When Death Intrudes
by Maynard Pittendreigh
John 11:1-57
On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. "Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask."
Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world." And after she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. "The Teacher is here," she said, "and is asking for you." When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. "Where have you laid him?" he asked. "Come and see, Lord," they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. "Take away the stone," he said. "But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days."
Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out.
When my father died a few years ago, I found a box at his house with a label. It said, “Things I want my son to keep.”
Inside there were no bearer bonds or gold coins. No age old stocks. Nothing you would list on Ebay.com and try to auction off on the Internet.
It was a strange collection. A hodge podge.
I found a broken pencil. Strange pencil. It was shaped like a rifle. Pull the tiny trigger and lead comes out. Not bullets of lead, but you know, a long thin line of lead you write with. Open the shoulder rest and there is an eraser. It is absolutely worthless. It is terrible condition, but there was a small note attached to it that was written in Dad’s handwriting. It read, “My mother’s pencil.”
I also found a pearl. Not a very pretty one, and in fact, was quite small. But Mom had found it while eating oysters at a dinner. How could you throw something like that away.
There was an envelope filled with teeth. Human teeth. Not adult size teeth – children’s teeth. I don’t even know whose teeth they had been. My teeth? My sisters’? Some bully Dad had beaten up in the 2nd grade. Who knows?
There was another envelope. It was labeled “Missy’s hair.”
Missy was my sister, and so I opened the envelope expecting find a small lock of her hair.
But instead, inside was all of her hair. Enough for a small wig.
You see, 41 years earlier, Missy had become sick and had to have brain surgery. She was only six years old. And of course, they had to shave her head. Looking at this envelope of hair, I imagined Mom or Dad gathering up the hair as the orderly or nurse shaved her head, and then keeping it as if someday it might be all that was left of the child.
Now, I was quite young as well, so there are a lot of things I do not remember about Missy’s illness, but one thing I do remember very clearly is that our other sister, Shannon, had such deep faith.
We lived in a small town at the time and everyone became aware of this 6 year old child who was sick, and everyone was praying for her. Now, even as a child, I was aware that even though people were praying for my sister, I could sense that people didn’t really believe God would do anything to heal her.
Have you ever sensed that in someone? Or maybe you have sensed it in yourself. Praying for something, but not really believing.
But Shannon – our other sister – she not only prayed.
She believed.
She knew.
She was convinced.
She was persuaded.
Without any doubt at all, Shannon knew God was going to heal our sister Missy.
It is an amazing thing to see someone with that much faith.
Jesus promised in Matthew 17 (verse 20), “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ’Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
That was the kind of faith Shannon had. Everyone else seemed to have their doubts. But Shannon never did. She knew God would heal Missy.
A few months after the surgery, Missy died.
And the day Missy died was the same day that my other sister, Shannon, stopped believing in God.
We serve a God who is sometimes very hard to understand.
We serve a God who sometimes disappoints us – because we can’t manipulate him even with our prayers.
We serve a God who is sometimes hard to believe in.
Maybe you have been there.
You watch your mother or father suffer a long illness. Day by day the body weakens, the mind fades, one organ after another shuts down. It’s hard to believe in a God who lets someone die so slowly and painfully.
You are at home alone when the doorbell rings. You answer it and find the police at the door. There has been an accident. Your child was in a car. It’s hard to believe in a God who lets a child suffer a sudden death.
Or perhaps you’ve heard the news from your own doctor. The tests have all come back and they have confirmed the worst. “There’s nothing we can do,” the doctor tells you. It’s hard to believe in a God who allows death to intrude upon your life.
And don’t think this is something new.
It’s the same story in this morning’s Gospel reading.
Jesus has a friend named Lazarus. He gets sick, and then he dies.
There seems to be no escaping death and tragedy.
The death of Lazarus comes in chapter 11 of John’s Gospel and it is in sharp contrast with what has been happening in chapter 10.
Chapter 10 is a beautiful chapter. It’s filled with promises. It’s full of life.
Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd.”
Jesus promises that he has come to give us life, so that we may have it abundantly.
In chapter 10, Jesus promises life.
Then in chapter 11, Lazarus is dead.
Lazarus was a friend of Jesus. A very close friend (verse 3).
Lazarus had two sisters, Mary and Martha. They were the ones who sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was sick. Jesus doesn’t waste any time. He starts back to Judea to heal Lazarus. Now this is a risky thing to do. By this time, the popularity of Jesus has begun to decline. In fact, his disciples reminded him that they left that region because earlier people tried to stone and kill Jesus. But Jesus is determined. So when he goes, the rest of his disciples agree to go and die with Jesus.
But it is not Jesus who dies in this chapter – it’s Lazarus.
Martha goes and meets Jesus as he arrives, and she is bitter. She tries not to be. But she is. (John 11:21) "Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Martha served a God who is sometimes very hard to understand.
Martha served a God who sometimes disappointed her.
Martha served a God who is sometimes hard to believe in.
Martha looked at Jesus and said, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Jesus tells her, "Your brother will rise again."
And Martha tries to maintain her faith, "I know -- he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
But then Jesus says a strange thing.
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”
Martha professes faith that what Jesus is saying is true. She looks at Jesus and says, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”
It’s hard to keep your faith sometimes. It’s sometimes hard to continue to believe in God. But Martha believes.
Now Mary had stayed at home, but now Martha goes and gets her and says that Jesus wants to see her, so Mary goes to where Jesus is.
Mary and Martha are so different. You see their differences in other passages of Scripture, but sometimes they are very much alike.
When Mary sees Jesus, she ends up saying the very same thing that sister Martha had said to him earlier. "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
Mary served a God who is sometimes very hard to understand.
Who sometimes disappointed her.
Who is sometimes hard to believe in.
It is at that point that everyone breaks down in tears. Grief overwhelms Mary. Then the other mourners.
It is interesting to see the effect this grief has on Jesus. When he sees the tears of Mary, and of the other mourners as well, he was, in the words of the Gospel, “deeply moved in spirit, and troubled.” To be more accurate, scholars say these words do not reflect compassion, but anger. You don’t pick up on this in most of your English or Spanish Bibles, but it shows up in most other languages.
Why would Jesus be angry at a funeral?
Some would suggest that Jesus is angry at Mary. Martha makes a statement of faith – “I believe you are the Christ.” But Mary simply says, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” and then she melts away into tears.
Some would suggest that Jesus was angry at the power of sin and death in the world.
Some would say that Jesus is angry at the crowd of mourners gathered around Mary, because he feels their grief is insincere and hypocritical.
One ancient theologian named Chrysostom believed Jesus was angry because of the prospect of his own coming death and struggle with Satan.
Well, all of those theories are good, and maybe there is some truth in each of them. But I believe that the reason Jesus felt angry at the funeral of Lazarus is for the same reason many of us feel angry at funerals.
Anger and grief are closely related cousins.
In the classic pattern of grief, there are five stages – from denial to acceptance and hope. In the middle we find anger as one of the five stages of grief.
Think back to your own experiences with someone’s death. Wasn’t there some moment of anger?
Anger at the drunk driver who killed your best friend?
Anger at the doctor who wasn’t able to pull off a miracle?
When my sister died, my other sister became so angry that she stopped believing in God.
I don’t know why Jesus became angry at the funeral, other than to say that is was natural. When death happens, anger is one of the visitors at the funeral service.
It was as natural as what Jesus does next.
Verse 35 is the shortest verse in the Bible. “Jesus wept.”
Which has always struck me as a strange thing for Jesus to do in light of what he does next.
Jesus goes to the tomb and asks that the grave be opened. He addresses Lazarus and orders him to come out of the grave.
And he does.
Lazarus, who has been food for the worms for four days, comes back to life.
Jesus commands him back to life. It is one of the great miracles – or signs that Jesus performs.
