According to Celtic legend, tonight is the night when the line between the living and the dead is blurred. Tonight is the night when the dead roam freely upon the earth. This may not be far from the truth. The story of the raising of Lazarus is a story in which the line between life and death is blurred, the line between the human and the divine becomes soft, porous, and permeable.
God, through Christ, is breaking the rules. The world tells us that death is the end of the story, and there are some who greatly appreciate this rule. When Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead you might imagine that the crowd which had gathered would praise God and sing hymns and shout “Hallelujah, do it again!” but in the Gospel of John, the raising of Lazarus was the very catalyst which lead to Jesus’ crucifixion. When Lazarus comes out of the tomb several of the bystanders met with the chief priest, Caiaphas, asking “What are we going to do about this Jesus?” See, if your business is to do away with your enemies, you don’t take kindly to someone who has the power to bring them back. Not only do they plan to kill Jesus, but Lazarus as well. Lazarus and Jesus are at a dinner party several days later and a great crowd gathered, not only to see Jesus, but also Lazarus, so the chief priests gathered to figure out how to destroy not only this miracle man, but the fruit of his labor. So what happened?
Jesus receives news that Lazarus was deathly ill, yet he remains in where he was for two days saying, “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.” Jesus lingers, much in the same way he lingers when news of Jairus’ daughter is ill. Last week I spoke of two bullying myths, the myth that bullying will cease if you only get stronger and faster than the bully, and the other myth that if you just hang on, things will get better. Well, there’s also a popular Christian myth that if you just have faith, if you just pray harder than you’ve every prayed before, that bad things won’t happen. This is an old myth. In fact, when Jesus finally arrives near Bethany, Martha runs out to meet him and she says, “Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus arrives in Bethany, Mary, Martha’s sister knelt at Jesus’ feet and said the same, “Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died.” The author of John seemingly wants to make this point clear, that this is not how God through Christ works. Jesus is not Superman, swooping in and bouncing bullets off his chest and shooting the bad guy with lasers from his eyes. How I wish it were true, that the faithful never experienced pain or suffering or hardship, but Christ himself suffered, not so that suffering wouldn’t happen, but that suffering and death might be transformed into blessing and everlasting life.
This story reveals to us a “thin place,” a place where the line between the human and divine become soft, porous, and permeable. Thomas Merton once said, “Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time . . . If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything—in people and things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It’s impossible. The only thing is that we don’t see it.”[1]
The only thing is that we don’t see it. About four years ago, Christie and I went to the doctor because she wasn’t feeling well. She was really tired all the time and she couldn’t hold food down, but the nausea would subside later in the day. I remember telling my professors that we were going to the doctor because we had no idea what was going on . . . Christie came out of the office to meet me in the waiting room, and she said, “You’ve got to see this.” I went back into the office and there on the monitor was this tiny little peanut with a little flickering light.” “Congratulation!” the doctor said. That was a “thin place.” We were there and the world seemed to stand still as we meditated on the glory and miracle of God. The reality of the world sunk in not long after that when we sat down to discern just how we were going to pay for this blessed miracle of God. We did not have maternity coverage, so we signed up for Medicaid. We went to the Medicaid office to see if we qualified and we were waiting in this not so clean or pleasant waiting room. The room smelled of poverty, of working folk. Well, we thought we were above this kind of standard and we left the room thinking to ourselves, “We have got to find a different solution.” Two days later in Sunday morning worship, Dean Sam Wells was preaching on this very text we are hearing today. He read verse 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.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” Then Sam Wells seemed to look right at me and say, “Don’t let your fear of stench get in the way of you seeing the glory of God.” It was a life changing moment for me.
Don’t let your fear of stench get in the way of you seeing the glory of God. What is it that gets in the way of you seeing the glory of God? Is it your fear? Is it your prejudices? Is it your love of money? Is it your pride? Don’t let your fear of stench get in the way of you seeing the glory of God. Jesus isn’t telling Martha that if you don’t believe you are going to burn in the eternal fires of torment. He says, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God? If you don’t believe, you are going to miss something truly beautiful. You are going to miss seeing the very thing that makes God, God. You are going to miss life itself.”
Jesus weeps at the tomb and cries in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” Lazarus slowly emerges from the tomb, bound in cloth and Jesus calls for those around him to unbind him, and let him go. In this thin place, the line between life and death are blurred. In this thin place we see the glory of God, a glimpse of heaven on earth, a place where the line between human and divine is soft, porous, and permeable. Be unbound. Live unbound lives. As people of resurrection, we live according to different rules. If death is not the end of our story, what does that mean for a our daily lives? If death is not the end, what power does suffering have? If death is not the end of the story, what are we to fear? Go, and live unbound lives so that the world might see the glory of God. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2003), 155.