John 11:1-45
April 10, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
This is one of the strangest stories in the Gospels—Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. What is this story really about?
An urgent message is sent to Jesus, “Lazarus, whom you love, is ill.” Two desperate, frightened sisters—Mary and Martha—send the message to Jesus, expecting that Jesus will rush back to Bethany to heal his sick friend.
Surprisingly, Jesus does not rush back to the bedside of Lazarus in Bethany. In fact, John says that Jesus lingered where he was for two more days. What was he doing? John doesn’t say. John doesn’t say that Jesus was in the middle of a major theological conference and couldn’t leave. John doesn’t say that he was healing dozens of sick people who were sicker than Lazarus. John just says that Jesus stayed where he was for two more days.
By the time Jesus makes his way to Bethany three days later, it was all over. Martha comes out to tell Jesus the bad news—Lazarus is dead. If only Jesus had come more quickly. Jesus goes out to the cemetery and, though Lazarus has been entombed three days, Jesus speaks and raises Lazarus from the dead. “Unbind him and let him go!” Jesus says.
While it’s wonderful that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the question remains in my mind—why did Jesus stay where he was for two whole days before rousing himself up to leave for Bethany at the request of Mary and Martha? The two sisters must have prayed for Jesus to come until it was too late—Lazarus died and was buried.
Why We Pray
In our Sunday services, we have a time for prayer requests. I usually read out a list of all the people from our congregation who has been hospitalized or sick in the previous week. We invite other prayer concerns that we are not aware of by handing the person a mike to inform the whole congregation. Some of these people became ill over the weekend. Then prayers are offered for those who are sick.
This is what has become of Christian prayer in most of our churches—prayers offered for sick people in the congregation.
Now I am all in favor of praying for the sick. And, as an aging person myself with probable health problems coming, I am all in favor for you praying for my problems and me.
But don’t you think it is rather remarkable that Jesus so rarely prays for sick people? Look at the Lord’s Prayer. And there you will find Jesus praying for forgiveness, for daily bread, for the coming kingdom, but he doesn’t mention sickness.
Nor does Jesus mention death. I would say that death, or at least the fear of death, tends to be one of our most persistent modern infatuations. There are various therapies and cosmetics that promise immortality, or at least the closest thing we can get to immortality. We don’t want to face the reality of death.
This is the reason why development offices of universities are successful in raising money for endowed lectureships, endowed chairs, and endowed buildings. People want this sense of immortality. Have you noticed in our annual reports, the long list of memorial gifts given in the name of our loved ones? Every year they are immortalized. This is one of the reasons why we have a Gifts Planning program at our church as well. At the Green Lake Conference Center in Wisconsin, there’s a “Don Ng Meeting Room.” As long as they have this building in Wisconsin, I am immortalized!
People believe that by endowing this chair, by eating this particular diet, by following this exercise regimen, they can be immortal, or at least close to it. They may not be able to completely give death the slip, but they can certainly avoid death for a long time. We pray all the time to avoid death.
God’s Glory
When Jesus received the urgent plea of the sisters, Jesus said to them, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of Man may be glorified through it” (v. 4). Jesus lingered a couple of more days where he was. Jesus refuses to stop everything, to drop everything, and run to the bedside of Lazarus just because of a little thing like death.
This story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus occurs when Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus was on his way to his own death. In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ death is spoken of as his “hour of glory.” In Jesus’ strange, upside-down way of looking at things, death and glory are linked. Jesus told Mary and Martha that this illness of Lazarus and in fact his whole earthly life and ministry leading him to the cross is for God’s glory.
Jesus refuses to be sidetracked by death, by sickness, by those matters that so totally consume us. He does not drop what he is doing and rush right over to Bethany, just on the basis of a little thing like mortal illness. Maybe this is because Jesus wisely knows that all of us are suffering from mortal illness.
This is what St. Augustine said about death. It is as if when a physician leans over a sick man’s bed, shakes his head and says, “I don’t think he will get over this. I don’t think he will come out of this alive.” So on the very first day of our lives somebody could look over into our crib and shake his head and say, “I don’t think he is going to get over this. I don’t think she is going to come out of this alive.”
Jesus is wise to know that there are some things worse than dying. So Jesus goes out to the cemetery and stands before the tomb and says, “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus, bound up in the grave clothes, comes out.
When Jesus says, “Lazarus, come out!” he is also saying, “Lazarus, come with me.” He is inviting Lazarus to come with him down the path that leads to death. Lazarus, even though Jesus raised him from the dead after this illness, will die again as a disciple.
