Apologies, services for 2000 students and eye surgery has made me late this week.

John 11:32-44
32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’ 38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ 40Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

In this reading we have a lovely example of the humanity of our Lord. It is so important for me to stress that Jesus was fully human, for if he was not, then how could he really know what we all experience? Yes, he was the incarnation as well, but I do not believe that this means that he was not human in the same way as we are. The incarnation will always remain a mystery.

Jesus was heartbroken by the news of the death of his friend Lazarus – and he wept. It was especially sad as, while it is possible to argue that the others whom Jesus raised might merely have been in a coma or a very deep sleep, all Jews were of the view that, after four days, the spirit finally left the body, and a sign of this was that the body – very definitely – began to decay; in fact in the hot climate, by this time it would be so badly decayed that it would be hardly recognisable.

Jesus asked for the stone to be removed, and because of the decay, his request was initially challenged because of the stench that would result. But Jesus responded “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

Before going into any depth, Barclay suggests that there are certain things to take special note of:

Firstly, Jesus prayed. The power that flowed through him was not his; it was God’s. “Miracles” says Godet, “are just so many answered prayers.”

Secondly, Jesus sought only the glory of God. He did nothing to glorify himself.

Everything that Jesus did was due to the power of God and was designed for the glory of God. We are so different. Barclay comments: “So much that we do is attempted in our own power and designed for our own prestige. It may be that there would be more wonders in our life too, if we ceased to act by ourselves and for ourselves and set God in the central place.”

I must admit, that, initially, I found Barclay’s notes on this passage, a little disappointing, as he did not penetrate the text in the same way that he normally does. In a later reflection, he gets closer to the mark when he exhorts us to honestly face the difficulties.

(i) In the other Gospels there are accounts of people being raised e.g. Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son at Nain. As I mentioned earlier, it is quite possible that these people were merely in a coma. Barclay explains that, at this time, it happened quite frequently that people were in fact buried alive because of the necessary haste to bury them, so Jesus could have been seen as saving them from this sort of death.
(ii) There is no mention at all of the raising of Lazarus in the other Gospel accounts.
(iii) John portrays the event of the raising of Lazarus as the final straw which caused the authorities to want to get rid of Jesus – where in the other Gospels, it was Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple.

There have been some attempts to address these issues:

(i) Renan sees the whole incident as a fraud arranged by Jesus and Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Barclay (rightly) dismisses this as needing to be mentioned just to be dismissed as incredible.
(ii) Perhaps Lazarus was in a coma, but the events in the narrative seem to dismiss this – the detail is simply too vivid.
(iii) The story could be an allegory.

I like the way Barclay deals with this. He aggress that there are difficulties and we might never really know exactly what happened. But something significant must have happened.

Perhaps the most important thing to stress here is the fact of our present experience of death and resurrection, for this is something that is real in the life of Christians. So Barclay comments:

“There may be problems with this story; we may never know what exactly happened at Bethany so many years ago: but we do know for certain that Jesus is still the Resurrection and the Life. That is what the story tells us – and that is what really happens …”

I had never thought that this passage was as controversial as it seems – probably because most of my ministry has been in schools where I have been a teacher of philosophy. So many scholars think it probably never happened and that this was just John revealing an important truth – a vital truth – but using a made up story to illustrate the point. Richardson calls this the ‘… last and most stupendous of St John’s seven signs …’ Richardson continues explaining that John’s purpose was ‘… to relate the Gospel story in such a way as to make the meaning of the life of Christ in history while at the same time he felt free to re-cast the whole synoptic tradition in the interest of his purpose …’ So, Richardson concludes that it is not literally true but John is telling a story to explain a greater than literal truth.

To modern ears – even to mine – this seems outrageous: how can he feel free to (in effect) make something up, portray it as something that actually happened, to make a theological point?

