Remembering the Future John 11:1-53

I am sure that many of you have heard the story of Lazarus coming out of the tomb, or parts of it, numerous times. You have probably heard it at funerals, in general sermons, through your personal Bible reading, and possibly in study groups. If this is the first time that you have heard it, I welcome you into some of the most encouraging and heartening passages of the New Testament. At the same time these are some of the most troubling and confusing passages.

This past week, I was again amazed by the number of shifts in time that take place and the bizarre behavior on Jesus’ part. To begin, we hear John tell the story of Mary to identify her: you know, she is the one who anointed Jesus with oil and wiped his feet with her hair, even though in the narrative of John’s Gospel, we will not be told of Mary anointing Jesus until the next chapter.

As I was reading, I noticed how the verbs do not always agree with the rest of the context of the sentences and that there are other allusions to events that have not occurred. Yet we, as the readers and hearers of this story, both when it was written and today, are to remember the future has already happened.

We hear that Lazarus is sick and a message is sent to Jesus to inform him of the fact with the desire that he come immediately. Does Jesus go to this person he loves? No. He decides to stay where he is for two more days. In the background of our “already, but not yet” memories, we hear “And on the third day, he was raised up from the dead.” But wait, that is not Lazarus; that is Jesus.  

Lazarus is four-days-dead when Jesus and the disciples arrive outside the village, outside the house of Martha and Mary. When Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will rise again, she looks ahead to the future, to the coming messiah. Jesus tells her that the resurrection is not something to come; it is before her in that moment. Jesus says, “I am I am, the resurrection.” This is not some future thing that will happen; it is loaded with the history of the “I Am” of Moses encountering the burning bush, and it is happening again as Jesus speaks with Martha and as we hear it.

Then we come to that classic line all translators of this text wrestle with. Jesus looks to heaven and says, “I knew that you always hear me.” This past tense certainty comes with a present tense understanding “for the sake of the people standing here”, both those hearing Jesus that day and throughout time. This construct that begins in the past has a life in the present of the speaking that assumes the future of all of you gathered here today.  It is nothing short of spectacular how this short passage prefigures our language of Eucharistic mystery, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” We feel, more than hear, that “Jesus’ time has not yet come”, in the language of John. We are reminded that this story is about Lazarus, meaning God’s mercy.

The next instance is after Martha goes out to meet Jesus when we hear Martha whisper to Mary that Jesus is calling for her and yet there is no evidence in the text that Jesus has called her.

Then we hear the people respond to Jesus’ question, “Where have you laid him?” with the words that reveal the messiah earlier in John ch. 1, “Come and see.” Yet this time the words “Come and see” are not an invitation to find new life, they are an invitation to witness death—real death—stinking, rotting death. Again, John reminds us that Jesus truly died, but this story is about Lazarus, God’s mercy, not Jesus’ Easter victory.

Or, is it? Amid the seemingly poorly told, mixed-up tenses, and out of sequence events of this story of Lazarus, we encounter resurrection and the resurrected one who has the power to destroy death, to raise the dead of the world from their places of death into new life. We encounter the one who has the authority to command the stone to be removed from the tomb and lay it as the foundation stone of what is to come. In this spectacular way, we are called to remember, not the past, but the future. For the world of the resurrection is all about seeing the possibilities of what is to come—the realization of hope in the future, a world of anticipating  the true state of nothing separating us from God’s “Lazarus mercy and love”, that is, God’s everlasting grace.

No wonder that there were some who believed because of what they saw. No wonder there were those who had to go and tell the authorities what was happening. No wonder there were those who thought that this Jesus had to be stopped because, if more people understood that Jesus had the power to put death to death, everybody might come to believe in him.

Several years ago, a pastor I know had a young man who was new to the faith come to her office to tell her that he had enlisted and was being shipped out to Afghanistan. He asked for the prayers of the community while he was gone.

The pastor asked if there was anything else she could do for him before he left. He asked if she could tell him how to get a copy of that book they read from on Sundays. The pastor asked if he meant the book of hymns. He said, “No, that book that you read from every week.”

She said, “You mean the Bible?”

He said he didn’t know, but he would like to get a copy of it to take with him. He thought that he could read it while he was gone. It would remind him of the people he had met at church. She took him into the sanctuary where she gave him their Bible, The Message translation, saying, “This is a gift to you from us. We will get another and read it with you.”

Well, time went by, and the young man came home. He came back to worship and then showed up at the pastor’s office one afternoon. He asked, “Pastor, do other people know about this book?”

“Yes,” the pastor said.

“Do other people read this book?” the young man asked.

“Yes. Why do you ask?” the pastor responded.

“’Cause, after reading it, I couldn’t help but think, if more people read it, it could change the world.”

The writer of John, in this story, challenges us to witness the authority of Jesus who puts death to death. We are called to remember the future—the events that are to come—the world that invites us to imagine life abundantly, hopefully, joyfully, and prayerfully. We are called then, to tell the story in all times and in all places confessing the resurrection of the body and the life of a world, as yet unknown, to come. And so, in those words that we have been taught, we pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Martin Luther reminds us that God’s will will be done—God’s kingdom will come without us praying for it—but, in this prayer, we pray that we might know, that we might know God’s will and know God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, not sometime in the future, but right here and right now.

This is a precious story that grows when we find ways to share it. Today we heard Brandon join us in telling the story. With his voice, we learn that the story is not only for the old but for the young. And we give thanks for his voice in our midst, that voice of youth and promise.  It is the voice of here and now and the voice of the future. It is another voice that invites us to hear the story of Lazarus’ rising. Telling the story is not about remembering the resurrection in the future but of Christ’s presence in our lives today, lifting us up into new ways of living. It is a story of love and hope that our world needs and longs to hear. It is a message that can change the world. In God’s Lazarus mercy, “Come out!”.