I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die (John 11:25, ESV throughout unless otherwise noted).
Steven Spielberg, one of the most acclaimed directors of modern cinema, wanted John Williams, one of the most acclaimed composers for modern cinema, to score the film Schindler’s List. Spielberg screened a rough cut of the film — absent music, of course — for Williams. Here, in Williams’ own words, is what happened next:
Spielberg showed me the film … I couldn’t speak to him. I was so devastated. Do you remember, the end of the film was the burial scene in Israel — Schindler — it’s hard to speak about. I said to Steven, “You need a better composer than I am for this film.” He said to me, “I know. But they’re all dead” (https://www.slashfilm.com/880861/john-williams-didnt-think-he-was-up-to-the-task-of-scoring-schindlers-list/, accessed 2/28/2023).
As I stand before the Gospel today, as I have been immersed again in this devastatingly human story of Lazarus and Martha and Mary and Jesus, I find it hard to speak. We are confronted by the confounding wisdom of God and the joy producing sorrow of death and resurrection, and I know this: you need a better preacher than I am for this sermon. They are not all dead, but this passage beggars everyone of them, everyone of us, still living. So, I pray, and I speak:
O Lord, open my lips,
And my mouth shall proclaim your praise. Amen.
There are grand movements in this story that compel our attention. And yet, I find myself drawn to smaller things, to little details —a word here, a phrase there: now, so, if, come and see, come out. These are the little words and the seemingly insignificant phrases that frame my life, that define my experience: perhaps yours, too? The story starts now.
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha (John 11:1).
Now. This isn’t just a word of transition from one chapter or one story to the next or even just a routine marker of time. It is the sleep-shattering clanging of the village church bell in the middle of the night heralding some imminent disaster — fire, flood, invasion — something that requires immediate action. And that is exactly what we expect from this story, what we expect from Jesus: immediate action. Now a certain man was ill. Wake up. Do something — now.
Notice that now is paired with so. Now a certain man was ill…so the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” Now and so are literary bookends, a cause and effect pair. There is an immediate, urgent need — now — so the sisters send for Jesus. This message they sent to Jesus is their prayer: Come, Lord Jesus, come. Now.
How often prayer is like that: now, so. Now the ambulance is on the way to the emergency room. Now the bills are overdue and there is no money to pay them. Now the water is rising and the forecast calls for nothing but rain for days. Now my daughter slammed the door behind her and I have no idea where she’s going, when or if she’ll return. Now my wife says she doesn’t love me anymore and she wants a divorce. Now the neighborhood lies flattened and scattered by the tornado. Troubles, when they come, always come now. So, we pray:
O God, make speed to save us;
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Now is the time of our trouble, so, come quickly, Lord. Now. So.
Lest we miss this pairing of now and so in the text, it follows again immediately.
John 11:5–6 (ESV): 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
As before, now is not just a literary transition, not just a marker of time. As it’s used here, now is emphatic. In A Christmas Carol Dickens wrote emphatically:
There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave I).
That is how now is used here in the Gospel. In this little word now, St. John emphasizes, “There is no doubt that Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he immediately rushed to Bethany. That’s what we would expect, isn’t it? That’s how we would write the story, given free literary rein to do so. But that’s not the Gospel. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, so he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Because he loved them, he delayed two days: two agonizing days for Martha and Mary as they watched their brother decline, two confusing days as they waited for word from Jesus or watched for him to rush breathless through their door to take Lazarus by the hand and raise him up. And nothing.
How often prayer is like that — now, so: urgency, agonizing delay, confusion. One we love, one our Lord loves, is ill, and we pray; oh, do we pray. And nothing. The situation moves from bad to worse. One we love, one our Lord loves, turns his back on the faith, and we pray. And nothing. He moves farther and farther away, his heart growing ever harder. This world we love, this world the Lord loves, descends into madness, and we pray. And nothing. Disasters come one after another, wars and conflicts increase, cultures disintegrate. And nothing, or so it seems.
St. John wants us to understand distinctly that Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, and precisely because of his love he stayed where he was for two days. If we don’t understand that, nothing wonderful comes from this story, from this difficult story. And St. John wants us to understand distinctly that Jesus loves us, that Jesus loves those whom we love, that Jesus loves this world that was made by him and through him and for him. If we don’t understand that, nothing wonderful comes from our story, from our often difficult story. Now the dark days come, and so we pray. And nothing, or so it seems. But, it’s not nothing; far from it. Jesus wasn’t idly or callously twiddling his thumbs during those two day of waiting. St. John parts the curtains a bit later to show us that Jesus spent those days — and certainly the days of his travel to Bethany — praying: God the Son interceding to God the Father on behalf of those whom he loved, interceding that his Father would do for Martha and her sister and Lazarus better things than they could ask or imagine. If Jesus delays in answering our prayers now, it is because he loves us. It is because he is interceding for us at the right hand of the Father, asking for and preparing us for grace beyond our feeble power to comprehend.
There is a final now/so pairing in the story, this one after the death of Lazarus and before his rising again.
John 11:17 (ESV): 17 Now when Jesus came (to Bethany), he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
John 11:20 (ESV): 20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house.
What does now mean here, I wonder. Ask Martha and she might say, “finally,” or “it’s about time,” or, most likely, “too little, too late.” So, she went and met Jesus. Taken together, this now/so pair ushers us into the presence of the most poignant word in the story: if.
John 11:21 (ESV): 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
We know exactly what if means here because we have all experienced it and we have all said it or thought it. If expresses regret, opportunities lost or squandered, potential unfulfilled, roads not taken. If looks backwards. If longs for a do-over. If imagines a different — and far better — present and future. If is a fantasy, maybe even a lie. If asks us — beckons us — to trade the real present for the imaginary past and unrealizable future; but it is seductive, and we can easily lose ourselves in it. Who among us has no regrets? Who among us has never said of past choices, “If only I had”? Who among us has never pointed the finger at God and said, “If only you had…”?
