Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
So the sisters sent word to him saying,“Master, the one you love is ill.”
When Jesus heard this he said,“This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God,
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?”
He said, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.”
So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”
But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.
So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there,
that you may believe. Let us go to him.”
So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him;
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him,
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,
he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”
And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man
have done something so that this man would not have died?”
So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench;
he has been dead for four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me;
but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”
And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”
Resurrection of Lazarus
Leon Bonnat - 1833-1922
The sisters sent word saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.”
"The one you love is ill." As we have seen, often John does not use a name: The woman at the well. The Man Born Blind. Lazarus is called: 'the one you love.' The one you love is ill and needs healing.
We use the way John writes so that any of us could enter into that experience: asking for the water of life; for sight and healing. And this week, entering into the experience of Lazarus, knowing that each of us can feel we are the one Jesus loves. We are loved ones who need new life.
John offers us a story with a miracle – what he calls a sign, and as always with John, it is not to dazzle or impress.
It is for the glory of God, and he is even more explicit in this Gospel – that the Son of God may be glorified through it.So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was
This isn't what we might expect here. Jesus loved Mary, Martha and Lazarus, so we want to hear that he went to them right away - but he doesn’t.
He remained for two days.As in many of John’s gospels, we can feel this is a teaching moment. This is not what we expect, but we have learned that whatever happens, it will be for the glory of God.
He said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?”Jesus says “Let us go back to Judea.” He is saying, Let’s go back to Jerusalem. His passion and death are waiting for him in Jerusalem and he knows it and we are invited to go to Jerusalem with him.
The power of this story is not only that Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead as his final sign. Lazarus, after all, will die again. The deepest power is that this is just days before Jesus himself will die and be raised from the dead.
We don’t always get the resurrection. We don’t feel the power of it in our hearts because we have to really embrace death to understand what it means, and we live in a culture that is in denial of death. In previous ages where death was more a part of everyday life, the Good News of the resurrection was tremendous good news.
We don’t lack a fear of death because we don't believe it, but because we deny it. In fact, it is a great fear inside of us.
When I sat at the side of my friend Dave, and watched the life slip out of him, I grieved for him along with his family and other friends, but I don’t think it made me think of my own death. My death is … out there at some vague time in the future... when I’m really old.
But now I’m 57. How much more time do I have? All of us will die. Everyone in this room will die and we don’t want to really think about that. We’re going to die this year, or next year, in ten years, twenty-five years. We don’t know.
The invitation in one of the Eucharistic Prayers is “to be ready to greet him when he comes again in glory,” to be ready to die.
My dad, who died about nine years ago, was always terrified of death. He dwelled on it a lot because he was so afraid of it. But when I think of his life, he was raised to be terrified of God. He believed that at the end, he was going to be punished for his bad life by a God who was waiting to judge him.
I thought my father was a hard man, but toward end of his life, I had the grace to see my dad with new eyes – with the compassionate eyes of Jesus. I could see him as a man who lived a good life, who raised six children and did his best.
In his faith life, I could see that he was faithful, and never missed Mass. He read a number of Catholic magazines, lots of books about the Catholic church and he talked to his pastor about church issues.But maybe he could never move his relationship with God from his head to his heart. It was rare for him to talk about his relationship with God, but when he did, it was clearly one of fear of the big, judging God. It wasn’t a warm relationship. It was cautious and he was leery. I don't think he ever had the sense that at the end, he would be falling into the arms of a loving God. He didn’t know he would hear Jesus saying to him, “Cletus, come out! Let yourself free!”
So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.”
That’s kind of remarkable thing to say, from Thomas, who would be the doubter among them, expressing the doubts we all have. But Thomas is also the one who says to Jesus, Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?
Jesus answers: I am the Way.
So what is the path we are to take? The path of Jesus; we imitate him and follow him. This is the way to eternal life!Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”
There’s a little edge in this. Martha is blaming him for the loss of Lazarus, and she doesn’t really believe it when his next line is “Your brother will rise.”
Right, right, she is probably thinking. In the resurrection on the last day. Yeah, Martha says, I get it.
But she blames Jesus for not saving him now. Mary does too.
How often do we blame God for the pains and sorrows in our own life and for the deaths of so many things in our lives.
