Open the Word: Free to believe?

Martha and Mary learn how to be free to believe as they experience a sign.

• This story is unique to John. In John’s Gospel, the ‘signs’ are events with clear purposes. They are not chance events; nor do they reflect a Jesus who is simply sorry for the people he meets. This week Lazarus is raised ‘for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through’ this sign (v. 4). The fact that Jesus does not rush to the scene, but deliberately allows at least two days to pass is John’s scene-setting device. So often we want instant answers. But Jesus waits to respond in this story, perhaps to underline his authority and perhaps because only after some delay will God’s glory be truly seen.

• Martha and Mary, and the intimate dialogues that Jesus has with each of them, are central. The conversations are related but distinct. The sisters have gone through the difficult process of seeing their brother die. They have, as we might put it, gone through hell. With her enigmatic assertion that ‘God will give you whatever you ask of him’, Martha seems to think that Jesus can still resolve the situation, but does not know how. She believes that God can transform situations, but the notion of a stinking corpse coming back from the dead was beyond the wildest expectations of a pragmatic woman. Today’s psalm, ‘Out of the depths’, could be used to illustrate how she might have felt. What she learns is that God can transform a situation in more ways than she expected. This raising is, in some sense, a foretaste of resurrection for all, in which Martha firmly believes. It is also a foretaste of what is to come for Jesus himself, a point that is particularly relevant as we mark today the beginning of Passiontide, the most solemn fortnight in the Church’s calendar. The conversation with Mary is briefer but more emotional and less theological.

• It is no accident that the core saying, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ comes at the heart of this passage. We hear those words most often as a public proclamation at funeral services. The story makes the point very clearly that Lazarus was not just dead but stinking (v. 39). This point is made another way in the South African version of the Mysteries (see Further resources) in which the Lazarus who rises is dressed as a spirit returning from another world.

• We need to be careful not to suggest that this story is normal. It was no more normal in the first century for stinking corpses to reappear from the grave (or for the dead bones described by Ezekiel to reassemble) than it is today. Equally death is surely not to be seen as entirely negative. Death and life are both integral to creation. Without death there would be no compost or renewal of fertility in the ground. The intimate integration of life and death, inextricably intermingled in the story of creation, is part of the background to today’s Gospel story. The raising of Lazarus is the last and most significant of the signs in John’s Gospel. Its very abnormality is the central feature of the story. Yet the reactions of the people are very similar to those we could imagine people having today, were such extraordinary events to occur. Above all in the unexpected there is a sign of God’s power.

Another angle

• Lazarus’ freedom is not something he can grasp alone. He needs to be helped towards freedom, to be unbound. How much are we bound by metaphorical grave clothes as we seek to live out a Christian life in the 21st century? Are we as free to believe as we think we are?

Living faith

• How do we, in this generation that sees very few ‘miracles’, react? Are we equally angry that God seems to have selected a few people in a particular time to benefit from such miracles?