The Plymouth Pulpit
March 9, 2008
Rev. Lisa Dembkowski
“Sensing Resurrection”
Many of you are aware that I was an English major in college. I’ll spare you from English major jokes this morning although many such witticisms have circulated over the years. I remind you of my college major for the purpose of describing my initial excitement with this week’s scripture passage from John’s gospel. In reading the familiar story of Lazarus being raised from the dead, the English major in me immediately discerned a wealth of critical elements. We have vivid imagery, subtle foreshadowing, discernible transition, and the suspension of disbelief mantled in duality. All of this is contained within a complete short story contained within a longer story which relates to the entire Judeo-Christian anthology we know as The Holy Bible. Perhaps the author of John’s gospel was an English major.
Of course, meaningful writings of any kind are based on a thesis statement and their purpose is to convey a message intended to enrich the reader. Thesis statements in western academia and scholarly writings are found traditionally at the beginning of an author’s work. However, in a style we would categorize as persuasive, the thesis statement for John’s gospel is located near the end of the book in chapter 20. Verse 31 of chapter 20 reads, “these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.” It is this statement that opens the author’s literary toolbox for the purpose of making sense of Jesus’ resurrection so that people then and now might come to believe.
The first literary tool used by our author is imagery. Right now, take a deep breath and activate your imagination for a moment or two. In lingering over the text and using your imagination, one can smell the heady perfume Mary used to anoint Jesus’ feet in a previous meeting. One can see her long, richly dark hair with which she wiped Jesus’ feet, hair that feels warm and soft and luxuriant. In a section of the story we didn’t read, one is led to imagine the intense brightness of daylight and the debilitating darkness of night. In this section, too, the reader is led to feel the hardness of the stones thrown at Jesus by those who persecuted him. In verse 17, one feels the coldness of Lazarus’ tomb, the coldness of his body. And in verse 32, which we didn’t read either, one can feel the hard ground pressing against Mary’s knees as she kneels at Jesus’ feet. We see hot tears streaming down her face and, in that moment, we hear her words as she says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” The author then instills in the reader an image of a cave used as a tomb sealed with a great stone. And again, one’s sense of smell is provoked, perhaps disturbed by the mention of the stench building up inside the tomb as Lazarus’ body begins to decompose. And from beginning to end, in the mind’s ear, one hears the sound of the constant dialogue between our principle characters.
Why do you think the author took such great care to include this vivid imagery? Why was it so important to him? I believe it was important to him because he wanted the story to come alive. He wanted the reader to associate concreteness and reality with this amazing account of Lazarus’ resurrection. He supports his thesis statement by using the human senses to make sense of the resurrection. He’s appealing to those who say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Undoubtedly the most significant element of the story that the author makes real is Jesus himself. Although the gospel of John generally “lays more stress on the divinity of Jesus than do the other gospels,” here the author gives to Jesus the very human emotions of sadness and of being disturbed by what he is experiencing. These emotions are so strong in Jesus that he begins to weep. His response leaves no doubt in one’s mind that Jesus experiences emotions as we do, that he is capable of standing beside us and carrying us through our pain because he, too, has suffered as we suffer.
We must be mindful, however, of an important distinction surrounding the source of Jesus’ emotions. It’s natural for us to breeze through this reading and infer that Jesus is weeping because Lazarus, a person whom he loved, is dead. But that’s not entirely true, is it? Yes, Jesus weeps because he loves Lazarus but also he weeps because he sees Martha weeping, another person whom he loves, and because he sees her friends weeping. In reality, this is an illustration of Christian compassion, of caring for our fellow human beings by standing beside them when times get tough. Within this descriptively rich passage of scripture, Jesus shows us how to minister to one another. No special qualifications are necessary. Without offering platitudes, Jesus walks beside her in her anguish and pain. What’s really important to Martha at this moment is Jesus’ physical presence.
The author’s toolbox opens again as we imagine Jesus and Martha and her friends arriving at the tomb where Lazarus is buried. Biblical scholars believe that the gospel of John was written eighty or ninety years after the time of Christ, therefore, readers of this gospel most likely have heard the story of Jesus’ resurrection. Within their knowledge base lies an image of Jesus’ empty tomb with its stone rolled away. In bringing our entourage to Lazarus’ tomb and rolling away the stone, the author employs the literary device of foreshadowing. The reader’s mind jumps to the notion of resurrection and a critical question arises. With my knowledge of Jesus’ own resurrection, can I now imagine that Lazarus, too, will be raised from the dead? Is my sense of what’s about to happen correct?
Now think back to the conversation between Jesus and Martha earlier in our reading. In telling him about the current situation, Martha says to Jesus, “I know that Lazarus will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Beyond mere belief, Martha confidently states that she knows Lazarus will rise again. Here is where I challenge you to consider that Jesus is concerned with today, with the here and now. In the moment of their conversation, Jesus is concerned about the well-being of his friend, Martha, just as he is concerned about your well-being and the well-being of your friends and loved ones. In our story, we have a very real Savior standing next to a very real woman suffering a very real tragedy. Can Jesus offer her anything less than real hope? So he says to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” And then he asks her if she believes what he has told her and she says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
“Yes, Lord, I believe.” Again the author’s literary toolbox opens and the device known as the suspension of disbelief is blatantly engaged. “Yes, Lord, I believe.” With this phrase, a remarkable thing happens. What was previously dead is now alive! With this phrase, a literary transition occurs where the focus shifts from death and suffering to new life and hope. And what is the catalyst for this shift? The catalyst is Christ—fully human and real, yet fully divine. And how does Jesus bring about this transition? First, he looks upward and prays out loud for the sake of the crowd and for the glory of God, thanking God for hearing him and he includes in his prayer his reason for carrying out the miracle he is about to perform by saying, “so that they, the crowd, may believe him to be the Messiah, God’s Son. Then he shouts, “Lazarus, come out!” Believe in me and be released from darkness and the stench of death. Believe in me and be released from the hard stones of persecution and tears of sadness. Believe in me and be free.
William Loader writes that the purpose of this “narrative, as a whole, is to make and celebrate the claim that people who believe in Jesus find life. It is eternal life, which includes timelessness or eternity in the temporal sense, but the focus is quality not quantity. It is sharing the life of God here and now and forever. The claim (made by Jesus that he is the resurrection and the life, that those who believe in him will live and never die) serves as a springboard to jump to a different level of reality that leaves the original story behind.” Loader says, “People who remain at the basic level of the story will have a faith like that of Martha and Mary. They need to move beyond that. If they do not, they will be left looking for the next miracle and failing to see that, from John’s perspective, the miracles are signs of something else.”
For me, very often that “something else” is learning to place our trust in God. It’s so easy to experience the miracle and then forget that God has promised to continue working miracles. We figure miracles are like winning the lottery, once you hit big, chances are slim that you’ll ever hit big again. But that’s not how God works. God wants us to experience miracles that take us to the next level, a level where we place our trust in God. This trust is a sanctifying trust, a trust that brings holiness to our actions. This trust brings holiness to the times when we sit with someone who desperately needs a friend even though we don’t know what to say. This trust brings holiness to the times when we keep moving forward in God’s name despite foreseeable risk. It’s a trust that makes sense of the miracle of the resurrection, allowing us to share confidently and assuredly the resurrection story with others. Our trust in God conveys a message that enriches the world so that people of the world may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, the people of the world, including you and me, may have life in his name.
Rensberger, David K., The HarperCollins Study Bible, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, New York, 1993, p. 2013.