John 11: 38-53
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death.
Sermon
During her tenure as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Lesley Stahl on the television show 60 Minutes. In the interview, Stahl mentioned the report that a half million children had died in Iraq due to U.S. sanctions. She noted that was more children than had died in Hiroshima. She then asked Albright whether the price was “worth it.” To which, Albright calmly responded, “This is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.” While the deaths that resulted from the sanctions were rarely discussed in the U.S. mainstream media outside of this instance, they were noted in other parts of the world. In his recruitment video for al-Queda, bin Laden showed “pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine.”
Looking back to our scripture this morning, I wonder what Caiaphas would have said if he had been interviewed by 60 Minutes after the crucifixion. Leslie Stahl might have said, “Caiaphas, people have compared Jesus to Moses and Elijah. Some even say he was the Messiah. Do you think the price was worth it?” To which, Caiaphas might have responded, “Ah, you know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed. Of course, the price was worth it.” At the time, Caiaphas’ argument might have been fairly persuasive. Why not kill one man to save a whole nation? But, as with any politician who advocates for violence, it is usually wise to ask whether there might be any ulterior motives or interests. Not too many politicians openly confess to wanting to kill someone for selfish or politically calculated reasons. Even Hitler claimed he was for peace.
Caiaphas likely acted as he did out of self-interest and the requirements of his job. You see Caiaphas benefited from the Roman occupation. His holding the office of high priest depended upon the approval of the Roman governor and that approval depended upon his keeping the rabble in line. Caiaphas would have had little choice as to what to do when he saw that Jesus was a threat to both his boss and to himself.
Recently, I was listening to an episode of the radio show “This American Life” in which an “executioner” named Chris was interviewed. He wasn’t an “executioner” who killed people, but he—like others in his profession—had been given that label as a result of an unpleasant task he was required to perform for his company. Chris was a human resource manager, and his job was to fire hundreds of workers at a time in a financial services firm that was downsizing during the economic slump that followed 9-11. Chris fired over 1,500 people before he himself was fired. He flew around the country carrying out his orders. Many of the people he fired had, in his own words, “grown up” in a firm that had become “their life as well as their job.” When he arrived in a unit, he could overhear people ask, “Is this the executioner?” Not surprisingly, Chris regarded his job as “very, very depressing.” Chris, of course, did not like to use the word “fire” to describe what he did. He liked to describe it as a “parting of the way” or an “exiting of the unit.” We don’t know if Caiaphas found his job depressing, but like the clinical language of Chris he cleverly dressed up the act of murder in the language of prophesy. Like the inevitability of rain on a cloudy day, Caiaphas foresaw that Jesus must die. It was simply something that had to be done. The nation requires it. God ordains it. We must do it. Through a careful choice of words, gone was any sense of moral culpability.
While I am of the opinion that individuals should be held accountable for their own actions, I do believe that often institutions essentially lead people to act immorally. Caiaphas, like Chris, had a job where his institutional role required him to do grievous things. Since the massive expansion of the middle class roughly a century ago, scores upon scores of middle class managers and professionals have found themselves in positions where they have had to do grievous things against those below them at the behest of those above them. As it seems that we find ourselves at the beginning of another recession, the next few years could quite likely find many more middle class people acting against their own initial desires in firing people, perhaps, before they too get fired.
A number of details in our reading for today suggest that in many ways it arguably reflects more of what was going on in the life of the community in which it was written than the historical life of Jesus. For example, our scripture says that the Pharisees and Chief Priests collaborated on the Council, but the two would have been opposing groups, and it was not until after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 that the Pharisees became powerful. Once we free ourselves from wondering about whether the story of Lazarus was historically true, we are freed to consider it in other ways that can be enriching and spiritually meaningful. We can consider it as a story designed to give hope to a community that, similar to Jesus, was treated like a scapegoat and given a collective death sentence. About the Roman emperor at the time, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote in the 1st Century, “Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated by the people for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians.” About these Christians, he went on to say:
They were put to death amid every kind of mockery. Dressed in the skins of wild beasts, they were torn to pieces by dogs, or were crucified, or burned to death: when night came, they served as human torches to provide lights. Nero threw open his gardens for this entertainment…These Christians were guilty, and well deserved their fate.
So what was the message of Jesus for those with “their backs against the wall,” as Howard Thurman might say. No platitudes or clichés about endurance would seem to work in this instance. They needed to hear something that would give them a transcendent, undefeatable hope. They needed to hear something that could help them bear the bleakest of days.
The story of Lazarus went right to the heart of the matter: the inner battle between belief and disbelief. This was the battle that lay beneath all the other battles: the battle between despair and hope, the battle between fear and courage. Jesus had told Martha to believe, but the death of Lazarus had counteracted anything Jesus had previously said about belief. In life, we can experience all sorts of belief-killing events. When I served a hospital chaplaincy program in California, I witnessed lots of courage and strength in patients, but occasionally I also met people whose belief had been killed by the events of life. I wish I could report to you that I also witnessed all sorts of physical resurrection miracles that made people believe again, but I didn’t. I wish I could tell you that I believe Lazarus was literally brought back to life after being dead four days, but I can’t.
