Worship
Sermon Archive
Sunday March 9, 2008
11:00 am - Saint Thomas Church
Preacher: Fr Mead
John 11:1-44
Back from the Dead
In the Name of God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Our Gospel today gives us one of the few glimpses of the emotions of Jesus. Twice Saint John says Jesus in today’s story of the raising of Lazarus was “deeply moved in spirit” and once that Jesus “wept.” The original Greek of the Gospel indicates that Jesus was strongly agitated in the spirit and that his agitation contains an element of anger.
Anger at what? Jesus is agitated, is angry and weeps, at the thick concentration in this great story of everything that ails us, that disorders and destroys human life: Lazarus’s illness and death; his sisters’ grief, as well as their and his other disciples’ incomprehension of who he, Jesus, is and what he is about; the mourning, lamentation, questioning and despair on all sides.
If Jesus can be called the Lion of Judah, as he is in the Book of Revelation, then we could say that the Lion emitted a deep growl as he saw the work of his enemy in this scene of despondency. “Take away the stone.”
And so Jesus moves to call Lazarus, who has been dead four days, back to life. The Lion roared. “Lazarus, come forth.” The dead man came out, still wrapped in his grave clothes. “Unbind him, and let him go,” said Jesus.
The resurrection of Lazarus is an event, a miracle, which is a sign of what is promised to all who believe in Christ, here and now, and in the end.
Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary believed Jesus to be a worker of miracles. Martha also professed her belief that her brother would “rise again on the last day.” But Jesus, who knew from the beginning what would happen and what he was going to do, said something new. “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”
Jesus is resurrection and life, and thus the believer on this side of death lives in the spirit, and the one who believes in him now will live as well on the other side of physical death.¹ I am the Resurrection: the person who has faith in me, even if he dies, will live on the other side of death. I am the Life: the person who lives in the spirit with faith in me will never die.²
A while back in Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus declared, “The hour is coming, and now is, that the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (Jn 5:25ff) Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is the sign of that life-giving voice. Jesus, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, is Lord even of the realm of the dead. His voice penetrates the tombs, both of our bodies and our souls.
Martha was worried that Lazarus was in a state of advanced decay. “Lord, by this time there will be a stench.” There are similarly smells of death in the spirit – When we start to think life is just one (damned) thing after another; that what is important is having things, indeed using people as if they were things, or insulating oneself from others. When we see no ultimate purpose in life beyond self-serving. When we are paralyzed by fear or some other emotion. When we do not know or care what it means to give, to love, or to serve. When we do not receive life, ours and the lives of others, as gifts of God endowed with sanctity. – Then there is the smell of death as surely as the one in Lazarus’ tomb. To hear the life-giving voice of the Son of God who is the Resurrection and the Life is to be called out of our soul’s tomb into newness of life, eternal life.
The grave clothes in this Gospel are important. Lazarus was called back to life, this life on earth, and he needed to be freed from the cloth in which he was bound. Lazarus would have die physically again. Paradoxically, Lazarus’ Resurrection led to another death, the death of Jesus himself. The miracle roused the religious authorities to a determination to kill him, which came to pass. Again there were grave clothes, wrapped around the dead body of Jesus. But on the third day, finding his tomb empty, the disciples noticed Jesus’ body shroud and head napkin neatly left behind. There was no need to unbind and free him. God indeed raised Jesus from the dead, and his tomb was empty for all to see, but the Lord was raised, even bodily, to eternal life in the spirit, beyond any confines of space and time. Death has no more dominion over him.
The raising of Lazarus back to life led to the death and eternal resurrection of the Lord himself. The Lord’s “glorification” in this way released the Holy Spirit in fullness, so that everyone who believes in him has an immediate, contemporaneous, direct and personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who is the Resurrection and the Life.
“Lazarus, come forth!” roared the Lion of Judah, our Lord Jesus, who was so agitated and angry at the work of the devil all around him. He is similarly concerned for what has befallen us: “Take away the stone.” Then as that all powerful, life-giving voice calls, substitute your own name for Lazarus, and you know what Resurrection and Life mean. It is the Lord speaking to each of us, raising us from death; and then he says, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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¹Francis J. Maloney, Sacra Pagina, The Gospel of John, p. 328.
²CH Dodd, quoted in FF Bruce, The Gospel and Epistles of John, p. 248.
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¹Augustine, Confessions VIII.ii; see also Henry Chadwick’s note on this passage.
²VIII.ii(4); Chadwick trans.