Resurrection is Liberation
John 11:17-44
Have you ever seen a person who's been dead for four days come back to life? You all have? Great, then I don’t have to explain how that’s possible. Next question. Have you ever personally raised someone from the dead? Everyone has? Ok, good, that’s helpful.
I’m going to read you a story, in three parts: the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. As I do, I invite you to suspend your disbelief about whether people actually rise from the dead, and to hold loosely your theology about Jesus’ own resurrection, or what you assume is “standard Christian belief” about the resurrection, and try to just listen to this story. Hold the supernatural elements loosely and attend to the natural–to human nature. Listen for the truth, not the factuality, of the story. Consider not the unique power Jesus has but a more universal power he may be tapping into, here.
Part 1: If You Had Been Here.
John 11:17-27 (NRSV): 17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
I mentioned power, and I do think this story is partly about power. Does Jesus have Divine power? “Divine power” can mean a lot of things so that’s an easy “yes” from me. John, the only gospel writer who includes this story, is probably trying to prove Jesus' Divinity and Messiahship to us. But what’s more captivating to me than this theological point is the relatable journey of a person discovering their power. A person learning not just whether others have faith in him, but whether he has faith in himself and in his own, personal connection to the Divine. Do you have Divine power? What does that even mean? I’ll come back to that question.
“If you had been there.” It’s theologically tempting to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt, and assume his timing is deliberate. But he’s not Gandalf: ”a wizard arrives precisely when he means to!” I actually don’t think Jesus has things under control, here. Let’s not dismiss Martha as an upset, irrational woman who should be more trusting of men with authority, like Jesus, lest we slip into misogyny. I choose to trust Martha, and Mary, who voices the same frustration in the next section. I think that they’re right: Jesus could have done something. And didn’t. Or, hasn’t, yet.
“Even now, God will give you what you ask; even now, you can do it.” We rightly look to Jesus as a model, but let’s not overlook Martha, who vividly demonstrates what so many needle-movers and game-changers have done, when they put appropriate pressure on those with the power to do something. Whether or not Martha can raise the dead, she does display her power to mobilize those who can.
Maybe Martha thinks Jesus can still help others in dire health, but that he can’t help her brother, at this point. And I wouldn’t blame her. Maybe Jesus could have stopped a man from dying, but a man who's been dead four days is certainly too far gone, right? Surely he’ll rise at the end of time, believes Martha, but today? Her confidence in Jesus doesn’t go that far. But Jesus says “I can do resurrection, I am the resurrection.”
“I am the resurrection”...could be a reference to the belief in a universal resurrection at the end of time, when all are raised to new life on a recreated earth. The hope, undergirding this belief, as I understand it, is in a future where the pain and suffering and cruelty that are present in this world, are gone. Whether you can accept this first century Jewish and early Christian understanding of the end of time, Jesus could basically be saying: what I’m doing here is a foretaste of things to come. Love is our final destination, and I am that Love, in a sense. Those who believe in Love so much that they become it–even though they die, will live, like really live.” More than any jaw-dropping power Jesus has, it is his Love that drives him to restore his friend to life.
Martha believes in the resurrection on the last day. Martha might be saying, reassuring herself in hope, “yes, of course, resurrection, reunion with my brother…some day.” Jesus might be saying “no, Martha, resurrection now! Reunion, this day.”
Part 2: I’m Sad but Also Angry.
John 11:28-37 (NRSV): 28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Jesus displays what may be, according to some contemporary Christian influencers, one of the greatest sins: empathy. When religion depends so much on order and control, empathy can be disruptive, especially when you begin to empathize with the people you are supposed to oppose, ignore, or exclude. Empathy tends to spark action, and Jesus’ empathy seems to be the spark that mobilizes him to act. Jesus lets himself feel his own feelings, but also the feelings of others–of Mary, Martha, and others gathered. This empathy not only produces tears of grief in him, it also makes him really mad.
Jesus is mad. I wasn’t certain of this, at first, but every biblical commentator I found confirms this. Why is he mad? I’m not clear on that, but I can guess, based on what can make me angry, like: when I’m disappointed with myself, especially if I feel I’ve let someone down; and when life feels absurdly unfair, like when bad things happen to good people. I think it’s possible that Jesus is feeling these feelings, or something close to them, even as that anger eventually subsides and gives way to another powerful glimpse of Jesus, captured in the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus began to weep.”
Jesus wept. For all those who preach a cool and collected Jesus, who’s got everything under control and even seems kind of above the messiness of human emotions–or who preach a God who is unmoved or unscathed by the messiness human emotion and suffering, we’re presented with a highly disruptive image: a godlike figure, in Jesus, so clued into the suffering of his friends, and suffering in general, that it makes him mad, and also really, really sad. No theological justification of suffering offered here. No platitudes or anxious positivity. Just frustration with an at-times cruel and unfair world, and grief at the pain of loss. And yet out of that anger and sorrow comes a spark of something…a readiness to embrace his power to do good in the world.
“Come and see” they tell him, words Jesus himself uses elsewhere to invite others into the important work he is doing in the world. Personal experience has a transformative, mobilizing power. Those who have the luxury of not directly observing the suffering of others may be more likely to be indifferent, or in disbelief, or unaffected. But a direct encounter with a real person can really disrupt your ideas about what is true and real, and appeal to your heart in a way that information–or misinformation–cannot.