Jesus is on his way up to Jerusalem where he will eventually die and be wrapped in grave clothes himself. He invites Lazarus to come with him toward the death he is avoiding, lay his life into the hands of the living and loving God and let God give him the life that he cannot earn for himself.
Jesus invites Lazarus to walk with him and in walking with him on the way to the cross, he will have eternal life, life abundantly; but first, he has to get out of the cemetery. Later this afternoon, you’ll have a blessed opportunity to hear from five persons who have decided to come out of the tombs of earthly life and to follow Jesus toward eternal life filled with promise and abundance. They no longer will worry about sickness and mortal illness. By accepting Jesus’ hand, they know that their lives will glorify God through their words and deeds.
All about Life
Sickness is a great challenge in life. And death is one of the most important challenges and one of the eventualities that each of us must face. But perhaps, by lingering where he was for three days and not rushing right over to the bedside of his friend Lazarus in Bethany, Jesus was trying to teach us that there are some things that are much more important in the reign of God than our sickness, or our dying.
What’s more important is the ministry, the service, whatever Jesus was doing that kept him from rushing over to Bethany to the bedside of Lazarus. What is your ministry or service that you believe God is calling you to do? If sickness and dying are not the most important things about following Jesus, what is important for you?
Every Friday, you have an opportunity to come out of your tombs of watching TV or entrapped in your busy schedules to teach English and citizenship to newcomers. This would give God glory!
Every time we come to church on Sundays and we greet the merchants opening up their stores for business or give a smile to a visiting tourist or recognize a street person as a child of God, we have gotten out of the tombs of our cars to give God glory.
When you support the missions that we have like the House of Love, the New Life Center in Thailand, the Seafarers Ministry in Oakland, Redwood Glen where children, youth and adults come to know Jesus in God’s creation, the Night Ministry in San Francisco and many other life-saving ministries, you give God glory!
When you get up in the morning and live every day with joy in your heart and a renewed hope that God will work through you to bring good news to a confused, warring and troubled world, you have emerged out of the tomb of despair and you are peeling off the bandages that have kept you from giving God glory.
I know it is so easy for us to fall into this infatuation of growing old and complaining about our bones hurting and that we can’t do as much as we used to and we are obsessed with pain and suffering that death and dying preoccupy our life. But if we pray for Jesus to come to heal us or to raise us from our death, he may wait 2 to 3 days.
A pastor tells about a woman who suffered from a debilitating illness for many months. She languished in the hospital as doctors tried first one therapy and then another, but still she was in pain and still she was confined to her bed.
Every visit to her in the hospital, the pastor prayed with her, and they prayed for healing. But the healing did not come. The pastor prayed, on a number of occasions as he left her room, “Lord, please answer our prayers. Please come into her life and restore her to health so that she can be on her way.”
Now one afternoon, as the pastor sat by her bedside in the hospital, she said to him, “Now, pastor, I want you to think with me about what it is that God has for me now.”
“How do you mean, what God has in store for you now?” he muttered.
“Well, it looks like I am not going to be healed of this illness. But still, here I am. I am in a considerably weakened situation, but here I am. I can still talk. I can still think and care about people. So now I am wondering what God wants me to do now, in this situation. I am sure that, even if I am not healed of this illness, Jesus still expects me to be a disciple.”
I think this person knows what her life is all about. It’s about life—living as a faithful disciple of Jesus to glorify God. While she may very well be entombed on her hospital bed, she is ready to come with Jesus toward the cross as his disciple.
There is no way that we can avoid illness. As human beings, from time to time, we get sick, sometimes very seriously sick.
There is no way for us to find some path that is a detour around death. We are human, and all human beings will die. But there is a way to do it. We can walk with Jesus on the way of the cross. We can engage ourselves in those ministries that Jesus gives us in the time that we have.
And if Lazarus’ death was for “God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it,” I pray that in our sicknesses and deaths that our lives will also give God glory.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, while we worry about sickness and our mortality, comfort our anxieties and remind us once again of the promise of eternal life in our faith in Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Alleviate our pain and suffering in order for us to focus our attention on your will. Settle our fears about the mystery of death and dying and redirect our energies and strength to participate in renewing the world and restoring peace and reconciliation among your people. Let us not be troubled but raise us from the lifeless existence of keeping time to come and follow you to active and faithful discipleship. In the name of Jesus who raised Lazarus to life so that he may follow Jesus to Jerusalem, we pray. Amen.