Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 9, 2008
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 6:16-23
John 11:1-45
You have undoubtedly heard it said that there are two things we cannot escape in this life. They are….death and taxes. But if you had to choose one, I am sure we would all agree; some might escape paying taxes, especially paying their fair share of taxes, but no one will escape death. We will all have to leave this world when we die; but as people of faith we know that death is not the end of life, only life as we know it. In fact, we might think of our death not as leaving this life, but returning to the life we came from—our life with God. But first we must die. And that is a scary thought, even for believers like you and me. Personally, I have no fear of death itself; but I must admit I fear dying. I fear the pain and suffering which might come with dying. I just don’t want it to hurt. I don’t want to linger in this life without some quality in living it, either. And I don’t want to be a burden by becoming totally dependent on a person or an institution whose job it is simply to keep me alive. But we don’t always get what we want in this life. And as for our death, there is so little we can control.
This is the problem for Martha and Mary in our gospel lesson today. Martha and Mary wanted Jesus to come to them immediately when they send him word that their brother Lazarus was dying. They were anxious and afraid that their brother would die, and their expectation of Jesus is that he could save Lazarus from dying. You can’t blame them for being anxious and afraid because if Lazarus dies there will be no man to be the head of their household. So regardless of the fact that Martha and Mary would be financially secure and still have their nice home to live in, they would no longer have any status or regard in their community. Because if you remember, in ancient cultures women were nobody without men; without fathers and husbands and sons to take care of them.
So Martha and Mary wanted Jesus to come back to Bethany to save their brother from dying. And we can’t blame them for their expectation that Jesus could and would save their brother. After all, he had already demonstrated this divine capability. So we can’t blame Martha and Mary for wanting Jesus to come back to Bethany to heal their brother. And we should not be surprised that they expect that Jesus will come immediately because he is such a close friend; a friend who visits them frequently and stays with them often in their home. Their home is a place of comfort and refuge for Jesus. I can imagine Martha and Mary, Lazarus and Jesus having wonderful meals and conversations together as Jesus enjoys the restfulness of retreat from the demands of this world.
So it must have come as a shock to Martha and Mary that Jesus does not come to Bethany immediately. In fact he does not arrive for several days, four days after Lazarus’ body has been prepared for burial and placed in a tomb. And that just seems inexcusable, because Jesus has been only about two miles away from their home, apparently too busy to care for his friends in their time of great need. How inconsiderate. In fact, Jesus’ apparent neglect is so inconsiderate, he does not even attend Lazarus’ burial. So we can’t blame Martha for running from her home to meet Jesus on the road when she hears he is on his way to see them. We can hardly blame her for shaking her finger at Jesus as she accuses him of such inconsiderate neglect. “If you had come, our brother would not have died” cries Martha. And we are not surprised to hear Mary level the same accusation at Jesus when she encounters him later in the story. And now that Lazarus is dead, the anxiety and fear of these sisters has turned to bitter pain and grief and even anger. How could Jesus do this to them? How could this good friend let their brother die when he had the power to save him from dying. How could he.
What a powerful moment it must have been for Jesus to encounter Martha and Mary and the other mourners who are gathered at their home to grieve the death of Lazarus. In fact, it was so powerful that when Jesus witnesses the pain and suffering of his grief-stricken friends, he breaks down and cries with them and for them. Two thousand years later this is still a powerful moment for those of us who hear this story today. Because this is also a defining moment in Jesus’ life. This is a moment when we experience Jesus as the fully human person he is. This fully human God is capable of feeling human grief and pain, and responding to our tears with his own tears. At this moment in scripture we can take comfort in knowing that Jesus truly is like us, and we can be assured that he wants more than anything to be present with us in the dark and difficult moments of our life, and to heal us in them.
