Lazarus and New Life

Pastor Katie, David, and Keith sit down and explore the gospel reading for the fifth Sunday in Lent, the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This iconic story is full of emotion and relationship as we encounter the human and experience the divine in John 11. Read along with the scripture here. 

Learn more about St. John Lutheran Church at stjohnchurchmars.org or follow us on Facebook.

Scripture quotations from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Facets of Faith. Once again, David, Keith, and I have gathered to talk about the upcoming gospel reading for this coming Sunday. This coming Sunday, we are diving into the story of Lazarus. This is a story that is so well known across many cultures and denominations and people who are churched and unchurched or dechurched. This is a story that people know of Lazarus coming back to life. However, as we will discuss, this story has so much context and so much depth. And actually, the conversation that we had went far longer than we've got time to include in this podcast. So I hope that this conversation will spark some curiosities for you, will invite you to explore the new and abundant life we have in Christ here and now, and then also to read the story with fresh eyes, to engage with it and to bring your own questions, your own deep dive, and your own experience of the divine in this encounter with Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

A certain man, Lazarus, was ill. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha. This was the Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair. Her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, saying, Lord, the one whom you love is ill. When he heard this, Jesus said, This illness isn't fatal. It is for the glory of God, so that God's Son can be glorified through it. Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus. When he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was. After two days, he said to his disciples, Let's return to Judea again. The disciples replied, Rabbi, the Jewish opposition wants to stone you, but you want to go back? Jesus answered, Aren't there twelve hours in the day? Whoever walks in the day doesn't stumble because they see the light of the world. But whoever walks in the night does stumble because the light isn't in them. He continued, Our friend Lazarus is sleeping, but I am going in order to wake him up. The disciples said, Lord, if he is sleeping, he will get well. They thought Jesus meant that Lazarus was in a deep sleep. But Jesus had spoken about Lazarus' death. Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died. For your sakes, I'm glad I wasn't there, so that you can believe. Let's go to him. Then Thomas, the one called Didymus, said to the other disciples, Let us go too, so that we may die with Jesus. When Jesus arrived and found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days, Bethany was little less than two miles from Jerusalem. Many Jews had come to comfort Martha and Mary after their brother's death. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him while Mary remained in the house. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Even now I know that whatever you ask God, God will give you. Jesus told her, Your brother will rise again. Martha replied, I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? She replied, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, God's Son, the one who is coming after into the world. After she said this, she went and spoke privately to her sister Mary. The teacher is here and he's calling for you. When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to Jesus. He hadn't entered the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were comforting Mary in the house saw her get up quickly and leave, they followed her. They assumed she was going to mourn at the tomb. When Mary arrived where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying also, he was deeply disturbed and troubled. He asked, Where have you laid him? They replied, Lord, come and see. Jesus began to cry. The Jews said, See how much he loved him? But some of them said, He healed the eyes of the man born blind. Couldn't he have kept Lazarus from dying? Jesus was deeply disturbed again when he came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone covered the entrance. Jesus said, Remove the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead man, said, Lord, the smell will be awful. He's been dead for four days. Jesus replied, Didn't I tell you that if you believe, you will see God's glory? So they removed the stone. Jesus looked up and said, Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know you always hear me. I say this for the benefit of the crowd standing here, so that they will believe