Sermon for Lent 5

Reading: John 11:1-45

Today’s Gospel is yet another of the long passages from St.John’s Gospel that we are working our way through this Lent. With the arrival of Common Worship, and the adoption of a new lectionary, it was decided that stories that last for many verses would be kept intact, rather than being abridged, or split over several weeks. So here we have the story of the raising of Lazarus in its entirety.

I sometimes feel that there is an elephant in the room with this story. If Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, then why not extend this to everyone? Why should any of us die? This question becomes all the more pressing when we ourselves are faced with death. A significant person in our lives dies. Could not God have prevented this? No, life is not like that. We all have to face death. Except for the fact that here is a story of Jesus raising someone from death. It was Lazarus, and today’s Gospel tells the story of this.

Straight away we face a question of biblical interpretation. If we are presented with the story of an event, in the pages of the Gospels, are we to assume that what is presented is meant to be an objective and historically accurate account of what has happened, such as might be found in a scientific paper of today? The answer must be that the Gospels are not like that. I am convinced that stories like this do not appear out of nowhere. Something happens and it is remembered. The story is interpreted, put into a theological context and passed on. The point of retelling the story is not to keep alive the past, but to express an important truth for the present moment. So we need to approach this story with an open mind. What is God saying to us through these verses?

One thing to consider is what we mean by death? In our own time we have had to reopen this question. With the rise of organ transplantation, and the need for speed in transferring the organs, deciding when a person really is dead has needed to be defined with greater precision. There was far less precision in Jesus’ day. A lifeless body would have been counted as dead. This is a key feature in the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which it is the Samaritan who gathers up the beaten man lying on the road. The Priest and the Levite, both of whom passed by on the other side, were not without compassion. The probability that the man was dead meant that they could not have gone near him without making themselves ritually unclean. So was Lazarus really dead? We cannot inject such a scientific question into so ancient a text without doing violence to the text. The story describes the stench that comes out of the tomb, indicating the decomposition of the body, as if to make the point that yes, Lazarus really was dead. Whether this is a vivid memory of the original event, or an element of the retelling of the story, is a question we cannot answer.

What this Gospel passage proclaims to us is that here, in a dark situation of utter hopelessness, Jesus comes and transforms the situation. In the face of tragedy, he brings hope. Where there is despair, he offers the promise of new life. I think the context of this story is not questions about the deadness of Lazarus, but the situation of our own lives when we face trauma, despair, hopelessness and even death. The point of the Incarnation is that God himself takes on human flesh and comes to live in our midst. Whatever the darkness of this present moment, God is there alongside us. When the things of our earthly journey look to be without hope, Jesus raises our eyes to discover new hope and new life with the breaking in of his kingdom. There is no sense of turning back the clock here. The promise of Jesus is not to remove the challenge of the present hour, as if to return us to better times. Rather, at the heart of the Christian message is the challenge to let go of the things of this world and to surrender ourselves into the life of God’s kingdom. Ultimately, the Christians life is one that affirms death and dying, and faces up to our mortality with both acceptance and hope. We do this because, even in the present moment, we have already stepped into a different dimension in which ‘God is among us. He will dwell with us; we will be his peoples, and God himself will be with us; he will wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ (Rev 21). 

This Gospel, including the story of Lazarus, was written in the light of the resurrection of Jesus and the explosion of New Life that poured out from the empty tomb and empowered people with the Holy Spirit. By the grace of God, we are drawn into the resurrection life, which is why Jesus transforms our crying into dancing and our sadness into joy. As we travel though Lent towards Palm Sunday and Good Friday, we do so in the knowledge that Jesus gives his life for us and we, held in such transforming love, have been transported into a new world in which the life we live is eternal.