“A Matter of Life and Death”
John 11: 1 – 53
Introduction
We’ve all prayed, every one of us, for a loved one who was ill. Each of us here has asked God to heal someone we care for. It could be a spouse, one of our children or grandchildren, a friend, an aunt or uncle, one of our parents or grandparents, a neighbour, or a co-worker. Sometimes the situation has been serious – someone we love is dying or seriously ill. Sometimes it’s not been so serious, or at least not life threatening. No doubt some of you here today have been to healing services, have experienced the laying on of hands, or have been anointed with oil as it talks about in the book of James. I can’t count how many times I have asked God to make those whom I love better, healthier, stronger. I suspect it’s the same for many of us. We all pray.
So we’ve all prayed. But have all of these prayers been answered in the ways we have wanted? Have those for whom we’ve prayed been healed of all their illnesses and diseases? Has each prayer resulted in the person getting well, regaining their strength, and even remaining alive? We know the answer. And we don’t necessarily like the answer; more, we don’t really understand the answer. When the answer is “no” we often feel confused. We wonder why. Why heal this person and not that person? Why must this person I love suffer like this? Sometimes it seems that the answer is “no” more often than not. Even so, we continue to pray.
“He whom you love is ill”
The people in our story today are not that different from us. Here we have a story about a man who was seriously ill – a man named Lazarus from the village of Bethany. Lazarus had two sisters, Mary and Martha. All three were friends of Jesus, and our story tells us that Jesus loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. And of course Mary and Martha loved their brother Lazarus. And Lazarus was dying.
Mary and Martha also loved Jesus; more than that, they believed Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world (v. 27). So when Lazarus fell ill, they sent word to Jesus: “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” They knew that Jesus could do something. Both Mary and Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (vv. 21, 32). They had faith and believed that Jesus could heal Lazarus. And they were hoping that he would do something. They were hoping that he would come right away.
Doesn’t this sound familiar? Isn’t this just like us? As those who trust Jesus today, we often hope in the same way. We pray, and hope for an immediate answer. We hope Jesus will respond quickly. We trust that he can (or at least we should), and we pray accordingly. We want Jesus to hurry; the more serious the situation, the more urgent our prayers.
But what happens in our story? We learn that even though Jesus loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and even though he knew that Lazarus was deathly ill, that he still waited two days before leaving for Bethany. Jesus remained where he was for two more days.
I wonder, did Mary and Martha ever learn that Jesus waited for a couple of days before leaving to go to Bethany? I cannot imagine how that would have made them feel to know that Jesus, whom they loved and trusted, waited, that he deliberately delayed his trip. What does that make you think? How does that make you feel? How should we react to this picture of Jesus – a Jesus who waits and allows illness to take its course? I think we all have felt this way. Perhaps you’ve said to God, echoing both Mary and Martha: “Lord, if you had only acted sooner, my loved one would not have died.” Why does the Lord tarry? And why does he seem only to seldom answer prayers for physical healing?
When the Lord delays, we experience a gap between what we know of the Lord’s power and what we know of the Lord’s will. If we really believe in Jesus, then we believe that he is fully capable of healing those who are sick and dying. We call Jesus our “great physician.” Yet he doesn’t always heal. He doesn’t always respond to prayers of faith, does he? Certainly Mary and Martha had faith in Jesus. They believed that had Jesus come sooner, Lazarus would not have died. But Lazarus did die. So while Jesus is able to heal our physical bodies, it would seem that it is not always his will to heal. And this is what we find so difficult to understand.
“This illness does not lead to death”
When Jesus learned that Lazarus was ill, he told his disciples, “This illness does not lead to death” (v. 4). But of course this is not quite true. Jesus himself later in our passage tells his disciples bluntly, “Lazarus is dead” (v. 14). If Lazarus died, how could Jesus have said that this illness will not result in death? Well, we have to finish looking at Jesus’ words here: “Rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
So Jesus had a purpose in mind for the illness and death of Lazarus. Through Lazarus the character and identity of God would be made known and visible. Jesus wanted his disciples to believe in him. More than that, he wanted them to believe that he is the author and giver of life. So as Jesus said in verse 11, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The ultimate end of Lazarus’ illness will not be death, but life, resurrected life. It was to be an occasion for faith and for the revealing of God’s glory.
