Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Based on John 11:1-45.
Today is not Easter. Lazarus was just one man who was raised from the dead. In today’s story, Jesus did not usher in the messianic age. So why did Jesus bother raising just one man to just a few more years of life?
For that matter, why was Jesus born? Next week, I’ll talk about why he was killed, and then on Easter we hear about his resurrection. We have lots of theology built around his death and resurrection. But remember: Once Jesus was born, he was destined to die. It was a matter of when, not if. So he must have lived for a reason.
Paul wrote in Philippians,
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8
Jesus emptied himself so that he could be like one of us. He came down from heaven to experience humanity and everything good and bad about it that we must also experience. In the process, he showed us how to live, and how to deal with the brokenness of the world.
We often talk about and idealize a transcendent God, one who is remote, removed from this world, emotionally distant. Jesus showed us an immanent God, one who is right here among us, in the messiness of real life. One who experiences the full emotional range of the human condition. In this passage, we see Jesus riding a rollercoaster of emotions.
First, when he hears that Lazarus is sick, Jesus seems a bit dispassionate and even cold. “Oh, my dear friend is sick? I’ll just stay here and keep doing what I’m doing for a couple of days.” He doesn’t even seem to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. But then he decides that he needs to do something, that he needs to be present with his grieving friends.
When he encounters Martha, he is a calming influence. He reminds her of the coming messianic age, and also that he himself is the Messiah who will usher it in, someday, just not today. He seems to defuse Martha’s anger, and the story could have ended there. But then when Mary confronts him, he gets it: death is a reason for sadness, and anger, and all of those other emotions.
In verse 33, we read, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” The two Greek words used here are kind of tricky to translate, but convey a troubled emotional state, maybe indignant, maybe angry. One is the same word used for Jesus’s emotional state when he says that one of his disciples will betray him. Here these two Greek words convey a sense that Jesus is angry at the presence of death in the world, and particularly this specific death. Mary is weeping and wailing, and Jesus is angry that death has that kind of power over us.
As the story continues, we encounter the shortest verse of the Bible: “Jesus wept.” A great sadness came over him, but it’s a quiet grief. Not the wailing grief of Mary, but a quiet weeping. What made him so sad? Was it the loss of his friend Lazarus? Was it the contagious grief of his friends? Was it the thought of his own coming death? Maybe all of those things. He was overcome with the reality of death and its power over us.
I recently listened to a podcast about death. The guest pointed out that in modern Western culture, we try to avoid the topic altogether. In fact, we try not to even say that someone has “died.” Instead, we use euphemisms: They passed away, or they’re in a better place, or they kicked the bucket, or they have entered the Church Triumphant. These are all ways of avoiding the simple fact that life ends in death. Jesus knew this, and was overcome by its reality and its close presence, and he broke down. He was not a distant, dispassionate God, but one who humbled himself and became truly human so he could know what it felt like to lose a friend.
The story doesn’t end there, either, though. Jesus once again becomes indignant over the power Death has to disrupt our lives and relationships. He is compelled to act. He cannot sit idly by while his friends grieve. So, he takes control of the situation, raises Lazarus, and is calm once again.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross broke down grief into five stages. A common misunderstanding is that people think the stages are sequential. In reality, it might be better to call them modes of grief. Each person handles grief differently, and most people jump back and forth between these modes over a period of time that could be days, weeks, months, years, or decades. There is no fixed timetable or sequence. But it’s still useful to think of the different modes: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We see these all in today’s passage. The disciples don’t believe that Lazarus is really dead. Martha is angry at Jesus, and Jesus is angry at Death. Both Mary and Martha seem to be bargaining with Jesus and wanting him to turn back time. Jesus weeps, and the others are also weeping in their own ways.
The only mode that we don’t see is acceptance. Jesus cannot accept that death is the end. He cannot let the story end with Mary and Martha trapped in their grief and suffering the loss of their brother. In fact, on that podcast I mentioned, the guest pointed out that every time Jesus encounters a dead person, he raises them. He is always, always indignant over the power of Death to disrupt relationships.
Yet his miraculous raising of Lazarus is ultimately temporary. Lazarus will die someday, just not now. So will Mary and Martha and everyone else in this story. Everything is temporary. Jesus solves the problem of the day, but doesn’t solve the ultimate problem of death and brokenness in the world.
Or actually, he does, just not in today’s story. As Martha says, Lazarus 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.” Jesus is proclaiming the coming messianic age, the age that comes after this one, the age in which we are all restored to life and wholeness. This life is temporary, but death is as well. Death is just a waypoint on the journey of our eternal lives.
So, what’s the point? Lazarus is dead; Lazarus will be raised on the last day, along with Mary and Martha and all those who loved him. Someday, they will all be together in Christ’s eternal kingdom. So why does Jesus bother to raise Lazarus from the dead? Why force him to die a second time?
I’m often reminded of a scene from “Moonstruck.” Who has seen that movie? OK, well, if you haven’t, I apologize for a few spoilers here. Cher plays a widow who is dating a man who proposes to her. Foolishly, he doesn’t have an engagement ring. I mean, what man proposes marriage without a ring? Well, Cher calls him on it, and he happens to be wearing a pinky ring. So she makes him give her that one as a temporary measure. She goes home and tells her father that her boyfriend has proposed, and shows him the ring. Her father says, “It’s a pinky ring, it’s stupid, it’s a man’s ring.” She says, “It’s temporary!” He says, “Everything is temporary! That don’t excuse nothin’!”
Everything is temporary, but that’s no excuse. Jesus could have just said, Yeah, sorry your brother is dead, but someday you’ll be dead too, so just suffer without him until you’re raised together on the last day. But he didn’t. He knew that even though this life, and the death that comes with it, is temporary, each one of us must do what we can to resolve the pain and suffering of this world. And later on, he promised that when he departed, he would send a Helper, the Holy Spirit, to be with us as we strive to follow his healing example.
Life is temporary. Life is change. When I look back five years, or ten, or twenty, I can see how much things have changed. Some for the better, some for the worse. Almost exactly three years ago, all our lives changed dramatically, and we all had to live with a succession of temporary measures. Think about the way we have worshipped in that time. We started with Lou Ellen preaching on her iPhone from her camper, then moved to pre-recorded worship services that I pieced together, then came back in person but with pews taped off for social distancing, and eventually got back to where we are today. There is still a sense that what we are doing is temporary, for example, that Susan and I are just placeholders. At any point along the way, we could have just said, Oh well, we can’t worship the way we used to, so we’re done here. After all, God doesn’t take attendance, and we can love God and be loved by God no matter what we do. But no, we chose to deal with the reality of the present—not the past, not the future, but the present—and find ways to continue to worship. We chose to find ways of joining together to show our love of God and our love of our neighbors.
That was the message of Jesus’s life. He knew that his time on earth was short. His active ministry may have been as short as one year or as long as three years—not very long to teach us everything we need to know. He knew the path he was on would lead to conflict with the religious and civil authorities, likely ending in his death on a cross. He didn’t give up, though. He made the most of the time he was given. He healed the sick, raised the dead, and fed the hungry. He took care of the problems of the day. He taught his disciples about the kingdom of God. He showed everyone how to live. And he sent the Holy Spirit to help us all to follow his example.
Everything is temporary. But that doesn’t excuse us from doing all that we can, every day, to serve our neighbors and help them to know God’s presence in their lives. Someday, all will be well as we enter Christ’s eternal kingdom. But in the meantime, we have work to do, today and every day, healing the brokenness of this world. Let’s get to work. Amen.
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