and a Refusal to Die
Lent 5A | John 11:1-45
Jesus is there to reveal the glory of God. Resurrection. This is what he came to do, isn’t it? To show the world what God is up to.
The people didn’t know this was the score at the beginning and Jesus wasn’t being super straightforward, was he. He’s like, My Bud, Lazarus? He’s just sleeping. I’m going to go wake him up. And the disciples are like, Oh, sweet! Sleeping? Then no big deal. Why even go! And Jesus is shaking his head, Dudes, I’m telling you he’s dead.
So there are two paths that Jesus is intertwining here: direct and indirect. He is speaking around the subject and also speaking directly to it. He announces that he has to do something for the glory of God. He speaks to the sleeping and the dying. He even announces before they leave that Lazarus is dead already.
There’s also quibbling over the timing. Jesus waits two days to leave, it seems to take Jesus two days to get there, Lazarus is dead for four. Maybe Jesus could get there in time and maybe not. Either way, that isn’t the plan. It isn’t the way to the glorification of God. That seems to require Lazarus to die.
Confused By Jesus
This story is both straight-forward and cryptic. And when it is over, I think we can see what the point is, but I’m not sure what it does to our expectations. Because we see what Jesus came to do, but does that make everyone else wrong?
The story starts with an appeal. Martha and Mary are worried about their brother, who appears to be on death’s door. They have an in with a renowned healer — he happens to be one of their best friends. So get word to him to come quickly. Save his life! And Jesus is like OK, here’s the moment! And then he just hangs out a couple of days before heading to Bethany.
The disciples are not excited about any of this. They think Jesus is walking into the lion’s den (he is) and that he doesn’t even need to go (what happens happens, right?). And then, when he does go, the people are like, why’d you drag your feet? You should’ve been here heaping the shame on him.
Think about all of these expectations. These assumptions. About Jesus. About what he cares about, who he is, what God has called him here to do. Think about all the ways we assume Jesus should do anything. All of this unspoken assumption that is on the people, not Jesus. They’re just making this junk up.
AND while we’re at it, let’s consider how much we render these matters individualistically. He needs to be here. Or else he doesn’t need to be there, he’s his own man. How much the arguments tie his hands to obligation or to an individualistic life with no obligations whatsoever. All of this is projection. And none of it speaks to the very glory of God in anything.
More Than “Jesus Saves”
There is a hard pill to swallow at the center of this gospel story. And it isn’t one anyone wants to think about. The people in the story and the people reading the story today assume Jesus has an obligation to save every life. Or else, he is picking and choosing who gets saved. People throughout history have built doctrine and dogma around these iterations of obligation. That Jesus, and therefore all Christians, have an obligation to save every life. Or, as the great judge of humanity, Jesus chooses the best lives to save. And this becomes the fundamental truth of Christianity: Jesus saves.
And in this story, Jesus doesn’t. He doesn’t save Lazarus. Whether he could or chose not to is actually not the point. And it is so clearly not the point that the evangelist puts that argument into the mouths of whiny hangers-on who don’t get what Jesus is actually there to do.
Jesus doesn’t only save. He raises the dead.
But this, too, is not the point that Jesus or the evangelist are trying to make.
They are trying to say to us that Jesus doesn’t save. Or raise the dead. Jesus reveals that God is behind the miracles of the world. And Jesus helps us see that.
So all of that doctrine and dogma, those fundamentals we’re told are the center of everything, like Jesus trying to save us from sin, saving lives, saving children, born and unborn, all of it, is confounded by the actual mission Jesus reveals here. Even confounding the truth of Jesus’s words in chapter three: that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
God’s Grace
None of this is to say that saving isn’t on the table. Nor should we swing to the opposite assumption about condemnation. Many people can be so binary in their thinking. No, the point is that saving the world doesn’t obligate Jesus to save Lazarus’s particular life in this particular context. And the people’s obsession with this assumed obligation reveals just how far they are from what Jesus is actually up to.
He’s revealing the resurrection power of God. God’s command over the fabric of the universe. Over life and death. And not just whether we live or die, but the foundational system of living and dying.
So this isn’t about whether people live or die only, then. It is to awaken God’s grace behind it all. That we don’t live and then die. We live and die and then live again. That, in God, and through the Jesus Event, we can see life in a whole new way. A way that removes death’s sting and evokes the living, the returning, the becoming of the earthly human/divine project.
What this story reveals is the fundamental flaw of saving as principal ethic: as if it were the foundational ethic of our faith. Because we aren’t called to being saved into a permanent life: we are called to die to ourselves and be reborn into a new life in Christ.
So all of that talk of saving of souls, of winning people to Christ, of preserving their lives, of protecting the unborn, is built on a different premise than the revealed glory of God. It is built, instead, on the premise of saving one into a permanent life without death at all. Jesus’s talk of vibrant living becomes, instead, about a soul that never stops living.
God’s Glory
This is not only unbiblical, it misses that the fundamental story of our faith revolves around a life ending. And then it beginning again. The glory Jesus reveals in God’s resurrecting Lazarus presages the glory in God’s resurrecting Jesus days later. And in both cases, the man dies. He dies and remains dead. Then stops being dead. Becoming something alive again. Something new. And also the same. Both. Rebirth is about being who we were, but with a blank slate. Being new again.
This is our foundational moment. It is literally what made those first followers of The Way begin to identify themselves as something different from the tradition that was becoming Judaism. And because of this we do want to save lives and protect the innocent. These are good things. But they aren’t the first thing. And it is important to notice the way that complicates this foundational teaching.
So we aren’t called to only save. And we aren’t called to kill or hasten anyone’s death either. That violates the command — don’t push God into action — follow what God is already up to in the world. That is the posture that is most important here. And it helps us to see the way forward. To be people who can recognize the glory of resurrections. And because of this, offer dignity in death and life, both.
Love, Friends. Love and live. And then . . . love others into death and love them into new life. This is the work. And it is also what people so often miss. For a variety of reasons. Mostly fear. Confusion. Being taught to care about certain things. Assuming other things. All of that. But mostly, it is that we struggle to see the point: that death wouldn’t be the end of everything.
Unbind Him
I’ve always found the most telling line of the gospel is Jesus’s command to the people as Lazarus walks out of the tomb. After Jesus has announced that God has already done something, despite the olfactory evidence, the stink of death around them. Jesus calls for Lazarus to come out, and as he appears, fully alive, Jesus commands the people “Unbind him, and let him go.” Remove from him the clothing of death. It no longer fits him. It did. Now it doesn’t.
This is a command to let go. To let go of what was, but isn’t. Of an idealized past that is long gone. Of pain that doesn’t help us live. Hope that was built on sand. Anger that was formed from regret. Let it go. Unbind your spouse, your child, your parent. Neighbor, church, community. Unbind them and let them go.
There is living to do.
We are alive and there is so much to embrace. So much that is being born.
Yes, it can be scary and confusing and maybe we still don’t want it to be different than it is. And maybe there are reasons for the hanging on, for the burial wrappings we’ve dressed them in. And maybe there are things that really ought to stay dead and this is not the scene we want right now! But hear this: This is the revealing of God’s glory! That new life is possible. But we have to let go of the eternity of death to embrace the possibility of resurrection.
Which goes for our traditions, our loved ones, even our church. All things. God is in the business of making all things new. That is the root of our tradition. Of our faith. Our very lives. Thank God.