that you sent me. Having said this, Jesus shouted with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. The dead man came out, his feet bound, and his hands tied, and his face covered with a cloth. Jesus said to them, Untie him and let him go. Therefore, many of the Jews who came with Mary and saw what Jesus did believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and Pharisees called together the council and said, What are we going to do? This man is doing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. Then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our people. One of them, Caiaphas, who was a high priest that year, told them, You don't know anything. You don't see that it is better for you that one man die for the people rather than the whole nation be destroyed? He didn't say this on his own. As high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would soon die for the nation. And not only for the nation, Jesus would also die, so that God's children, scattered everywhere, would be gathered together as one. From that day on, they plotted to kill him.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Thank you. So this is once again such a rich and immersive story that we have for our gospel reading this week. To be perfectly transparent, if you don't have the revised common lecture diary memorized, which I imagine many people don't, I actually had David read a few verses beyond the assigned reading, because then those last few verses propel us into what we will look at next week, which is the passion of Christ. And so this text is really the pivot point from where we have the first half or so of the book of John, which is known as the book of signs. When we see lots of Jesus doing signs, doing miracles, showing what it is to be God's word made flesh. And then starting in chapter 13, we get what is called the Book of Glory, which is where we get into the last few days of Jesus' life: the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and ultimately the resurrection. So to put ourselves more closely into context, this is the 11th chapter of John. Last Sunday we read from the ninth chapter of John, where we heard about the healing of the man born blind. And then that story, Jesus actually explains what he was doing, and it kind of has the discourse or the explanation of that miracle, of that sign in chapter 10 of John, where he starts talking about I am the I am the Good Shepherd, and the sheep know my voice, and they hear my voice, and they come to me. Those, all that stuff we get for Good Shepherd Sunday, two out of the three years, comes from that explanation of the sign of the man born blind, and that's in chapter 10. And then shortly after that, we hear this altercation between Jesus and some of the Pharisees, and they want to stone him. Ironically, we don't talk about that reading very often, but it's in there, and they want to stone him not because they're necessarily afraid of Jesus or necessarily because they just don't like him. They want to stone him because he is proclaiming himself, and people are proclaiming him to be of God, from God, and God. And that is a heresy, that is going against the teachings of the church, obviously, or the synagogues, obviously, because there's only one God, and so therefore, this man in their faith tradition cannot claim to be God without causing massive issues within that structure. And so they want to stone him because he is committing one of the greatest sins, if you will, of their faith. And so that would be a natural consequence of that. That would be the acceptable level of punishment. And then we don't know how exactly, but Jesus just simply escapes. And then it just leaves it there. It says they wanted to stone him, and then Jesus escapes. And then next thing we know, we get right into this story with Lazarus. This is a story that so many people know. Even if you're not connected to a church, even if you did not grow up in a church, a lot of people understand the concept of Lazarus as being a person risen from the dead or who was risen from the dead. And so we have this whole story, but Jesus kind of explains it before he does it this time. And then in chapter 12, he goes back and kind of summarizes the past three years, looking forward to the next three days, and then in 13, it's all holy week stuff from there on out. So, like I said, this story, this chapter 11 is super rich. There are lots of big picture things, there are lots of little nuanced details that give us depth of insight into all of this. There are so many directions we can go in talking about this, but rather than me tell us where we should go, I'm curious what is the parts of this text that jump out to you? What are your curiosities and where does this text kind of lead you in your own exploration of your faith?

