Opening scene: Jesus gets word his friend is sick
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
The writer gives us a picture of how much Jesus loved these three, Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. There is an emphasis on how much he loved them. And there is also a perplexing hesitation. Jesus stays where he is two days longer.
Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"
Bethany was (and is) just down the road from Jerusalem. If you take the road, as Jesus would on the first Palm Sunday, from Bethany, you come to the top of the Mount of Olives. Directly ahead, across a narrow valley, rises the Temple Mount, where at the time of this story the great Temple in Jerusalem stood. Jesus went down the Mount of Olives to enter the city – in the most visible way possible – on Palm Sunday.
Going to Bethany was in effect deciding to go to Jerusalem. There was a hesitation on the part of Jesus. The reaction of the disciples was to try to talk him out of going.
Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."
Courageous Thomas
I remember many years ago, the Church of Scotland preacher James Stewart (1896-1990) said that Thomas should be called “Courageous Thomas” rather than “Doubting Thomas” because he was the one to speak up to urge them all to go with Jesus, whatever the risks of going near Jerusalem.
Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
Jesus goes to Bethany and talks with Martha
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
Here is the promise of resurrection.
Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."
Then Jesus says another of the seven “I am” statements:
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
These words are quoted at the beginning of the burial office, the funeral service, in the Book of Common Prayer, and are read at the opening of every funeral in St. Chrysostom’s parish.
“Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
Jesus died and was buried and on the third day rose, and our central Christian faith and hope is that when we die, or those we love die, we will be raised with him.
This is the center of what the church – of what St. Chrysostom’s, Chicago – has to say to the city and world.
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her 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.
A deeply human moment. Even tighter in the King James Version: Jesus wept. As the Nicene Creed emphasizes, Jesus was Son of God, and also human, born of a human mother. He was born and he would die. He ate meals and loved. And faced with the death of a friend, he wept.
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?"
Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus
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."
An extremely earthy real human comment.
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, "Father, 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!"
So may we each hear Jesus one day call us, to come out of death into life with him.
This was the great sign of the resurrection which was coming soon, when Jesus would die on the cross, and be buried, and on the third day rise.
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."
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
The Bible text of the Gospel lesson is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
