(Read John 11: 1-2)
With these simple words, the Gospel writer John lets us know that something special is going on here. Jesus had already been healing many whose names we don’t know. But here it says a “certain Lazarus” was ill. We read his name, Lazarus, and that he lived in Bethany, and who he lived with, that is, his sisters Mary and Martha. And if that is not enough, John specifies that this is the family from which one of the sisters... (read verse 2). Have you noticed that John reminds the readers about that event as if all we need to do is turn back a few pages and find it in the gospel? The funny thing, though, is that that event is located later in the gospel, after this chapter, not before it! What it means is, when John says to his readers, ‘This is that Mary who anointed Jesus once and wiped his feet with her hair”, John doesn’t mean, “like you already read in this book”. No, what he means is, “like you already heard about, dear readers.” John is writing first of all to believers in the first century who first heard these stories in spoken form, and he assumes that when he mentions the story of Mary anointing Jesus, the early church knows perfectly well what he’s talking about, even though he hasn’t gotten to that yet in the written version. And, of course, in the same way, as they read this Gospel from the very first words, “In the beginning was the Word”, they already knew that it would tell about the crucifixion and the resurrection and Jesus’ many, many glorious words and deeds. And as soon as they read here that Jesus got word about Lazarus’ illness, they already know, “Ah, this is the story about how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead!”
All the same, none of them probably ever heard the story with all the detail that John includes here. That’s part of the reason for the written Gospel, to fill out the story and go deeper into the spiritual impact of it. I don’t doubt that John chose precisely the most important details that would teach us more about the very meaning and glory of Jesus Christ.
Now, we’re not going to talk today about the whole story of the raising of Lazarus. We’ll just focus a bit more deeply on the first part of the chapter, about what happened right up to heading out to Bethany. But just like the church of the first century, we also know the rest of the story, and let’s keep it in our minds as we meditate over the “preface”. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. We know it. And reading the run-up to it, we know that Jesus knows he will do it, and he knows why, and everything he’s doing and saying before the event is in the light of the awesome glory and power he is about to reveal.
(Read verse 3) Word came to Jesus: “the one you love is ill”. But Jesus already knows that the one he loves is not merely ill; he’s going to die. And precisely in this fact Jesus recognizes the promise of glory. That brings a question to my mind: if the Son of God sees in the death of his beloved friend the promise of glory, then what do we see only gloom and despair in?
In verse four, Jesus says, “This illness will not end in death”. But... Lazarus died! As a rule, if a doctor says some illness won’t be fatal and then the patient dies from it, we say the doctor was wrong! But when Jesus says that this illness –the illness of this dying, perhaps already dead man – is not going to end in death but in God’s glory, knowing that he will glorify his Father precisely by raising this man, Jesus Christ happens to be talking about the realest thing of all, the most fixed and certain and true and concrete and genuine. Because thinking that this death represents defeat for all possibilities of God’s activity in Lazarus’s life, that’s actually what is unreal and an illusion. Lazarus’s death is no defeat but an occasion for glory.
Back in chapter nine, verses one to three, Christ expresses the very same truth just a little bit differently. (Read vv. 1-3) For Christ, God’s action is uninterrupted and continually present. Ultimately, God’s intention plays the central role in everything that happens. And in Jesus’ life on earth the entire sense and objective of his being was to continually perceive and carry out that intention. The Lord also knew that, as long as he walked in this world, he was the world’s light, and while there is light you can work – in other words, there was nothing that was going to stop him from doing what his Father was determined to do through him. It was that simple. Jesus would never stop, because it was time to work, right up to the moment when it was time to embrace death itself in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice to the Father’s will.
In this light it’s easier to follow what Jesus says further (read vv. 4-5). “People don’t work at night, they work in the day. And it’s day now, so let’s work. I’ve brought the light, I am the light. Why wouldn't I do my Father’s work now?” And for us these words (v.5), “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” are as relevant now as they were when Jesus walked the earth. This is a promise not only to the disciples who listened to Jesus speak it, but a promise and encouragement to us, because Jesus is in the world even today, not in the flesh but spiritually indwelling his body, the Church – the Church he purifies and prepares for glory.
This same Christ, who now abides in his Church with the Father and the Spirit, and sanctifies her, this is the very same Jesus who on one sunny day in Palestine long ago heard the words, “Your friend is sick”, and answered, “This is to God’s glory”, and when he said that he wasn’t just wishing, he was defining reality. And he knew that not just sickness but an actual death would turn into God’s glorification. What are the circumstances, the situations, the problems in your life today that Jesus knows all about, just as much as he knew all about what God would do through Lazarus’ death? You know, just as with Lazarus, it’s truly the case that, sometimes, the circumstances have to get, not better, but worse before God’s glory unfolds through them.
But let’s not make the mistake of thinking that, until we see that glory, God’s doing nothing, taking the day off. The essence of faith is that even when it seems that things are only getting worse, without a glimmer of hope, the heart stays fixed on the truth of God’s continual presence and intention. True faith doesn’t sleep until God does something. Genuine faith always perceives the advance of God’s will and gets stronger for it. Faith is a way of seeing. In order to see physically, two things are needed: eyes – at least one! – and a source of light, like the sun. Well, the spiritual realm is no different. To see spiritually we need both eyes and sun. But the spiritual eye is faith, and the sunlight of our faith is the very Person of the risen Son of God and his glory. (Read 2 Cor. 3:17-18)
And so we return to the “preface” of the raising of Lazarus, to listen to the words of the Light of the World. (Read John 11:4-8) Of course, Jesus could well have responded, “No, you needn’t fear that. They’re not going to stone me, in fact. Something else is waiting for me there....” But Jesus took the moment to repeat the lesson he gave them earlier, one they seem not to have understood: (read vv. 9-10). What does that mean?
Jesus would have “stumbled” in the darkness if, hypothetically, he had promised his disciples that no one would stone him and then they had actually stoned him in Jerusalem. He would have stumbled in the darkness if, with the horror of the cross looming before him, he had run away, and if they had caught him anyway and led him to the cross as he struggled and screamed. But Jesus didn’t stumble, the Light of the World didn’t get lost in the darkness. In fact, he had this to say about his soon suffering; (read John 10:17-18).
The light of the world never stumbled, and he will help us not to stumble. It doesn’t mean we won’t go through hardship or grief. But not stumbling means not losing faith, not giving up your assurance in God’s presence and intentions, not losing hold of the absolutely certain hope in the ultimate outcome of God’s glory, which overflows with goodwill towards us.