SPEAKER_02 10:46

So a few years ago, I was in a men's group where we discussed this particular reading, and the interesting bit in that in that men's group discussion was how we slowed everything down, how we slowed the story down. Because growing up in the church, we read this story often, many people know it, and we pretty much just go from A to B to C. So what we did in this in this discussion was we realized that Jesus waits for two days. When the news of Lazarus' illness reaches him, he says very, you know, very clearly, we're just gonna wait. Like we're just gonna wait here, we're not gonna do anything. He doesn't just jump up and say, you know, hey, I know that I love this guy, but we're gonna get, you know, so let's let's get going. They just they sit there and wait for something. What is that something? Is it uh Jesus trying to unfold what God is trying to do, what he's trying to do for the people, how he wants to give um God glory. So the the the entirety of the rest of the conversation then was, at least in that particular session, was reading it and slowing down and looking at it through the lens of put yourself in this in this moment of time and and and walk with Jesus through the events as he is waiting.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Yeah, it's it's it's funny that he waited so long. I mean the scripture shows that uh they were only two miles away. And you could cover that time period in less than an hour, I guess. So, you know, why did they do that? I guess that was what he was referring to, saying that you know this happened because we're gonna show what God's glory is all about, rather than rather than just rushing right away to do the miracle of raising Lazarus.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah, I mean I think it's some of all of that because the um the four days that gets explicitly mentioned here is critical because in a lot of ancient thought, um, Jewish thought, Zoroastrianism, all the religions of the area, a lot of them had this idea that after death the soul kind of hung around the body for three days. And so within the span of those kind of first three days after death, um it actually, it's not that it wasn't uncommon, but other people did raise people from the quote unquote dead, and it modern science probably says that you know they were unconscious or you know, whatever. We could come as yeah, exactly. And so for him to be dead for four days says that nope, he's like dead, dead, like all the way dead, no hope, gone. Um, so the four days is critical to the story because for Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead after two days, the it's not impactful. Um and that being said, it is always kind of like an icky sticking point, the delay. Uh, because it's not I we had this issue last week with the man born blind. It so often seems that people who encounter Jesus almost get used in a way. Um, like poor Lazarus, he's suffering, he's dying, and Jesus is just like, hold on, guys, we're gonna wait because I have something to show you. That doesn't feel good. No one likes that feeling. Um, and we don't know why he waited. Um we know kind of looking back that the waiting allowed the glorification to be shown. Uh but I don't know that I necessarily like saying that Jesus was using Lazarus in that way. That just feels a little icky. So sometimes we just gloss over the delay a little bit just so that we're not accidentally saying something we don't want to say about Jesus. Um and maybe it's just because, you know, like he says, this it Jesus said this illness isn't fatal. And so Jesus wasn't worried. And with all the with the recent altercation with the Pharisees and the stoning and things like that, maybe this was also just a very human moment of we're gonna wait. I know this isn't fatal. Give me a miss, give me a second. And so maybe it is more of that as opposed to I'm just gonna let Lazarus suffer because I want to show you something cool. Um so maybe it's there's a little bit of both and I don't I don't know, but the delay is complicated, shall we say, in interpretation.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

I always wondered why it was four days because everything about it seems like a precursor of his death and resurrection. You know, there's the tomb, roll away the stone, you know, right? So why wasn't it three days? Yeah, but like you said, the four days, he was dead, dead.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

100% dead. Um but yeah, so much about everything else, there is direct parallels between Lazarus' resurrection and Jesus' resurrection. This is absolutely a precursor to the resurrection. Um one of the primary differences though is that Jesus raises Lazarus and there is no acting party to the resurrection of Jesus. Right. Well, no human acting party, we should say. Um so because that well, that we're not gonna go down that rabbit hole who raises Jesus and how Jesus raised from the dead, but it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

I know back in uh a couple of sessions ago in Bible study, we talked about um the Jews, some Jews had a belief in the afterlife and some didn't. Can you refresh my memory about that?

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yeah, so the Jewish tradition is actually fairly open. I mean, it's like saying something about a Jewish belief is the same thing as saying a Christian belief. There are different denominations, there are different sects, there are different ways of interpreting so many different things, that there is no one Jewish way of approaching many topics, and that includes afterlife. And so, like the Sadducees, if we're gonna stick within the first century Judaism, aka the Judaism at the time Jesus was around, uh, Sadducees did not believe in a life after death. Um they there was some shadow realm and things like that, but it was it was not quite as defined as we have it now. But then the Pharisees, which was the um the ancestor of rabbinic Judaism, which is the current Judaism, uh the Pharisees did say that resurrection was gonna happen. There was going to be a resurrection of the body at the last day, at the day of the Lord. And so that was very much a future-looking thing, kind of the end of days thing. And so that's why when we get to like Paul and things like that, Paul is basically just saying, I'm saying Jesus rose from the dead. We've been saying people are gonna do that for ages, and I'm just saying it happened. The thing that makes this weird though, is that it's happening now, and it's not happening at the end of ages. And so that's kind of what sticks it, sticks it out from what would be considered a broader understanding. And that's where Martha comes in with this idea of I know the resurrection's gonna happen, I believe, I, you know, I'm I'm good with all that stuff. And Jesus kind of corrects her preemptively saying, no, no, no, life is here now, eternal life is here now, and not just in the ever after.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

