"Take Away the Stone"

John 11:1-44

April 2, 2017

I.

Last week we talked about how the man born blind represents all of us.  Today we will reflect on how Lazarus the dead man also represents all of us.  In fact, all of the maladies the Messiah comes into the world to heal stand for the condition of normal human beings, caught in the prison of their egocentricity or sin.  Whether we are described as blind, lame, deaf, bleeding, feverish, leprous, or dead, these describe different dimensions of the human condition we all share, even if we are not experiencing them physically or literally as individuals.  Jesus comes to restore us to our original goodness and wholeness, which he embodies.

In order to ensure that people get the point, Jesus deliberately waits for several days before going to visit his dear friend Lazarus, whom he hears is terminally ill.  This in itself is difficult for us to hear, as it was for Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha.  We all know how permanent death is.  You don’t mess with death.  There is no room for procrastination.  Death means that we have run out of time and options… or so we think.

For all this is what our ego tells us about death.  This is how we have learned to experience death: as the annihilation and permanent extinguishing of the individual forever.

Yet when Jesus finally shows up in Bethany to visit his friends, after withstanding Martha’s bitter disappointment with him, he says, “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.”  It is one of the most blunt, direct, and astonishing things that Jesus ever says.  

We say these words at funerals even today.  We quote Jesus as saying, “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  And we say it when there is often a dead body right there visible in the room!  Either we are simply spouting incoherent nonsense; or we are saying that the person who died didn’t believe in Jesus.  But one thing is obvious, which is that the person has died.  That seems to be the incontrovertible fact.

It is the same for Martha.  Jesus says this to her, and she is deeply aware that her brother is dead.  Then he looks at her and says, “Do you believe this?”  In other words, “Do you trust that what I am telling you is truer than what you know by direct, personal experience?  Do you believe me or your own eyes?”

And Martha says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah the Son of God, the One coming into the world.”  In other words, she says that she trusts that Jesus is more real, more true, and far better than everything she has known or experienced in her life.  If he says that Lazarus will rise again, then that, not the raw fact of Lazarus’ body decomposing in a dark tomb, is what must be true, even if it doesn’t make any sense to us.

II.

Jesus sees us and knows us in a way we cannot imagine.  We are only aware of a tiny portion of who we ourselves even are.  We think we are small, discrete, limited packages of meat that only live for few years, and then we are gone.  Jesus comes into the world and says… “No.  I don’t think so.  I will show you who you really are.”

So: Are we going to believe our own experience?  Are we going to believe our own senses and reason?  Are we going to go along with what just about everyone else says and thinks and does?  Or are we going to believe this one guy who is saying something totally different?

The writer of this gospel says he wrote it so people may believe.  That is, he is telling us about Jesus for a specific purpose, which is so that we may be inspired to place our whole-hearted trust in him.  These are not just interesting stores: they have a point.  And that point is of existential importance.  Because if you do come to trust in him, you “will never die”.

And yet Lazarus has died, in a sense.  Indeed, he has died in the only sense we normally think is meaningful.  His physical body doesn't work anymore.  No brain-waves, no heart-beat, no breath.  Rigor-mortis and decomposition.  You can’t get any deader.

Jesus asks to be taken there, to the tomb.  They even invite him with the characteristic revelatory words of this gospel, “Come and see.”  Come and see how this “never dying” thing is delusional at best, and a heartless lie at worst.  

When they get to the tomb, Jesus begins to cry.  The tears he sheds are tears of empathy recognizing another’s pain and at the same time realizing it doesn’t have to be this way.  They are the tears of a parent whose child has become an addict, or whose child has a brain disease called depression and has tried to end her own life.  They are the tears of one who reflects, “If only they were able to see that the tomb they thought they were stuck in wasn’t real.  If only they had just reached out their hand to discover the walls were imaginary.  If only they were able to change their way of thinking and come to trust, follow, and obey — instead of their own eyes, instead of their own reason, instead of what everyone else said — the Word of Jesus Christ.

Jesus cries here, over all of us, and each of us.  We who have diligently and innocently messed up not only our own lives, and not only lives of strangers across the planet, but especially the lives of those we love and cherish the most.  For we are all entombed in our own self-interest, which filters and distorts everything we see and know and do.  We think we are doing good, when in reality we are doing violence and neglect.  We think we are helping, when in reality we are harming.  We think we are preserving and protecting life, when in reality we are agents of death.

III.

Finally, Jesus instructs them to “take away the stone” which had been rolled across the mouth of the tomb, which, we are told, is a cave.  Lazarus, obviously, is not in a position to remove the stone himself.  He has been dead for four days.  Neither are we — who don’t even know we’re spiritually dead and locked in a tomb of our own making, which we have convinced ourselves is normal life — neither are we able to remove the stone that blocks us from emerging into new and true life.  We cannot be born again on our own.

Lazarus is inert.  And after four days he has no choices to make.  He is empty.  He has given up everything.  Even life.  His body is disintegrating, returning to its primal elements, breaking down.  He has let everything go.

I wonder if this isn’t the key to the transformation from death to life.  I wonder if it isn’t less about what we do, and more about what we let go of.  Maybe this is the mystery of God’s grace, that only when, as they say in AA, we “let go and let God,” that we discover how we have been held, and fed, and empowered all along.  Maybe the way to life is not by our planning and striving, not by what we do, but by what we don’t do.  Maybe it’s not what we grasp but what we let go of and let flow through us.  In that case, the dynamics of renewal, rebirth, and resurrection are more about ceasing and relaxing, opening and exhaling, and falling.

In the next chapter, Jesus says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit.”  Lazarus has died and fallen into the earth.  And that is precisely the precondition for rebirth and the bearing of much fruit.  Falling and dying.  Letting go and letting God.  Giving up what you think you are so that who you truly are may emerge.

Martha’s worry that there will be a stench if the stone is removed reminds me of the way we rationalize our not letting go: we are afraid we will be ashamed of what is revealed about us.  Someone might be offended.  Someone might get angry.  It could get messy.  We don’t know what will come out of us if we stop holding it in.  In fact, we have a pretty good idea that it won’t be very nice.  

But Jesus just says, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”  Stop worrying about what you think you’re going to smell.  Get ready for what you are about to see.  Because you are going to see something wonderful!  For when we stop grasping, holding, projecting, trying, and striving, what comes out of us is nothing less than the glory of God.  We are made in God’s Image; we are made to have God’s glory — God’s presence, love, and wonder — flow through us into the world.  That is the wonder of who we are.

IV.   

Jesus calls out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”  And Lazarus, his hands and feet still bound, somehow appears at the opening of the tomb.  The fact that he is still tied up means that even in the end it was not his doing to get himself to the light, it was a pure response to the Word of the Lord.  It was the Word, calling his own name, which draws him up and out of the tomb.  

Jesus then tells the astonished onlookers to “unbind him and let him go.”  The final letting go happens in community.  We emerge from our darkness and paralysis into the arms of others.  We need the attention and work of others to remove the remaining bonds which had tied us into our entombment.  Unbinding each other is our task as a community of those who trust in Jesus.  Identifying and removing the constrictions we have around us is important work for the community of transformation.  

So not only can we not break free on our own initiative, neither can we break free by ourselves.  We need a community that embodies the Word of Jesus to us.  We need a community to be the Word of liberation and enact upon us the coming out and the letting go which is the only path to new life.

Unbinding people and releasing them from their own bondage becomes the mission of Jesus’ followers.  It is the ultimate expression of the “new commandment” he gives us, which is to love one another as he has loved us.

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