Ez. 37:1-14 Ps. 130
Rom. 6:16-23 John 11:1-44
Lectionary Link
Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died?
In the relationship with God, one might cite the continuous mistiming of good things happening to undo bad things which have occurred.
The Lazarus story in the Gospel of John, encapsulates the way in which the early Christians were pondering their lives in their circumstances, which were not always so good.
By the time that the Lazarus story came to textual form, the Jesus Movement had moved from being a community waiting for the imminent end of the world to becoming a community which needed to survive and grow within the cities of the Roman Empire.
The very first writing of the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians was written by St. Paul to people who were anxious about the deaths of their friends happening before the Day of Lord. St. Paul wrote words of comfort to link up resurrection life as a holding place in the now with the future resurrection of everyone.
The Thessalonian believers worried that death before the day of the Lord would put the preservation of such pre-deceased in question.
The Gospel of John is a writing which mixes a narrative of Jesus of Nazareth with a narrative of the Risen Christ for people living decades after Jesus. The Risen Christ narrative is super-imposed over the narrative of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Gospel of John incorporates a "Book of Signs" in it. The word signs is used instead of "miracle" or wonder. The Gospel of John proclaims Christ as the eternal Word of God from the beginning. And as Eternal Word, the Risen Christ is all and in all. And being all and in all, the Risen Christ is present to all life circumstances, some of which are cited in the book of Signs. Christ is present in the seemingly trivial, like when wine runs out at a wedding feast. Christ is present when one's child is deathly sick. Christ is present when there is a storm on the Sea. Christ is present for the blind and the lame. Christ is present when the multitude lack enough to eat. And finally Christ is present when one's loved ones die.
In this way, the writer of John is saying the Gospel is profoundly real to the actual circumstances of our lives. It is not some other worldly, utopian, pie in the sky system of denial.
We do not necessary like the Risen Christ being compatible with all the conditions which we face in life. We wish the timing of Christ would be our timing, and like children we wish that all human experience could be always already completely pleasant and "us" friendly.
The Gospel of John proclaims through the word of Jesus that the Risen Christ is resurrection, not only the resurrection or his resurrection, but rather resurrection itself. What could this mean? It means the preserving essence of life itself even when life is going through apparent states of change. The most apparent states of change are designated as birth and death, and resurrection encompasses both. Neither birth nor death changes the status of resurrection.
The story of Lazarus is how John's Gospel intertwines the realization of Christly presence with all the circumstances of life, which includes death.
The Gospel of John was written for a minority community in the Roman Empire who had members suffering, and members who were dying. What kind of life is compatible with all that humans have to face? Resurrection life. Resurrection life while we are living. Holy Spirit continuous life even across the portal of death.
Today, we are ask to be humble about certainty of the continuity of any specific state of our existence, given the reality of changes in life. The probable conditions which can happen to any of us at anytime are numerous and confronted with the uncertainty of what might happen to us, how do we live on the quicksand of such tentativeness? We embrace resurrection as what continues within every change.
Resurrection is the continuity under the changing apparent conditions of our life. And John's Gospel tells us to embrace this resurrection as the anchor for the roller coaster of our changing lives.
John's Gospel super-imposes the life of the Risen Christ upon the presentation of a life of Jesus. The Gospel for us is for us to super-impose the Risen Christ upon the circumstances of our lives because as Jesus going to grave of Lazarus says, "I am Resurrection, I am Life." You and I need to let resurrection be more than getting to some heavenly place in the future to be "saved"; we need to embrace it as the preserving continuity within the changes of our life. John's Gospel invites us to embrace resurrection as life, even in Lent before Easter. Amen.
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