Sermon for THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT 2008
TEXT: John 11: 1-44
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” 11After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” 12The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” 13Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” 28When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” 38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I 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.” 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
TITLE: Come Forth
Preached by the Rev. Caroline B. Edge at Carter Memorial United Methodist Church, Needham, MA on March 9, 2008.
"I didn’t want to come back," writes Suzanne Guthrie in a sermon entitled "Back to Life" on Religion-online.org. "My consciousness hovered somewhere above the body lying on the gurney. It was all over, I thought. The last sensation I remembered had been incomprehensible pain, then a tunnel, and a grinding noise as described in other ‘near death experiences.’ But unlike other people who tell of [these experiences], I saw no lights, no angels, no dead relatives, no friendly saints; rather, I found myself very much awake in a weightless, imageless, gray hyper reality. I experienced a blessed clarity, freedom and relief, and a stunning sense of the illusory nature of the life I’d left behind."
It was four days since Lazarus had died – four days! Any near death experience he might have had would have long since passed. Even his soul – which his culture believed lingered near the dead body for three days – would have departed. Lazarus was really dead – "his remains were stinking," practical Martha rightly implied. When Jesus and his disciples finally arrived, the seven days of mourning were in full swing. Jesus entered into that deep mourning for his dear friend. He wept. He was agitated. He must have beat his breast with grief. To see his dear friends Martha and Mary so grief-struck must have doubled his sadness.
Yet, John does not tell us this story just to show Jesus’ human emotions and empathy. The story is a sign – the last sign – of the glory of God. The story is the setting in which Jesus can declare the most comforting and challenging words he ever said, "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." (John 11: 25-26) As Jesus called Lazarus to come forth from death, so does Jesus invite each of us to shake off that which binds us and come back to life.
I invite you this morning to identify yourself with Lazarus. Perhaps at some point in your life in the past or perhaps even now, or at some point in the future, you feel very sick because of some situation in your life. Perhaps you find yourself weaving a cocoon about you to hide yourself from the world, from other people. Maybe you felt that way when one of your closest loved ones died. The loss of a job can also make you feel that way. Your spouse telling you that your marriage is over and divorce is necessary can plunge you into this cocoon. The doctor’s news that your disease can not be healed and your time is limited can drive you into this darkness. The birth of a child handicapped can make you feel helpless. Persons telling you that you are no good all the time can do it. Failing to achieve something you had hoped for in your school can do it. Whatever the reason, when we experience a great crisis in our lives, We can feel that we are totally cut off, isolated, forgotten, beyond the point of being helped. Our response can be to check out, to withdraw, to pull in to ourselves and shut all others out.
When we like Lazarus are dead in the spirit, we have many people around us who hurt. Our family becomes desperate because of our anxiety. They seek to do the best that they can for us. Their friends reach out to them in sympathy. The gospel tells us today that even God hurts when we are hurting.
But God does not simply say, "I hurt for you."’ God calls us forth to return to life, to emerge from our cocoons, to soar free of the pain that has encumbered us. "Lazarus, come forth!" "Christian, come forth!" We are called, we are reminded that we have life yet to live, that we are persons of worth…that the loss of a job or a marriage or a loved one is not the end of the world. There is still love to be shared, there are still needs to be filled, there is still laughter to be had.
How can we come forth? God breathes into us the breath of life giving our dry bones flesh and spirit and life. God’s call might come to us from a family member that says, "I need you." God’s call might come to us from our church that says, "You are .o.k. Life is worth living." God’s call might come to us from a new self-understanding of how we might live our lives with meaning.
We are told that as a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis or a moth out of a cocoon, it eats its way out breaking through its outer walls from the inside. Somehow nature tells it when it is matured and ready to fly. But the butterfly itself has to break through the bonds. Jesus called Lazarus forth. But Lazarus had to decide whether he would return to life. God is calling us. The final decision, however, is with each of us. Will we burst out of the bonds of grief, loss, anger? Or will we die within them forever? There is nothing sadder than to find a chrysalis on a spring day that contains a dead, half formed butterfly. There is nothing sadder than to find a person who is unwilling to respond to God’s call to come forth, to live.
But John did not tell this story of the raising of Lazarus merely so we could identify with the dead man called back to life. John told this story to show us how Jesus was willing to put himself in great danger to save a friend. By Jesus’ deciding to go to Bethany – so near Jerusalem where Jesus’ enemies were plotting against him – Jesus was making himself totally vulnerable. By raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus sealed his own death warrant. This last miracle would be the one that would tip the scales. The news of Lazarus’ resurrection spread quickly throughout the city. People came from afar to see the man that was dead and now was alive. Those that wanted to silence Jesus knew they could wait no longer. So Jesus’ fate was sealed.
As we read the way John wrote this story, we are struck about the stone that had to be rolled away from the grave, the discussion of the grave clothes. John – great story teller that he is – wants us to connect this story with Jesus’ own resurrection. For it is here in the discussion with Martha that Jesus declares the greatest "I am" statement – I am the resurrection and the life. Although tragedy will befall Jesus, that is not the end of his story. The Gospel of John will not end on Good Friday – or even on Easter Sunday, but will go on to tell a number of stories of the Resurrected Christ and his followers. So here we are a week before Holy Week being reminded that death is not the victor – for Jesus or for us who would believe in him.
Suzanne Guthrie who felt her spirit hovering above her gurney and had tasted the freedom from her earthly body goes on to tell the rest of her story. "Then the recovery room nurse enforced an alternative plan for my life. Someone was shaking my body and calling me by name. No NO! Unprepared and inept, I slipped, as if falling on ice, into that lesser "reality" in a helpless panic of anguish and anger. Suddenly I was back in the confines of that little life of mine. Now I carried a memory of the futility of this "fake life. It was as if I hadn’t had time to drink the magic "forgetting potion" that makes you immune to truth. I came to consciousness disappointed, frustrated, unspeakable sad – and in excruciating pain." But Suzanne’s story does not end there. A few hours later another nurse "put a beautiful but hungry infant boy into [her] arms." And she suckled him - choosing life for herself and her child.
We are invited this morning to respond to Jesus’ strong call to us to "Come forth." To return to life. To choose to be freed of those things that bind us. We can do it because Jesus did it. Amen.