Four Days Gone
Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-452


March 17, 2002

If you are a judge in a figure skating competition, every competition should be approached as if there were never any before. Seldom does this apply in any other situations.

This famous tale of the calling back to life of Lazarus does not exist by itself in a timeless vacuum. Twice Jesus has had his life threatened, though he managed to escape. It was time to cool it, so he retreated from Jerusalem back to Galilee. Yet now he has decided to go back where it is dangerous, a journey not welcome to his disciples.

Desperate word travels fast, no matter what the level of technology. “He whom you love is ill.” We wish we knew more about Lazarus, for he must have been a remarkable person, though he never utters a word. The only other one referred to in such intimate terms was the Beloved Disciple, possibly John himself. Having escaped death, Jesus goes back into the land of death to retrieve his friend from the iron grasp of death.

Ezekiel is known for bizarre visions, and the dry bones lying on the desert floor is the perhaps the most so. Parched and dry so long they are no longer connected, but God’s word brings sinews and muscles and flesh back to the bones and they rise up to life again. Israel did not revive itself, however; only God could do something like this. Even among churches the dry bones can come to life.

Fred Craddock tells of a minister who really became terribly frustrated with his lethargic congregation. They didn’t want to do anything, except sit and listen passively to the worship service - if they could stay awake long enough. One day the minister suggested, “Why don’t we all form a circle, hold hands, and attempt to communicate with the living.”

Lazarus is not the climax of John’s Gospel. Nevertheless, Lazarus is the last sign of Jesus’ ministry begun with the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. Nothing here is as it appears to be; our conventions are surprised and overturned. Death, after all, cannot be allowed its way; it has to be confronted and its power embraced and undone. Still have to keep doing it today.

In this Gospel no one ever seems to understand what Jesus is saying. No one gets his drift. Nicodemus thinks being born again means a physical second birth. The Samaritan woman desires Jesus’ living water so that she will never have to draw water at the well again.

The disciples hear Jesus report that “our friend Lazarus is asleep” and so they wonder what’s the urgency. OK, Jesus once more has to be blunt, “Lazarus is dead...Let us go to him.”

Anyone who has been to a Sunday School knows about Thomas. He’s the doubting one who refused to believe that Jesus had really conquered death. Scars are what he demanded. It is Thomas who exhorts his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Perhaps he still didn’t hear Jesus right, but he understood that this was now a battle against death and a battle to the death and he was willing to join it. No tentativeness with this Thomas.

Despite the speed of gossip and rumour, Jesus arrived four days late. Martha and Mary are still in Bethany, and what is consistent is that Mary stays put again at home. Martha hurries out to meet Jesus and one wishes there was a tape recording of Martha’s tone of voice. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Was this the same Martha who had berated her sister Mary for doing nothing but sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to his teaching? She knew, however, that God is with Jesus and that their relationship is stronger than death.

“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus assures her. Once again someone doesn’t understand the sense of Jesus’ words. Martha takes his assurance about her brother as a statement of religious doctrine about the resurrection at the end of time. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus goes further. I am that I am. God is not death, God is the defeat of death, and Jesus is the incarnation of that defeat.

Mary was paralyzed on the couch, an emotional wreck. Martha pulls her aside and tells her Jesus was asking for her. A troupe of mourners accompany the distraught Mary as she repeats Martha’s lament, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” The scene is a mess, everyone is weeping, including Jesus. Death’s hold seems firm.

Some are able to be skeptical, wondering out loud why a person who could make a blind man see could not also have kept this person from dying. Amazing how you can demand miracles from others. Why didn’t you score the winning goal? Why didn’t you kill the dragon?

Take away the stone, a prelude of two weeks hence. Martha believes in Jesus, but she believes even more in death. She is “the sister of the dead man,” and knowing he has been dead for four days, no longer a chance of life, she warns Jesus that there is a stench.

A number of years ago at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in the U.S. a minister preached on this very passage. In particular, the preacher chose verse 39, the end portion of the verse from the King James Version - “Lo, Lord he stinketh” (referring to Lazarus).

The preacher went on to preach a classic three point sermon. The first point: there are always those raising a stink in the church.

The second point: there are always those leaving the church because they smell a stink.

The third and final point: there will always be some folk in the church who just plain stink. You can’t get around it. You just have to live with it.

Mortal, can these bones really live?

They took away the stone, and with a loud voice Jesus called Lazarus by name, “Come out!” And the Word became flesh and lived among us. Lazarus came out, bound up in the cloths of mortality. “Unbind him and let him go.”

Is this supposed to be a preview of the resurrection on the third day? Lazarus was raised on the fourth day. It takes longer with us.

We may believe we have overcome death through our improved health procedures, nutrition and medications, but it is evident by September 11 that we are still bound up by the fears of our vulnerability. How are we to let go? How do our dry dry bones come back to life?

Thomas was on the right track, that we accompany Jesus and Lazarus in dying. Do not be afraid of death; be courageous enough to find life in its midst.

A woman submitted an ad to the personals section of the newspaper. Perhaps never the most sane thing to do, but she was obviously looking for someone who finds you, rather than you finding him.

“I’m a 58-year-old woman with, doctors tell me, one year to live. I would like to spend that year doing something meaningful, interesting, and fun. I like C-Span, Bill Moyers, Times crosswords, Nina Totenberg, Anna Quindlen, and Nevada. I don’t like George Will, R. J. Reynolds, computer talk, Fundamentalists or California. I have limited stamina and resources. Have you any ideas how I can spend this year making a difference?”

I don’t know what I would have suggested to this woman. It is probable that some of you have some excellent suggestions. The one thing I can recognize is that Lazarus still lives, called out from death’s tomb and summoned to really live again, body and soul. She had allowed God to take off the bindings of illness and disease, and proceeded to live every moment with every breath of life possible.

We can do no more. We should do nothing less.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan