lazarus and job (Lent 5 a)

Given by the Rev. Lee Barford, Mar. 9, 2008

John 11:1-45

The standard, the built-in, interpretation of the story of the raising of Lazarus is this: Jesus shows the totality of his relationship with God the Father---indeed, Jesus' Godhood---by bringing back Lazarus from the dead. And not recently dead, either. Four days dead. Dead long enough that “there is a stench.” Wow. A really good trick. And it gets many of those in the crowd who sees it to believe in him.

But when we look at the details of the Lazarus story, things get a bit more complicated. Listen again to what Jesus does when he hears of Lazarus' illness: “when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death;” But, it did for Lazarus. The text continues: “Though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus ... he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” Then Jesus knows from a distance, from outside of Judea, the southern half of Israel, when Lazarus dies. So if Jesus loved them so much, why didn't he go to Bethany and save Lazarus? Was Jesus letting Lazarus, Mary, and Martha suffer just so that he could put on a good show when he wakened his friend from death? These questions remind me of the Old Testament book of Job.

Job is a righteous man. He is healthy and rich, with a big family. God decides to test Job. God kills Job's family, destroys all his property. God gives Job a horrible skin disease. The one thing God doesn't do to Job is kill him. Some of Job's friends come and discuss, at some length, the cause and the justice of Job's suffering. Eventually, God Himself comes in the form of a whirlwind. God speaks. He tells Job and his friends that all their speculation is wrong. God says, it's my universe, I made it all, I run it all. You couldn't even explain to me how to create a single creature in it. So you have no right to complain about it. You have no right to complain about your suffering.

There are some parallels to the Lazarus story: Jesus decides not to save Lazarus. Maybe Jesus is testing Mary and Martha, the way God tests Job. God's test of Job involves killing Job's large family. Lazarus dies, too. And, as far as we can tell, Lazarus is his sister's provider, and women in that society couldn't inherit property. So maybe Mary and Martha were about to become impoverished.

In Job, God makes his point about his omnipotence from the whirlwind: pretty physically impressive, showing some of God's glory, impossible to argue with or dispute. Jesus says that he raises Lazarus, “for God's glory,” “for the sake of the crowd standing here,” “that they may believe.” In Job, God, after making his point, allows Job to start a new family and plant new farms. Job ends up with a larger family and more wealth than he had before. That's good for Job, but I guess not so good for his first family. Similarly, Jesus restores Lazarus to his sisters. But there is one huge difference between these two stories. In Job, God speaks. He tells off Job and his friends. God tells them: God is what God wants to be. God does what God does. But Jesus feels. Jesus weeps. Jesus acts from compassion.

Here is the good news: The omnipotent Creator God of Job and Jesus the friend who weeps are one and the same God. One of the things that God chose to do with His omnipotence is to become one of us. The Book of Job teaches that we do not have standing to question the acts and the justice of the Creator. But the Gospel According to John teaches that that Creator became flesh, lived among us, as one of us, and has felt the suffering we have. The pain of grief. The pangs of mortality. And he's probably having those pangs at this point: In the next paragraph after we stopped reading he's mentions his upcoming burial to his followers. Sometimes you might hear someone say the dry-sounding sentence: Jesus is fully human and fully divine. But the importance of this is emotional: God felt deeply moved at his friend's graveside. God wept. From Bethany Jesus took these experiences, his experiences as fully a human, the pleasant and the painful, straight to Jerusalem, a few miles away. Then he took them to the cross and the grave. The road that Jesus takes from Lazarus' grave is the road to his death, and the road to his resurrection and the hope of resurrection for us and for the whole world.

In the name of Christ our Friend and our Savior, Amen.

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