What's the Point?

Luke 16:19-31     Daniel 12:1-4.    John 11:17-44

What’s the point?

In 1899, French Archeologist Carles Clermont-Ganneau published a report regarding, what he described as "Judaeo-Christian Sarcophagi", found in a tomb on the Mount of Offence, not far from Bethany. The Hebrew inscriptions present the names Martha, Eleazar (the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Lazarus), and Mary, some with the sign of the cross.  It is possible, although not certain, that these ossuaries contain, among others, the remains of the sisters Mary, and Martha, and their brother Lazarus. Dr Eleazar Lipa Sukenik, a scholar considered the greatest authority on Jewish ossuaries, believed this was a 1st Century Christian burial site and argued that the cross had become a sign for believers earlier than previously thought. Interesting, but not conclusive…

However, regardless of whether or not these ossuaries contain the remains of the famous family from Bethany, the fact is that despite the miracle of bodily resurrection described in our Gospel passage for today, all three of them died and all three of them were buried…or, in the case of Lazarus, the poor sod had to die all over again and be buried all over again and the mourners had to mourn all over again.

So, what was the point of this miracle? 

Death is not a trivial matter for those dying nor for those watching them die. Let’s face it. Death is difficult to deal with, whether it be the death of a favourite pet, the death of a friend, of a grandparent, of a spouse, or the worst of them all, the death of a child. Why then create a situation that will lead to a repeat performance for this already traumatised family?

And we may well ask, what is life other than a long (or short) prelude to death? 

No, the winter weather is not getting to me nor am I reading too many Russian plays.

Seriously, think about it. We are all going to die. There’s no escape plan other than if the Lord returns right now. 

So, what’s the point of life? 

It doesn’t matter how well-educated you are, how wealthy, how powerful, or how uneducated, poor, or weak, you are going to die. So, why not just die in the womb or, better still, not be conceived at all?

I’m not the first to ask such questions and I most certainly will not be the last. Job asked: “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?” (Job 3:11) Jeremiah echoed this sentiment: “Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?” (Jeremiah 20:18) Or what about the cheery writer of Ecclesiastes? “A good name is better than a good ointment, and the day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth.”

So, what’s the point? Why resurrect a man who had already ended this pointless exercise of life and make him go through it again? 

In my humble opinion, we move way too quickly through this passage, charging ahead to get to the “happy space”…dead man walking here…in this case, quite literally. “You see,” we say, “there was a reason for the delay!” And then we wax lyrical about persisting in prayer. 

But what about the times when there is no end to the delay…when there is no healing or resurrection? When there are no answers, only questions?

 And whether or not the delay ends, and whether or not the prayers are answered, what about the emotional struggles, doubts, fears, grief, anger, denial, bitter questions, hurt, tremendous pain, anguish, numbness, and shock? These are things we all go through and then there’s no rushing through to the happy place.

And then there’s another question we need to ask ourselves as we walk through this story, and that is the question: why are we, as followers of Jesus…as followers of the one who said he is the resurrection and the life…why are we so afraid of death? Some say we face the unknown alone and that that is what we fear, but are we alone in death? Is that what the Scriptures teach?

John tells us that by the time Jesus arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now, I had to help once with an autopsy of a man who had been dead for three days – not four – but it ranks in the top five most unpleasant things I have ever done in my life. You don’t get that smell out of your nostrils for days.

Now, typically in the 1st Century, the hands and feet of the deceased would be tied together with strips of cloth (as well as the chin to keep the mouth closed), and then the body would be wrapped up in a shroud with spices together with a separate square cloth for the head.

The cadaver would then be laid out on a shelf and left to decompose for one year after which the family would return to collect the bones and put them in an ossuary to be placed in one of the niches along the inner wall. Mourning would last for seven days (called shivah) during which the family was cared for by the community.  

How Martha knew that Jesus was coming and why Mary remained in the home is not known, but from what we know about Martha’s nature, she had to be active, so it is possible that she simply could not sit still like Mary, and she was, therefore, the more likely candidate of the two to be out and about. 

