“Unbind Us” - John 11: 1-45

Jesus disciples have to think that he has lost his mind. They have just narrowly escaped being stoned to death by those infuriated with their presence and their ministry and now Jesus is speaking about walking right back in the direction from which they came - the place filled with hate and anger.

They question Jesus as to why he would want to risk his life to travel this path, not realizing that in a few days he would lay down his life completely. His response is perplexing “Our friend, Lazarus, is asleep”. 

Death is a hard thing to talk about. So we try to make it pretty, make it acceptable. We tell small children that Grandma is sleeping or Grandpa went away for a while. And the children often become confused - why did he go away? Doesn’t she want to wake up and play with me again? As we get older our attempts to sweep death under the carpet become slightly more sophisticated “She passed” or “He is in a better place.” But our responses are no less confusing. In fact, they are often infuriating. How do you know he is in a better place? Where was God when she was suffering?

Jesus finally has to state it plainly. Lazarus is dead. I wonder if the disciples whispered amongst themselves about why they were going to visit the dead or if they were stunned into silence. They had met Lazarus. They knew he was dear to Jesus. They had spent time in his home. Met his family. Now he was gone. 

Maybe they started to wonder how many other people they knew, they loved, had died during their three year journey with Jesus. When we hear about the death of someone, whether we knew them or not, it brings back a flood of memories of ones whom we love who have died. Ones who we know who are suffering daily and battling death. 

The sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, are sitting smack dab in the middle of the ugliness of grief. They realize that watering it down by saying “He passed” or “He is in a better place” won’t bring them relief or comfort. Instead they cry out to Jesus a statement that perhaps you have made at one time or another “If only you would have been here, Jesus.” 

There is so much packed into such a short statement. It is drawn out of us in times of grief and heartache, which seem to always be present in our lives, waiting just around the corner. God where are you? God where were you? Why did you let this happen? Sometimes, just allowing ourselves to state these questions is an act of great faith. 

I never really liked Jesus’ answer in this passage, even though it is almost identical to what Jesus told his disciples in the story we heard a few weeks ago about the man born blind. Jesus told the sisters that Lazarus died so that the glory of God could shine. It seems cruel. To let someone you love suffer, just so God can be glorified. Just so that we can be shown that Jesus is one with God and that God’s power is working through him.

And yet. And yet, as cruel as the answer may seem, as much as I wish Jesus would have made it to the home of Lazarus to heal him instead of to the tomb to raise him, Lazarus’ raising from the dead gives us a preview of deliverance from death itself. There was no mistaking that Lazarus was dead. In this ancient culture, four days was the amount of time it took for the soul to leave the body. Practically speaking, four days was when you knew someone was really dead because their body would begin to decay. And with that smell you knew that they weren’t simply just asleep, a mistake had not been made. They were dead. And it is out of this real death that Lazarus is raised to real life. Lazarus tells us not of a general resurrection, where everyone is generically raised to life, but speaks to our personal promise of resurrection. This was one whom Jesus deeply loved who was raised to life. And one who knew him, like his sisters, to the the Christ, the Son of God. Lazarus arose when he heard the voice of his Shepherd calling, a voice that he recognized. A voice that called him out of death into the presence of new beginnings and new life. 

Lent is a time to do the hard work of reflecting on death. To live into the tension between the hope of the resurrection of Easter and the finality of death on Earth. We live into the tension of knowing that God promises to be with us in Entirety and that God promises to be with us right now, here today, on Earth. We have been struggling with this tension throughout the season by laying aside our wants and desires. By spiritually journeying with the one who is leading us to the cross where he will lay down his life for us. And to reflect upon the small ways that we are dying every day. 

For the truth is that we are all bound in death clothes that we do not even recognize and they are suffocating us. We are bound by self doubt, fear, anxiety, isolation, oppression, grief, just to name a few. But for those who are bound in every day deaths, the story of Lazarus gives us the hope not only of a resurrection, but a hope for an unbound life now. A hope to experience life anew.

We know that we are living in a world that is not as it should be. A broken world inhabited by broken people. One of my favorite bands, Over the Rhine, states it this way in their song “All My Favorite People are Broken”. “All my favorite people are broken;

Believe me, my heart should know; As for your tender heart, this world's going to rip it wide open; It aint gonna be pretty, but you're not alone.” 

This world is going to hurt us. It is going to bring grief and people we love are going to die. We are going to ask God why from time to time. Because this world is not as it should be, not as God intended it to be. So it is going to rip us wide open. But when we get caught up in how hurtful the world is, to the point where we remember that we are not alone, but are journeying with a Risen Savior, then we can no longer hope. And that is a pain worse than death. 

The story of Lazarus asks us confront death. To not shove it into a funeral home or death bed, but to really face it. To open ourselves up to the grief of the death of those who have died before us, and to still ask “where is the hope?” The story demands that we examine our own lives for those things that are killing us every day, and lay them at the feet of the cross and claim the hope of a risen Savior who raises us too, both to new life and new beginnings. The story beckons us to live into the tension of the grief of dying and the hope of living, and listen to the voice of our Shepherd who is calling us to his side, the side where we will live again. Amen.