John 11:1-45 "It is about Now"

  You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute it properly!       

         Three friends were discussing death, and one of them asked: "What would you like people to say about you at your funeral?"

         The first of the friends said: “I would like them to say: ‘He was a great humanitarian who cared deeply about his community.’”

         The second one said:  “I would like them to say: ‘He was a great husband and father who was an example for his children to follow.’”

         The third one said, “I would like them to say, ‘Look, he’s breathing!!’”

         Not many of us look forward to death – at least not while we have the health and wherewithal to discuss it good-naturedly with our friends.  Given a suitably vibrant constitution and abiding friendships, surely there is a piece of each one of us that hopes we will defy the odds and try out immortality - or at least find ourselves movin’ and shakin’ for a good many more years to come.   If we look through the eyes of blessing, when we look around us, we cannot help but see that there is so much of life left to live.

         Lazarus of Bethany must have felt that way – until he got sick, that is, until the cancer metastasized, until he could feel his lifeblood ebbing and slowing to a trickle, until he could no longer ignore the smell of impending death that his own body sent forth as a signal of the inevitable.

         There is so much of life left to live. Surely that is how Martha and Mary felt as well – and perhaps not so much as when Lazarus got sick.  When they sat by his bedside and soothed his fevered brow.  When they came to understand that all their nursing and all their comfort care would do no good in the long run. 

         They knew Lazarus was in dire straits, and so, out of the depths of their souls, they cried out to the only one they hoped could help them.  They did the only thing left for them to do. 

         They sent word to Jesus: “Master, the one you love so very much is sick.”  As Lutheran pastor Lee Griess pondered, “We can almost hear Martha, can't we? Surely he will come; surely he will help. Didn't he aide the paralytic? Didn't he cure the leper? Didn't he give sight to the blind and help the lame? And they hardly knew him. Surely he will come. Surely he will help.”

         And, of course, one would have thought, because it was Lazarus dying that our rabbi would have dropped everything and beat feet to Bethany to help out in this time of desperate need. After all, as the Gospel writer tells us, Lazarus was the one that Jesus loved. 

         However, as Lee Griess continues, “But he didn't come. He didn't help. Lazarus got worse, and Martha was left to watch and wait. And when Lazarus slipped into unconsciousness, getting weaker and worse, Martha whispered in his ear, ‘Hold on. Hold on. He will come. He will be here soon.’

         But Jesus didn’t come. He didn’t help. And finally it was done. Lazarus died and four days later, Jesus came. And Martha is hurt.”

         Imagine that!  It was four days later, after the connection between the body and the soul had been eternally broken, which was the Jewish belief, after death was therefore assured and there was no hope of turning back, after the body had been wrapped in its funeral attire and placed inside a cold cave-like tomb, after the rock had been set in its immovable place, after what was left of Lazarus had begun to decompose and emit that awful smell that corpses do:  It was after those four long and pain-filled days that Jesus showed up. 

         What took him so long?  The Gospel writer does give us an answer to this pivotal question, you know.  The Gospel writer tells us in no uncertain terms that this story is not about Lazarus.  It is not even about Jesus.  It is about God, for Jesus told his disciples, “This sickness is not fatal. It will become an occasion to show God’s glory by glorifying God’s Son.”

         And so Jesus put everything on the line - all his ministry, all his beliefs - and he showed up when he knew his friend was dead and gone.  No wonder the sisters were angry.  No wonder they were upset.  No wonder Martha ran down the road when she saw Jesus in the distance.  No wonder she threw herself at him – unladylike and downright scandalous behavior that it was.  No wonder that, out of the depths of her anger and despair, she laid it on the line for him. 

          “Master, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Even now, I know that whatever you ask God he will give you.”

         And Jesus calmly replied, “Your brother will be raised up.”

         And Martha, being the good Jew who knew her Torah, who knew as all good Jews knew that bodies would be resurrected physically at the end of time, but not now, not now, replied, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”

          And Jesus answered her with those familiar words that we hear at every funeral, those words on which we perhaps mistakenly stake a claim on our own immortality, and I say mistakenly because those words are not about the future.  They are about the present, “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life” – to quote from The Message translation of the Bible.

         Soothed by this puzzling statement, Martha wiped her tear-stained face and dutifully found her sister, and Jesus became the focus of the whole anger, grief, and despair scenario a second time. 

         “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

         Maybe it was just too much for Jesus, all the emotional upheaval, all the sobbing and wailing carried on at a fever pitch, but whatever caused it, Jesus’ emotions grabbed him as well – and would not let go.  First, he got angry.

         “Where did you put him?” he asked.  And they took Jesus to the tomb with its eternal rock set in place, and there, for the moment at least, Jesus’ own grief at the death of his friend poured out of him.  He wept.  He wept, and the tears ran down his face and settled in his scruffy beard.  He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe.