We usually think that a restored body and restored health is reason enough for Jesus to heal someone we love. And this makes sense. We love this person and loving them means wanting them to be well. Since we know that God not only loves them too, but loves them infinitely more than we are capable of, we assume that His love would lead Him to the same conclusion: loving this person means I should also want them healed of their physical illness. And so we ask God to heal. We pray. And we wait. And yet the Lord delays for two days, and sometimes two days is just too late. It was for Lazarus. For Mary and Martha it was also too late. Or at least it was too late for what they were hoping and praying for.
When Jesus finally arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead four days. That this is the case underscores the finality of his death. Upon his arrival Jesus first encountered Martha. The first thing she said to Jesus, as we know, was, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Martha’s words here are more than an expression of regret that Jesus did not heal. Some who read her words are reluctant to see them as a complaint, but as one scholar says, “To overlook their edge of complaint, however, is to overlook the thoroughgoing Jewishness of Martha’s remarks. Complaint belonged to the language of faith in Judaism.” I once heard someone say that the largest category of psalms is psalms of lament. Read the Psalms and you will see lots of pain and confusion at what the authors feel is God’s lack of action, the same apparent lack of action that resulted here in Lazarus’ death.
There’s an important point for all of us in this. When we experience what Martha experienced – the pain of losing a loved one despite our most heartfelt and tear-filled prayers – it’s alright to bring all of our feelings to God. He knows our hearts anyway. God wants us to be honest with Him. God can take the worst of what we can throw at Him. It’s important for us as Christians to know that we can be open and honest about our grief, even in the presence of God. We need to know that when we feel God has let us down – particularly when we have prayed for healing – that we can tell Him how we feel.
But let’s keep reading. While Martha did say, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” she also said something else. After this, she said, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” “But even now,” Martha said. Even in the midst of grief, lament, regret, and pain, Martha’s faith in Jesus was undiminished. Was she, in some way, hoping that Jesus could reverse Lazarus’ death? Did she believe that even though Lazarus had lain dead four days that Jesus could still do something? She knew that Jesus could have healed Lazarus (“If you had been here, my brother would not have died”), but did she also believe that Jesus could raise him from the grave (“Even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him”)?
“I am the resurrection and the life”
Jesus’ first words to Martha remind us of why he delayed. “Your brother will rise again.” But of course his words are ambiguous here if only because Martha thought he was talking about the end-time resurrection. When Martha said this, Jesus’ told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
When Jesus calls himself the resurrection and the life, these two “titles” are not synonymous. As one scholar says, “For Jesus to be the resurrection means that physical death has no power over believers; their future is determined by their faith in Jesus, not by their death. For Jesus to be the life means that the believer’s present is also determined by Jesus’ power for life, experienced as his gift of eternal life.” In other words, Jesus is saying that he is the source of life both in the present and in the future, both while we live in this world and when we die. Only through him can we have life.
And after Jesus said these words to her, he then asked her a question: “Do you believe this?” In asking her this question Jesus wanted Martha to think beyond her expectations. He wanted her to look beyond Lazarus’ grave to him. Is Martha able and willing to see Jesus as who he really is?
“Do you believe this?” Jesus asked Martha this question. He also asks us. “Do you really believe this?” Jesus wants all of us to think beyond immediate healing. Jesus wants to look past our prayers for physical healing to who he is. Do we believe that he can give abundant life in the present? Do we believe that he can bring life to someone who has died? Do we believe that through him death need not be the end but rather the beginning, that he can and will raise us up to everlasting life if we put our faith in him? That is what he is asking from each of us: faith. Specifically, he is asking us to place our faith in him. He is asking us to believe that he is the resurrection and the life.
