John 11:1-44

Our gospel reading this morning from the gospel of John is about grief, death, and the resurrection of the dead. But before we dive into those heavier topics, there are two very important things about Jesus that are shown in this story.

The first is that over and over again in the gospels, Jesus was never in a hurry. In the story this morning, Jesus waits two whole days to visit his friends Martha, Mary, and their deathly ill brother Lazarus, all of whom were good friends of the Lord. Here is why that is striking. Presumably, Jesus as the Son of God, could have healed Lazarus of his illness and prevented his death and the grief that it caused his sisters had he dropped what he was doing immediately and went to them. It seems that is what Lazarus’ family was expecting him to do. When Jesus finally does arrive after Lazarus is already dead, Martha, Lazarus’ sister scolds Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” before she adds in that she still has faith. “But even now,” she confesses, “I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”

The plain fact is that Jesus wasn’t a person who rushed. The Lord is patient and kind, the Scriptures teach us. And while on one hand I am grateful for the Lord’s patience because he is far more patient with me than I am with myself or other people. On the other hand, the Lord’s patience often means that God doesn’t operate on my timetable or anyone else’s timetable. “The Almighty has his own purposes,” Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address. That can be incredibly frustrating from our human point of view because we want things to happen fast and for situations to get better, not worse. 

The second important thing we learn about Jesus’ character is that he had emotions. That might sound obvious since the church believes that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, the Son of God and the Son of Man. But often I think our impression of Jesus was that he was this wise teacher who floated above the rest of us common people and didn’t have the problems or worries or sufferings that the rest of us face. But in our reading from John, Jesus faces the sting of death, the pain of losing someone, and he weeps.

In fact, the shortest verse in Scripture is in our gospel reading this morning from John chapter eleven. The verse in many translations is two words: “Jesus wept.” 

I remember the first time that I heard that the shortest verse was that Jesus wept, I was overcome with emotion. I don’t know why. Many of you know me and you know I’m not that emotional of a person, and I’ve been that way for my whole life. But something about the fact that the simplest sentence in Scripture is that Jesus wept is very moving to me. I think it reminds me that all of the pain, suffering, war, and death that is part of this world – the Lord must weep over it too.

At a basic level, the gospel reading about Lazarus’ death and Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is about God’s power to raise the dead. If you remember from high school English class the concept of  foreshadowing in a story, where some event or action earlier in the story predicts the main thing in the story, this story is like that. The story of Jesus’ raising Lazarus is a foreshadow of Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead after his crucifixion. 

It’s another long story full of lots of symbols and meaning, similar to the other readings from the gospel of John the past few weeks of the Woman at the Well and Jesus’ healing of the blind man. Here are a few important details.

The story begins by introducing Lazarus and his two sisters Martha and Mary. They were all close friends of Jesus. And Lazarus is very sick and close to death. His two sisters, Mary and Martha, send for Jesus. Perhaps they were hoping Jesus would come quickly and heal Lazarus and prevent his death.

When Jesus learns the news of Lazarus’ grave illness, he doesn’t drop what he is doing and rush over to them. In fact, John tells us that Jesus stays two days longer where he was. On the surface, Jesus seems to brush aside the real concerns for Lazarus’ life, explaining that “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.”

Jesus eventually makes his way to Martha and Mary, but by that time, Lazarus had already died and his body placed into the tomb. Martha scolds him for his lateness, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And they have a conversation that goes deeper than normal at a funeral. Jesus makes two shocking statements to Martha. First, that Lazarus will rise again. Second, Jesus himself is the resurrection and the life. 

The story moves from their home to Lazarus’ tomb. Lazarus’ other sister, Mary, when she sees Jesus, offers a similar protest to Jesus. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is a deeply moving scene. When Jesus sees Mary weeping and the rest of the town weeping over Lazarus’ death, John tells us that Jesus was deeply moved in his spirit and ‘greatly disturbed’. 

When Jesus arrives at Lazarus’ tomb, he begins to weep himself. It is an incredibly emotional scene. The story moves in a such a way that Jesus eventually asks for the stone that is covering Lazarus’ tomb to be rolled away. Martha, Lazarus’ sister, protests, “It’s going to stink, Lord, he’s been dead four days already.” Jesus persists in his instruction, and prays to God and thanks God for hearing his prayer, and then offers this wild and strange command to the dead Lazarus’ body, “Lazarus, come out!” 

