The Ex-Dead

Propers: The Fifth Sunday in Lent, A.D. 2019 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

There’s a dead man in the room.

Or rather, an ex-dead man, which is all the more disturbing.

Our Gospel reading this morning leaps into the twelfth chapter of John’s Gospel, having conveniently skipped over the eleventh. And this is no small omission, since chapter eleven tells the astonishing story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. And immediately following all that, here he is sitting at the table, unnervingly quiet, while everyone avoids talking about the elephant in the room—which is the fact that up until a few verses ago, Lazarus was a corpse.

We know this family fairly well. They show up regularly in the Gospels. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are siblings, and they own a home in Bethany two miles or so east of Jerusalem. Whenever Jesus comes to Jerusalem—three or four times a year to celebrate the high holy days—He stays with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Mary may or may not be Mary Magdalene; that is, Mary of Magdala, a city in Galilee, where Jesus grew up. It is conceivable that they’ve known Him since His youth.

Jesus’ public ministry began in His early 30s and lasted for about three and a half years. And that ministry has always been punctuated by death. I suspect, though I cannot prove, that Jesus began preaching after His earthly father Joseph died. His ministry reaches a turning point with the execution of His cousin, John the Baptist. And now, as we come to the end of His mortal life, Jesus gets word that His friend Lazarus has been stricken with a terrible illness.

He tarries for two days, which might seem callous, but by the time He arrives, Lazarus has been dead and buried for four, so He wouldn’t have made it even if He’d set out right away. He encounters a scene of great mourning. Half of Jerusalem, it seems, has come out to grieve with the family, and Jesus also weeps at the loss of His friend and the distress of the people. And Lazarus’ sisters say to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, our brother would not have died.”

And Jesus’ reply to them is stunning: “I am the Resurrection, and the Life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, shall live. And those who live and believe in Me shall never die.” Then He orders the stone to be rolled away from the tomb, and in broad daylight, before the gathered crowds of Jerusalem and Bethany, He commands the dead man: “Lazarus! Come forth!”

In the Holy Land of Jesus’ day, people were buried in caves. There’d be one tomb for an entire family. A round, flat rock would be fashioned to fit a groove at the mouth of the cave, so that it could be rolled open and shut. In the middle of the tomb would be coffin of sorts called a sarcophagus—literally a “flesh-eater.” Here the body, properly wrapped in linens, oils, and incense, would be laid to rest for one year, and the tomb sealed shut.

On the anniversary of that death, the family would return to the tomb, roll aside the stone, and gather up the desiccated bones. It didn’t take long, in the Near Eastern heat, for bodies to decay and fall to dust. The remains would be placed into a rectangular stone container—an ossuary, or bone box—just large enough for the thigh bones to cross in an X from corner to corner. Then the bone box would be placed within a niche or upon a shelf alongside other members of the family, and thus could one tomb hold dozens of the dead.

When Jesus orders the stone to be rolled away, Lazarus has been dead for four long days, dead and rotting. Even wrapped in linens and properly anointed for burial, the heat of spring is not kind. There will be a stench, his sister warns. Jewish tradition held that the soul might yet linger for three days after death, but by the fourth—well, by then he was truly gone. All these details emphasize that Lazarus was dead as dead could be.

Yet when hears the voice of Christ, the same voice that called light into being and set lights in the sky to govern night and day, the dead man gets up. And he comes forth, hobbled by his wrappings, smelling of oil and myrrh, back from hades, back from the dead. And they unbind him, and set him free.

And the whole city goes nuts.

This is not the first time that Jesus has raised someone from the dead, mind you. But those other instances were private, were quiet. He warned the ex-dead to keep their secrets, lest fear beset the people, which would doubtless lead to violence. But now He has, under the broad light of day, pulled forth a dead and rotting corpse up from the tomb and back to the living in front of witnesses all across Jerusalem. The world has seen Him now, seen what He can do, seen Him conquer death.

And so the world is thrown into a furor. For centuries God’s people have awaited the Messiah, the Christ, awaited the coming of the Kingdom of God. For three years and more they have wondered if this might be Him—this Jesus, this Galilean. Is He the Christ? And if so, what next? Will He call down fire from Heaven? Will He lead the armies of God against the Legions of Rome? Will the Messiah set them free and bathe the world in the blood of their enemies? Wouldn’t that be exciting? Or will He die like all the others before Him who claimed to be the Christ?

In our reading this morning, at that awkward dinner, there sits Lazarus at table, terrible in his silence, a mute witness to the grave. Then along comes Mary, anointing Jesus’ feet with costly nard, a treasure worth a working man’s entire yearly wage. And here Judas rebukes her, telling her that this pound of ointment could have been sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor. What is in his head?

Is it, as John writes, that he was simply greedy, that he wanted the money for his own? Or is it that he wanted the money for his own purposes: that he had seen what Jesus had done and knew now that there would be no more avoiding confrontation; that when they rode into Jerusalem on Sunday to prepare for the Passover, there would be an uproar unlike any the city had known for generations? Did Judas want the money to prepare for the coming of war?

Iscariot, after all, comes from sicarii, dagger-men. Judas wanted freedom for God’s people, but he wanted it by the blade. And now at last he knew that Jesus had to fight, had to fight or He would die. To arms, brothers! To war!

But Mary understands, in ways that Judas cannot, that Jesus, in returning her brother’s life, has forfeited His own. This is the miracle that will get Him killed. Lazarus isn’t the dead man at this table after all; Jesus is. He has died to save her brother. He has died to save His friend. And so she anoints His feet with oil, the costliest she has, not as a luxury, not as a waste, but for His burial, for His funeral. Because when Jesus enters Jerusalem, He enters it to die.

The tension here is palpable. Death surrounds the table, hedges them in at all sides: Lazarus’ death in the recent past, Jesus’ death in the immediate future, and the death of Judas occurring before their eyes because he cannot imagine a way other than the sword. He does not understand the love that raises the dead. He understands only power, only coercion, only violence. His rage has consumed him. And so this brother, too, is already lost. He will not outlive his Lord.

Yet this, my brothers and sisters, is not a scene of despair. It is a scene of preparation, a deep breath before the plunge. The forces of sin, death, and hell, of violence, oppression, and empire are gathering because Christ has called them out. Christ has publicly humiliated them by raiding and emptying the tomb. There shall be no more secrecy, no more shadow games. Now all the assembled forces of hell shall come at Him directly, shall strip Him and beat Him, shall twist His head with thorns and nail His flesh to the Cross.

They shall throw everything they have at him, every horror hidden in the blackest pits of night, and they shall humiliate Him as He has humiliated them; they shall pierce Him and break Him and tear Him asunder as He has torn open this tomb. They shall wage war unceasing against the sacrificial Christ, the Lamb of God who goes uncomplaining forth, to die for His brother, to die for His friends. They shall hit Him with every weapon in their arsenal and pitch Him headlong into hell.

And there, in the very house of death—He will conquer all.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.