John 11:38-44

01/24/10
John 11:38-44
Hudson UMC

Sometimes, the way the church year is structured, our journey through John is delayed because we get interrupted in the middle of a large story. This is precisely what has happened with the story of Lazarus. We started to consider this story way back in November but, because of various special Sundays, we are only now getting to the climax of the story and preparing to move on to something else. However, though there might be some people who are already sick of this story and want to move on, I think that spreading out this story over three different months has actually been a blessing. Since we began the story of Lazarus, we have celebrated the coming of the Son of God into the world, including the waiting that took place beforehand; we have celebrated a new year; we have renewed our covenants with God; we have celebrated a baptism and a confirmation. Throughout the time that we have been considering this story, there have been two funerals for saints in the church. In the midst of this story where sorrow and joy are so closely mingled, we have both felt sorrow and joy in our own lives. Seldom have the passages on Sunday morning spoken so directly to our contemporary condition. It has been a joy to explore this Scripture with you.

As we come to the last section in this story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, I am struck by the incredible amount of buildup that John takes us through before the miracle and how he doesn’t seem to take much time to deal with the miracle itself and what happens afterwards. This strikes me as odd, because I would think that the people reading this Gospel would want to know about Lazarus, especially because John has spent so much time on other miracles. Now, part of this might be because Lazarus shows up one or two more times in the narrative, but even still, it is amazing that John spends over forty verses building up to the miracle and only two verses dealing with the miracle itself.

I wonder if maybe the reason that John does not spend much time talking about what might be called the most surprising and incredible miracle in the entire Bible, short of the actual Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ, is because he is drawing our attention first and foremost to the one who is performing the miracle and only in a secondary way to the miracle itself. I think that, if we had a chance to have a conversation with Lazarus, he would tell us that the fact that he was raised from the dead is nothing compared to the fact that he followed the one who raised him. I think that, even though Jesus promises His disciples that they will do greater things than even He was doing, they would say that those miracles are nothing compared to the fact that they had been redeemed and they dedicated their lives to following Christ and telling other people about Him. It is like Jesus Himself says when His disciples came back from healing the sick and casting out demons, “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.”

It is extremely important that we find our identity first and foremost in Christ. If we get so distracted by what Christ has done and we do not realize that, as Christians, we are not just the recipients of God’s grace, but are part of the church, the very body of Christ, we will focus more on the “what” and not on the “who.” John’s whole point of spending forty verses setting up a miracle that he only talks about for two verses is to take the attention off the raising of a man from the dead and put it onto the question, “What manner of man is this who can raise a man from the dead?”

We need to make sure we are asking questions like that because, if we aren’t, we are going to focus on the miracle itself and not the source of the miracle. Once we do that, as amazing as it is to bring a person back from the dead, we will forget the unique nature of Christ. After all, we read that some of the Old Testament prophets brought people back from the dead. If all that matters is the bare act of returning life into a dead body, as incredible as it is, we must admit that more than one person has done it.

Let us take a moment and remember each of the miracles that John includes. We read about Jesus turning water into wine. This was not only meeting a very practical need, but was meant to point to the idea that God is the one who makes the common into the incredible. The next miracle is the healing of the official’s son. Here, we learned that God’s miracles are not limited by time or space, and that just a word from the mouth of God can accomplish more than all of human effort can. Jesus heals a man who had not been able to walk for thirty-eight years. Here we see that God is a God who empowers people to accomplish what they never could on their own. The famous story of Jesus feeding the five thousand demonstrates that scarcity does not stop God from providing for His people, even if they were not expecting it. The healing of a man born blind is meant to point out to us that God wants to remove our spiritual blindness. This point is driven home because, right after this miracle, we see that the Pharisees insist on remaining in their blindness.

In light of how John talks about the miracles he includes, we need to realize that the real point is not that Jesus can raise a man from the dead, but that Jesus can raise us from spiritual death. Now this is a real miracle. Again, we have examples in the Old Testament of prophets raising certain people from the dead, but we never read about a prophet promising to save the people from spiritual death. We see God at work, empowering them to do what most people would say is impossible, but only in Jesus do we see God entering so completely into the human condition that the life of God is imparted into us in such a startling way. Because others have raised people from the dead but only the Incarnate Son of God can raise us from spiritual death, we can see that overcoming our bondage to sin and death is actually the much greater miracle.

We read in our passage that, when Jesus got to the place where Lazarus was buried, He said, “Take away the stone.” At this point, the people still do not understand what He is going to do. Because of this, they are understandably concerned at this request. “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” If you speak to funeral directors about opening a casket once it has been closed, you will often find them reluctant to do so. For many people, it would be a disturbing experience. Emotions well up anew and it can be difficult for people to try and go through the closure process more than once. Here is Jesus asking that the tomb be opened after Lazarus had been there for four days. I can imagine that the family might not be happy about doing this. After all, four days after the burial, they probably have just gotten to the point where they are just starting to get used to the idea that Lazarus will no longer be with them and they don’t want to start the grieving process all over again as well as potentially disturb the rest of the people.