This if of Martha is repeated by her sister Mary a bit later. And, there is a final if spoken by Jesus; we must save that for the proper time. Between the ifs of the sisters and the if of Jesus there is a classic bit of Johannine dialogue in which Jesus and Martha talk right past one another, Jesus saying one thing and Martha hearing another.
“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus says. Martha hears only a pious, funeral home platitude, Jesus singing “When We All Get To Heaven” to lessen the pain of her brother’s death. “(Yes, yes) I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. (We all will. We all believe that.),” Martha responds. And right here at this point, though John doesn’t write it in the text explicitly, there hangs in the air between Jesus and Martha another short if phrase, perhaps the most important one in the story: What if? What if the resurrection is not just an event, not primarily an event, but rather a person? What if, in the person of Jesus, the resurrection on the last day is brought forward into the present, God’s future appearing now? What if resurrection is here today, not in its fullness, but as a sign pointing toward the fulfillment to come? What if new creation could break into this sin-impregnated, death-filled world now?
John 11:25–26 (ESV): 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
What if all that is true? What if Martha believes it? What if we believe it? What if St. Paul is right?
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ — new creation (2 Cor 5:17a, author’s translation)!
If anyone is in Christ, new creation has broken forth. Resurrection has overtaken death. Eternal life is here and now. None of this fully yet, of course, but there are signs of it everywhere, the mysterious already/not yet signposts of the kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurated. We need not wait for the last day. The one who was, and is, and is to come says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Now. So. What if?
Martha answers Jesus, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” If she believes it at all, I think she believes it like I do some days, like many of us do from time to time: feebly, hoping against hope that it is true, believing it because there is absolutely nothing better to hold on to, no other words of life on offer.
After speaking with both sisters, Jesus asks where the tomb is. The answer is another of these meaning-packed short phrases: come and see. Come, Jesus, come and see the reality of the human condition. Come and look death in the face. Come and weep with us, as if this one who speaks so loftily about resurrection and life needs to be brought down to earth, as if the one who warned Adam and Eve that on the day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die doesn’t know what that means or looks like. Come and see what the real world looks like, Jesus. And Jesus wept at all this: wept for the disobedience in the Garden, wept for the sin of Cain, wept for the tower of Babel and the flood, wept for slavery in Egypt and in every land, wept for forty years wandering in the wilderness, wept for the glory of Israel squandered, wept for the exile, wept for the death of Lazarus and the death of all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, wept for his own death to come. The theological arguments for a dispassionate God melt away in the flood of tears that Jesus, God the Son, wept on this day. But his tears are not the final words; nor are ours. There is more to come.
I told you earlier that there was another if to come. “If you had been here” was the first. “What if” was the second. Now, for the third and final.
John 11:38–40 (ESV): 38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for 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?”
Martha doesn’t seem to know quite what to believe. That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world? Yes, but what does that have to do with her brother Lazarus who is four days dead and well along toward decay? That Jesus is the resurrection and the life? Yes, I suppose, but what does that have to do with the stench that will waft from the tomb if the stone is removed? But Jesus knows what one has to do with the others. Jesus knows because he has been praying for just this moment, praying for days. Did I not tell you if you believe, you will see the glory of God? If you believe.
John 11:41 (ESV): 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.”
This is so subtle that we will miss this bit of glory if we blink, if we do not pause to sniff the air around us. The stone is taken away and there is no odor, no mention or whiff of putrefaction. And Jesus thanks his Father that he has heard his prayers, the prayers that he has been praying since receiving word of Lazarus’ illness, that it would not be unto death and decay but rather for the glory of God.
If you believe you will see the glory of God. That’s the final if in this story. And don’t we need that word of assurance? Someone, something, some dream we hold dear is sick and dying. We have sent for Jesus and he hasn’t come. Things are going from bad to worse and the end is in sight. Still, no Jesus. What is he doing? Why is he waiting? He is praying, interceding for us at God’s right hand, preparing for us a weight of glory that will bring us to our knees in praise and thanksgiving. Has he not told us? If we believe, we will see the glory of God.
And now we stand at the climax of the story, at that point when all the little words, all the seemingly insignificant phrases come together to reveal the grand truth that we have been waiting for: now, so, what if, come and see.
Standing at the open tomb in the fresh air, Jesus cries with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The man who had died came out.
Come and see the reality of death, the people had said just moments ago. Come out and see the glory of God, Jesus shouts now. Come out and see the sign of the coming defeat of death. Come out and see the resurrection and the life. Come out and see the inbreaking of the kingdom of God — already and not yet.
And with this, all the little words, the seemingly insignificant phrases have been spoken: now, so, what if, come and see, come out. Jesus’ disciples will need all these little words and phrases soon. He and they are standing a mere two miles and a few days from his own betrayal, from his own death, from his own tomb. And his disciples will say all these little words and phrases in a thousand different ways: now, so, if, come and see. And God the Father himself will say the final phrase: come out. And the man who had died will come out.
Like the disciples, I need this story. When troubles come now and Jesus loves me so much that he waits and prays before answering my prayers, when I am lost in regret-filled what ifs and accusatory “if you had been here”s, when I am so certain that God does not understand my plight that I cry out “Come and see!” I need this story. I need to hear Jesus say, “If you believe, you will see the glory of God.” I need to hear Jesus cry, “Come out!” Perhaps you do, too.
I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
Amen.
First Blessings 