There are real deaths and losses and deaths of relationships. We also have to face the loss of expectations for ourselves, for others, for our children. And we ask: Why weren’t you there for me, Lord? We just can’t see, that this is all so that the glory of God can be revealed. So we don’t believe,
This is why deep in our hearts, deep in our souls, we have this longing for a real connection, a friendship with Jesus. We need to get rid of the image of a God who keeps a record of all of our sins, one who can’t wait to punish us. Jesus is a God who weeps with us in our sorrows, and who loves us endlessly. Jesus can’t wait to greet us with open arms when we arrive in eternity.
An older Jesuit I know visits people who are dying. When he stands at the side of a person in his last hours, and their eyes are often closed, he will put his hands on their face or on their hand and say, “When you open your eyes, the next thing you will see is the face of Jesus, delighted that you are with him welcoming you to heaven!” It’s a vision of a God who is delighted!
My mother died two years ago, after a long bout with Alzheimer’s. Over the years when I would fly out to visit her, her mind slipped. But there was something so joyful about going to see her. I would walk into her room and her face would light up and she would say, “Oh, Maureen! I am so happy you came to see me!” She was thrilled, ecstatic.
If I left to go down the hall for a minute to get some water, I would return to her room and she would look up and squeal! Oh, Maureen! What a surprise! You’re here! I’m so thrilled to see you!” I could leave her sight for 30 seconds and every time I walked back in the room, she was thrilled.
I think that’s the way God is with us, except we are never out of God’s sight. God remains delighted, thrilled, ecstatic to see us, at every moment in our lives.
A dear Jesuit friend of mine, Fr. Paul Mahowald, died last summer. Before he died he was calm and peaceful, saying, “I’ve been preparing for this my whole life.” That's the way I want to face my death. But I can only see it that way when I feel myself wrapped in God’s love.
Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.It wasn’t just Lazarus who was in that tomb. Jesus may have been looking in at his own upcoming tomb. And when we picture Jesus standing in front of that rolled away stone, we can know that we are in the tomb. Each one of us is tied up with things that bind us to a certain way of living, a regular pattern of behaving. We believe that it will never change. We believe that we simply have to stay tied up for all of our lives in a dark and lonely place.
This Gospel invites us into death – a dying to ourselves, a death to putting ourselves first and our needs before anything else and a new life in thinking of others first. A good place to take that dying to self is into our marriages. That's a place where we tend to think we can’t break out of the patterns that have been there for years, the The way we have always been.
I got married in 1975, and I made sure the word OBEY was not in our wedding vows. No one had it in the mid-70’s and I certainly wasn’t going to be subjected to it! It was an old-fashioned concept.
But years later I heard a Jesuit philosopher say what a shame it was to have "obey" dropped from the vows. He said the root of Obey means: To listen to, or to put the needs of another ahead of my own. I was astonished! Wouldn’t that be a good thing? What if we lived our marriages by putting the needs of the other ahead of our own? We do it with our young children all the time. But in our marriages? Not so much.
What if during this Lent, we unbind ourselves from the old way we have lived our marriages? What if we spent the rest of Lent obeying: Putting the needs of our spouse ahead of our own? There is certainly a dying to ourselves and our own needs when we do that. What if we stopped keeping score? Stopped saying, “He never asks how my day was!” or Why do I always have to apologize to her?
In a profound way we are being called to care for one another in a gospel-like way: to die to our own needs and to love someone else more deeply -- our spouse, our parents, our children. We are being called to take care of others before we take care of ourselves. It’s counter cultural when everything in our lives and world says "it’s all about me. I’m an army of one. Make sure I get what I need first." Yes, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you help others. But in our closest relationships, we are invited to cherish each other.
Jesus stands at the end of our tomb and calls to us, Come out! Be free! Unbind yourself from score keeping in your marriage. Let yourself be free from focusing only on your own needs and desires. Untie yourself from limiting your love.
If we begin to love our spouse freely, not keeping score, not keeping grudges, it will change our relationship. Not overnight. But we learn, as we slowly untie the burial bands that have held us so captive, that we can trust that eventually, with our constant love and with Gods’ loving grace, our spouse will notice a difference. And respond.
This is not something a wife does for her husband, or a husband does for his wife. This is the way Jesus calls us to a marriage -- or any loving relationship. If we do this over and over, with the utmost patience and courage, we will see a difference.
And we can picture Jesus, standing by the rolled away stone, calling to us by name, Come out! As we stumble out into the light, he says so gently, "Untie him. Untie her - and let them go!"
