John 11:1-16; 30-41  NRSVUE

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” 11 After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” 12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” 13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

32 When 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.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But 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. 39 Jesus 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 four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I 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.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The 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.”

I edited the reading again –  you may have noticed that it jumps from verse 16 to 32- it’s a really long one!

This is a story of premeditated resurrection.

Jesus knew that Lazarus was going to die

And Jesus was planning on resurrecting Lazarus.

This whole story functions in the gospel of John as a foreshadowing of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So Mary, Martha and Lazarus were siblings who lived together – this is important because women couldn’t own property, and Mary and Martha had no husbands or children that we hear about in any bible story, so that makes Lazarus essential to their household.  No Lazarus – no house.

So Lazarus’ death wasn’t just the death of their beloved brother, his death meant the death of Mary and Martha’s economic, legal, and social existence.  Two women without male relatives were basically legal non-entities in the first century – no voting rights, no economic rights, no property rights, only the right to receive charity if they were old enough to not be forced to marry.  So their grief was compounded with panic 

-What were they going to do?  

-Where were they going to live?  

-How would they eat?  

-Would they be forced to marry?

-Would any man want to marry them?

-Would that man be kind?

In the portion of this reading that I cut out, the first thing Martha and Mary each say to Jesus is, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died,” (Jn 11:21) which we see Mary say in verse 32.  

“Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died,” 

It’s a question we all ask when things go sideways.

Jesus, we prayed and prayed, why didn’t you act sooner?

God, can’t you see what’s going on here?

How long, O Lord, must this suffering last until you step in?

(with vulnerability)…Jesus, do you even care?…

Meanwhile the disciples who are with Jesus don’t want him to enter the city.  We’re back in verse 7.  They don’t want him to go anywhere near Jerusalem because the last time they were there a bunch of people tried to stone Jesus.

The stoning is in chapter 10. Where folks are still mad at Jesus for healing the man born blind, so then they pressure Jesus to tell them if he is the messiah or not, which in the gospel of John, Jesus is totally willing to tell people for free… so Jesus said he is the son of God, and then the crowd gets mad and they are ready to throw rocks, but Jesus talks his way out of it and then they try to citizen’s arrest him and Jesus slips away.

The disciples did not love almost getting stoned to death – stoning being the practice of corporate execution by the whole group throwing rocks at you until you die.  So in verse 7 the disciples are like, “Hey Jesus, how about we go back to Judea where they aren’t trying to stone us?”

But Jesus…

But Jesus… is already on his way towards premeditated resurrection, not just for Lazarus, but for Jesus himself.  

In verses 9 and 10, Jesus speaks poetically about walking during the day and not stumbling at night to tell them that he can see where his path will lead him.  Jesus knows that he is moving towards his death and resurrection and Jesus knows he is moving towards Lazarus’s death and resurrection, and Jesus had told the disciples this, which is why Thomas, in verse 16 says, 

“Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Thomas, at least, is willing to believe that Jesus is set on a path towards death, but he does not yet see the possibility of resurrection.

If you live long enough, everyone encounters these moments in life where we recognize that the path we are on is a dead end.

Sometimes we’re on that dead end path for all the right reasons.

And

Sometimes it’s just a stupid dead end – the result of circumstances beyond our control or a series of unfortunate choices.

And sometimes there is no getting over it, no getting around it, and no getting away from it.

Sometimes “through it” is the only way.

I mean, sometimes we can and should walk away.

We as individuals don’t have to have every argument.

We as a country don’t have to fight every war.

But sometimes, sometimes we are just too far down an increasingly narrowing path of options that is leading us inexorably towards a dead end.

Or at least it may look like a dead end to us.

When a relationship ends.

When a job or a career ends.

When things don’t work out as we planned.

When a church dwindles down to a handful of members.

When a nation divides, or forms of government change.

It can feel like the end of the world.

But God is always making things new.

God is a God of premeditated resurrection.

And sometimes one thing has to end in order for a new thing to come into being.

Jesus, by waiting a few days to let Lazarus die and Mary and Martha grieve – gave them time to imagine their lives differently, before Jesus resurrected a new life for Lazarus, Mary and Martha.  Nothing can be the same after you go through something like that.

And we need that time.

We need that time to accept and grieve what we have lost and to become ready for what is coming.

We can’t rush through the process.

Church,  I admit that I am impatient!

I want to leap straight from what’s no longer working to resurrection day!

I want to skip the work of grief and acceptance and just go from one good thing to the next good thing and the next good thing and the next good thing.

But that’s not how life works.

That’s not how *we* work.

We get attached to things while they’re good.

We think, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it and sometimes we willfully ignore that it’s been broke for a while.

Just like the church got attached to the mid-twentieth-century way of doing things because it worked really well for a long time.

So we pretended that it was still working well, long after that way of doing church had stopped working.  Long after it was no longer 1958 outside, we kept pretending that it was 1958 inside the church and wondered why people from 1990, and 2005, and 2016, weren’t coming in.

For many churches, COVID-19 was the dead end of the mid-century road.

And we prayed!  God, can’t you see that your church is dying?  Do something Jesus!  Save us from ourselves!

And Jesus did.  Jesus waited for Lazarus to die.

So that we would come to this point, where we have grieved and struggled and come to accept that what was, can no longer be.

So that we would be willing to accept our resurrection into affordable housing and ministry with people who never would have been welcome in this church in 1958.

It’s hard letting go of something that seemed so good at the time… at least for some of us.

And it’s still hard.

I still find myself saying to God, like Mary and Martha,  “Lord, if only you had shown up sooner!”

Lord, if only we could have done this 10 years ago, or 20 years ago we would have a lot more hands on deck!

Lord if only our friends could have lived to see this day…

Lord, if only we could skip the messy parts of life and move from strength to strength, instead of having to learn everything the hard way!

But life doesn’t seem to work that way.

*We* don’t seem to work that way.

So when it feels like the end of the world, remember that our God is a God of premeditated resurrection.

Our individual lives and our corporate life go through seasons of falling apart and coming back together.

But God has not yet let everything fall apart and stay fallen apart.

God will bring order to this chaos.

Peace to this conflict.

Life out of this season of death.

God is a God of premeditated resurrection.