesus could get to his house, Lazarus died. When confronted with his grieving, weeping friends, Jesus goes to the grave of his friend, and after a time a grieving himself, he has the stone removed from the tomb and he calls his dead friend back to life.
“Faithful one! Come out!”
All through Lent, we have been
listening to Jesus in the Gospel of John telling the people Jesus’ meets and us
what it is like to be a person who believes and follows Jesus Christ. What is
like to be a person who meets God in the person of Jesus Christ? What is it
like to have our life changed by God?
Well, let’s check the list the Gospel
has set out for us:
It is like being born again, Jesus
tells Nicodemus.
He also tells Nicodemus that it is like
feeling the wind and knowing that it is moving but we don’t know from where it
comes from.
Jesus tells the woman at the well that it
is like drinking from a well of water that never runs dry.
John tells us that believing and
following Jesus is like coming out of blindness and into both sight and light.
Today, we find out that believing and
following Jesus is like being dead and now being alive.
When Jesus calls out to his friend, “Faithful
one! Come out!” the Word of God, is calling to the faithful of God to wake from
death, as from sleep, and come out. And Jesus shows us what we have to wake up
from.
Raising Lazarus from the dead is Jesus’
Ezekiel moment. In our lesson from Hebrew Scripture this morning, Ezekiel dreams
that God will knit together “dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones” into a
living, restored people of God who hear and live the word of the Lord. Jesus
calls us out of darkness and death into life. When Jesus stands outside the
grave of his friend, he is giving his last and greatest sign that he is here to
animate, breathe life into, humanity.
What Jesus told Nicodemus in the dead
of night comes to pass at the grave of Lazarus, who is not only raised from
death but also experiences a kind of re-birth.
This is not just theory nor a metaphor to
Jesus. It’s personal. Jesus’ friends, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus are all real
people from a real family who are experiencing real grief, real anguish, and…real
death. So the idea, the concept, of God bringing life to God’s people comes to
life when he meets the tears of the two women and the reality of Lazarus’
death.
It’s personal, and the people all
around Jesus are handling Lazarus’ illness and death in their own way. They are
all over the map. The disciples don’t get it—some think that Lazarus is asleep,
and when they learn he is dead, in a fit of fatalism they shrug their shoulders
and say “then let’s all die together!” Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, are
grief-stricken and maybe just a little angry and perplexed. Listen to how they
both confront Jesus when he finally shows up: “If only you were here, our
brother would not be dead!” Yeah, they get the theology. Martha knows that
they’ll see Lazarus at the final resurrection, but Mary is not there, not
really. In this moment, she only knows her loss.
And there were a variety of responses
from the crowd of mourners, as well. Some were grieving the death of a friend
and hurting for his sisters. Others were disappointed that they didn’t get to
see Jesus heal Lazarus. And, in the ‘No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department,’ some
would be angry when Jesus does revive Lazarus from death. There’s a part of the
passage in the Gospel of John that we didn’t hear this morning where Jesus’
enemies begin to plot against both Jesus and Lazarus as a result of this miracle.
So, yeah, Lazarus’ resuscitation leads
directly to the cross for Jesus.
Looking at all those responses, it
strikes me that Lazarus’ resuscitation is a kind of spiritual Rorschach Test
for us. We all look at the same splotch, the same story, but what we take away
from Jesus and Lazarus may tell us something about our own faith journey.
Jesus has waded into the stew of life,
and while he raises Lazarus, it will be Jesus’ own death and his own
resurrection that will allow us to come out of our own tombs and know life.
Jesus cries to all of us “Faithful one! Come out!”
Notice that when Lazarus comes out of
the cave, he is a dead man walking. He is bound up in the bandages and
coverings they put around the dead. He was dressed for death. He needed to be
unbound and released to rejoin the community, and he could not do that
alone. We need each other to remove the
shell, the bandages, the clothing of death. It turns out that to be born anew we
need help. We require Christian community.
How we live together, how we pray
together, lift each other up, welcome one another, challenge one another, allow
others to experiment, and support each other all help us crack the old shell, remove
the bandages, so that we can live a little more as the people God made us to
be.
Jesus—who has himself experienced life
and endured the grave--stands at the foot of our cave; Jesus opens our tomb and
says to all of us, together and alone, “Faithful one! Come out!” And when we
come out, we find ourselves among people who with prayer, support, sharing
their faith stories, and who encourage us when times are hard, who unwrap us
and dress us for living.
What started for us in our baptisms
continues every day. Sometimes we find that we have re-entered our tombs, our dark
places, our hidey-holes and have to be called out.
Here is a glimpse of what the resurrected life we share in Christ through baptism is like. It is like having dry bones knit together into new life. It is like coming back to life. It is like having bandages removed from one’s body and one’s eyes. It is like being set free.
All of us have been called out of death. Now, faithful ones, come
out!
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Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida
Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here
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