“It is for God’s glory”
We come back to where we started. Sometimes the Lord delays. Sometimes our prayers for healing do go unanswered. And we usually wind up not knowing why. We simply conclude that it must not have been God’s will to heal. I certainly don’t have the answer to the question of why He doesn’t answer all of our prayers for healing. It seems that healing on our terms is not always within God’s will. Warren Wiersbe says, “Ultimate healing and the glorification of the body are certainly among the blessings of Calvary for the believing Christian. Immediate healing is not guaranteed. God can heal any disease, but He is not obligated to do so.”
And take note of our story. Jesus was under no obligation to raise Lazarus. He deliberately delayed so that Lazarus would die. Why? As Jesus himself said, “It is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” When they reached the tomb, Martha objected to Jesus’ request that they roll away the stone. Did she not yet understand? Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” Even in Jesus’ prayer, we see this: “I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.”
And then Jesus raised Lazarus to life. A man dead for four days gets up and walks out of the tomb.
But Jesus’ focus here is not on Lazarus – on the raising of the dead man to life. As with every other sign – and this is his last sign – his focus is on revealing the Father, on making God known. That is his purpose. He wants people to believe. Jesus is even here asking us to look beyond the miracle of the raising of Lazarus to the sign of Jesus’ identity so that he may be glorified along with the Father.
Have you heard of the story of Joni Eareckson Tada? As a teenager she became paralyzed from the neck down in a swimming accident and wrote a best-selling book on her experiences. After her book was published she received many calls and letters telling her that God had both the power and the desire to heal her. Eventually she became convinced that this was true. And in a little chapel near her home several elders and ordained ministers anointed her head with oil and prayed fervently for her healing. And she fully expected to be healed. Here’s what she said: “A week went by, then another, then another. My body still hadn’t gotten the message that I was healed. Fingers and toes still didn’t respond to the mental command . . . You can imagine the questions that began popping into my mind. Is there some sin in my life? Had we done things right? Did I have enough faith?” She spent the next six years searching and questioning, studying the Bible for answers and finally came to this conclusion: “God certainly can, and sometimes does, heal people in a miraculous way today. But the Bible does not teach that He will always those who come to Him in faith. He sovereignly reserves the right to heal or not to heal as He sees fit. From time to time God, in His mercy, may grant us healing from disease as a gracious glimpse, a sneak preview of what is to come. It is my opinion that He sometimes does. But, in view of the fact that the kingdom has not yet come in its fullness, we are not to automatically expect it.”
Was Joni Eareckson Tada healed? Maybe not physically, but certainly she received spiritual healing – abundant life – through Jesus Christ. And I have no doubt that through her ministry Jesus has also revealed his glory and made the love and character of our heavenly Father known. Life has been given to her, and life is being revealed through her. And I also have no doubt that she is looking forward to that day when she too will be raised to resurrected life – for then she will be fully healed for the kingdom will have come in its fullness.
Conclusion
Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the grave was the last of his seven signs in John’s Gospel. That we looked at this story today – on Communion Sunday – is appropriate because the raising of Lazarus from the dead resulted in the plot to kill Jesus – his death that would bring life to the world. The Jewish leaders, having learned of Lazarus’ being raised, said, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him.” Verse 53 says “So from that day on they planned to put him to death.” Overturning death in the case of Lazarus meant death for Jesus; however, Lazarus’ raising is an anticipation of the even greater gift of eternal life that Jesus provides us through his death and resurrection.
We may not always receive the answers to our prayers for healing. We may be disappointed in this life by what happens: illness, suffering, death, and loss. In the midst of all of this, though, we have something invaluable. In Romans 5:2 Paul speaks of “our hope of sharing the glory of God.” We have hope. Through Jesus Christ, and the sacrifice on Golgotha, we have hope. And as Paul says in the same passage, “hope does not disappoint us.” In 1 Thessalonians Paul says that we ought not to “grieve as others do who have no hope.” What is his reason for saying this? He continues:
“For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”
Today we remember that the Lord Jesus died for us and gave his life. We also remember that both the cross and tomb are now empty. We remember this not only to proclaim what Jesus has done, but what he will do – raise us up and take us to be with him, give us eternal, everlasting life. No matter what prayers in our time, in our lives, go unanswered, we should encourage one another with these words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