         After all, as the author of the blog, Magdalene’s Musing, noted, “…glory comes at a cost. The cost (here) is one dead man, and two sisters who mourn and suffer terrible grief, not only at the loss of their brother, but at the failure of Jesus to act in time to save him.”

         But even in the midst of such an emotional scene, there were still the practical ones among the crowd of neighbors and friends, the ones who, for the most part, could not see much beyond their own noses. 

       “Well, if he loved him so much,” they murmured and whispered.  “Why didn’t he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.”

         Hearing such backchat, Jesus, the anger again welling up within him, commanded, “Remove the stone.”

         And Martha, ever the practical one, piped up.  “Are you crazy?  He will smell.  After all, in case you have forgotten, he has been dead four days!”

         Jesus looked her straight in the eye, unblinking. “This is not about Lazarus, Martha.  This is not about you, and it is not about me.  It is about God, about the glory of God.

         And so, at his command, they removed the stone.  Jesus said a quick prayer, knowing that what he was about to do would seal his fate.   “Abba,” he whispered, “I have spoken so that they might believe that you sent me. It is not about Lazarus.  It is not about me.  It is about you – and your glory.”

         Jesus knew that it was one thing to heal a blind man or even touch a leper, but this?  This?  This sort of thing was quite another.  And he took a deep breath and shouted into the depths of the cave, into the depths of all the pain and despair, the sobbing, and the malicious whispering raging about him, “Lazarus, come out!”

         And lo and behold, Lazarus did, a living corpse, wrapped from head to toe in strips of white linen, with a kerchief over his face.  The onlookers stepped back – in awe and in its flipside, fear – and probably also because of the stench of which Martha had warned.

         Undeterred, Jesus said, “Unwrap him, let him loose, and set him free.”

         We do not know what happens when we die – and we have no record of what stories Lazarus might have shared with his family, neighbors, and friends – though tradition has it that he lived another 30 years.  None of us knows what happens when we die though many of us try to figure it all out.  Listen to this form letter once sent by the Department of Social Services in Indiana to a recently deceased welfare recipient:

“Your food stamps will be stopped, effective March 1992
because we received notice that you passed away.
May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a
change in your circumstances”.

         No, we do not know what happens when we die.  But we do know what happens when we live.  I like to think that Lazarus did some good before he left this earth for all time.  No one, as I said, bothered to write down the rest of his story.  However, you can visit his final, final resting place at the Church of St. Lazarus, a Greek Orthodox house of worship in Larnaca, Cypress.  No, we do not know about Lazarus’ life that second time around.  We can, however, know something about ours.

         “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now.

         It is about living with the kind of hope that Martha and Mary had when they sent for Jesus.  When everything around them had fallen apart, when all the good nursing in the world would not make a difference, when they could see in Lazarus’ sunken eyes that there was nothing else that could be done, Martha and Mary hoped for something more – for something beyond the structure of humanity as they knew it.  And so out of the depths they called for Jesus, and we as Christians might do the same.  Perhaps that is one thing the sisters can teach us. 

         When the going gets tough, call on Jesus.  Place your hope in Jesus because such hope will never fail you.  We might change what we hope for.  We may not always hope for the cancer to be gone, for the clock to be turned back to happier, healthier days.  Our hope might shift to a loving letting go, where grudges and petty resentments are laid to rest.  We might hope for a dignified death, a gentle death.

         “You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now. 

         It is about living with the sure and steadying knowledge that we are not alone in our pain and in our despair and in our grief.  As Martha and Mary learned when they finally found the warm embrace of Jesus, in the end, he came to them.  And he not only came to them, he came weeping. 

         He wept because Lazarus was dead.  He wept because Martha and Mary were in such pain.  He wept because the whole course of events could not have been otherwise.  He wept, just as he weeps with us at the cancer diagnosis, the failed marriage,

all the times when things go terribly wrong, and we try unsuccessfully to make sense of loss and disappointment on our own.  He wept, and because he wept, Martha and Mary knew they were not alone.  Still he weeps – for us.  Still he weeps – and shares our pain.

         You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time.  It is about now. 

         It is about living here and now.  Life is not about waiting to die.  Life is about having a purpose.  Life is about the contribution each one of us makes now – today – tomorrow – and all the tomorrows to come. 

         Life is about affirming as Jesus did that everyone – everyone – but most especially the outcasts and the marginalized, most especially the ones who hurt and who litter our world with their pain – affirming and doing what Jesus calls us to do for them in order to ensure that they have the long and rich lifetimes they deserve.

         You don’t have to wait for the End,” Jesus said.  “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life.”  It is not about some future point in time because, in the end, life is about living.  And living is about the glory of God. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.