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SERMONS

Fifth Sunday of Lent
March 9, 2008

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

Jesus has come to the crossroads in John’s Gospel. Jesus is facing a turning point in His journey. Jesus has done so much in John’s Gospel. There have been miracles, and miraculous teachings. Jesus has gathered disciples. All of it in an effort to give the world a glimpse of how God is breaking into the world.

Those who study John’s Gospel often divide it into four parts: The Prologue, The Book of Signs, The Book of Glory, and The Epilogue. Today, as Jesus makes his way to the town of Bethany, Jesus is closing The Book of Signs. In the Book of Signs Jesus gives himself wholly to a public and open ministry. The signs, the teachings, the miracles all work to unveil Jesus as the Messiah, the one for whom Israel has been waiting.

Jesus has turned water into wine. Jesus cures the paralytic at Bethesda. He multiplies loaves and feeds a hungry crowd. Jesus gives sight to a man born blind. Through these signs Jesus has been disclosing his identity, that He is indeed the light and life of the world.
The signs that Jesus shares are not meant to dazzle crowds hungry for religious tricks. Jesus is not playing to anyone’s curiosity in the first half of John’s Gospel. Each of these signs tells a little story about what God is really like. That God is a power and presence that feeds the hungry. God heals the hurt and suffering. God is sight and light where there is darkness and obscurity.

Bishop Anthony Bloom makes the point: “Miracles are not the breaking of the laws of a fallen world, but rather a re-establishment of the Laws of the Kingdom.” In the Book of Signs, Jesus has been about the business of peeling back the layers of where God’s presence lay waiting in our world.

“Lazarus”: it is a shortened form of “La Zar,” derived from the Hebrew “Eleazar,” which means God helps. The key to this passage lay simply in this name.

“Lord, Lord, if only you had been here my brother would not have died.” As Jesus enters Bethany, he is met by the anxious voice of Martha. “Lord, if only you had been here, this terrible thing would not have happened, my brother would not have died.”

Martha has been close to Jesus. Martha knows that Jesus is capable of great things; she knows that if Jesus had been in the midst, things would have turned out differently. Martha’s plea, her grief, is something that Jesus must have encountered often on his travels. It is the voice of a human being who is losing in this life. It is the voice of a human being who knows that things might be different, but who is being crushed by mortal circumstances; He could not be everywhere at once could He?

Martha, the sister of Lazarus, weeps for all those who believe they have missed their miracle. Martha knows that Jesus carries the medicine, carries the wonder, but sorrow is added to sorrow because Jesus had been where she needed him, when she needed him. What good is a Messiah if He is not where you need Him, when you need Him?

{HANDS} One book is closing, and another book is opening.

“Martha, Martha, your brother will rise again . . . He will rise.”

Martha responds with a textbook answer: “Oh yes Lord, he will rise on that last day and all that sort of thing. Yes Lord, on that last and far away day, he will rise and stand somewhere, sometime, off in that far away never, never land of eternal hopes and dreams. Somewhere at some point all will be made well, everything will be fine, and he will rise again.”

Here is the point. Martha hears what Jesus is saying, but she does not fully understand what He is saying. “On That Last Day.” Martha is giving Jesus a kind of pat answer; perhaps what she believes at this point is the right answer. However, she is not giving Jesus an adequate response.

Martha knows the Book of Signs and what Jesus has written there. She knows that Jesus is the light and the life; she knows he has done great things. However, she has yet to “trust”, to “know” the deep waters of God’s power that live within Jesus.

The power of Martha’s savior remains tucked away in the future. The power of God is still a “not yet” reality in her life. And so Jesus presses her a bit, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die . . . Do you believe this Martha . . . Do you believe this?”

Martha’s eyes are still covered. The veil of this world is still draped over her heart, and she gives Jesus another textbook answer.

“Oh yes Lord, I believe you are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God . . . and all those other things that they call you; you see, I know all of your titles.”

She is close, but not yet close enough. Like us, so much of the time, Martha has that “almost but not yet” feeling of faith.

“Lord if only you had been here . . . then my life would not have been snapped and shattered into so many pieces. If only you had been here, then my loss would not be so great. Lord, if only you had been here then that which is precious to me would not have died before my very eyes.”
And so Jesus stands at the crossroads. On one road is life as we have known it, as Martha has known it. Life in a box. Life that ends in a box. Where we die, or some part of ourselves die, is buried, mourned, and eventually forgotten.

On this road, the Son of God is greeted with the voice of weeping and resignation and textbook answers. The voice of someone groping for answers, “Why me?” The voice of someone saying “It’ll be all right; I’ll be fine.” What is done is done, what is bound is bound, what is buried is buried.
At Lazarus’ tomb Jesus is stepping onto another road, opening another book - The Book of Glory. Jesus is going ahead of us on that road. Jesus is opening the Book of Glory in such a way that all of us are named Lazarus, “God helps.” On this road, in this book, our tombs become our doorways.

Jesus is giving himself to a new chapter so that there is never a “when” or a “where” that God’s light and life are not present. There is never a “when” or a “where” which keep our tombs sealed. Standing over Lazarus, Jesus stands over each of us, calling us from our tombs, “Come out . . . unbind him . . . unbind her . . . let them go.”