Fifth Sunday after Lent

Sermon on John 11:1-45 | by The Rev. David H. Brooks |

The Gospel of John is one of those books that seem to be just about to careen off into areas that “normal” people don’t always want to go. The late author Reynolds Price half playfully called John “The Strangest Story” as he wrote in his book Three Gospels that “this last gospel—little more than a pamphlet and written in a curiously shackled Greek prose—is [among] the most outrageously demanding works, in any type of prose or verse,…that has ever appeared in the West[ern world]…it continues to be a work of madness or blinding revelation.”

I want to start there because I agree with Dr. Price that one of the things that we tend to lose in the reading of stories from John—especially when we’ve heard the stories over and over through the years—is the strangeness of what John relates. We gloss over the rough edges, paying them no mind; or maybe we do notice them, but decline to point them out, in much the same way that we kindly refrain from pointing out a child’s action doll cooked in the lasagna when we dine at a friend’s house.  And yes, I’m aware that there are those who try to jump on the strangeness bandwagon by complaining that the whole idea of a messiah or savior is just to weird to be true—but that group is missing the point.

John just tells strange stories that demand to be taken seriously.

Take this one today. First thing that we know is that Lazarus is sick, sick enough that his family sees that the jig is up. Yet, they have enough time to send word to Jesus that Lazarus is in dire need.

So…Jesus waits. After two days, he rouses the disciples and they go back to Galilee, and when they arrive in Bethany Lazarus is dead, and been dead for four days, which is Scripture’s way of signaling that he’s not mostly dead, he’s ALL DEAD. Indeed, his sisters warn Jesus as the action really starts to roll that to open the tomb means raising a serious stink. But Jesus calls forth the rotting Lazarus, who emerges, still wrapped up like one of those mummies from the old horror films.

And the kids among us can remind us easily what the weirdest or coolest part of the whole story is—yes, it’s the idea of Lazarus, dead one moment, alive the next, standing out there among the people still wrapped in burial cloths.

But he’s out there because Jesus said so.

John means for us to focus on Lazarus because we are Lazarus. We are wrapped up, entombed, helpless. In bondage. John tells this story because here is a moment that illustrates 1) the helplessness of our situation, and 2) Jesus’ power to do something about it.

Here is the Lutheran approach to the idea of salvation in a single story. Lazarus is beyond help…and then, he is alive again, reunited to all that he loves, restored to himself.

So many of us think that salvation is about a decision that we must make, as if believing in God is an intellectual problem, something we can reason through, whether at leisure or in haste. That is not it at all. No, salvation is about someone else coming in and doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves, which is free us from what has us bound—sin, death, evil.  We are set free—just like Lazarus. Do you think that, if anyone had bothered to ask him, that he would have said, “no Jesus, I get to choose, and I prefer to stay in this tomb, wrapped up, slowly becoming fertilizer?” No, Lazarus was set free—he was held by death at one moment and was grasped by Jesus in the next moment. Lazarus could do what he did only because Jesus did what he did.

Luther often talked of the reality of salvation from the perspective of his life as a subject—someone who lived under the rule (and the care!) of a liege lord. In Luther’s day, kidnapping was a common occurrence, where rogue knights would snatch a poor individual and hold them for ransom. Sometimes the family could pay, but frequently a prisoner would languish for months because the money simply was not there.

But, in the civic contract that governed the relationship between a liege lord and subject, it was finally the responsibility of the ruling lord to secure the freedom of his subjects, to be the bondsman, to be the one who made freedom possible. Imagine the joy when the captive came home! Such blessing! Such opportunity!

Jesus makes freedom possible. He can do this because death has no power, death has no meaning where Jesus is present. In this present hour, when so much is uncertain, and many are asking “what can be done?” the Church knows—live free in joy, live well in the Lord, live for the opportunity to bless the neighbor. Amen.

The Rev. David H. Brooks

Raleigh, NC

Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com