Unbinding the Ties

John 11:1-45
The Rev. Sara Fischer

Grant your people grace…that our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.

So, this guy and his buddy are playing golf on a Saturday morning, at their regular weekly tee time. They are near a road winding past the course to the nearby cemetery. A funeral procession goes by. The guy is in the middle of a swing but he stops, rests his club, bows his head, and removes his hat as the hearse passes by. The other guy is somewhat awestruck and afterwards says “gee, that was really nice of you.” The first guy says: “I figure it’s the least I can do. After all, we were married for 35 years.”

What does this have to do with today’s gospel or the fifth Sunday in Lent? Only that it points to the tendency many of us have to have complicated feelings or misplaced priorities around death.

Our relationship with death is ambivalent at best. The advertising world earns a huge portion of its keep by marketing to our longing to stay young forever. We’re all supposed to have young-looking skin and young-looking hair. Products have tag lines like “anti-aging formula” and “turn back the hands of time.” Our preoccupation with looking and staying young is almost idolatrous.

The language we use about death is itself avoidant. We don’t like to say that someone died. We say that they “passed away” or “passed on.” This kind of language distances us from our own humanity. Yesterday we held a memorial service for a complicated and gifted young man who died tragically at the age of 38. To say that he “passed away” is a disservice to the experience of his family and to the reality of all of our lives.

The paradox of our culture is that on the one hand, we treasure life so much that we distance ourselves from death. On the other hand, we applaud movies like “No Country for Old Men,” where human life appears to have no value at all. When we go to war, we refuse to number the dead on the other side of the conflict, as though those lives had no value. We further devalue human life with language like “casualties” and “collateral damage.” And please don’t let me get started about the video games that some of our teenagers play.

It is into this world that is so ambivalent about death, that Lazarus intrudes.

Lazarus did not “pass away.” Nor was he obliterated by the click of a button. Lazarus shows us how real death is. The evangelist writes about Lazarus with unambiguously earthy language. Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days. The King James version writes “he stinketh.” I learned a while back—and I’ve shared this before—that the people who write soap operas talk about different degrees of, well, “deadness.” If someone goes away and is presumed dead, the soap opera writers call them simply “dead,” and you know they’re coming back. If someone is killed off the air, and given a memorial service with no coffin, it’s likely that we’ll see them on a future show. They call this “definitely dead.” But the term they use for characters who really are never coming back is dead dead dead dead. In soap opera terms, we can say that Lazarus is dead, dead, dead, dead.

This is an odd story, really. Lazarus’ death is very real, and yet his resurrection is very fleeting. We read in the next chapter of John’s gospel that the chief priests who had it in for Jesus also decided to put Lazarus to death because of the events we heard about this morning. Why does Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? First, he postpones visiting Lazarus in his last hours, almost as though he is waiting for Lazarus to die. Then later he can say “Did I not tell you that you would see the glory of God?” He makes clear that all of is about revealing the glory of God, rather than restoring his friend to life. It is almost as if Jesus is just showing off.

What is God up to? Why does Jesus raise Lazarus? Surely there is more to this than just an impressive display of divine power. While this story is told as a miracle story, like the water turning to wine at Cana, or the feeding of the five thousand, I believe that this story is also a parable, a story that, like all gospel parables, reveals something about the Kingdom of God. This parable points to Jesus’ resurrection after being in a tomb for almost as long, and it points to our triumph over death, our new life in Christ. Lazarus’ tomb is opened to prepare us for the rolling away of another stone on Easter morning. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead just as, in the not-too-distant future, God will raise Jesus from the dead. This miracle story of Lazarus points to the real miracle of Easter morning.

The miracle story of Lazarus also points to the miracle of our new life in Jesus Christ, life that puts earthly death—Lazarus’ death—in a different light. The miracle is that in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we are given the gift of eternal life, life in the fullest. The miracle is that in the Kingdom of God, here, now, God goes into the dark, dank places in our lives and revives us. Jesus says of Lazarus: Unbind him, let him go. This is what God does for us. Death no longer has a hold on us. Being bound, by sin, by regret, by self-preoccupation, or by fear, keeps us from the full life God created in us. God unbinds us, through grace. This is what Sunday is about, week after week. We gather with song and prayer, and we offer to God all that binds us. We are nourished by God’s forgiveness n the sacraments, in our fellowship, and in the living out of our baptismal promises. When we go forth from this place, we are nourished by God’s forgiveness.

Next week is Palm Sunday, and with Palm Sunday we begin the incredible journey that we make together each year as a worshipping community. Through the services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday, we act out this movement from death into new life. Lazarus’ unbinding becomes our unbinding. As we move closer and closer to the cross, let us listen for Jesus’ voice saying of us: Unbind them, let them go.