Fifth Sunday in Lent A; 03.22.26; G. Miles Smith+
Updated: Jul 30
The story of the raising of Lazarus is the second longest story in all the gospel books
—the longest being the passion story of Jesus. And it would seem, that it is almost
impossible to preach on this story without it being even longer than the story itself!
But I am going to resist that this morning. And instead, make a few observations.
Because I still find it almost impossible to have a tidy message based on this
sprawling, dialogue-rich story.
The story has often been confused with the story of the beggar Lazarus and the rich
man in the Gospel of Luke. It is strange, after all, that the name of Lazarus occurs
twice in the gospels—however they are two quite different men and stories.
If we were to read on in the Gospel of John beyond the end of the story today, we
would see that the raising of Lazarus becomes the precipitating event for the
religious leaders to decide that Jesus must be arrested and killed.
And they also decided that Lazarus must be killed. However, according to multiple
later legends, he became a bishop in Cyprus--or a bishop in France. There is also
another tradition that for the rest of his life, Lazarus almost never smiled, apparently
quite traumatized by his experience. And there are stories that he either died a
natural death, was executed by Rome, or that—in more modern stories--Lazarus
ended up being unable to die again, and has been wandering the earth until the end
of time, sometimes even showing up as a man named “Larry”.
Part of this ambiguity about the future life and death of Lazarus is because it is not
absolutely clear from the story if Lazarus was miraculously restored to his former life
as a mortal (which seems most likely) or if, with all the emphasis on Jesus being “the
resurrection and the life” that Lazarus himself was resurrected into immortality.
As you can imagine, there have been very many paintings about this story through
the centuries. And there are quite a few modern songs referencing Lazarus, including
ones by Nick Cave and David Bowie when David himself was dying. Lazarus has very
much captured the imagination of generations of Christians.
Looking now, more closely at the text itself: this story is perhaps most famously
known for containing the shortest, and one of the most poignant, verses in the Bible,
which the King James Version translated as: “Jesus wept”.
There is also the poignant message sent by the sisters of Lazarus to Jesus: “Lord, he
whom you love is ill.”—which is one of the most explicit statements in the gospels
that Jesus loved...his disciples and friends...and which also sums up the most urgent
prayers of many Christians to Jesus for their own imperiled beloveds.
And there’s the grief—and complaint—named by both Martha and Mary to Jesus:
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And then the similar
complaint by the Judean onlookers who said: “Could not he who opened the eyes of
the blind man [as we heard that story last Sunday] have kept this man from dying?”
Variations of these kind of statements have been on the lips of the broken-hearted
faithful ever since.
And then there is the clear statement of Jesus which became the opening words of
our funeral liturgy in the prayer book: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who
believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in
me will never die.” And that is followed in the story by Jesus specifically asking
Martha, and in effect, all the rest of us: “Do you believe this?”
And finally, when Jesus brought them all to Lazarus’ tomb and tells them to roll away
the stone, they protested, and Jesus countered them by saying: “Did I not tell you that
if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
May God give us the grace...in our own struggles of life and death...so to believe.
