If you had been here
Readings: John 11. 1-45
Jesus raises Lazarus in our Gospel reading this morning. And in this moment we see his love, and the hope to which he has called us
We thought a few months back about Jesus turning the water into wine at the wedding at Cana, and how John described that miracle as the first of Jesus’ ‘signs’. Well it’s commonly held that John’s Gospel can be treated as two halves, the first half referred to as ‘the book of signs’ and the second as ‘the book of glory’.
Chapter 11, of which we have most of today, is seen as the end of the book of signs, this is Jesus’ seventh and final sign of who he is and what he is here to do. And this sign is also the turning point, the hinge, of the Gospel; it rounds off Jesus’ public ministry around the region. In chapter 12 he will be anointed at this same house, enter Jerusalem on a donkey as we’ll hear next week, meet some Greeks, and then vanish into the upper room, out of sight of the crowds, the night before he was betrayed, as chapter 13 begins.
This hinge point is a sign, pointing to where all this is headed. But we can’t let that distract us from what is happening here. The emotion of it, the stakes and the relief at the end. This miracle is a rollercoaster in itself.
And it starts with the news that Lazarus is ill, it’s noted that his sisters are Mary and Martha, who we’ve met in the other Gospels, and they send word to Jesus that ‘the one you love is ill’. From what we can tell from the Gospels Jesus becomes good friends with this little family of 3, and so naturally they send word to him, he’s a miracleworker and his friend is ill, why wouldn’t you contact him.
But by the time he gets there Lazarus is dead. Indeed Jesus knows he is dead before he gets there. And we have repeated on the lips of both sisters a declaration of faith and of despair ‘if you had been here my brother would not have died’. The exact same words on the lips of both sisters separately. Words of faith, the belief and trust that Jesus would have been able to prevent this. But also words of despair, sat there behind these words, hanging in the air; ‘so why weren’t you’. If you had been here this wouldn’t have happened, so why weren’t you? Why didn’t you show up?
I wonder if it’s a familiar refrain for us at times. God doesn’t show up in time. The person we are praying for dies, the job offer falls through, we get sick, we have money troubles, we feel lost. And in the midst of it all the question; where is God in this? Where is he? If he was here this wouldn’t be happening. Does he even love me? It’s a big question but we can find ourselves there at times. All this stuff going wrong, does God really love me if this is happening? The passage opens with these sisters calling Jesus to their home as their brother, ‘the one you love’, is ill, and yet here they are outside their brother’s tomb. Does he really love him? Does he really love these sisters? If so, why wasn’t he there?
There’s a really interesting little phrase near the start of this passage that gives us the answer. ‘Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was two more days.’ Now if we just had the second sentence we’d really be questioning his love for these people ‘when he heard Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was two more days’. In fact as the passage goes on we find he doesn’t leave until he knows, by divine knowledge, that Lazarus is dead. If we just had the second sentence we’d question his love. And yet John doesn’t want us to misunderstand, to fail to see Jesus’ love for these people or mistake his actions for lack of compassion or callousness. Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus, his lack of showing up in time does not mean a lack of love, or compassion or care. Jesus loves them, even when they feel his absence.
If you had been there this wouldn’t have happened. And yet he still loved them. It’s all too easy to assume that when God is slow to act, or we have a sense of God being absent, that he doesn’t love us. Whether not loving us anymore or that he never really loved us in the first place. It’s all too easy when things go wrong to slip into thinking that if God was here this wouldn’t have happened, and if he loved me he’d have been here, so he can’t love me then.
This passage tells us the total opposite, Jesus loves them, his lack of haste, his lack of action in the timeframe they would have wanted does not mean that he does not love them. And as he comes to the tomb we see it as clear as day; Jesus weeps. He is mourning and crying for his friend, this is not a God who is unmoved by our suffering and our struggles, he loves us, even in the midst of them. And his love will be realised in the end, in how this passage resolves, in the raising of Lazarus. God’s love for us always wins out in the end.
So why does he delay? Well I can’t answer that question in the general sense, we will only know when we see him face to face, but we can answer in this case. From what we can work out from the passage Jesus is four days journey away. We read that he knows Lazarus has died, and then they leave, and when they get there Lazarus has been dead 4 days. Whereas if Jesus had not delayed Lazarus would still have been dead, but only for two days. Why does that matter?
Well 4 days is the length of time the Jewish Mishnah, a collection of writings made up of the teachings of the Pharisees from this time period, states is the point you can be sure the person is dead. Before that people may think the man had been resuscitated, was never properly dead, but after 4 days, Lazarus is properly dead, and would be starting to smell we are told. Jesus delays so that the faith of Mary and Martha, which is already there in some sense, may be fully fanned into flame. So that the mourners and those who will hear about this may put their faith in him. In waiting two days he doesn’t change the outcome for Lazarus, but it transforms the faith of those around him. Salvation comes to them. Jesus acts at just the right time to bring many to everlasting life.
And this is what he is here to do, not simply to raise us to life again for this life as he does with Lazarus, but to raise us to life without end. This is why this is the hinge of this Gospel. We’re in Bethany, Jerusalem is just over the horizon, just as Jesus’ crucifixion, outside of those city walls is just over the horizon. Jesus will not die of sickness, but he will bear upon himself all our spiritual sickness and disease, all our sin and shame. And then, when he is dead, like Lazarus, he will be wrapped in the burial cloths, placed in a rock hewn tomb, a stone rolled across the entrance and left there for days. And in the raising of Lazarus we get a foretaste of what is to come once his days in the tomb are over. A foretaste, but what we find in Jesus’ resurrection far outstrips what we see here. For when some other women reach his tomb, they will not need to remove the stone. The burial cloths will already be neatly laid out in their places. Jesus will already be gone, no-one will call him forth, instead he will say their names.
For he is the resurrection and the life. He is not simply resurrected, he is the resurrection. He does not simply have life without end, he is life. The grave cannot hold him, death in vain forbids him rise (as we’ll sing in a few weeks).
And so as we enter Passiontide, as we enter this final fortnight of Lent, as we set our eyes on that horizon and on Jerusalem beyond it with the cross on which he will die, we sit at the hinge point in John. We see where this is headed for Jesus, and we see where this is headed for us. For as Jesus reminds us ‘The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die’. Our faith, our hope in him, means we are never left in the grave to waste away without hope. Rather like Lazarus, and with Jesus, we called forth from our graves to meet with him. For whilst we die in this life, we live in the next, live life without end. Whatever we face now, God’s love wins out in the end.
Jesus says ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ May God give us the eyes of faith to say with Martha ‘Yes Lord, I believe you are the Saviour of the world’.
Amen.