In chapter 11, John tells us his story of the
raising of Lazarus. An unforgettable
teacher I once had was a German pastor who had escaped Nazi Germany with his
wife in the late 1930s. The NZ
Presbyterian Church took him in, made it possible for him to complete his
studies, and then took him on the staff of the theological hall in
Dunedin. But Dr Rex’s treatment by the
Nazis had rendered his health precarious.
He was at times alarmingly frail.
He never dwelt on these problems… but one day, in a seminar, when the
many questions around resurrection had come to the fore, he said: In
prison I had nothing. I had no power. But I had the hope of resurrection.
There are different ways by which people approach this
Lazarus story. I read it as an
allegory. The home at Bethany was
clearly a place much loved by Jesus. It
was a refuge for him. Two sisters and
their brother lived there – Martha, Mary and Lazarus. They perceived Jesus differently from each
other. I am using some speculation here,
but it seems that, to Martha, Jesus was plainly Israel’s Messiah… as simple as
that, as we say these days. She says
so. She identifies him as the promised
deliverer who could therefore do miraculous things. But she still thought dead meant dead – Lord, if you had been here my brother would
not have died. And it is to Martha
that Jesus makes his revelation: I am
the resurrection and the life… But Martha
doesn’t get it, not yet.
Mary is quite different. She waits in the house. She does not run out to meet him, as Martha had,
to tell him all about how she’s feeling.
She is content to await events. And
so she receives a message via Martha: The
Teacher… is calling for you. Martha
had been calling for the Teacher – Mary waits to be called… and then she goes. Martha is wanting Jesus to respond to her in
her loss and need – Mary chooses rather to respond to Jesus -- and so she is
able to see their common need. Jesus is
grief-stricken too. Mary senses what
Martha doesn’t, that (in the words of Dylan Thomas, quoting St Paul to the
Romans) death shall have no dominion.
Now, Lazarus is dead. This fact is hammered home for us by their
grief, by the reminder that he has been in the tomb for four days… The fact is reinforced for us by Jesus
himself – he is not sleeping, he is dead
– lest we think that what Jesus does here is some remote CPR. So now we have to bring our literary imaginations
to the service of truth. John surely is
not trying to have us understand that Jesus resuscitated a corpse. What would be the point of that? Lazarus would die again. And it would take no account of grieving
families through the centuries for whom God has not done anything of the
kind. John tells us a story, inviting us
to the possibility that death is not God’s last word. In him
was life, writes John in Ch.1, and
the life was the light of the world.
Have you ever noticed, on hearing this story, the
curious thing Jesus said when Lazarus emerged from the grave? All Jesus said was: Unbind him, and let him go. It
is John’s clue to what resurrection means, what the scriptures call new life,
what we crane to see, as we say, beyond the veil, beyond death… unbound, and
free – Unbind him, and let him go. We can see the addict, at last unbound and
free. The Alzheimers victim, or anyone
lost to senility, unbound and free. The slave
to criminality, unbound and free. The
bigot, the racist, the tyrant, the bully, the lonely, the unloved, the
frightened, the chronic pain-ridden, the outcast… unbound, and free. It is beyond our sight, but open to the eye
of faith, and it is the miracle of resurrection.
No comments:
Post a Comment