Lent 5 2008
Timing is everything. In John’s Gospel timing is symbolic. Nicodemus approached Jesus in the dark of night to inquire about his identity. At high noonday in the bright light of day, the foreign woman at a well in Samaria encounter a man who told everything she ever did, revealing that Jesus was more than a prophet and her response was to go and tell. On the Sabbath, Jesus broke the law by kneading some clay to put on the eyes of the man born blind and healed him. The man had been blind since birth, so it seems to me that Jesus intentionally healed him on the Sabbath. The man was willing to testify to the church hierarchy that the man who healed him did an unprecedented thing, a work of authority. The one who does the works of God is of God, the man declared. The Pharisees were blind to this revelation because tradition, law, and presumptions of knowing bound them. The wonderful story about Lazarus ends John’s book of signs and turns us toward the passion narrative. Here we have the declaration that gives our lives meaning and grounds our future with hope: I am resurrection and I am life, says the Lord.
Jesus was about a day’s journey by foot away from the village of Bethany where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived. Word was sent to Jesus that Lazarus was dying, but Jesus did not go immediately, rather, he waited two days and then began the trip to Bethany. As Jesus approached the village, three days after Lazarus was buried, Mary and Martha ran out to meet him, and each woman said, “Lord if you had been here, our brother would not have died.” I often ponder how this sounded coming from Mary and Martha. Did they say this as a statement of faith that Jesus is the Lord of the living and the dead? Did they say it accusingly, as in: Lord if you had hurried you could have kept Lazarus from dying? If we hear the statement as one of faith, then we can join with Mary and Martha and see in Jesus the full revelation of God. We will affirm that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. We will have this comfort in knowing that even though we die we are the Lord’s possession. Nowhere in Scripture do we find a promise that God will prevent death. Rather we have assurance that God is with us in all stages our lives…including our dying, and in time we too will see God face to face as a friend and not as a stranger. We do find in Daniel 12:2 and 2 Maccabees 7:9 references of assurance that God can give life to the dead. We have in the Lazarus case exactly that truth being made evident: that we too may believe that Jesus is of God.
Martha knows that Jesus is the Messiah, the resurrection and the life. Mary is emotional, crying because her brother has died. Seeing her tears, Jesus wept. As he approached the tomb, he said, roll away the stone and they argued: Lord he has been dead four days. There will be a bad odor. In ancient times, people believed that for the first three days after death, the soul hovered over the body, able to re-enter and regain life, but on the fourth day, such opportunities were past. One must wonder if Jesus timed his arrival to avoid any confusion about what raising Lazarus meant. If he had acted sooner would the people have assumed the soul just reentered the body and not seen the miracle? Is the timing intended to demonstrate the power and authority of God? Dutifully they rolled the stone away and Jesus in a loud voice said: Lazarus, come out. Lazarus came forth still bound in cloths. Jesus said, unbind him and let him go.
Do you think Lazarus had a choice? I think so and hope so. Freedom is the condition of discipleship and faith. Without freedom we are not choosing to follow Jesus as Lord. If we are only acting on command, we are being mere puppets, in the hand of an awesomely powerful God, not creatures made in the image of God, capable of sharing in ministry. If I were Lazarus, I might need a few minutes to think this through. If I come out today, great, I have some time with family and friends and can see what happens with Jesus, in whom I have great expectations and hope. But, sometime in the future, I have to die again. It gives me comfort to think that Lazarus would choose to live and die, rather than to just stay dead. Somehow this tells me that dying is not that traumatic and it is not something we should fear. The process of dying may be much worse than the act of dying.
We can learn a lot about the process from this story of Lazarus. After Lazarus came out of the tomb, still bound with cloths, Jesus told others to unbind him and let him go. Jesus did not do it all, an important illustration for us in the church today. God gives us life, new life in baptism, and we too die to sin and rise to life in Christ. The rest of the journey is in Christ and we are never alone in the body of Christ, rather we are members of a great community of faith. In community we can make a difference, in our world, in ways that promote peace, reconciliation and justice.
Unbind him and set him free. Freedom is important because it is only when we are free that we are capable of acting as moral agents. Indeed if we look at the catechism (BCP 845) we find that as part of God’s creation we are made in the image of God, we are FREE to make choices, to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.
We all need to be free but most of us are more bound than we are ready to admit. We are bound by work, debt, family obligations, illness, responsibilities, commitments, habits, hobbies, and fear. We deal with these bondages in various ways, often avoiding a direct acknowledgement of our condition. We are like Mary and Martha, we call out to God when we are in over our heads, when the pressures mount and we are at the breaking point. Come Lord and do something. Our needs are met, but we don’t know the difference between our wants and needs, therefore if we don’t get what we want, we are disappointed, sometimes even angry with God.
We think we know what God should do and yet, we are not yet willing to relinquish our control, our power over the conditions of our lives to God. The only way we know how to avoid the conditions of poverty and vulnerability is to gain and maintain power. We think our weapons and aggressive strategies can protect us. We somehow reason that we deserve protection, that our abundance is a sign of being special to God, or that we are just simply better than people in places torn by strife and poverty. Jesus showed us a better way of living.
Jesus was not about power but had great authority. Jesus did not settle disputes with the religious and political leaders by a contest of power, but by being aligned with the will of the Father. It was the integrated seamless union of Father and Son and Spirit that gave Jesus authority. The crowds noticed that Jesus taught with authority. The disciples with Jesus walked the dusty roads in the hot sun, thirsty for water, tired, and often rejected form the more “comfortable” places. Life with Jesus was never easy. The disciples argued about who was to be first in the kingdom and were chastened by Jesus. Some thought he would meet power with power and bring the kingdom to this earth in a way that would overthrow the powerful Roman rulers but that was not the definition of God’s kingdom, nor was it the path Jesus chose. Why do we think our situation will be better than that of Peter or James or John, or Mary or Martha? We cry out like Mary and demand accommodation like Martha because we claim to know what God should do. Even as a statement of faith, we might recognize a certain expectation.
Mary and Martha confronted Jesus: If you had been here (when we called you) this would not have happened. In other words, this did not need to happen. Jesus knew otherwise: this did need to happen. He waited to come to Bethany two days, so that the glory of God would be revealed. God is God. We are not God. If we will respond to God, have faith in God, work with God, we will discover a freedom we have never known and a sense of new life that would rival anything Lazarus experienced.
Timing is everything.