Resurrection before Resurrection

 5 Lent C April 6, 2025
Is.43:16-21 Ps.126
Phil.3:8-14 Luke 20:9-19

Lectionary Link

We are lectionary users, meaning that on any given Sunday we put together readings from Hebrew Scriptures, including a Psalm, coupled with an Epistle and a Gospel reading.  Lectionary makers, obviously are motivated by themes and by the Christian Calendar as a practical curriculum for breaking up "Christian and Hebrew Scripture knowledge" into bits to reflect upon because we don't have the capacity to read the entire Bible every time we gather.

So we get the Bible in bits, and sometimes the biblical bits are forced together with or without some obvious connection.  All of the readings cannot "fit together" for a singular unified theme.  So preachers have to select and a preacher can rather arbitrarily, or as we say inventively, put together the themes on any given Sunday.

One of the things we often forget about interpretation of the Bible is that the first key to probable intended meanings has to do with the mutually reinforcing and consistent meanings within the same book itself.  Next, one ponders which of the other books of the Bible did a particular biblical author have access to and can one make any suggestions of meaning based upon such "cross referencing" that one biblical author might perform with another book in the Bible?

The writers of the New Testament, of course, did not have a 27 book New Testament.  But scholars might attempt to date the New Testament writings and ask if a later writer had access to writings from an earlier writer.  What came before the Gospel of John in terms of other writings?  Hebrew Scriptures, of course, often read in the Greek translation known as the Septuagint.  There were inter-testamental writings some of which are included in the Apocrypha.  There were other writings referred to as apocalyptic.  And John being a very late writing, especially its last iteration, meant that Paul's writings, Mark, Matthew, and Luke may have been known by the writer or writers of John.  Also the writers of John wrote in Greek and they were writing for people who knew Greek, which means that they and their listeners and readers would have had had access to the various kinds of literature in the Greco-Roman world of their time.  They did not write in a social vacuum; they wrote using available themes, types, and genre to inventively try to persuade their listeners about their Gospel values.

John is different from the other three Gospels, the synoptics which include lots of verbatim shared phrases.  The anointing of the feet of Jesus in John's Gospel is significantly different than the anointing of the feet of Jesus stories in the other Gospels.

To understand the pericope of Mary of Bethany anointing the feet of Jesus with perfume and wiping them with her hair one looks for contextual meanings within the rest of the writing of John's Gospel, as well as the other New Testament writings.  John's Gospel is different because, the writer wants to share insights about how the writer connects experiences of the Risen Christ with the traditions which center around Jesus.  Like the other Gospel writers, the writer or writers of John present a parable of Jesus' life, his ministry, and his teaching to illustrate the meanings of knowing the mystical reality of the Risen Christ, many decades after Jesus lived.

Many decades after Jesus, the world still existed; the Son of Man had not come in the clouds to catch up those who lived, and to raise those who had died.  The theology of the delay of the Lord's Day had become a theology of having a foretaste of abundant resurrection life even while waiting for a hoped for messianic age.

The anointing of the feet of Jesus by Mary of Bethany is presented within a sequence of the sure providence of Jesus the Christ on his way to becoming the ever present Risen Christ available by the Holy Spirit as the mode of living before death.

The anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany comes after the raising of her brother Lazarus.  The other Gospels mention Mary and Martha but not their brother Lazarus; such seems like quite a failure not to mention Lazarus since it would seem that being raised from the dead would be a rather significant unforgettable event.

The writer of John is using the Lazarus story for at least two purposes.  First, the Lazarus of the Gospel of Luke is in fact a leper in a parable of Jesus who dies at the same time as a Rich Man whose gate he begged at while he lived.  The Rich Man in the parable, called to Lazarus across the chasm which separated him from Lazarus who had gone to reside in the bosom of Abraham.  He said, "please send someone back from the dead to tell my family so they will be warned to avoid the eternal torment that I am experiencing."  But the Rich Man was told that if  family did not believe Moses and the prophets, they would not believe even someone who came back from the dead.

Isn't it interesting that the writer of John tells the story of Lazarus, friend of Jesus and brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany.  Jesus intentionally delays coming to Lazarus while he is sick knowing that he would die so that a greater work, a greater healing of death could be accomplished.  Jesus went with his clueless disciples to the tomb of Lazarus and called him back to life.  And he told Martha, "I am resurrection and I am life."

What was the result of the coming back to life of Lazarus?  In John's Gospel, the writer says that even Lazarus coming back from the dead did not convince those who hated Jesus, in fact, they plotted even more to kill Jesus after Lazarus came back from death, thus proving the words of the parable of Jesus about Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke's Gospel.

So interestingly, the writer of John responds to the parable in Luke with the Lazarus account.  But more importantly, the writer of John is using the story of the resurrection of Lazarus as illustration of the experience of resurrection life before we physically die.  Lazarus was brought back to life, but he was going to know physical death again.  Lazarus is illustrative of all who experience the  zoe or abundant life of the Holy Spirit.  Holy Spirit, Risen Christ, Abundant Life is the experience of the coming of Christ in a significant way before the long delayed advent of a messianic age.  In fact, the delay happens so that many people can come to know the experience of this resurrection abundant Holy Spirit life of the Risen Christ.

And what is the fitting response to this resurrection life?  Excessive, effusive devotion and gratitude.

Mary of Bethany after her brother of Lazarus is brought back to life, is moved to such excessive devotion.  It would have been enough for her to do the typical duty of wives, or slaves in performing foot-washing for a guest or honored person, but Mary full of gratitude for having the life of her brother restored, poured perfume on the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair.  Such excess was shown to make people uncomfortable, particularly Judas,  but Jesus praised her for her pre-anointing of his body on its way to death and resurrection.

To read this, one needs to appreciate the theology of the writer of John.  It is such a providential resurrection theology, that the writer wants to show how death and resurrection are always already realities of the experience of knowing the Risen Christ.  Like the mystical theology of Paul, the writer of John believed in the always already process of abundant life as identifying with the death and resurrection of Christ.

We need to appreciate that the writer of the Gospel of John is intoxicated with the mystical experience of the Risen Christ and this experience has been a profound experience of the coming of Christ, that can be known before the longed for Messianic Age of the reconciliation of all things.

So how can you and I appropriate this Gospel for ourselves, seeing that our life context is so different than the writer of John's Gospel?  How do you and I make do in significant ways since it is obvious we don't yet live in the Messianic Age of the wolf and lamb living together as playmates?

We live by articulating our persuasion about what resurrection life means for us who woefully lack the perfect Messianic conditions.  Abundant life for us means that we have internal insights about how to articulate in word and deeds approximations of love and justice as that which is most messianic and blessed.

Let us be excessive in gratitude about having received a kind of resurrection life which inspires us to approximate the abundant life leading to loving and just results in our world today.  Amen.