The conversation between Martha and Jesus is interesting. Was her opening line a simple statement of fact or a statement of reproach? “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Many mourners are often “angry” with God for allowing their loved one to die and this anger manifests itself in various ways. 

Be that as it may, she hastened to soften her remark with a statement that has puzzled scholars for years. “But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” 

If one compares this statement with her astonishment and horror in verse 39, “Lord, by this time there will be an odour (or in the KJV “by this time he stinketh!) for he has been dead for four days!” – if you compare these two statements, Martha could not have meant that she was expecting a bodily resurrection. 

More than likely, her understanding of the resurrection was based on various Old Testament passages such as the one we read in Daniel, that there would be a general resurrection of the righteous on the last day. This is what Jesus himself taught in John 6:39-40: “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

So, whatever her initial statement of faith meant, it certainly did not include what happened. Perhaps she believed that Jesus was about to usher in the last day right then and there and thereby bring about the general resurrection, which, in one sense (depending on what you think is meant by the term “the last day”), she may not have been too far off the mark. Matthew (Matthew 27:52-53) does allude to some form of general resurrection at the time of Jesus’ own resurrection, but that’s another topic for another sermon. 

Mary then came on the scene, repeating the same words as those of her sister, but with a greater degree of emotion. Now, the few verses that follow are very important. I think some followers of Jesus believe it is wrong to mourn or to grieve as, to them, it is a sign of unbelief. This is what some call “grief shaming” and it comes in many forms. 

“You do believe they’ve gone to a better place, don’t you?” 

“We should be rejoicing that it’s all over.” 

“They wouldn’t want you to grieve.” 

No. In the face of grief, the Word made flesh was silent. Instead, Jesus wept. Mary wept. The community wept. Paul instructs us to weep with those who weep. He says we mourn, not like those who have no hope, but we do mourn. No recrimination here. In fact, we should weep, because death was never meant to be. Death is the sign of everything that’s wrong with this world…it is a sign of the curse brought about by sin. 

For Jesus, this must have been especially painful because he is the exact opposite of death. He is life. And so, death is still a sign that all is not as it should be. Only once we cross that threshold do we encounter life as it was intended to be. 

This goes back to my initial opening statements. Why bring one who has already crossed over to real life back for a repeat performance? Why resurrect him? What’s the point?

Well, I believe that what Jesus was doing can be compared to the release of the captive in Plato’s Cave allegory. 

  Plato’s Cave allegory is a philosophical metaphor found in his work “The Republic.” It explores the concepts of reality and perception. In the allegory, prisoners are chained inside a dark cave, facing a wall where shadows of objects are projected by a fire behind them. The prisoners perceive these shadows as the only reality. But when one of the prisoners escapes and discovers the outside world, he realizes that the shadows are mere illusions.  In Plato’s mind, the allegory represented the journey from ignorance to enlightenment and the philosopher’s duty to enlighten others.

So, what has this to do with the resurrection of Lazarus? Well, Martha and Mary were no different from any other human being…we are all material, and we think in terms of the material. Anything beyond the material is an abstraction and hard to comprehend. That’s why the biblical authors often used figures of speech and images to explain what they otherwise could not explain. Dragons and beasts and fruit trees and fountains.

Very few of us have been beyond the veil of death and lived to tell the tale. So, how do you make an abstract comment about “life after death” material? 

Well, someone must leave the cave (in this case quite literally) and then come back…for all to see and hear and experience…

Just as an aside, I do think it strange that Lazarus did not write a book about his ordeal. “My trip to Sheol and back.” Or “What I saw in the Great Beyond.” Or “How I Survived Death.” Or “I went to Eternity and all I got was this Life back again.” Well, maybe it was because Someone else would write that book…

Nevertheless, I think that is why Jesus resurrected Lazarus. To make an abstract concrete and therefore understandable.