It is true that experience bears witness to the truth that Jesus has conquered death and that spiritual existence is more real and precious than mere physical existence. John Suggit explains that the experience of Lazarus is a type of Christian disciples and what happened to him is the experience of every Christian. Like Lazarus we are loved by the Lord, we are called by name from death to life, like him, as sheep of the good shepherd, we listen and obey and we are handed over into the Christian community when we have found new life in Christ and most important, just as Lazarus was found at dinner with Jesus and the disciples (12:2) so are we at the celebration of the Eucharist. Suggit concludes:

“It is not difficult therefore to consider chapter 11 as reflecting the experience of every Christian who has been raised to life by Christ …”

But is it true that John was just writing a spiritual gospel for those who were already in the faith? Suggit disagrees and adds:

“…John has narrated the story, which presumably he accepted as a historical event, in a way which symbolically describes the person and work of Jesus …”

John is stressing that they need to see the life of Jesus and his earthly ministry and relate it to their own experience. Lazarus’ death and rising is mirrored in our experience. Jesus is the giver of life – real life – and this is much more than mere physical existence, not a mere continuation of mortal life. True life can be found only by abiding in Christ. This life is received by faith, when a person becomes a Christian. This new life involves a death. To find life we must share in the death of Christ as Thomas said earlier in chapter 11 (verse 16) “Let us too go with him that we may die with him.”

We need to have died to our old selves and find new meaning by being united with Christ.

This passage tells of something both dramatic and yet very ordinary. It tells of a simple trust and faith friends have for each other. Mary comes to Jesus with the simple words of conviction: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus responds with the complete identification of love for her and her brother and so spontaneously allows himself to be moved to tears because he is vulnerable and is overwhelmed. He wept; he did not just shed a polite tear – he literally wept. Those who are allowed to witness the privilege of this profound intimacy comment: “See how he loved him …” What they next say shows how they are voyeurs and not part of the real moment. But John is; for me evidence that it was John, the Apostle and the Beloved disciple; because John notices that Jesus was “… greatly disturbed …”

Jesus said to Martha, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ Allow me a moment to elaborate on this, which for me, is a most important point. Karen Armstrong, in her The Case for God makes an important point:

Why did Jesus set such store by [belief]? The simple answer is that he did not. The word translated ‘faith’ in the New Testament is the Greek pistis … which means ‘trust; loyalty; engagement; commitment’. Jesus was not asking people to ‘believe’ in his divinity … he was asking people for commitment. He wanted disciples who would engage with his mission, give all they had to the poor, feed the hungry, refuse to be hampered by family ties, abandon their pride, lay aside their self-importance and sense of entitlement … trust in the God who was their father.

In Middle English bileven meant to ‘prize; to value; to hold dear. It was related to the German belieben (to love). Armstrong continues:

So, ‘belief’ originally meant ‘loyalty to a person to whom one is bound in promise or duty.

Belief and faith became interchangeable. Belief only became to be seen differently during the late 17^th Century and the Enlightenment. Now it started to be used as an intellectual assent to a particular proposition, teaching, opinion or doctrine. Armstrong concludes:

It was used in this modern sense first by philosophers and scientists, and the new usage did not become common in religious contexts until the 19^th Century.

It seems feasible then, that Jesus was saying to Martha – and now to paraphrase – “Did I not tell you that if you remained loyal and committed and trusted God, your Father, you would see his glory.”

John’s writing is so crucial for Christians. It forces us to move away from being mere observes and challenges us to become engaged in a dynamic, personal encounter with the narrative and from there to the living Christ in our own lives. Suggit puts it this way:

… the purpose is to draw the reader or hearer to be closely involved in the story which he unfolds … the story is as much a reflection of the circumstances in which the gospels were produced as a history of the events in Jesus’ life …

If this was not the case, all we would have would be the so-called ‘facts’ about what happened, but we would be unaware of their real significance. Jesus is not just a figure of past history, but the living Lord of the church. Suggit continues:

… the meaning is [also] not fixed once for all but has continually to be discovered or rediscovered by the reader or hearer, who needs to share at least some of the attitudes of the evangelist.

This is what I believe! May you all be blessed.