BRINGING OUT THE DEAD
The Monty Python troupe touched on a very real issue of the Middle Ages in their movie about the quest for the Holy Grail: Death! So many people were dying 800 years ago at so fast a rate that there was no time to bury them. Carts were brought around to villages to pile on the corpses and haul them away. Black plague, bubonic plague, had ravaged Europe so severely that a third of the continent died of the disease.
In the Python movie, a comedy of unique tastes, a man comes by yelling, “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!” One man responds by bringing out a very old man, but he’s not dead yet. The cart owner says it’s against the rules to take a body if it’s still alive. “He’ll be dead soon,” the man replies. Meanwhile, the old man gets up and says, “I’m not dead yet, I feel fine, I feel like dancing!” With some prompting the cart owner hits the old man on the head and moves on. Death is inevitable, the story teaches – it comes to all, ready or not.
Black plague is a note in history books. Today we are the conquerors of bubonic plague, polio, diphtheria, and smallpox. We are getting better at exercise and looking and feeling younger. We have this impression that we are conquering death itself. And yet the death rate remains the same: 100 %. The truth is, we have conquered certain diseases and new ones have sprung up. Our newest plague is HIV. And it’s been joined by Bird Flu and Asian Flu. Need we mention that heart disease is still a factor alongside cancer? Death is inevitable.
We may try to avoid it with pre-planned funerals but the shock of death still gets you every time. Dealing with death is something our culture doesn’t do very well. Death is our greatest enemy.
In the story of Lazarus we have the seventh sign telling us one more important fact about who Jesus is. This Jesus is able to reverse the iron grip of death, to take the sting out of death. The story unfolds in three movements where Jesus interacts with Martha, Mary and then Lazarus. Now we’ll see how Jesus brings out the dead.
1. Resurrecting an ailing Faith
Dreams can die quick deaths. Relationships have a way of dying if they are not nurtured. Even faith can find itself dying in the face of overwhelming trials.
Jesus got word that his good friend Lazarus was dying. When we hear of a friend who is near death we naturally drop everything and go see them. Not Jesus, not in this case – he waits two more days. When Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been dead for four days.
Scholars say Rabbis in the 2nd century taught that a soul would linger around its body for three days looking for a way back in. On the fourth day, when the soul sees the color of his face has changed, it realizes its dead and goes away.
Another tradition concerning hospitality in the East might also shed some light. A guest was welcome to stay for 3 days – one to rest, one to visit, and to prepare to leave. If he stayed a fourth day it was a breech of etiquette. You could also tell a false prophet by how long he overstayed his welcome.
The point is, Jesus made sure Lazarus was as dead as local customs perceived death. Jesus had a purpose for this death.
Martha comes out to meet him with the words, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” If only, if only…how many times have we said words like that? Martha knew that Jesus could heal people. She knew that he had given sight to the blind, and made the lame to walk. If only Jesus had been here while Lazarus was sick, he would not have died. If only…these are words of despair. It’s too late now. Are these words of rebuke for Jesus? Probably not. Martha simply resigned the situation to hopelessness.
What about her confession that God would give Jesus whatever he asked? Isn’t this faith? Was there a glimmer of hope that Jesus could raise the dead? Not if you consider v. 39 where Jesus wants the tomb opened and Martha’s concern is only for the stench. There is no clue in her that Jesus would raise her dead brother.
Martha’s faith in Jesus has not matured to the point of boundless possibility. And when faced with death our faith takes a beating, especially a premature death. We wonder why God would take our loved ones when they had so much life to live. Sometimes we go down into despair and come up in faith, growing through the experience. Some stay down, faith in God having died in the heartache.
Jesus says to Martha, “He will rise again.” She replies, “Yeah, at the final resurrection.” Then Jesus makes the most powerful statement in the whole Bible, in the whole world really: “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.”
If you have a fear of death, Jesus addresses your fears in two groups in these words. The first group refers to those who have already died. Those who have believed and are dissolving into dust, our loved ones who have passed away, are not dead. D. L. Moody said, “One day you will hear that D. L. Moody…is dead. Don’t you believe it! In that day I will be more alive than I have ever been before.” Death can seize my body, but I will live.
The second group, “Whoever lives and believes…” This is us. We’re not dead yet. Jesus says, you never will. The Greek says very literally, “He will never, ever die forever.” Yes we will die, our bodies will collapse, but if you believe in Jesus, you will pass immediately into life. Your eyes will close in this world and open in the next. Now death, where is your sting?
“Do you believe this?” Jesus asked Martha. “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” Has her faith been resurrected? Not yet. It sounds like faith, but she is still unsure of what Jesus is talking about. Do we understand the implications of who Jesus is?
2. Resurrecting a Crushed Heart
Mary is summoned to come and meet Jesus. You remember Mary, she’s the one who was enthralled with Jesus, sitting at his feet and drinking in his teaching. Martha was stoic in her grief, but Mary wears her emotions on her sleeve. She comes to Jesus, falls at his feet, and weeps. This is her Jesus. She needs him now. Her heart is crushed at the death of her brother. What she needs is not a lesson in faith, but someone to share her sorrow.
Yes, she too says, “If only…” But she comes at it differently than Martha and it draws two reactions from Jesus. One is that “…he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” These words are too cryptic. What they mean is – Jesus was angry. The word in Greek describes a horse snorting with anger. Why is Jesus angry? We’ll come back to that.
