The Gospel According to John – 2017.04.02
Raising the Dead
I am
the resurrection and the life
There
was a man named Lazarus who lived in the village of Bethany with the two
sisters, Mary and Martha, and he was ill. It was the same Mary, the sister of
the sick man Lazarus, who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet
with her hair. The sisters sent this message to Jesus, ‘Lord, the man you love
is ill.’ On receiving the message, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will end not in death
but in God’s glory, and through it the Son of God will be glorified.’
Jesus
loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, yet when he heard that Lazarus was ill
he stayed where he was for two more days before saying to the disciples, ‘Let
us go to Judaea.’ The disciples said, ‘Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews
wanted to stone you; are you going back again?’ Jesus replied:
‘Are
there not twelve hours in the day?
A man can walk in the daytime without
stumbling because he has the light of this world to see by; but if he walks at
night he stumbles, because there is no light to guide him.’
He
said that and then added, ‘Our friend Lazarus is resting, I am going to wake
him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he is able to rest he is sure to get
better.’ The phrase Jesus used referred to the death of Lazarus, but they
thought that by ‘rest’ he meant ‘sleep’, so Jesus put it plainly, ‘Lazarus is
dead; and for your sake I am glad I was not there because now you will believe.
But let us go to him.’ Then Thomas – known as the Twin – said to the
other disciples, ‘Let us go too, and die with him.’
On
arriving, Jesus found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days already.
Bethany is only about two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to
Martha and Mary to sympathise with them over their brother. When Martha heard
that Jesus had come she went to meet him. Mary remained sitting in the house.
Martha said to Jesus, ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died,
but I know that, even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’ ‘Your
brother’ said Jesus to her ‘will rise again.’ Martha said, ‘I know he will rise
again at the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said:
‘I
am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies
he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you
believe this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she said ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the
Son of God, the one who was to come into this world.’
When
she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in a low voice,
‘The Master is here and wants to see you.’ Hearing this, Mary got up quickly
and went to him. Jesus had not yet come into the village; he was still at the
place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were in the house
sympathising with Mary saw her get up so quickly and go out, they followed her,
thinking that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
Mary
went to Jesus, and as soon as she saw him she threw herself at his feet,
saying, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ At the
sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who followed her, Jesus said in great
distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, ‘Where have you put
him?’ They said, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept; and the Jews said, ‘See how
much he loved him!’ But there were some who remarked, ‘He opened the eyes of
the blind man, could he not have prevented this man’s death?’ Still sighing,
Jesus reached the tomb: it was a cave with a stone to close the opening. Jesus
said, ‘Take the stone away.’ Martha said to him, ‘Lord, by now he will smell;
this is the fourth day.’ Jesus replied, ‘Have I not told you that if you
believe you will see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus
lifted up his eyes and said:
‘Father,
I thank you for hearing my prayer. I knew indeed that you always hear me, but I
speak for the sake of all these who stand round me, so that they may believe it
was you who sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus,
here! Come out!’ The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with bands of
stuff and a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, let him go
free.’
Many of the Jews who had come
to visit Mary and had seen what he did believed in him.
Propaganda
God is not served by a false narrative.
We may use our reason to find in this
gospel a different meaning than the meaning which the narrative plainly
describes.
That of Jesus calling a corpse from the
tomb.
We may do this and we should do this, we
may do this and we should do this because the narrative is plainly false.
In John this narrative has become convoluted
by politics, by the ongoing disputes John’s community was having with the local
population of Jewish people, who they were doing everything in their power to
distinguish themselves from.
In John the narrative goes to the issue of
who people believe Jesus was, the Christ the Son of God, rather than who he
actually was and what he actually taught.
In John it is more important to believe
the church’s dogma, than to live according to Jesus’s teachings.
In the end, only our conduct matters, not
what believe about Jesus, or his power to raise the dead.
5th Sunday of Lent
