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Thursday, November 05, 2009
Lazarus: Life Leaps Up
Psalm 24; John 11:32-44
Here's a piece of Bible trivia that might win you a little money some day. Or at least the admiration of impressionable friends.
The shortest verse in the Bible is... John 11:35.
"Jesus wept," it says.
You can't imagine what great good news that was to me as a ten-year-old sidewalk theologian. My parochial school buddies and I, a Protestant pupil in the public school, would compare notes from time to time on all things religious. This verse thoroughly jazzed all of us across all denominational lines.
Wow. You mean we didn't have to always be strong or smart or brave? If Jesus could lose it like that, then we were in the best of company come the time when we might fall apart.
That amazing verse comes in the middle of one of the Bible's most tender stories about Jesus, in the one Gospel that pays careful attention to his intimate relationships with God, his disciples, and a few other lucky people along the way.
Imagine, for example, how great you would feel if it was your house that Jesus called his home away from home. To be the host with whom he felt free to simply be himself -- off duty, no obligations, no expectations.
That's how it was for three good people in the village of Bethany, about two miles outside Jerusalem. Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. Jesus would stay at their house on the way to and from Jerusalem for the holy days.
In John 11, Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus is dying. He shares the news with his disciples, adding "He's not going to die." And he proceeds to do absolutely nothing about the emergency. Harsh, that.
Two days later he says, out of the blue, "Lazarus is dead. Let's go there now." His disciples are surprised, confused, angry, and scared. But off they go with Jesus to see what they will see.
And what they see turns out to be first one sister, then the other, challenging Jesus with the same lament. "Lord, if you had only been here..."
To Martha, the no-nonsense pragmatist who waves an accusing finger at him, he makes the astounding claim, "I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will never really die!"
To Mary, a sensitive soul who sobs her complaint through tears, he responds with tears of his own.
"See how he loved Lazarus," buzz the friends and neighbors who've come over to grieve with the family. And they've got it exactly right.
Next thing you know, Jesus has someone open up the tomb, braces himself, and calls out, "Lazarus, come out of there!" Pregnant pause... All eyes on the tomb... What next? How long?
Shazam! Out comes the dead man -- eyes wide open now, grinning ear to ear, then laughing out loud, now dancing some holy kind of two-step.
"I'm alive!" he shouts. "It's Jesus! And Mary! Oh, and Martha, too! Hallelujah!!!"
Let the party begin. This that was lost has been found! He who was dead is now alive!
If that last bit sounds just like the climax in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, well why not?
For I believe this episode in John's "intimate gospel" not only describes the incredible power of Christ's love to resurrect his dead friend Lazarus. It's also a living parable about the spiritual state of every one of us, and of Christ's amazing power to bring us all to life as we've never lived before.
Listen to the GODcast!
posted by Jack Buckley at
3:56 PM
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