The other reaction is that famous short verse of the Bible: “Jesus wept.” It’s been joke for a long time. Easiest to memorize of all verses. It just happens to be the most eloquent verse in the Bible. Jesus broke into tears. Yeah, Jesus knew he could raise Lazarus from the dead. That wasn’t the point. His friends were hurting and he hurt with them. Grief is not logical; it doesn’t have to be. Sharing in our friend’s grief is not a problem to solve; it is love we share through quiet companionship.
How do you resurrect a crushed heart? Come alongside and hurt together. By the way, “Shut up.” Don’t talk. Let Jesus speak comfort through you.
One night while conducting an evangelistic meeting in the Salvation Army Citadel in Chicago, Booth Tucker preached on the sympathy of Jesus. After his message a man approached him and said, "If your wife had just died, like mine has, and your babies were crying for their mother, who would never come back, you wouldn’t be saying what you’re saying. Tragically, a few days later, Tucker’s wife was killed in a train wreck. Her body was brought to Chicago and carried to the same Citadel for the funeral. After the service the bereaved preacher looked down into the silent face of his wife and then turned to those attending. "The other day a man told me I wouldn’t speak of the sympathy of Jesus if my wife had just died. If that man is here, I want to tell him that Christ is sufficient. My heart is broken, but it has a song put there by Jesus. I want that man to know that Jesus Christ speaks comfort to me today."
3. Resurrecting a lifeless body
Everyone is weeping. Jesus is weeping. The scene is one intense group session. The Jews say, “See how he loved him!” Then of course, there are accusations. If Jesus could give sight to the blind…well! If the doctors had caught the disease in time. If only he had gone to the doctor sooner.
Then we read, “Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb.” Jesus is angry again. He is boiling with rage. Why? What made Jesus so angry?
Was it the pressure to raise Lazarus from the dead by a misguided crowd of mourners?
Was it the hypocrisy of the professional mourners who do not understand Mary’s pain or how to enter into it? These people cry at all the funerals; that’s their job. So cold.
Was it the unbelief of Mary and her friends that angered Jesus so?
No. Jesus is angry that death has taken his friend. He is angry at death. He is angry that sin allowed death to come into the world and continues to rob people of life. It’s the same sort of anger that you feel when you read about a little boy or girl in the newspaper who is beaten to death by his own father. It’s the same anger you feel when a drunk driver kills your son on grad night. Jesus is angry at death. It makes him mad.
B. B. Warfield explained it this way, “The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its violent tyranny.”
You read John and you will see this word associated with Jesus over and over again: LIFE. Jesus came to bring life to us so that we may have it to the full. He is the bread of life. Whoever believes in him has life. He is life!
The great mistake we make is saying that God took our loved ones. God is not death, he is life. Death was not his plan. There is no plan in death…do not say that God takes people away to teach us something. That is heresy. It’s wrong. God can bring good out of bad; beauty from ashes. But he does not plan death – for then he could not be the God of life. Death is his enemy too. And one day he will crush it completely.
“Take away the stone,” Jesus said. This is where Martha objects, “It stinks in there – he’s rotting.” So Jesus didn’t get to see the open casket? He wants one more look?
Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” That old saying, “Seeing is believing” is turned on its head here to “Believing is seeing.” When Jesus turned water into wine we saw a glimpse of his deity. Now we are witnesses to the full glory of God in Jesus in this seventh sign. Believe and you will see the glory of God. If you do not believe, I’m sorry you can’t see what we see.
When Jesus had prayed, he called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” Someone once said that Jesus had to call Lazarus by name or else the whole cemetery would be emptied. But Lazarus knew his shepherd’s voice; he recognized the voice of Jesus.
Lazarus was stone-cold dead in the tomb. When Jesus said “Come out,” in the twinkling of an eye, the color came back to his face, blood pumped through his veins, his eyelids twitched and nerves connected with his brain stem. The heart began to beat again, and the breath of life started carrying oxygen to every part of that decaying, stinking body. When he heard the voice of Jesus, Lazarus CAME OUT! And Jesus said, “Take off those grave clothes, they’re for dead people. Lazarus, my friend, is alive.
OUR PART – Whenever Jesus performed a sign, the interesting thing is his innate need for people to do something, to participate, to be involved. He had the servants fill the water jars when he turned water to wine. He told the official to go home. He told the lame man to get up, pick up his mat and walk. Note here how we can help him resurrect lifeless bodies:
a) He wants us to take away the stone. There are people we have given up on in the community, in our families, in our relationships. These are people who we feel will never commit to believing in Jesus. We have buried them in their tombs and lost all hope for their salvation. Jesus says to us: “Take away the stone.” We reply, “But it stinks in there. It smells like death.” These people won’t even come to church. Doesn’t matter: take away the stone.
The stone is our attitude. We need to develop an attitude of hope for those who we see as lost, to believe that as long as they have breath they can come to the Lord. We can’t raise them to life, but we can remove their stones of ignorance, fear, doubt, prejudice and despair. We can speak the word to them.
b) He wants us to pray boldly and verbally. Before Jesus raised Lazarus, he prayed “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. It is the most uncomfortable thing to pray with and for an unbeliever. But what an impact this could make. They may not know what to do with it afterwards. Chances are though, they have never been prayed for before. Pray to the Father for their benefit, for healing or some kind of achievement – not necessarily for salvation. Just see what God will do in them.
c) Take off the grave clothes and help them walk. When by the grace of God these people are raised to new life, help them unwind the grave clothes of old thinking and discouragement and fears and so on. Help them to walk the new walk of Christ.
Jesus is the master of life. He reverses the effects of sin and death. He is the resurrection and the life. This is what the seventh sign reveals to us about Jesus, and it is glorious. Bring out the dead…remove the stone, and bring out the dead. No one is too far gone that Jesus cannot raise them to life.
AMEN
