Death. Not a topic that many want to discuss. Not a subject high on anyone’s list of discussion topics. And yet, what is the symbol of the Christian church? What is the cross, if it is not a symbol of torture and death?
But before I convey the idea to you that death is what we are supposed to worship, let me set you straight. We worship life. We worship the renewal of life. We worship the very essence of life, for it is from God that all life springs forth.
Mary and Martha are sisters who have found a great friend in Jesus. They have come to realize in their relationship with him that he is capable of doing many things in the name of God. He can heal the sick; he can make the blind to see; he can feed multitudes with a minimum of food. So, when their brother Lazarus falls ill, they look to Jesus to come to them and make him well.
But when Jesus hears of Lazarus’ illness, he does not immediately set out to go to him and his sisters. Instead, Jesus waits; he remains where he is and continues on with what he had been doing at the time the messenger arrived with the news about Lazarus. For two days Jesus does nothing. Then finally, he sets off for the village of Bethany where Mary and Martha and Lazarus live.
You recall that upon learning of Lazarus’ illness, Jesus had initially remarked: “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.” Now, as he prepares to travel with his disciples he tells them: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” When they fail to understand what he was telling them, he speaks plainly to them: “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
When Jesus finally arrived, he is told that Lazarus has been dead for four days. This four-day period underscores the finality of death. It was of popular belief among the Jews a the time of Jesus that the soul hovered around the body in the grave for three days after death, hoping to reenter the body. But after the third day, when the soul would see “that the color of its face has changed,” the soul then left the body for good.
For Jesus, this is significant. No one would doubt that Lazarus was really dead, and not just in that “dying” state in which the soul could reenter his body, restoring life. For these people who were acquainted with Lazarus, death for Lazarus was final. There was possibility that his soul could reenter his body after this long a period of time.
But not so Martha, who, when she learned that Jesus was approaching the city, ran out to meet him. There she confronted him, complaining that had Jesus come sooner, he could have prevented Lazarus’ death. And yet, she continued, that even now, Jesus had the power to restore life to Lazarus. God would grant to Jesus whatever he asked. Such was the faith Martha had learned she could place in Jesus.
Martha returned to her home after speaking with Jesus to summon Mary for him. Mary too, when she arrived where Jesus was waiting, voiced her distress that Jesus had not come when first summoned. It is then that Jesus asked as to where Lazarus was buried. After he was shown, he commanded that the stone be rolled away. Martha protested because of the length of time Lazarus had been dead. Again, the finality of the four days in the grave meant the certainty of his death.
“Believe,” is the word spoken in reply to Martha, “Believe, and see the glory of God.” And they rolled away the stone from the mouth of the grave.
Jesus stood there, first looking heavenward, and then praying. At the conclusion of his prayer, he called our in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” And all who were present that day were amazed to witness a dead man coming out of the grave, still bound by his grave cloths.”
The final verse to this passage says it all. “Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
Ironically, what these Jews witnessed that very day was a vision of what Jesus would soon accomplish. Only when Jesus emerged from the grave, he would not still be bound by the grave clothes as was Lazarus; he would be resurrected free of all encumbrances.
And that is what this story means to me. This is not a foretelling of death, it is the promise of life that comes forth out of death.
As a child I was always fascinated with the garden that my father use to plant every Spring. He would take what appeared to me to be old, dried-out dead seeds and plant them in the garden. He would then water the garden every day, unless it rained that day. And as I think back now, it always seemed something quite unusual would begin to happen by about the third or four day. In the place where each of the little mounds of earth had marked where a seed had been “buried”, a new growth would start to appear. And I would witness a new living plant springing forth, having been “buried” inside that seed which, until it was planted in the soil, could not release that plant.
In each of us is “buried” a seed. That seed is the essence of the Spirit of God. It has the potential to produce in us a life that is far beyond the imagination of any individual. Even those close to God have but a faint glimpse of the full potential of that life. But one thing holds back the final germination of that seed. Just as those apparent dried-up old dead seeds that my dad planted each year, needed proper “ground” in which to germinate, so that seed, that essence of God, needs to have good “ground” in which to germinate. But we humans have an inherent deficit: we have a tendency to have sin in us. And sin is not productive ground; sin is soil devoid of the essentials of life. A person caught up in sin is like a seed sealed away in a glass jar: neither has contact with good ground, good soil, that will allow it to do its’ thing.
That was not how God had created us. But once sin got in, good “soil” became scarce. And only the death of sin would allow the reappearance of Soil in which that seed, the essence of God could once more germinate.
God has attempted, and continues to attempt to rid His creation of sin. When Jesus was made the chosen one, his sinless nature enable God to do through him for all of us what we could not do for ourselves. Jesus became the “seed” of life that had to be buried, literally buried, so that sin would die and allow life to live. Jesus died that sin would be destroyed, and life would then spring forth. I’m not speaking about human life, the physical existence. I speak of the spiritual
life, that part of us that unites us with God, and with each other, in a relationship that goes way beyond the concept of human relationships.
That potential is within each one of us – you, me, and everyone around us. But often what we see, however, is not the fruits of that potential; rather we see the consequences of the hold which sin retains on us. What we see at such times are souls, struggling to break free, but not yet ready to accept the very thing, the only thing, that can set us free. But, because Jesus died, we still have life. Because God put sin in the grave, and allowed Jesus to bloom in the hearts of humankind,
we have the assurance of good soil in which our seed, the essence of God, can grow. We need, like Martha and Mary, only to believe. And then we shall see and know the miracle that out of death comes life.
Amen.