Now, before we move on to the actual resurrection, allow me to explain what I believe happened to Lazarus. According to various Old Testament texts, the dead all went to a collective place called Sheol or Hades or a resting place with the fathers. In a sense, one could call it a kind of waiting room.

This place was best described by Jesus in the “story” of Lazarus the beggar and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31. If you recall, Lazarus the beggar and the rich man both went to the same place after they had died, where they were awake and able to communicate. But while Lazarus was said to be in Abraham’s bosom, the rich man was in flames, the two distinct areas separated by an impassable gulf. 

 I do believe that this is where Jesus went at the time of his death, together with the two thieves, one on each side of the gulf. 

Now, according to Matthew 27:52-53, at the resurrection of Jesus, a number of the folks from the righteous side (called “saints” or holy ones) rose with him from the dead and were seen doing a short walking tour of Jerusalem. 

But the most important thing for us to note here is that this is the last reference to any collective place of the dead. From the resurrection on, according to several New Testament texts, death ushes followers of Jesus right into his presence. 

For instance, in 2 Corinthians 5:8 Paul wrote: “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.… We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” Absent from the body, present with the Lord.

In other words, at the ditching of this earthly body, we are immediately escorted into the presence of Jesus in heaven. No more collective place of the dead. No more waiting room. After all, we are already in him, and we have the Lord and giver of life living in us even now.

As to the raising of our discarded bodies at the end of time, that’s another sermon for another time…

But back to the story. Martha here revealed the limit of her grasp of what resurrection meant to her when Jesus told her to have the heavy stone covering removed from the mouth of the tomb. Unlike most 21st-century folks, she knew what the four-day-old corpse smelled like. But that was exactly the reason for the delay. Ultimately the “delay” was for the sake of God’s glory, but it also closed the door to any speculation about Lazarus just being in a coma or a deep sleep or that everyone had mistakenly thought he was dead. No way. No sleeping human smelled like that! 

At this point, Jesus revealed that he had been conversing with the Father for quite a while already…no doubt ever since he first received news concerning Lazarus’ illness…and that his vocal prayer at the tomb was purely for the benefit of those around him at the time. The point was for the people to know and believe that Jesus was the resurrection and the life. They’d already seen him or at least heard about him resurrecting people who had just died, but this was on a whole different level. No one, not even the prophets of old had ever raised a rotting corpse.

The rest is, as they say, history. Lazarus was raised and what happened afterwards is the subject of next week’s sermon. 

But, as David Ford says in his theological commentary on John, “The thrust of this chapter’s response to (the problem with belief in a loving God who yet lets people die) is to face the harsh facts of illness, death, and decomposition, and do justice to the realities of loss, grief, and anger while trusting that they do not have the last word. The relationship with the living Jesus in love and trust is more fundamental and embracing. Living in that trust and love can begin now, and the relationship with Jesus is not destroyed by physical death. Jesus himself does not avoid grief, danger, suffering, and death, but offers a life that has come through them and sustains others through them.” 

The challenge for us who still live in a material world and think in material terms is to get beyond an abstract faith in Jesus and embrace him for who he is…the one who created us and who sustains us…the one who went through the portals of death as one of us so that he might annul the penalty and the curse once for all who believe in him. Jesus is not one story among many…he is the story. He is not an ideology or a philosophy…he is a person who can be and must be known.

So, my prayer for us today is for us to emerge from the cave, as it were, and to see Jesus for who he really is…the resurrection and the life. To see him crowned with glory and honour, seated at the right hand of God the Father. To leave behind the shadowy abstractions and to engage with the spiritual reality of life in him. 

Yes, we will die…and it will not be easy for us or those around us as we go. But besides his clear promise to be with us always…we have the witness of countless believers in Jesus who have shared glimpses of what they have seen as they passed over the threshold into eternity…as that barrier that hinders us from seeing the reality that lies beyond death faded and allowed them to hear and see and experience that reality before passing into it, sharing their reactions with us in smiles and happy mumbles…so we know that Jesus is with us, even through the darkest valley of death.

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2024