After Jesus reminds Martha once again about who He is and that, if she believes, she will see the glory of God, the people remove the stone. Then Jesus says something interesting. He says, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” If any of us were to say something like this, to say that we pray out loud only so that people would think we were sent by God, we would be laughed at, and rightly so. And yet, this Jesus points out that He is the fullness of God in our midst by saying this.

Think about what this means. It means that, even though Jesus is absolutely certain of His relationship with the Father, He is not content just to live in that relationship, but makes it a priority to make that relationship benefit others. In fact, we hardly ever actually get a chance to read the words that Jesus prays to the Father. I can imagine that, since Jesus, before He was born as a human, was part of the Trinity that God is since eternity past, praying in human speech must seem incredibly inefficient. And yet, Jesus prays to God using human language, just like we do. This is just one more way that Jesus takes the things of ours and bends them into obedience to God. God has taken even our language upon Himself, redeeming it and making it new.

The last major thing in this text is the miracle itself. Jesus cries out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” Now, I will bet that most of the people who were there at the time thought this was a ridiculous thing to say. After all, if someone is no longer living, they are not able to respond to a call, no matter how loudly or authoritatively it is made. And yet, Jesus does not hesitate to do just that. Though everyone knows that Lazarus is dead, though they all went to the funeral, though they have spent the last four days weeping over their loss, Jesus does not behave as if Lazarus is dead. He calls to Lazarus, not only as if he were alive, but awake, in his senses, and strong enough to respond. Now, it is clear that he did not have any of this because of his own doing, but Jesus made his obedience possible in every sense of the word. He raised him from the dead, he opened his ears, he empowered him to stand up and walk out of the tomb that had been his home for the past several days.

Now, when this happened, I am certain that those who were there had to scrape their jaws off of the ground. They had never seen anything like this before and it absolutely blew their minds. It would be safe to say that the people were utterly surprised by what had just happened. What I think is important to notice is that Jesus does not share their surprise. Not only had He called out to Him, expecting a response, we can see from His actions after Lazarus presented himself, that He was not at all surprised. He simply said to the people, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Jesus knew what He was doing, and though it might have surprised the people that a dead person might come back to life, Jesus treated it as if it were no big deal, because He had absolute confidence in His power.

This should be a lesson to us, because, if we look at the people who have been touched by the Gospel throughout the years, it has tended to have the greatest transformational power on the poor, the weak, the broken, the friendless, the helpless; in short, it has tended to work the most powerfully among the people that the world doesn’t think all that much about. In the early days of the Methodist revival in England, it was not at all uncommon to have people who were thieves leave their old ways behind. People who were known as public drunks became model citizens who led the way in temperance. Sometimes, when people like this have radical conversions, people are surprised. The point is that, even if some are surprised that people who seem beyond help could have such a radical life change, God is not surprised in the slightest.

In fact, it seems that, if we follow this Lord Jesus Christ, who can speak a word and raise someone to life, who can speak to a heart and raise someone who is dead in their sins back to spiritual life that transforms everything about them, then we should not be surprised if this kind of thing happens. In fact, we should be so familiar with how God works that we would go into the world, into our workplaces, and into our social settings, and expect to see God do exactly this kind of work in our midst. What should surprise is us is when people encounter God and are not fundamentally changed.

We follow a God who speaks to the dead and they receive not only life, but strength. They are not only called out to, but actually empowered to respond to that call. This means that, even if a person is completely spiritually dead and is not moved when people talk about God, when God moves, all the hindrances are taken away. When God speaks to a soul and says, “Live! Come forth!” nothing on heaven or on earth can hinder God’s work. The fact that not everyone responds in faith is something for which we can make no rational account. It is a baffling mystery. Again, we should not be surprised when God transforms lives, but we should be surprised when people refuse to be transformed.

So, maybe you and I do not have the power to impart life to a person. Maybe we can’t overcome the power of death, but we follow the one who can. Perhaps God is not only calling out to those who are not yet spiritually alive, perhaps God is calling out to you, out to us and saying, “Take away the stone.” Perhaps God is calling us to be participating in Christ’s mission of liberating humanity. We can’t do everything, and we cannot even do anything without Christ, but He is standing by our side, He has sent His Spirit to live inside of us, and He invites us to join Him in His work. So let us go into the world, not to raise the dead, but to roll the stones away so that God might do what only God can do. Let us pray.

AMEN