\u201cJesus said, \u2018This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God\u2019s glory so that
\nGod\u2019s Son may be glorified through it.\u2019\u201d John 11:4<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus said to her, \u2018I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes
\nin me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in
\nme will never die. Do you believe this?\u2019\u201d John 11:25, 26<\/p>\n
REVEALING GOD\u2019S GLORY <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe smell of death is everywhere. The pictures you see on TV do not tell the whole story. You only see<\/strong> the devastation in those pictures. But when you are here, you not only see the devastation, but you smell<\/strong> it, no matter where you go or what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n Those who visited the tsunami disaster areas described the scene in this way time after time. The very smell of death permeated the air.<\/p>\n Is this not something of a description of the atmosphere of all history, though? Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. Great individuals appear for a brief time and their work disappears almost as fast as they do. Immense institutions dominate the economy for a while and then they give way to other great institutions who give way to still other great institutions. The enhancing perfume of greatness is constantly replaced with the aroma of death. Nations and people and institutions leave marks, to be sure, \u2013 often very enduring marks that literally alter the course of history — signs of having been there. But they are only replaced . . . perhaps even re-invented after a fashion, but having lived their lives out they are not raised again from the dead. History marches on as much in spite of their having been there as it marches on because they were there.<\/p>\n \u201cBy this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n So spoke Martha when Jesus asked to see the body of his friend Lazarus. Death had visited this household and friends were gathering for the mourning period that followed the burial according to the custom of the time. Laid in the grave almost immediately upon death, the body began its deterioration almost immediately. \u201cThere is a bad odor.\u201d So spoke Martha.<\/p>\n It was not her first word to Jesus, though. She, like her sister Mary, had earlier asked why Jesus had not hurried his coming. \u201cIf you had been here, my brother would not have died.\u201d Those were the first words Martha spoke to Jesus, and Mary echoed the very same words when she rushed out to meet Jesus upon hearing that he was near.<\/p>\n Are they words of sisters somewhat irked at Jesus\u2019 seeming indifference to their brother Lazarus? After all, \u201cLazarus now lay sick . . . so the sisters sent word to Jesus, \u2018Lord, the one you love is sick.\u2019\u201d Had their message not carried enough sense of urgency? Or had Jesus dallied along the way and missed the opportunity to heal Lazarus?<\/p>\n Jesus\u2019 disciples had the same question, for they had been with him and knew that \u201cwhen he heard this, Jesus said, \u2018This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God\u2019s glory so that God\u2019s Son may be glorified through it.\u2019 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.\u201d What strange behavior for one who loved Lazarus! And what a strange explanation he gave for having done so! The disciples must have been as miffed as Mary and Martha.<\/p>\n And now here they stood alongside the sisters with Jesus weeping in keeping with the great sorrow of the moment, with Mary and Martha\u2019s rebuke, and with Jesus\u2019 request to open the grave. \u201cBy this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.\u201d It is too late! Death has claimed its latest victim, and all they could do was to mourn and to wonder why the only One who could have done anything about it had done nothing but dilly-dally around.<\/p>\n \u201cThis sickness will not end in death.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n It is true that Jesus had said, after his unseemly delay in responding, that it was finally time to go to Lazarus\u2019 bedside. The disciples then tried to restrain him, as though, upon reflection, they had realized that \u201ca short while ago the Jews tried to stone you.\u201d<\/p>\n Jesus startles them, though: Ignoring the danger they pointed out, he said, \u201cOur friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going to wake him up.\u201d The disciples took this to mean that he is on the way to recovery, however, for \u201cif he sleeps, he will get better.\u201d But they have not listened to Jesus well at all.<\/p>\n First of all, he had never said that Lazarus would not die. \u201cThis sickness will not end in death,\u201d he had told them. He had not said, \u201cLazarus will not die.\u201d He had said, in effect, \u201cthe death of Lazarus will not be the end of the story. There will be more to be told.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of their failure to listen to Jesus carefully the first time, the second word also fell on deaf ears. \u201cLazarus has fallen asleep.\u201d Therein lies the heart of the story for which much more will be said. By the time they arrive, his death had preceded them by four days. And not only Mary and Martha, but the gathering mourners also were saying, \u201cCould not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is for God\u2019s glory, so that God\u2019s Son may be glorified through it.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDid I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?\u201d Jesus asks Martha when she hesitates to have the grave opened. After thanking the Father for the revelation of his glory in his Son, Jesus simply, boldly, forthrightly orders Lazarus to come out. It was not a statement of hope. It was a command: \u201c\u2019Lazarus, come out!\u2019 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.\u201d<\/p>\n The ministry of Jesus had essentially begun in Cana of Galilee where he turned water into wine. We are told that this was \u201cthe first of his miraculous signs . . . He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.\u201d<\/p>\n The raising of Lazarus is the last \u201cmiraculous sign\u201d that John records for his readers before the passion and death of our Lord. It is a giant leap to move from turning water into wine to raising a man from the dead! But the two events bracket the ministry of Jesus with the testimony that he \u201crevealed his glory\u201d in these and all other \u201cmiraculous signs\u201d in-between!