Lazarus: A Meditation on John 11

Death is not something most people look forward to.  For many, death is something we delude ourselves into thinking isn’t on our horizon, so that we may live frivolously and care free in the present moment.  When people start thinking about death, or talking about death, we often think there is something wrong with them, and avoid them if possible.  We find them morbid and morose, and they tend to pop the bubble we create around ourselves as we pretend death doesn’t exist.

In our Gospel lesson for this week, the subject of death is front and center.  Lazarus was a friend of Jesus, as were his sister and family.  They seem to have known each other well, and shared a fondness for each other beyond polite pleasantries.  While Jesus was a day’s journey or so away, Lazarus became very ill.  He was so ill in fact, that the family sent a messenger to Jesus, hoping that He would come quickly to save Lazarus from death.

In an age like ours, with medicine and doctors so abundant and near at hand, we might lose sight of the urgency of illness in the ancient world.  While some piecemeal experiments in vaccination go back a few hundred years, the real science of using vaccines to protect against disease didn’t blossom until less than 100 years ago.  Likewise with antibiotics, and the discovery of living bacteria, the use of this as medicine also blooms in the 20^th century.  Before this time, if you caught a bad bug, you were largely on your own to fight it off.  Either your immune system would be victorious and you’d live, or the bug would be victorious and you’d die.  And even with all our medicine today, there are still bugs out there that make our medical science blanch—such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa happening now, with a high rate of transmission, and over 90% fatality rate.

Knowing the brutal reality of disease, and watching Lazarus’ body losing the fight against whatever bug he had, his family reaches out to Jesus, who they know can cure him miraculously.  In the timeline we’re given, someone goes to find Jesus while Lazarus is still alive, and Jesus intentionally waits another two days before he begins His journey to meet him.  By the time Jesus gets to Mary and Martha, we learn that Lazarus has been dead for four days… oddly enough, probably just before the messenger reached Jesus with the plea for help.  Knowing Lazarus is already dead, Jesus does not make haste to get back—He allows his friend to remain dead four days.

And what, you may ask, could lead Jesus to do such a thing?  Since the text only tells us, that Jesus is glad He was not there, so that the people might believe in the miracle He was about to perform (and His corresponding teaching, that He is the Resurrection and the Life,) we can’t know much more of His motivation beyond this.  However, we do know some things that might prompt people not to believe Jesus’ miracle of resurrection.  For example, it was a common ancient belief that the soul of a dead person, tended to hang around the body for three days, before departing to the place of the dead (in more modern funeral rites, one might observe the practice of a wake, having similar roots—waiting to make sure the person is really dead, and not coming back.)  For the people who might have held this idea, Jesus’ work of resurrection would be that much more convincing, having been done on the fourth day.

But we’re still stuck with the problem of Jesus allowing His dear friend to suffer with a horrible disease, until it finally wore him down and killed him… all for a teaching moment.  What could Jesus possibly think is so important to teach us, that He would let someone scratch out their last feeble breaths, just to make His point?  Doesn’t this make Jesus seem cruel?

Well, it would, if we didn’t understand what He was teaching us.  Lazarus’ death, like our own eventual death, is the wage we have earned—it is the fate we cannot escape, due to our own fallen and evil nature.  We die, because we are evil.  Whether your life is taken from you by an accident, an illness, or a homicidal maniac, death comes to the whole human race because the whole human race is fallen and evil.  Death is where we’re all headed, whether we be great or small, rich or poor, wise or foolish.  Death is the fate of sinful man, and no man shall avoid it.  Not even friends of Jesus.

But there is a greater truth than that of our death as a just consequence of our sin and rebellion.  That truth, is that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life for all who will believe in Him.  He is the resurrection and the life that is victory over sin, death, hell, and the devil.  His creative Word of Life calls to us, shattering the hold of death’s icy grip, and raises us up to a life that will never die again.  Jesus was there to teach the people, that if they remained in Him by grace through faith, their life would be hidden in Him forever.  He taught the people, even His closest friends, that even though we die, we shall live by His infinite power and grace.

So for Lazarus, Mary, Martha, and all the disciples, the lesson to be learned was not really about Jesus’ delay, or His weeping with the mourners, or His ability to work miracles great and small.  He was teaching them the greatest truth that any and every human being can know—that Jesus is Life Everlasting.  His sacrifice for the sins of the world continues to be the Means by which He pours out forgiveness, life, and salvation to all who will repent and believe.  He is the Life that death cannot defeat, the Truth that the devil cannot twist, and the Way which hell cannot breach.  He is the love of God made manifest, and the call to salvation for the whole human race.

So also for you.  Should the Lord tarry in His return to this earth, each of us will taste death, as is the consequence of our sin.  But for each and every one of us who live by grace through faith in Christ alone, even though we die, we shall live forever in Him.  Be of good comfort, for death no longer has any grip on you, the devil is chained under your feet, and hell is irrevocably broken.  You live, because Jesus is the Life of the World, and His life has become your life, even as He took your death upon Himself.  Your life is hidden in Christ, and there is no power in heaven or earth or under the earth, that can separate you from His love, and mercy, and life.  Be of good cheer—for though you shall die, even so, you shall live, for Christ’s sake.  Amen.