John 11. 1-45

It’s the stuff of which films are made.

The hero arrives to find his friend dead. ‘If you’d been here his family say ‘this wouldn’t have happened’ The Hero asks for cave to be opened and calls to his friend to come out. And out he comes. Hands & feet bandaged & cloth around his head. Hurrah! The hero saves the hour.

Jesus receives a message from Bethany that his friend Lazarus is ill. But Jesus waits two days before he goes having told his disciples that ‘This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son maybe glorified by it’ And he waits two days before he suggests they all leave for Judea. The disciples are concerned that the Jews might stone him. Jesus tells them that their friend Lazarus is asleep & he must go and awake him.

‘But if he’s asleep’ they say ‘he’ll wake up’ & Jesus has to spell it out that Lazarus is dead! So often we use euphemisms for death: he’s passed away, she’s gone over, we’ve lost him etc What we mean is that the person is dead & just as Jesus had to speak plainly of Lazarus’ death so should we of ours & of others.

But Jesus implies there’s something about this death they’ve yet to understand. And so they go & meet Mary & Martha, Lazarus’s sisters who take Jesus & the disciples to his tomb.

Martha laments that, had Jesus been there, her brother wouldn’t have died. Challenged by Jesus Martha asserts her belief in the resurrection at the last day – but Jesus says that Lazarus will rise now because he, Jesus ,is the resurrection & the life and Martha asserts her faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.

And so having gathered Mary & accompanied by those who’d come to console with, them they set off for the tomb. Two remarkable events take place. Firstly St John tells us Jesus weeps for his friend & then he asks for the stone to moved aside from the cave where Lazarus is entombed. Despite Martha’s protest that the body would stink Jesus reminds her of what he said earlier that if she believes then she’ll see the glory of God. Then having extolled God Jesus cries out ‘Lazarus, come out’ & he does & the crowd are gob smacked as they say in these parts.

Possibly film fiction, or something more. Oh something much more! St John unlike the other gospel writers chooses some events in Jesus’ life & ministry to speak about Jesus as God. He calls them signs & like (for example the Wedding at Cana) the signs show us the man Jesus revealing the Father. For Jesus is unique in that he is both divine & human, and this is wonderfully recorded for us in the Jesus who is human & so weeps with sympathy & feeling for the death of Lazarus. And the godly (divine) Jesus who calls on his Father to raise Lazarus to life.

And the result of such a momentous occasion, St John tells us, was Jesus being reported to the Pharisees by some present & their resolution, there & then, to have Jesus put to death. Jealousy & fear are powerful emotions. But the point that the Pharisees & others miss is not that Jesus did this by His own power, but that it is the work of the Father in & through him.

This event is for some neither easy nor comfortable to understand. Why should Jesus raise Lazarus to life & we have to live with loss. Is our prayer, our faith, not strong enough to save a loved one? Many pray that death will not come to them, or someone dear to them – but it does.

So what do WE make of this event?

Today is traditionally called Passion Sunday & points us towards the coming events of Holy Week, Good Friday & Easter Day. The story of the raising of Lazarus is a sign of what we are to look for. In the events of Holy Week we shall be confronted by the humanity of Jesus who displays the raw emotion of his fear in the Garden of Gethsemane & his fear & sense of desertion on the cross. And then at Easter we meet the risen Jesus, the divine Jesus who is still human, raised from the dead by the power of God the Father. No hero here but rather the Son of God human & divine; man & God, offering us fulfilment & hope. As he fulfils the promises & foretelling of prophecy in the Jewish scriptures so He fulfils His words to us & we like Lazarus (in life & death) here His call to come out.

This miracle of the restoration of Lazarus to his family is more than just an heroic event – it is a sign of the real miracle we have reflected on today – that like Lazarus Jesus will in time call us all to come out to eternal life in God. This will not be just a restoration to life in this world, but life with Christ for ever, yes, to the end of time.

P.S.