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John 11:1-45 One of the things that I noticed after I had lived in this country for a while was the way people dealt with death. I noticed it because it was just so different from what I had experienced growing up in India. The scene in the village of Bethany where Lazarus had died is more like what I remember of deaths in India. Most people knew each other in our small town, and deaths more than even weddings were communal affairs. The family who had lost their loved one would never be left alone for days on end. There would be young men and women doing nothing but sing through the night to comfort the family. Older men and women would take turns to just pray with anyone who wanted prayers. Some people took charge of the kitchen and cooked continuously for the consolers that came from all over town and elsewhere, and some took turns to clean and restock the kitchen. There would even be a group of people sitting together to tell stories and bring comic relief to the crowd. Children would never be stopped from participating in the process of grieving with the community. And like the crowd that was still hanging around Mary and Martha four days after Lazarus had died and was buried, there would be crowds hanging around the home of the bereaved even after the funeral. All these activities took place with the background of many weeping in sorrow and pain. Needless to say, funerals in this country are not quite what I had seen where I grew up. In a sense, I saw life at its best at those rather organized chaos of funerals in my hometown. Regardless of where we are and how we approach deaths and funerals, the finality of death always manages to bring into sharp focus the reality of a finite life that either has to be embraced or rejected. One of the questions that many of us face when we deal with sickness in the family, especially when it comes to terminal illness is the question of whether we are doing enough to make sure that our loved one is cared for. We don’t know for how long Mary and Martha had been taking care of their sick brother, but judging from the first thing that both Martha and Mary tell Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” we know that the sisters had been waiting for Jesus. The sisters had probably seen Jesus perform some or many healing miracles and in all likelihood they had send for Jesus to come and heal their sick brother. Martha goes on to say to Jesus, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Martha’s statement here is not necessarily asking Jesus to raise her brother from the dead, she is merely affirming that regardless of whether Jesus had been there to heal their brother or not, she still believed Jesus to be a man of God. Martha’s problem was not a lack of faith, she had faith and we know this because when Jesus tells her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha says to Jesus, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” To which Jesus replies, “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. Do you believe this?” Jesus is not just a Godly man! nor is he just a miracle worker, Jesus is Life! Jesus is the very source of our life, and not only is he life as we know it but he is the resurrection, in other words he is the new and transformed life, which is no longer bound by death. For the sisters as well as those who had gathered to mourn for Lazarus, death had once again become the defining factor in life. “If only you had been here” words filled with regret and disappointment, words echoing the desire of the sisters to prolong the life of their brother just a little longer. And then there is Martha’s hope of the future when she tells Jesus that her brother will rise in the resurrection on the last day. Come to think of it, the interaction of Mary and Martha with Jesus seems so normal under the circumstances, it is something which all of us can identify with. The regrets and disappointments of not having done enough and the hope of a glorious future someday. But obviously there is more to the story than Jesus’ compassion toward these two sisters in their time of sorrow. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the Life.” What do you think of this astonishing declaration of Jesus? Come to think of it, even Martha did not get the full impact of what Jesus was declaring. If she had, she would have laid prostrate before Jesus in awe and wonder, but she leaves him to go tell her sister about his coming. It is amazing to me that in one simple line Martha kind of summarizes what we confess every Sunday in Church. She tells Jesus that she believes him to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world, and yet she is oblivious to what Jesus is really telling her. It is amazing to me because it is exactly what I do every day without much thought, I confess that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world. But Jesus’ answer is, “I am the Resurrection and the Life” he is not the one coming into the world, he has already come. This declaration of Jesus has to do with the present, this very moment of my life. The faith that Jesus calls us to when he declares that he is the resurrection and the life, is one of absolute certainty. It is not about a future manifestation, it is not about making sure that we confess he is Lord and God. He does not need our confession to validate Him as the Resurrection and the Life, but what he does want us to do is live out that promise he gives in that declaration. It is one thing to believe that Jesus will be waiting for us when we die, but it is quite a different matter to know and believe that He is right here amongst us as the Resurrection and the Life. Jesus is certainly not trying to demonstrate that there is no suffering and pain in the act of believing in Him as the Resurrection and the Life, for Lazarus did die again. What Jesus is demonstrating here is that suffering, pain and death can no longer hold us captive and become that which dictates and defines our life. For Martha, even after her confession of Jesus being the Son of God, she says to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Very often we live our lives with fear that there will be too much stench. We don’t want to deal with the difficult issue of confronting our fears and pain. And when Jesus calls us to open our tombs so he can bring transformation, we cannot believe that he can possibly do anything that we ourselves cannot do. So often our lives are dictated by things that we have not been able to do in the past or by looking at a preconceived future of perfection that we forget to live for today. I am the resurrection and the life Jesus says, which means that the future is already here. Whatever painful experiences we have had in the past and all the if only(s) we keep on chanting need not keep us sealed in our tombs. Jesus is telling us to get beyond our confession of him being the Son of God and start believing in his transformative presence “now.” The call and promise of Jesus is not a future reality of hope, righteousness and power, it is the promise and possibility of a transformed life now. Every time we allow ourselves to be consumed by how we cannot change the past, every time we let our failures crush us, every time we look at churches that seem to be dying and lose all hope, and every time we see a young man kill others and himself because he sees no reason for life, Jesus weeps and is deeply disturbed and moved. Scripture does not say he was angry or judgmental, it says “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” Jesus wants us to believe in him when he says, “Take away the stone.” And when our bundle of fears, disappointments, shame, insecurities, and hopelessness is opened for Jesus to see, he tells us to unbind, and let it all go. Death is not just a biological matter, we deal with death every single day in so many different ways, but Jesus clearly tells us, “I am the resurrection and the Life.” |
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