I always like to use I always like to say that the shortest sentence in the Bible is Jesus wept. And that obviously is retranslated here.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Um He cried. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Jesus cried. That's not a short time.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

He cried.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Fun fact, I'm so excited you brought that up. Because you couldn't tell by my like giddy smile that I have over here. Uh so it is two words in in the English, Jesus wept, Jesus cried, however you want to translate that. But in the Greek, it's actually three words long, and it actually says the Jesus wept or cried. Um and then if you I don't think we did this in the podcast, this goes way back to a while ago. One of the lectionary readings was talking about the name Jesus and how Jesus gets the name, and Jesus comes from the Hebrew Yeshua, which means God saves. And so therefore, when you put the the in there, it is the God who saves wept. And is it like I got goosebumps thinking of that?

SPEAKER_01 19:04

I mean, that changes it totally.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

It does, because it's not then just this one human interaction, it is the God who saves, the God who saves people out of slavery, the God who saves people out of oppression and disadvantagement, the God who saves people wept in this space at this time. Now there's so many places where that weeping can come from. It can come from weeping because human grief is real, and if Jesus truly is the word incarnate, Jesus is human and fleshly, and that means Jesus feels grief. Um it could also be because in seeing all this, Jesus is feeling the weight of his own crucifixion that's gonna come and is weeping for what he knows he must endure. It could be weeping because he sees that people aren't really getting this whole life thing yet, the life that he's offering. Um but maybe and maybe it's a little bit of all of it, but all of that together comes with the God who saves wept.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

So I also found the interaction between Mary and Martha, the the reaction that they had when Jesus is on their way, on his way to come, to come to them, to see them, how they how they reacted, right? Because they Mary and Martha know who Jesus is. They've they've they've met him, they they obviously have some faith in him. So I I I kind of always envision them running up to him on the hillside and you know, beating on his chest. Lord, if you had only been here, we you know, our brother would not have died, right? And so the faith of the of the women and their reaction when they first saw him, I always found kind of intriguing as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Absolutely. I mean, again, we have that very human moment of their brother just died. I mean, it's not really clear what they expected Jesus to do when they told him that Lazarus was ill. Um they there seems to be some expectation that healing would have been possible or something. So then when he shows up, there's absolutely anger there because in their minds Jesus is life, and when Jesus was not there, death happened. And so they are angry. They are potentially beating on his chest, crying into his shoulder, um, blaming Lazarus' death on Jesus and all that stuff. I mean, I don't know that there's necessarily anything wrong with that though, because frequently we all also go into that same mindset of when something bad happens, we say, God, where were you? God, you you weren't here. And even in his absence, though, Jesus had love for Lazarus, Jesus had life for Lazarus planned and expected, and all that stuff. And so he was physically absent, but at the same time, Jesus was still with Lazarus in that time from a Spiritual perspective. And I think that's where then Jesus preemptively tries to coax Martha and Mary through their understanding of life and death before he raises Lazarus from the dead. Because if you remember, all of this conversation happens before they even get to the tomb. They don't get to the tomb until the very end of that particular part of the story. And so Jesus, you know, Martha has her moment with him, blaming him, angry at him. Jesus calmly, I assume, calmly replies, your brother will rise again. And then Martha goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But it's kind of like when we're in the midst of a strong bout of grief after someone has died recently, and someone says one of those platitudes that aren't really helpful of, oh, but you'll be with them again in heaven. And it's that doesn't help. And so Martha's kind of blows him off and says, Yes, I know. However, if you had been here, he would not be dead now, and he would be here now. And that's when Jesus gets into this. I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? And that sentence there, I am the resurrection and the life. Some old, ancient, reliable manuscripts actually cut out life because resurrection and life are so intertwined. And this is where we get into this idea of the eternal abundant life that Jesus brings through the Gospels is not just the ever after, but the here and now. And so Jesus is saying, here and now, people who believe in me, people who have a relationship with me will live, regardless of the whole death thing. And then we get the Mary conversation, Mary's crying, and then we get that Lord, come and see. And if you remember that phrase, come and see, is very poignant in the Gospel of John, because that's what happens when people invite them into discipleship, when Jesus invites people into discipleship, when the woman at the well wanted to invite people into discipleship and experience, and that's when we get the Jesus wept. So the women, I think they show a very human, a very expected, a very natural reaction to this whole process. Because they know relationship with Jesus is life, but they don't really totally get it yet. And even when Jesus tries to prompt them, they go back to their basic theology of yeah, yeah, yeah, on the last day there will be resurrection of everybody. We know that, but that's not really helping us now. You're not helping. And then Jesus kind of pushes them one more step further of, okay, now this. And he kind of walks them into the process of figuring out what does life in Jesus look like. And then Jesus gives them a very literal sign when he raises Lazarus from the dead.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