I cannot imagine what this must have looked like. To hear Jesus command a dead man to rise, “Lazarus, come out!” and then to see Lazarus come out, with the strips of cloth that they covered his body with when he died still dangling from his arms and side – it must have been an unbelievable scene. The story ends with Jesus offering a second command, “unbind him and let him go.”

The story of Jesus raising the dead man Lazarus to life is a wild story. For one, it’s wild because Lord raises the dead man with a command, an order: “Lazarus, come out.” It’s a miracle, for sure. But Lazarus was not cured of being a human being – he eventually dies again. There is no man named Lazarus who’s been hanging out on earth the past 2,000 years.

I think that means that something deeper is at work in Jesus’ raising of Lazarus. That something deeper is the Christian idea of the resurrection of the dead. We confess it every week as a part of our faith in the Apostle’s Creed: “we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.” Jesus calls himself ‘the resurrection and the life’.

Many of us, I think, think of the resurrection as something that happened to Jesus at Easter. “He is not here, he is risen,” is the message of Easter. For us then, the question is what happens to us when we die? The popular way to say it is that “our souls go to heaven”. And while that is true, the Christian idea of the resurrection is far bigger than that.

The apostle Paul gets at this in our epistle reading this morning when he writes, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” Let’s break this down. Paul is saying a few very important things. First, the Christian claim is that when we are in Christ, in our baptism, in our faith and worship and work in service of God, the Holy Spirit (God) dwells inside of us. The claim is that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, lives inside of us. That doesn’t mean we are God. But it means that God is very near to us, very much a part of our life, and that our life is somehow deeply changed by God’s presence. 

So, here is Paul’s thought process for the Christian: because the Holy Spirit resides in us, God will give our mortal bodies life. This is both a now and a future thing. For the now part of it, God gives us life. Let’s say up front: someone’s body can be alive, but they are dead on the inside. The image here is of Lazarus being called out of the tomb. The tomb here is a metaphor. The tomb can be whatever dark, lifeless, hopeless place that we find ourselves in. The gospel news is that Lord calls us out of the tomb that we find ourselves, saying, “Eric or Samantha or Luke, come out”. 

The way that the church says this is that God raises us to new life. It doesn’t mean that we are reincarnated or somehow come back a different person. It means our heart, our spirit is raised, changed. Those in despair are given hope. The hungry are filled. The prisoners are freed. The dead on the inside become alive on the inside. This happens by the power of God at work in us. All of these are resurrection things.

For the future part of it, the church (and by Church, I don’t just mean Trinity, but church in the big ‘c’ way to mean the fellowship of Christians around the world, past, present, and future) believes that God really will give life to our lifeless bodies one day when we die. The Scriptures speak of Jesus as the firstborn of the dead. Meaning, he was the first to be raised by the power of God from the dead. But one of the graces of the Lord is that he will raise all of the dead on the last day. “We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” The story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is both a now thing in that God’s Spirit resides in us and gives life to us and that in the last day, God will raise all those who have died to newness of life in him.

We do not the details about the life to come. The Scriptures don’t give long descriptions about heaven or the new heaven and new earth. What happens when we die? Our faith doesn’t teach us details, instead it gives us a promise.In the words of the Apostles’ Creed, “we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.” From our Lord’s words this morning, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though the die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me, will never die. Do you believe this?”

Let’s close here. The story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead brings up important things about God and human life. To state the obvious, life can be very, very hard and full of pain and suffering. We each sit beside our own pool of tears. Meaning, pain and suffering visit every one of us whether through illness, broken relationships, death, dreams that died, and our own sin which itself causes so much pain and hurt. 

Jesus weeps over his friend Lazarus’ death. I think our faith teaches us that the Lord weeps over all of the deaths that happen. 

The good news, the gospel news is that Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. That doesn’t mean we stick our heads in the sand and pretend everything is good. It’s not. We sin, the world is full of suffering. The kingdom of heaven has not come in all of its fullness. But, what it does mean is that God has done something about death. “Lazarus, come out,” is the Lord’s answer to death. We do two things at once as Christians. We mourn those have died, yes. But we also hope in the resurrection. We are very aware of the power of sin, but we are more so convinced of God’s grace to do away with sin. We are troubled and pained by the suffering in the world, but we also trust in God. We live as the Psalmist, “weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in he morning.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.