Let me fill you in on a little detail about Lazarus
and his funeral. Tradition has it that he was the
son of a former High Priest named Boethus. He and his sisters Martha and Mary were from a
very important and powerful priestly family.
This means that the people their grieving with Martha and Mary weren’t
just their family and neighbours in Bethany.
Since “the Jews” is John’s term for the religious authorities, those
people were likely some pretty powerful people.
This means that the Jewish authorities knew full well that Lazarus was
in fact dead. This also means that some
of the most powerful people in priestly positions in Jerusalem at the Temple
were likely there when Jesus raised him.
The powers that be in Israel’s faith knew that Jesus raising Lazarus was
no hoax.
What was their reaction? Well, remember in John’s Gospel that the
first thing Jesus did publically at the beginning of his ministry was cleanse
the Temple, which he called his Father’s house.
He cleansed it of the big business the Priests had made of it. Now, here he was raising the dead. They could see and put two and two together
and understand that there was something very real going on with Jesus and it is
most definitely was something only God himself could be doing. The Creator God of the Universe, the God of
Israel was at work in, through, and as Jesus. Well, John tells us that Jesus raising Lazarus
from the dead was the deciding factor
for the religious authorities to plan a way to kill Jesus because they feared
his popularity and the power of God at work in him would appear to be a
revolution that would bring the Romans down upon them all. John tells us in chapter 12 that they even
wanted to kill Lazarus. Isn’t it bizarre
the way religious people act against the works of God?
Ever wonder what it would have been like to be
Lazarus? We can conjecture. He certainly
would have had to live the rest of his days as being the man whom Jesus raised
from the dead. The very fact that he was
alive was a literal and living testimony to what Jesus told Martha; “I am the resurrection and the
life. The one who believes in me will
live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never
die.” Especially pertinent there is
Jesus saying, “the one who believes in him will live even though he dies.” Lazarus believed in Jesus and literally lived
even though he had died. He was the
living, breathing, walking about sign of the life giving power of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God become flesh.
Thus, he was every day of his life literally either a sign of hope to
those who believed or a source of fear for those who wished to cling to
power. What became of Lazarus? Eastern Orthodox tradition says he went to the
island of Cyprus and became a bishop.
The date of his death is unknown.
Well, while we’re on the subject of literal
interpretations of Jesus’ words, when Jesus told Martha that her brother would live
again, she, as did most Jews at that time, thought he meant that Lazarus would live
again when God raises all the dead. But,
Jesus, on the other hand, literally meant that he was going to make Lazarus
live again right then and there just as soon as he could get to the tomb. Martha, in the face of the impossible
finality of death, was looking to the future for God to do something rather
than to who Jesus is and what he was doing there in the here and now.
When Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the
life,” he was conveying to Martha that what she was hoping for in the future
was present right in front of her in the here and now. All those who believe, meaning those who are
in Christ now as Paul tells us in Romans because the Holy Spirit living in us, we
share now in that future life that we expect God to give us in the Day of Resurrection.
Resurrection life is present now. Eternal life, life filled with the Triune
life of God and lived in the Trinity’s will and purpose is present to us
now. The sign of Lazarus isn’t simply a
display of power to give us hope for our future resurrection. It is also and indeed the sign that Jesus
gives us new life now in him. Through
the presence and working of the Holy Spirit he calls us forth from the death of
a life lived apart from knowing God.
Through the same powerful presence and working of the Holy Spirit he
speaks into us the new life of knowing ourselves as the beloved children of God
the Father in Christ because the Holy Spirit living in us. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life for
us because we are bound to him, unioned to him by and in the Holy Spirit.
So, being called forth from the tomb into the new
life of Christ in Christ, when we come forth from the tomb we’ve got to remove
those stench-filled grave clothes which are our sin, our idolatry, our shame, our
guilt, our brokenness, our blindness with respect to seeing ourselves as very
loved by the Trinity. This is what Paul
means when says we must live according to the Spirit and not according to the
flesh.
Yet, this is something we cannot do ourselves because
our hands are wrapped inside those rancid, oozy grave clothes. Notice that Jesus told those who were
standing there to “Unbind him, and let him go”. The community of faith has to unbind Lazarus from
those rancid wraps of death. Yet, to
often in Christian community we don’t get involved in the truly difficult work
of helping each other remove the death clothes of the shame and guilt that we
carry. We do not help each other in our struggles
with own personal idols, those things that we put before God or in the place of
God and our walk in Christ. We don’t
speak the truth to one another in love.
We don’t hold each other accountable.
It is too often the case that we look at that stinky,
yucky stuff of each other’s sin and say, “Gross. You need to deal with that yourself.” Imagine if Lazarus had to spend the rest of
his days wrapped in his death clothes because no one would help him take them
off. He wouldn’t live very long. He’d starve to death and I think that happens
to a lot of new Christians in our midst.
We leave them in their death clothes of brokenness and shame starving to
death all the while expecting them to serve on some committee. In authentic Christian community we, through
acts of unconditional friendship and a lot of listening and just being there,
get our hands dirty helping each other remove the stinky, ooze covered grave
clothes of death that we all have.
Jesus said “Unbind him, and let him go.” The Greek word in the second part of that
sentence is the word we also translate as forgive. “Unbind him, and forgive him.” The biblical understanding of forgiveness
isn’t this transactional say your sorry and I will forgive you and we may or
may not be able to act like it never happened.
The Hebrew word we translate as forgive means to pick up and carry, to
bear the burden of. Remember the story
of the four men busting through a roof and lowering a paralyzed man down
through the hole and the carrying him to Jesus on his mat. The story goes that when Jesus saw their
faithfulness he said to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” These four men carrying this man in the
weakness and shame of his mat is what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is continuing to love and be in
community with, to be the image of Jesus to, those who you would rather
ostracize because they still wear the rancid death clothes of death and can’t
see their way.
Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection has
utterly made this world a different place to live in. Signs of the New Creation and Resurrection
coming are breaking forth all around us.
In these days and times, it is in our neighbourhoods outside the walls
of our churches that Jesus is calling people forth from death. Our role as those who know him and have his
Spirit in us is not to look down our noses at these folks because they don’t
meet our moral standards. We don’t go,
“Yuk. Death clothes. Not touching that.”
No! We go to where they are as
they are awkwardly trying to make their way out of their death tombs and in the
love of Jesus Christ that he’s poured into our hearts with the Holy Spirit
unbind them and carry them to freedom.”
Amen.