So another one of those discussions, uh, or parts of that discussion that I had in that in that group was the revelation, if you if you pause here and look at the sequence of events, there was very much a Jesus was very clearly drawing a distinction between what he was going to do and what he asked others to do, or more specifically, humans to do. Pure humans, right? Only exclusively humans. You roll the stone away. Not me, not me, Jesus. Dear people, you roll the stone away, and then I'll take it from there. Lazarus come out. And then that was the part that only Jesus could do. And then when Lazarus appeared, when he came out of the tomb, he Jesus didn't go and unwrap the the bandages and the and the cloth and the burial shrouds. He said, Okay, now you get to take over again people, right? So it's a partnership, it's a relationship that God calls us, Jesus, God calls us into. We need to do the things that we need to do, and God then will do the thing that he needs to do, that only he can do. And what again, when we when we slow the story down, it was like, whoa, that's pretty impactful.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Yeah, and that's huge because for John, belief is not a cognitive thought process. Belief is a relationship, belief is an interaction, belief is an experience. And so for the for Jesus to then invite the people to participate in this, he's inviting them to participate in the life that Jesus has and the life we know in Jesus, that eternal abundant life, and then to also have that community care for one another and the community participation, kind of foreshadowing a little bit when we get to the end of what does it mean to be church? Because the Gospel of John, it says at the end that all of this was written so that you may come to believe. So this is written to a church of people, a congregation of people, a group of people, as they figure out what it is to believe, as they figure out what it is to be church, as they figure out what it is to be Christians in this developing movement. And so here we get into this idea that it's not just about sitting and watching, it's about participating and being in relationship and an active relationship with Jesus, with God. Thanks again for joining us. As I said at the beginning, there was so much that we just couldn't include in this, but I hope you got something out of our conversation today that helps you hear the story in a new way. We hope you will join us again next week as we dive into the story of Holy Week. We'll have two separate episodes next week. One will just explore what it meant meant for Jesus to come into Jerusalem and the parade that was there and the hosannas that were sung out, and how that story still speaks to us and impacts the way that we hear the rest of the story of Holy Week. And then a second episode will include what those last few moments with his disciples looked like for Jesus, what his death looked like, what it meant, and how people responded to it, reacted to it, and how in those times Jesus is still giving us the gift of faith in many different facets. So until next time, I hope you enjoyed this facet of faith, and please join me in a word of prayer. Almighty God, your Son came into the world to free us all from sin and death. Breathe upon us the power of your Spirit that we may be raised to new life in Christ and serve you in righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.