<\/p>\n \u201cGlorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n There is a considerable difference between resuscitation and resurrection. Lazarus was resuscitated, brought back from the dead by the word of the Lord. He who initiated life in Lazarus held that life in his hand even in death. He could and did command life to return to the corpse concerning whom the mourners had gathered to express their grief.<\/p>\n But none of them expected . . . nor do we, ourselves, think anything else . . . that Lazarus was resuscitated never to die again. The life to which he was returned was still temporary, still tentative, still subject to another moment when he would return to the same grave from which he had been raised.<\/p>\n Because of this expression of his power over even death itself, however, Jesus\u2019 path was itself now clearly established on a downward spiral to death. Our text ends with the words, \u201cTherefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him,\u201d just as we read after the performance of his first miracle.<\/p>\n Immediately following, however, we read that this event is the triggering point for such a deep concern on the part of the religious authorities that \u201cfrom that day on they plotted to take his life.\u201d The One who restored life to Lazarus is now the One whose life is sought.<\/p>\n Nor did he escape that net of death, as we all know. The narrative moves quickly but surely to the time when he would be the man of whom Caiaphas, one of those plotting his death, spoke so surely but unsuspectingly: \u201cIt is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.\u201d (John 11:50) Thus did it happen that Lazarus\u2019 life led directly to Jesus\u2019 death.<\/p>\n It is there, in the very context of his death, however, that we see what this \u201cglory\u201d is all about. It is not about power. It is not about majesty. It is not about splendor. It is not even about dignity. It is about dying an ignominious death on a cross. It is about being put to death with sinners. It is about shameful nakedness before people who cry, \u201cHe saved others. Himself he cannot save,\u201d . . . a statement so true that it bursts the boundaries of our human imagination. Were he to save himself, the world would crash into condemnation and utter destruction. It is only in refusing to save himself that the world is saved from its own folly by the grace and mercy of God.<\/p>\n \u201cTake heart,\u201d he said in his parting words. \u201cI have overcome the world.\u201d And then he prayed, \u201cFather, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. . . I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.\u201d (John 17:1, 4, 5) It is his glory to die for the world! There the glory that was seen at Cana in Galilee and at Lazarus\u2019 tomb is brought to its brightest light . . . in the terrible three hour darkness of that Friday we call Good!<\/p>\n That death, however, was the glory of the Lord that came fully into view in the resurrection three days later. Quite different from the resuscitation of Lazarus, however, the body of Jesus was exalted to the highest level of glory, ascended into heaven, restored again to the throne from which he had descended in utter humility thirty-some years earlier in order to unveil for us the heart of God\u2019s love by his submission to death in our behalf. The grave that he unlocked for Lazarus as a brief respite from death was powerless to hold the Word that became flesh through whom \u201cwe have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only. [He] came from the Father, full of grace and truth.\u201d (John 1:14) Resurrection meant for him the end of his redemptive and saving work that he might become for all people for all time the Mediator through whom sins are pronounced forgiven and eternal life becomes available to all who come to him.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is to my Father\u2019s glory, that you bear much fruit.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n We know nothing of the days allotted to Lazarus following his resuscitation. It was undoubtedly much like that resuscitation of Israel to which Ezekiel speaks in the First Lesson for today. In the afterglow of God\u2019s miraculous activity of returning Israel from its corpse-like existence in captivity Israel had its bright moments and its dark moments. Like all human history it was never able to get past its human side. Nor, we can be sure, did Lazarus escape the human side of his existence even after he was returned from the dead.<\/p>\n Yet it is to the revelation of God\u2019s glory that we are called, along with Israel and Lazarus of old, through those commanding words: \u201cLazarus, come out.\u201d Christ is not only the death of death, but he is the One through whom and in whom sin and death must come out of the tomb to which our transgressions assign us and new life emerges as a new possibility.<\/p>\n Paul puts it this way in today\u2019s second lesson: \u201cIf Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.\u201d (Romans 8:10, 11) To use the language of the text, we are to \u201ctake off the grave clothes\u201d so that we can live as God intends!<\/p>\n John is always quite emphatic about this basic truth: Eternal life begins here and now, at the point where Christ\u2019s claim on us is confirmed. It is not a \u201cthen and there\u201d life to which we are pointed when we speak of eternal life. It is a \u201chere and now\u201d that becomes a \u201cpractice ground\u201d for the \u201cthen and there.\u201d On this earth we practice for that which we yearn and earnestly desire in the life yet to come. We are not waiting for it. It is ours already here . . . a life called forth from the grasp of sin and death as Christ called Lazarus forth from the grave! The smell of death that pervades the whole earth has been transformed by our Lord Jesus into the perfume of a life beyond our imagination or hope!<\/p>\n It is through us, then, that the Father\u2019s glory is now to be revealed. \u201cThis is to my Father\u2019s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.\u201d (John 15:8) It is not to be revealed by power or majesty or splendor, but by the simple, humble service that follows in the shadow of our Lord who revealed the Father\u2019s glory on the cross. \u201cAs the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. . . I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.\u201d (John 15:8, 11)<\/p>\n
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