Falling Asleep

Sunday, March 13th, 2005
Lent 5A
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 11:1-45

1Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘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.’ 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ 8The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ 9Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ 11After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ 12The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ 13Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ 16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ 17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ 23Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’ 28When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’ 38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus 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.’ 40Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I 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.’ 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44The 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.’ 45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

My earliest memory of Uncle Babe was hearing momma tell stories of how he used to play jokes on her and my aunts as children growing up outside Nortonville, Kentucky. The memory that stands out the most in my memory though, apart from those stories related to Uncle Babe was hearing Momma read a letter from my grandmother, received over 30 years ago, telling us that Uncle Babe had had multiple bypass surgery.

On some level, I suppose I was expecting the call that came last Tuesday ever since then. Years might go by, but always, if I thought about it, I wondered when we’d get that call. As it turned out, Uncle Babe outlived Grandma and Uncle Floyd, his older brother, by a little more than 15 years. We almost lost him a couple of years ago, but he rallied, and over these last two years the family – both immediate and extended – to whatever degree we were able to, had come to grips with the fact that Uncle Babe would be gone from us sooner rather than later.

So the gathering that took place on Thursday in La Center, KY was in very few ways unexpected.

Uncle Babe had done many things throughout his life; he was a State Trooper, a Salesman, he was elected County Judge-Executive, and when he wasn’t re-elected, he retired and became a pig farmer. There wasn’t a lot that he hadn’t tried. I don’t remember seeing Uncle Babe in uniform, though I may have as a young child, and I don’t remember his … identity being framed by what he did – ever. Even being elected to county office didn’t change that. Uncle Babe was just ‘UNCLE BABE.’ You knew he did SOMETHING for a living, but it wasn’t the ‘something’ that stood out, it was the living.

As I prepared to travel to Kentucky, I reread the text for today, knowing that I would be … perking the sermon while in the midst of visiting with family, sharing stories, and getting and giving hugs and using up tissues.

What I found was a deep sense of comfort in the events surrounding Lazarus’ death and subsequent resurrection. There’s a sense of purpose that Jesus expresses, in his deliberateness in waiting … in understanding as those who were around him could not, that there was a greater purpose to be displayed through Lazarus’ illness and death. The text echoes last week’s story of the man born blind in that instance – do you remember Jesus’ disciples asking him why the man was born blind, because of his parents’ sin or his own, and Jesus’ response – ‘So that God’s works might be revealed in him.’

Here we have a similar response:

4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘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.’

In that sense, John, the Gospel writer, is intentional in how he presents the story of an event in Jesus’ ministry. There is a difference in the Gospel of John that is not as evident in the other three Gospels – John is self-consciously theological in the retelling of Christ’s ministry. The writer makes it a point, for example, to have the people around Jesus call him Lord instead of Master, or teacher, in this passage. It isn’t so much a term of respect as it is a declaration of faith – some of the earliest evidence of the early church’s belief in the divinity of Jesus. To call him Lord even while he was on earth was a radical statement among a people who were known for reserving that term for Yahweh, in our language, God.

If we’ve been raised in church, with the stories of the Bible told to us from childhood on, going into this we automatically fill in the blanks with additional information – we know that Mary, Martha and Lazarus were Jesus’ “hang out” friends. Whenever he came to visit Judea, he stayed with them. Their house was his. He felt at home, he was welcomed. The introduction seems a little out of place, when we read that ‘a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany’… what we have is a non-chronological insertion by John.

The purpose of the Gospel of John is to instill and nurture faith – “so that you might believe”. The other three, on various levels attempt to present the ministry of Christ chronologically. John does not. This is one of those places where it is not. Later on we get to meet Mary and Martha and Lazarus, or in the other gospels, but here the purpose of the story is to … highlight the power of God to transform our lives just like Lazarus’ life was transformed.

True resurrection … does not just prolong life but transforms our entire being. The resurrection is spiritual. It begins when faith moves a person to become open to receiving God’s life.
There are elements within the story that stand out. Jesus hearing of Lazarus’ illness and waiting. The word we read as ‘stayed’ carries a couple of meanings, if you will – tarried, as in … waited, intentionally … and suffered – in other words, Jesus knew that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were suffering, and even though he loved them, he held back … he knew there was a greater event coming.

There is, as is commonly found, a subtext to this waiting – if you are not familiar with the customs and practices of first century Palestinian Hebrews. It was commonly believed that after death, the soul of a person lingered around the body for two or three days. Hence, Jesus waiting for the additional two days before going to the tomb. There was no question on whether or not Lazarus was dead when Jesus finally showed up. In case there were, John takes pains to point out that the smell of a decomposing body was already being noticed.

Where are we in the story?

Do we identify with Lazarus, who is known more for what Christ did for him than for what he did for Christ? Or are we like Martha, the kitchen-maven, who gets the intellectual approach from Jesus, a mini-sermon on resurrection. Or Mary, the scholar willing to break gender stereotypes to receive the instruction she needs, gets the emotional approach from the depths of Jesus troubled spirit.

There is a connectedness in their responses – and in Jesus’ responses to them, that carries through to today.

We are, all, facing life with the shadow of death looming. What God offers us in Christ is Life. True life. Abundant life.

When Jesus tells the people to unbind Lazarus, he is literally telling them to destroy what holds him down. Send him forth free.

That is our call today. We are Christ’s presence in this community. We are called to set people free – through Christ – of the stench of death and sin.

Let’s pray.