The Raising Of Lazarus Series

We need to take a leaf out of Jesus’ book here. It’s normal for us to feel grief and compassion when a friend suffers loss like this but unless that’s combined with outrage at the waste, at the terrible state our world is in that good people perish before their time, that evil men and women are able to do terrible things, even that life itself on this earth is limited to such a short time, and let me tell you, when you get to my age you realise what a short time it is; unless you feel that outrage that Jesus feels here, all you’re left with is mere sentiment. On the other hand outrage without grief leaves you with hard-hearted arrogance.

It seems that Jesus experienced both. As they took him to the tomb he again feels that outrage but also the grief; so much so that he begins to cry in sadness. Even knowing what’s about to happen the deep sadness of death, of his friends grief and loss, brings him to tears.

Jesus comes to the tomb and now he sets them the greatest test of faith yet. He tells them to roll aside the stone. When they object that the body will be smelly by now he reminds them what he’s told them before.

“If you believe you’ll see the glory of God.” So they roll back the stone and he prays out loud to his Father in heaven thanking him for having heard him. Then he cries out in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!” And out comes Lazarus, with the graveclothes still tied around him until the onlookers free him from them. And we’re told: “45Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.”

Do you remember at the end of last week’s passage Jesus saying to the Pharisees: “ 38If I do the works of my Father, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

All that Jesus has been saying in this chapter have been leading to this conclusion. His claim to be the resurrection and the life is attested to by this sign. Who else could raise someone form the dead after four days? If he can do that, then the other things he claims to be able to do must also be true.

That might have been the end of the story, except that Jesus’ enemies were still after him and this sort of miracle was too great to ignore; not because it required belief but because it was so hard to argue against.

So their only recourse was to have him killed. Caiaphas has the solution: “50You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” A lovely piece of Johannine irony: Caiaphas prophesies without realising what he’s saying, yet we see that his prophecy was spot on. In the next Chapter Jesus will make it explicit that he’s on his way to death but that his death will mean life for many. He is the resurrection and the life because he’ll pass through death to life as the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead. Those who die in him will also rise in him. Those who believe in him, even though they die, will live and will never die again.

That is the great good news of the gospel.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.