Open the Word: Christ has power over death

There is a drama in the course of Lent. Last week we saw how Jesus had power to heal blindness, physical and spiritual. This week we anticipate what is to come in two weeks’ time by seeing how Jesus has power over death. We look both backwards — to Jesus’ healing ministry among people — and forwards — to his own resurrection, which opens up life in eternity for us all.

The story links forward to chapter 12 (which we will read during Holy Week) where Lazarus’ sister Mary anoints Jesus with oil of nard, traditionally used for burial. She alone recognises that, though Jesus has raised Lazarus, he himself will very soon enter the tomb. Does she sense that he, too, will be raised, or not?

There is no ‘explaining’ this miracle in naturalistic terms. The evangelist wants us to know that Lazarus is well and truly dead. It has been four days. The mourners are all in place. ‘There is a stench.’ John wants us to know that Jesus has the power of life and death. He is very much in control of the situation. The traditional symbol for John the Evangelist is the eagle, sharp-eyed and incisive, seeing everything from above. Here John is quite clear about the presence of the divine in a human story. And his Jesus tells us the reason for the story — as with the blind man, as with his own resurrection, it is ‘for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it’. Everything points back to Jesus.

However — and again this is typical of John — Jesus is also intensely human. He is ‘greatly disturbed in spirit and intensely moved’. Surely this is for his friend’s suffering before death, for his own loss, for the loss of the sisters and all those who loved Lazarus. There is reassurance here for all those who grieve. Jesus himself knows the anguish and brokenness and intensity of bereavement; he shares the sisters’ longing that the death might be undone; he is one with the crowd of friends in their lingering about the family and the tomb.

Prepare for Easter by considering what is dead (and stinky) in our lives and in the life of this congregation. Where have we longed for healing and failed to see it happen? Which part of us and of our life together stumbles out of the tomb when Jesus calls ‘Come out!’?

Where in our world is people’s talent and zest for life buried because of the injustices with which it is riddled? What human potential is being buried in this neighbourhood? How is Jesus calling new life out of those situations?