The raising of Lazarus from the dead is a foreshadowing of Christ’s own resurrection, and of our own resurrection into eternal life.
Death intrudes into our lives all the time. Like it or not, ready or not, willing or not – death comes to our friends and loved ones, to the young and the old. And eventually, it comes for us.
But, through Christ, we have the hope for eternal life, and after Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, there should have been no doubt in anyone’s mind that this was true.
In fact, the Scriptures say that as a result of this, many put their faith in Christ (verse 45).
This made the religious leaders extremely nervous.
We did not read this portion of John, but immediately after the resurrection of Lazarus, John says that “the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. "What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.”
That is an interesting passage in John.
Even in the midst of political debate that would lead the religious leaders to plot to kill Jesus, the high priest Caiaphas had a glimpse that Jesus had come to save God’s children – that it was necessary for one man, Christ, to die so that all would live. (John 11:47-52)
Christ makes it possible for us to have eternal life.
And of all the miracles Jesus performs, I think this one may be the one that is the hardest for us to believe.
Oh I know, I know. We SAY we believe it, but do we?
Every Sunday we stand and say, “I believe in God the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord….
And remember how that Apostles’ Creed ends?
I believe… “in the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.”
But how many of us really believe that?
Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
Martha says she does believe it.
But do we believe it?
You stand at the grave of your best friend, and you hope there is everlasting life. But do you really believe?
You watch the casket of your husband lowered into the ground. Do you really believe what Jesus said when he told Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life.” Or do you just hope?
You hear the doctor give you the results of last week’s medical tests. You listen as he tells you that there will be no cure. Do you really believe that there will be anything at all for you after your death?
Believing that we have eternal life and that there is a resurrection is more than just a nice pie-in-the-sky hope that we have that gives us an empty comfort in times of crisis.
This belief is central to the Christian faith.
St. Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians that if you don’t believe in this, you might as well not believe in anything (1 Cor 15:12-14). He says, “If it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”
The most familiar passage of the Bible is John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
It’s a wild doctrine to believe! It’s beyond the natural – it’s supernatural! An afterlife? A bodily resurrection? It’s like believing someone could walk on water. It’s as wild as believing someone could turn water into wine.
But that’s St. Paul’s point. If you believe in the resurrection of Christ, then you must also believe that there will be a resurrection for you and other Christians as well someday.
Paul’s words in First Corinthians 15 are very clear! “If it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”
We have eternal life.
We have a hope for the resurrection from the dead.
We say this every week in the Apostles’ Creed.
Don’t just say it!
Believe it!
Believe it when you grieve over the death of your parents.
Believe it when you feel the anger over the injustice of the untimely death of a child.
Believe it when you weep as Christ wept at the death of a friend.
Believe it, and be comforted – not in the pie in the sky hope, but in the reality of faith.
When my father died a few years ago, I found a box that was labeled, “Things I want my son to keep.”
Inside was a tiny rifle shaped pencil, a small pearl, baby teeth, and an envelope containing my sister Missy’s hair.
And there was a letter.
It had been written by my sister, Shannon.
She’d had such faith. She prayed and truly believed that God would answer her prayers and heal our sister Missy.
And when Missy died, Shannon’s faith died.
But her faith did not remain dead for long. She often said over the years that when she held her first child in her arms for the first time, she found her way back to God.
She wrote the letter on her 50th birthday. By that time, she was facing her own serious, life-threatening illness. She was waiting for a transplant and had high hopes that it would save her life. It wouldn’t. Five years after writing this letter, she would die.
In the letter, she wrote about her illness. She shared her hopes. She shared her fears.
And she also shared her faith.
“Dear Daddy, I pray every day that God will heal me. But I don’t know if God will heal me and let me live. It’s important to me that God heal me. I want to live. But what’s more important than whether or not I live in this world is that I know our family has been given eternal life.”
And then she quoted a verse of Scripture – a verse from our Gospel lesson for today. ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ says the Lord. ‘He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’”
Copyright Maynard Pittendreigh, 2002
All Rights Reserve
