Sermon for September 23rd, 2018
John 11:32-44
32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Miracles: Raising Lazarus
When I was 10 years old, I got off the school bus one day right across the street from my house. I walked around behind the bus, and as I stepped out into the street, I heard the sound of screeching tires. That's the last thing I remember for awhile. I don't actually remember the feeling of being hit by the car, flying up over the hood and down the side of the vehicle. I don't remember landing on my back, breaking both of my clavicles on impact. I don't remember my head bouncing off the pavement, or the large pool of blood that created, although the dark stain lingered on the light gray street for months afterward. I don't know how long I was there, lying unconscious on the side of the road.
I do remember coming around slowly, through blurred vision seeing concerned faces hovering over me--the bus driver, my friend Nicolas, some strangers, and our family's nanny, who had seen the whole thing, horrified, from the window of our house. I remember, in a foggy haze, the ride in the ambulance, then several weeks in a hospital room, followed by several months in a brace with stitches in my head.
I do remember people (my parents, my doctors) telling me that I almost died. I do remember my friends asking me in hushed tones what that was like? And in the three decades that followed, my thoughts have often returned to that day, with a morbid sort of curiosity, wondering how the world, and many of the people I love, would be different if I if I hadn't "come back" to that hard pavement for another shot at this life. Who would Amy have wound up marrying? Who would be pastoring First Presbyterian Church right now?
I suppose that this mental exercise makes me more grateful to be alive, grateful to have experienced all that I have experienced in the past 33 years since that day. And when I read today's scripture passage, I wonder if Lazarus felt that way too? He had Jesus to bring him back to life. I had an ambulance and a team of medical professionals to bring me back.
Of course, sometimes all the modern medical technology in the world isn't enough to bring someone back. I survived being hit by a car. My brother-in-law, Mark Jennings, did not. And on the same day that Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead...hundreds of other people close enough to have been visited (and saved) by Jesus still died.
That's the funny thing about miracles. They are, by definition, rare and unexplainable. Why Lazarus? Was it because Jesus loved him so much? I don't think so. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus also restores life to the daughter of a Pharisee, whom he didn't even know. And Jesus did not resurrect his cousin, John the Baptist, who also died, and whom Jesus also grieved, and loved dearly.
The author of this gospel (traditionally called "John" even though we don't really know who wrote it) tells us later on, near the end of the book, that "Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these (the ones in the book) are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name."
John never calls them miracles, incidentally. He calls them "signs." There are seven signs in his book, beginning with Jesus transforming the water into wine. Each sign in is progressively more dramatic than the one preceding it, and this one, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, is the grand finale, the seventh sign, and the last one before Jesus' own death and resurrection.
So what is a sign, anyhow?
A Presbyterian Pastor and Jewish Rabbi were standing outside their respective houses of worship one day, across the street from each other. The Pastor held up a sign that said "The end is near!" and the Rabbi had a similar sign that read "Turn before it's too late!" A car approached them and the driver yelled out the window, "get out the way you religious fanatics" before speeding off down the road. A few seconds later, they heard the screech of tires and a loud crash. The Rabbi yelled across the street to the pastor, "Do you think maybe your sign should read "The Bridge is Out" instead?
Signs are entirely dependent upon our ability to correctly interpret them. They are symbols, meaning they represent something. Signs are never themselves the thing they represent. A sign with a symbol of a deer crossing the road is not itself the deer crossing the road, but it points us to the possibility that we might encounter a real one.
