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John 11:33-44
Our story for today is very long so I’m going to summarize the first part. The 11th chapter of John begins by saying that Lazarus of Bethany was very sick. His sisters, Mary and Martha, sent a message to Jesus saying, “He whom you love is ill.” But Jesus didn’t rush to the aid of his friend. Instead he stayed two more days where he was. When Jesus finally arrived, Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. The number four is significant because, at the time, some people believed the spirit would hover near the body for 3 days after death. By saying he’d been in the tomb four days, they are saying not only was he dead, but his spirit was gone, too. He was really really dead. Mary and Martha both said to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” They had believed Jesus could help, but now they were beyond hope. I’ll pick up now at verse 33.
When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus 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.” [The King James Version translates this line as “But Lord, he stinketh!”] Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “God, I thank you for having heard me. I 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.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The 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.”
This is one of those miracle stories that is difficult for modern readers. We can’t help but ask our logical questions and wonder if he was really dead, or maybe just in a coma. John’s Gospel is the only one to tell this story so it’s a later addition to the Jesus narrative and therefore a little more suspect. Even those who believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ can question the whole resurrection thing for anybody else.
Whether you view this story as historical or metaphorical, I invite you into a willing suspension of disbelief because I want us to think about Lazarus. More specifically, I want us to ask some questions about Lazarus. What was his cause of death? How long was he sick? Did he suffer? Was this a new illness, with sudden onslaught so severe that his sisters immediately sent word to Jesus? Or had he been sickly for months until, out of options, his sisters realized that only miraculous intervention could save him? Did Lazarus know he was dying? Was he fighting it with every breath? Was he resigned to the inevitability of it? Did he welcome it after a long struggle?
And, of course, we don’t know what happens when we die, and certainly not what happened when Lazarus did. Did he know he was dead? Did his spirit stay around, watching his sisters grieve, watching his friend Jesus delay coming to his rescue? Or had he passed on to another realm of light and love and peace that passes human understanding? If so, did he want to stay there? Did he want to be brought back to a life that included pain and sorrow?
How did he awaken? Was he lying there waiting for Jesus to call him? Or was he yanked back into his body by that voice? Could he have refused? Did it hurt to be brought back to life? Did the pains his body experienced before death return with his breath? Did he wonder about the smell?
So many questions and so few answers. Lazarus is voiceless in this story and I long to give him some lines, but I wouldn’t know where to start because I don’t know the answers to the two most important questions. Did he want to come back? Did he have a choice?
Have you ever been dead? Not medically, but mentally? Emotionally? Spiritually? Have you ever felt a lifelessness within you and felt powerless to jumpstart your own heart? Has an experience ever stolen the breath from your lungs and refused to give it back? Has your spiritual life been so lifeless that prayer felt like too much effort for so little reward? Have you ever been dead? Did it take a long time to come back? Did it hurt? What brought you back? Was it the sound of your name on the lips of one who loved you?
There are many ways to be dead. There are many ways to be brought back to life. Time. Therapy. Antidepressants. Prayer. Mediation. Worship. Love. Always love. And sometimes we need help unwrapping the grave cloths that still linger on our frames.
But there are other ways to be dead. There are times when we feel fully alive and think we’re fine, but we are dead to the pain around us. We can be dead to the racism, the sexism, the heteronormative expectations. We don’t know we’re dead, and even if we realize we are, we are reluctant to be brought to life to that particular reality. Sometimes we need someone else to look around and ask, “What’s that smell?” and to recognize that it is the decay in our own souls. We may not want to be brought to life if it means facing the pain of others, the pain we ourselves cause when we refuse to see. But God, we stinketh!
Christ calls to us in the tomb of our willful ignorance, our comfortable complacency, our good, white, liberal intellectualization of human suffering.
Christ calls to us: Come out! Come forth! Leave the deadness behind. Leave the stench of bigotry behind. Leave the cloths of intolerance behind. And step into the light so we can seek to broaden our understanding.
This isn’t the only area in need of life, of course. Christ’s call to life is to all of us, in all areas of our lives, individually and communally. Rev. Robb McCoy says, “Church, come out! Come out of your comfort zone. Come out of your fortress. Come out of your ‘good old days.’”
We often think of the “good old days” of the church as when the pews were full and the youth group had 50 kids who came every week and church was at the center of communal and family life. But the “good old days” of the church were also when clergy who were accused of sexual abuse were shunted off to a new church with no accountability for their actions. The “good old days” were when gay and lesbian people were told to deny their identity or they’d go to hell. The “good old days” were when indigenous children were ripped from their homes and sent to “Christian” boarding schools where they experienced horrific treatment and ended up in unmarked graves. One of the ironies of the decline in the church in America is that when it looked like the church was thriving, many parts of it were dead to the pain of those in its pews.
Where are the areas of deadness in your life? What areas need to be brought back to life? It may hurt a little to be reborn. We may not like the smell. But new life is open to us all. Thanks be to God.