Jesus grieves on the way to Lazarus, evidence of his Love–his greatest power. He is angered by preventable suffering and the unfairness of life. He is grieved that a light so bright as his friend has been extinguished, grieved by the anguish of others feeling the emptiness and injustice of this loss. And on top of all that, the pressure! Martha says “if you had been here!” Mary says “if you had been here!” Onlookers say “couldn’t you have kept this man from dying? Isn’t healing kind of your whole deal?” Maybe Jesus is “disturbed in spirit” because he too thinks he could have prevented this death. But he is human and can’t be in every place at once, and may have to make peace with that.
Except, he’s not ready to make peace, in this case. Sparked by anger, moved by grief, filled with Love for his friends and an awareness of the power he has to bring life from death–Jesus isn’t ready to let this one go.
Part 3: D****t Lazarus, Come Out!
John 11:38-44 (NRSV): 38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 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.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 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.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 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.”
Here, I think we’re told what resurrection really means. It’s not about resuscitated corpses. It’s the promise of liberation. Resurrection is liberation. It is…unbinding.
I asked earlier: do you have Divine power? I don’t really mean supernatural power, in a nature-defying sort of sense, although I don’t mean to exclude that. The timeless and urgent point of this story is not that Jesus literally brings a dead man to life. If we get hung upon the happenedness of this miracle, I think we may miss the point, and may needlessly make theological enemies in the process.
If we take the key words of Jesus at the end as hermeneutic or lens for making sense of the story as a whole, then Jesus, saying “I am the resurrection” is like saying “I am the unbinder.” Or, “I am the liberator. People get sick and die young; I’m here to liberate them from that fate. People are prisoners of the inequitable social world they’ve been born into; I’m here to set those captives free. People who are sacred and aren’t given the care or respect they deserve are doomed to an unjust death; I’m here to set those sacred bodies free from this inevitability. Do you believe that I can do this?” Jesus asks. “Do you believe you can do this?” I think Jesus may have asked his friends, later on.
The work of resurrection and liberation can be distressing and smelly. Jesus asks a ridiculous thing–take away the stone. Even though the literal stench of a decaying body awaits him. Even though the stench of death, so to speak, the potential agony of more vividly–and possibly traumatically–facing the reality of loss in an even more visceral way awaits, by opening the grave. It might be better to just let it be, to leave Lazarus body alone, to not attempt the seemingly impossible work of liberation. Move on.
Jesus is determined. “Thanks for hearing me God, and of course I know you hear me, but I wanted others to know that I know you hear me.” An odd, almost performative prayer? Or maybe just the raw, honest words of a grief-filled man, communicating clearly to others and himself that he does care enough to do what he can do.
“Lazarus, come out!” He asks the seemingly impossible. He doesn’t ask it in a spacious way to give God or Lazarus an “out.” There’s no “if it be your will” here. He probably doesn’t look pretty while doing it. This is a grief-filled but hopeful shout. “Dammit Lazarus, wake up! Get out! Be free!”
Lazarus comes out. Still covered in grave clothes. And probably very confused. Not quite oriented enough to make what would have been the perfect Monty Python reference…“I’m not dead, yet!”
Jesus did it! Yippee! Well, Jesus at least got the ball–stone–rolling. “Unbind him!” But, the work of unbinding is long, and more than any one person can do, including the so-called Son of God. Lazarus may no longer be dead, but he still is walking around like a dead man, wrapped like a mummy, probably really smelly, and probably disoriented.
When a baby is born and comes to new life outside of the uterus, we don’t then set the baby on our front porch, and say “good luck baby, our work is done, figure it out!” This is part of what bothers me, and maybe some of you, about the moral singlemindedness of the pro-life movement: it fixates on the life of the fetus with seemingly little concern about the life that fetus will have once actually born. Lazarus is, in a way, “born,” again. But the work of resurrection and liberation takes time, and takes a village.
We also know that when a law changes that offers more legal protections for a traditionally marginalized population, this doesn't necessarily mean these people are truly unbound. Prejudice and historical momentum linger. Old habits and established systems persist. The work of true equality and liberation takes time, beyond what a signed bill can provide. Lazarus is free! But in another sense, there is still a lot of work to do, for Lazarus to be fully unbound. That is his work and the work of others.
Resurrection is about being set free from what was binding. Self-hatred. A toxic relationship. Bigotry and the ways it manifests in individuals and systems. Wars that you had no part in starting yet which make you the victim. And so on. This is our work, if we live in a world where many are bound, and if Love is our center.
What opportunities to unbind, to set free, to bring life amid death, await us? What power do we have? I think the same power Jesus had, honestly, even if you think he found a way to harness and actualize that power in a way that we’re still kind of figuring out. Divine power, a power cultivated by community and friendship, by empathy and engagement, and by a willingness to do the difficult and slow work of liberation. That power is present in you, in us. To quote Jesus: “Do you believe this?”
Queries:
What is important to me about this story?
What do I notice about resurrection and liberation in this story?
What do I notice about power in this story?
What do I notice about “the heart” in this story?