But, what I can say is that the more I think about the story of Lazarus the more I am inclined to think that the story is not really about belief in the sense of believing that God will miraculously help us conquer death through physical resurrections. Even the Gospel of John suggests that the story of Lazarus isn’t about this. In the very next chapter of John, we learn that after Lazarus was brought back to life the chief priests plotted to kill him because so many people had become followers as a result of what had happened. What a great thing to come back to life for! We don’t know whether Lazarus was then killed, but presumably, like any human, he did eventually die.
Still, I think there is something profound and meaningful in the story of Lazarus. The life, death, and rebirth of Lazarus mirror exactly what happened to the community of John. With all of Judaism, they had been alive and well until the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, but then they experienced that devastating belief-killing event. Nevertheless, like Lazarus, they arose from the tomb. The stone was rolled away. They were given a second chance. Before they had lived in disbelief and despair, but now they lived life in belief and transcendent hope. Jesus was the Messiah, and he was with them.
Another way of thinking about this occurred to me as I was reading the book Days of War, Nights of Love. Pretend you are looking at a stopwatch. Imagine that you are to die in say one week, which could be the case for any of us. You watch the seconds pass, and it begins to sink in: You only have one week to live. You had better start planning to do everything that you want to do in that one week. Now, repeat this exercise, but this time imagine that you have been told that you have one month to live which again could be the case for any one of us. After doing that, repeat the exercise one last time, and imagine that you have one year to live, which could be the case. Now compare how you would plan to live your life if you were given only one week, one month, or one year with how you have lived your life the past week, the past month, and the past year. Is there a difference in how you have lived and how you would like to live? If any of us could die at any moment, should a difference even exist between the two, if we truly want to live life to the fullest? Maybe we should strive to live each day, each week, each month, as if it were our last because it might be.
I am not sure if Lazarus had a sundial, but if he did, I wonder if he stared at it and thought, “Whew, I’ve been living my whole life with the time just passing away. Now that I have been given a second chance I want to live life as a true believer. I want to live with that sense of purpose that comes from devoting oneself to the cause of Jesus and the Kingdom of God.” How much more appreciative and inspired Lazarus must have been! How uplifting it must have been to have a second chance, even if he did have a bunch of angry priests coming after him! I believe the question for each of us today is whether one is a pre-tomb Lazarus or a post-tomb Lazarus. Some of us might be a post-tomb Lazarus if we are like the rabbit Laz, living life enthusiastically, participating in any number of ministries or local activities like WHO and the upcoming peace march. Still, some of us might be a pre-tomb Lazarus if we feel like we have not really been living life to the fullest with a sense of transcendent hope and purpose, if we feel like our lives have become overcome with worry about getting one mundane thing done after the next because that’s what our job demands or that’s what our school requires. Some of us might be a pre-tomb Lazarus if we’ve been letting minutes just slip by while we remain a passive spectator of life itself. If you are a pre-tomb Lazarus, then stop, listen, listen to Jesus, listen as Jesus cries, “Come out! Come out! Believe! Live as you have never lived before.” Amen.
Post-Sermon Note: The reference to the rabbit Laz comes from the following children’s sermon:
Once upon a time, there was a great big farm full of wonderful fruits and vegetables. There were huge trees loaded with red apples. There were bushes with giant, juicy berries. There was crisp, green lettuce and humongous orange carrots. On the farm, lived a brother and his two sisters. The two sisters had similar names so to make it easy everyone called them Little M and Big M. Their brother was called Laz. Life was on the farm was like paradise until one day they got invaded by a bunch of huge monster robots who zoomed all over the place and clobbered anyone who got in their way. They were kind of like transformers, and they were awful. They destroyed everything.
One day when Laz was out picking carrots, one of the big robots came along and clobbered him as if it were nothing. Laz just laid there. Little M and Big M were afraid. They didn’t know what to do so they called up their friend J-Diggity. They believed J-Diggity could take care of anything, but unfortunately J-Diggity lived a long ways away, and he couldn’t come as soon as they hoped. By the time he came, they thought it was too late for him to do anything for Laz, but J-Diggity walked over to Laz and spoke to him saying, “Laz, Laz, Get up!” and almost like magic Laz slowly but surely got up. As soon as he realized where he was, he was all excited that he was alive and that he had a chance to live again. From that day on, he lived like he never lived before. He was so glad to be alive that he began to do whatever he could to help others to live and have happy lives. He shared his fruits and vegetables with them. He helped protect others from the evil robot monsters. He was inspired to live, and he owed it all to his friend J-Diggity.
As Christians, we often get inspired to live life differently when we realize what a great friend we have in Jesus and how Jesus set an example for us to help other people. Each of you can get excited and live life like Laz. By the way, did you know that Laz and his friends once lived around here? Vancouver used to be filled with farms, but Laz and his friends weren’t humans. Did you think they were humans? Laz and his friends were actually rabbits, and what they thought were big robot monsters were really just humans driving around in cars. So the next time, you see a rabbit, wave at it because who knows, J-Diggity might still be alive.