The fact that Jesus weeps with us, that Jesus is present with us in our times of great need is something we can know and experience as people of faith. I am certain we all have a story we can tell. But there is an even larger, more powerful message John wants to show us in this story of Lazarus. Jesus does bring Lazarus back from the dead and restores him to his family and community. And this is a teaching moment, because Jesus shows us a power that goes beyond his ability to feel and heal our pain and grief. It is the message we need to hear on this fifth Sunday of Lent. It is the message of resurrection. In this last week of Lent, as Jesus prepares to journey to Jerusalem, he wants us to know that his own death will also lead to new life in resurrection. And his resurrection will have the power to transform us, not only at our death, but in our life. Jesus’ resurrection will cancel death, and it will cancel our fear of death. The same fear we see in Martha and Mary.
Restoring Lazarus to life provides Jesus with a teaching moment which has greater consequences for our life. We learn that that death is not the end of our life and we no longer need to fear it. And when we no longer fear our death we become free to live our life, in confidence and hope, as God would have us live it. But only if we will believe that resurrected life begins now, in this life. Before Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb and restores him to life, Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life….Do you believe?” This is the same question Jesus asks the Samaritan woman, the blind man in the gospel accounts of our last two Sundays. In every case the answer is, “Yes, Lord. I believe.” And each person is healed of an affliction which keeps them from living into the fullness of their life. Their lives become transformed by the power of resurrection in the moment; neither death, nor the fear of death has any power over them, and the death they die will only be a transitory moment in the new life they have begun to live.
These are the stories we need to hear in Lent as we approach Holy Week, because the message we hear in them is an Easter messages. It is a message of life transformed and made new by the power of healing and resurrection. And Jesus is asking the same question of us in these stories. “Do you believe?” Jesus wants to know if we believe in the power of resurrection to transform our life. Because if we believe, that will make all the difference in the way we live our life, now, in this world as we prepare for the new life we will be given at our death. It will make a difference because people who believe that neither death, nor the fear of death has any power over them are able to respond in life affirming ways to all the fearful and deadly things we must face in this world.
Jesuit priest Gerald Darring writes about those fearful and deadly things and why it is so important that we believe in Jesus’ power to conquer fear and death, especially in this life. Darring writes: “We live in a world that has been caught up in death for a long time. We kill each other in acts of murder, abortion, euthanasia , execution, war, terrorist activities, drunk and reckless driving. We kill ourselves through suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, smoking, overwork, stress, bad eating habits, and physical neglect. We watch calmly as others die from poverty, hunger and malnutrition, homelessness, unemployment, poor education, disease, lack of health care coverage, child abuse, arms proliferation, discrimination, pollution, destruction of the environment, unsafe working conditions, and all the laws, policies, practices and attitudes which contribute to these conditions.” And might I add that this is far from a complete list of the things we fear or the things we can die from in this life.” Then Darring goes on to give the message of our gospel lesson today; the message of Easter: “Jesus is the resurrection and the life. He is the God who tells us, ‘I will put my spirit in you that you may live.’”
At the end of our gospel story today Jesus goes to the tomb to call Lazarus back into life. But if you remember when Lazarus comes out of the tomb, his body is wrapped from head to toe in the cloth he has been bound with to prepare him for burial. “Unbind him,” says Jesus to friends and family who have gathered there. “Unbind him.” And with this command, Jesus gives us one last critical detail about what is possible when we believe in the power of resurrection to transform our life. We become unbound, and our life is set free from the bonds of sin and death. We are no longer bound by the deadly things of this world. And we no longer fear them. Neither death, nor the fear of death, can keep us from living the life God has given us to live, as freely and completely as we are able. When Jesus unbinds us from our fear of death, we become free to love in a world which loves to hate; we are able to maintain hope in times of darkness and despair, we actually grow our faith in periods of doubt; we can always find the strength and courage we need to bring what is good and right and just to our world and regardless of the consequences to us.
This is only the beginning of a very long list of the life-giving and life-transforming ways we who believe in the power of resurrection are able to live in this world. We who can say with confidence that we are an Easter people. Because it shows. And no one, not even Jesus, need ever ask us if we believe in a life transformed and made new by resurrection, because we are already living it.