When Jesus forced the issue

The eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John begins with Jesus learning that his friend, Lazarus of Bethany, had fallen ill. Despite the news, Jesus stayed two more days where he was.

Then he told his disciples they were leaving for Bethany, which was only two miles from Jerusalem. The disciples want none of it, reminding him that he and they had almost been killed in Jerusalem less than a week prior. Finally, they agreed. When they arrived, Lazarus had already been in his tomb for four days. Many people had come to console Martha and Mary, Lazarus’ sisters; some had come from Jerusalem.   

Martha went to Jesus [and said], “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said 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.”

Martha went to her sister Mary and told her that Jesus was here. Mary quickly went to him. There were many people nearby.

Mary said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 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.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 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.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 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.”

The story of Lazarus perplexes and confuses almost as much as it enlightens. Jesus showed no sense of urgency about Lazarus’ illness. He seemed strangely unconcerned when he got the news. He responded, “This illness does not lead to death,” yet Lazarus had died either the day the messenger arrived or the day before. “Rather,” Jesus continued, “it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 

This statement almost makes Jesus seem cold or calculating. First, he dismisses the seriousness of the report, then he says that Lazarus’ illness is not really about Lazarus at all – it’s about him, Jesus. Despite the apparent callousness of Jesus’ attitude, I think this statement really holds the key to understanding the whole story.

The Lazarus story is the pivot point in the life of Christ as John tells it. The raising of Lazarus is the last miracle Jesus performs in John. John says that many of the people who saw Lazarus come forth from the tomb put their faith in Jesus, but others went to the Sanhedrin and reported what had happened. “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him,” said one of its members, “and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

Caiaphas, the high priest, said, “It is better for you that one man dies for the people than that the whole nation perishes.” So, from that day on the Sanhedrin plotted to take his life (John 11:48‑53).

Jesus almost certainly knew how those things would work out if he went to Bethany. Tempers were flaring all over about him. Jesus must have known he was the center of potentially deadly controversy. Then he got the message of Lazarus’ illness and said that the illness would not lead to death, but it would serve for God’s glory, so that he, Jesus, might be glorified through it.

I don’t think that “glorified” refers to the raising of Lazarus here. In every instance where John uses the word glorified, he means Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. I think Jesus understood as well as the Sanhedrin that the Romans might respond violently to his ministry. Jesus was well connected, with friends who were members of the Sanhedrin itself. Lazarus himself was probably wealthy and also well connected. They well understood Pilate’s mass murdering record and so did Jesus.

If so, then it may make sense to understand Jesus’ words this way: “This illness does not lead to death [of the Jewish nation at Pilate’s hands], rather it will lead to my death, which will glorify God.” The resuscitation of Lazarus’ corpse, then, may be seen as a powerfully symbolic act of Jesus preserving the life of his people. Jesus is probably less focused on Lazarus himself than on the big picture. Maybe that’s why he waited two days before setting out for Bethany, to think, ponder, and pray whether it was the right time to force a decision by the Jewish hierarchy about who he was. Could he, by bringing Lazarus forth from the tomb, force the Sanhedrin to recognize him as the Messiah? Or would the act drive them to turn him over to the Romans for their perceived good of the nation?

Whether these questions and considerations were actually ones that Jesus pondered we cannot know. But he finally made up his mind to go to Bethany.

The sacrificial scene is set. Jesus goes to meet Martha and Mary and tells them that he is personally the resurrection and the life. But at that time and place, in the cemetery, surrounded by death and wailing and grief, words are cheap. His acts are required, and they will prove decisive. 

 Often you will hear preachers try to humanize Jesus with the verse that says, “Jesus began to weep.” It seems a sentimental scene: Jesus, disturbed in his spirit, deeply moved, weeping in sympathetic grief with Mary and Martha. And no doubt that was part of it, but not the main part. As John wrote it, which doesn’t translate to English very cleanly, different language describes the mourners’ crying and Jesus’ weeping. The mourners are wailing in despair, but Jesus’ tears are of anger and frustration. John says some people comment on Jesus’ tears by saying, “See how he loved him.” In John, the crowd never understands what’s really going on. Jesus did love Lazarus, but his love moves him to action, not weeping.

Perhaps Jesus is “greatly disturbed” to tears because no one gets it. The disciples didn’t get it back across the Jordan when Jesus told them Lazarus’ illness would bring Jesus to be glorified. Martha doesn’t get it when Jesus tells her plain as day, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Her response is rote repetition of religious affirmation. Mary doesn’t get it. She sees Jesus as nothing more than a divine rescuer from the troubles of this world: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Mary says, accusing him of dereliction of duty. Jesus weeps because everyone, including his disciples, so profoundly misunderstand what he is all about. Jesus is not a divine knight in armor who rides in to shield tragedy from our lives. Rather, he is the walking proof of God’s promise that despite the troubles of the world, we should take heart because Christ has overcome the world.

Maybe Jesus is troubled and weeping also because he knows that to bring Lazarus out of the tomb will irrevocably set him on the course to Golgotha. If people tried to kill him for saying who he is, then to raise Lazarus will make them go bananas. But he can’t back out because he knows why he came into the world. He calls Lazarus forth from his tomb and within a day or two Jesus is marked for execution.

You know, Jesus’s religious talk with Martha pretty much goes nowhere. When a loved one dies no one is in the mood for theology, not right away, at least. People who cry in anguish when their children or spouses or other loved ones perish are reacting appropriately to the tragedy. And yet, we do not accept death as the final reality. Our real desire is not things that never end, but that when they end, they end well. After all is said and all is done, is everything going to be okay? That is the problem of the grave.

The apostle Paul wrote that all things finally work for the good. He does not mean that tragic deaths are somehow actually good, he means that death and evil and suffering are not powerful enough to prevent God from bringing creation to its final, good fulfillment. The present life of good and evil, pleasure and pain, is eventually resolved beyond this world. When God brings creation to its final fulfillment, the promise is not a point-for-point reward for suffering, but “an infinite good that would render worthwhile any finite suffering endured in the course of attaining it” (John Hick).

Jesus told Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, and that those who believe in him, even though they die, will live. Everyone who believes in him will never die. Then he went to the tomb of a man dead for four days and told him, “Come forth!”

I think John has done us a favor by downplaying the humanity of Jesus in this story. If Jesus, the Son of God, in whom all things were made, responded to the sisters’ plea, and wept at the cemetery from nothing but sympathy with their grief and sorrow at Lazarus’ death, then we have put our faith in a mighty small god. Even we, finite in understanding, can see that there are cosmic dimensions here, such as the pervasiveness of suffering and tragic death in a world we say is governed by a wholly good and infinitely powerful God. Martha’s faith is at best ambiguous, and considering the circumstances, we can identify with that. I would hope these issues, at least, occurred to Jesus.

Do we really want the Christ to approach the graves of our loved ones merely as a sympathetic friend who helps us cry? We can do that on our own quite well. No, we want someone with the power to order them to come forth, who can demonstrate that we do not die, period, we die, comma. And if the Lord is sometimes frustrated at us while we cope with what life throws at us, that’s quite okay. By such things we can come to understand him more fully. In faith, we can turn pain to power, tragedy to triumph, and crucifixion to resurrection, even though it may not be an easy or quick thing to do.

There was a decidedly unordinary day in Bethany about two thousand years ago, a day in which Lazarus came forth, wrapped in grave clothes. “Unbind him, and let him go,” said Jesus. We are no longer bound by death, in this life or the next. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. We shall not reckon our lives by the power of death, but by the fact that in Christ we have the sure promise of eternal life with God.