Lent 5A
March 29, 2020

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

The past two weeks I have wrestled with whether to livestream a service of Holy Eucharist, keeping as much of our customary service in tact as possible, or move to leading a service of Morning Prayer, wholly unfamiliar as a Sunday worship service at Emmanuel Church, although many Emmanuelites pray Morning Prayer as a daily practice, and have practiced Morning Prayer in other places. Continuing with the rite of Holy Eucharist is both comforting for some and painful for others, but for many of us, it is both comforting and painful at the same time: comforting to recognize the rhythm and the shape of the service, and painful to face what we are missing by not being able to be physically present with one another and with the elements of our sacrament. But then I think Eucharist means thanksgiving, and while bread and wine are signs of our thanks, they are not our thanks. While physical presence is a sign of being Church, it is not the Church.

We have another long narrative from the Gospel of John. Unfortunately, I don’t have any re-punctuation advice for you this week to take care of the theological problem of the statement that the illness and death of Lazarus took place so that God could be glorified. Still, I insist that God’s glorification is a blessed consequence, and not an intended outcome, or the targeted or gratuitous reason for people’s suffering. I resist the notion that illness and death are somehow designed or intended by the Holy One, for the glorification of the Holy One. If that’s what John the Evangelist really meant, I believe he was mistaken. There are plenty of ways for the Holy One to show off without picking on poor people living in a place called poor house (that’s what Bethany literally means). The main body of Jesus’ teaching supports my resistance. 

It helps me to remember that the Gospel of John is full of metaphors, poetry, and symbolism. It helps me to hear this story as if it were an important vision or dream. In a vision or a dream, things don’t have to “make sense” in order to be true, and a vision or dream, like poetry or music, does not have to get interrogated for facts before it can be called beautiful or significant. Indeed, it might be better not to interrogate chapter 11 for facts because right out of the gate, the Gospel describes Mary of Bethany as the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.  Maybe that happened, but more likely, the older story of a woman anointing Jesus head, the way a prophet anoints a king, had become too scandalous by the time John was writing, and the story had morphed from the woman’s act of anointing a king, from bold prophecy to humble supplication in the process of reducing in women’s leadership in the Church.

Again, Bethany means house of poverty.  Lazarus means “God has helped.” This is a story that could start with the words, “Once upon a time in the town of Poor House, the help of God seemed infirm or feeble, or weak, perhaps asleep. No, dead.” Poor people were struggling and there seemed to be a weak signal or no sign at all of the help of God. The help of God seemed dead – really dead – four days dead. The Greek-English lexicon offers this translation of the Greek:  to become quite dead.[1]

Martha and Mary were sisters, who lived in the poor house. Unlike the parents of the man born blind, they were willing to be “out” as Jesus followers even in what was known to be hostile territory.[2] They sent a message to Jesus to come. Jesus’ friends warned him that he would be heading right back into the danger zone if he went. He would be returning to a region where folks had already threatened to stone him on two different trips. Thomas decided – insisted — they wouldn’t let him go alone – they’d all go and die together. That was a sign, to me, that even though the disciples didn’t always understand what was going on with Jesus, some of his teachings were getting through! That’s a miracle for any teacher! I don’t mean miracle in the sense of “an extraordinary event that exceeds known human understanding or power; something supernatural.” I mean miracle in the Biblical sense of grace and gift. That’s what I think Biblical miracles are: grace and gift.

The Greek word that often gets translated into our English word “miracle,” is say-mi-on, which is, more literally, sign or token, from the verb that means to indicate or to signify. (Signify and significant both have sign as a root.) There is no positive or negative implication in the word. A sign is something that points to something else. It is not the thing – it indicates the way to the thing. To translate say-mi-on or sign as “miracle” lays a heavy theological load or judgment on that word – probably too heavy.

The Gospel of John is sometimes called “The Signs Gospel,” because of the narrative’s organization around seven signs. Now, John the Evangelist may have considered these signs to be miracles, in the sense of grace and gift, but it will help our post-enlightenment ears to back away from our own supernatural definition and understand the signs as indications of or as pointing to the nature or naturalness of the Holy One. Five of the seven signs in this Gospel are not in the other Gospels, and the other two are told in a very different ways. The signs are: water changed to wine at a wedding reception; a royal official’s son restored to health in Capernaum; the healing of paralysis in Bethesda; the feeding of 5,000 from the lunch carried by one little child; Jesus walking on water; creating vision in the man blind from birth; and the rising of Lazarus. I’ll repeat what I said a minute ago: a sign is something that points to something else. It is not the thing – it indicates the way to the thing. For example, a sign instructing someone to wash their hands, is not the hand-washing or the clean hands.

Think of this sign, this once upon a time story, and ask not, “did this really happen?” but “does it indicate the direction in which we are to go?” A sign might be aesthetically pleasing, legible and well-placed, but one can only determine the effectiveness based on whether it directs us where we need to go. As a sign, this story is poetry about restoration of life, restoration of health and mobility, the responsibility of community in calling out God’s help. Lazarus, God’s help, gets called out of the burial cave, head, face, hands and legs still bound. What made him get up? 

The most amazing part of this sign for me is this: Jesus tells the others to unbind Lazarus in a moment that clarifies how it is that God help comes alive. God’s help comes through the work of the community. Apparently, Lazarus can be raised from the dead, even after four days, but the burial wrappings tying his legs together and his arms by his side, covering him from head to toe, require human hands to undo, in spite of the stench, in spite of the unfamiliar and potentially dangerous territory. Imagine him hopping out of the cave – it’s quite a scene!

As a sign, this story seems to be pointing to the resurrection of Jesus as the destination; it seems like foreshadowing and it seems like an interesting piece of narrative evidence that Jesus was not the first to be raised from the dead. But I think it is pointing to a destination beyond the resurrection of Jesus. I think this sign is pointing beyond Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the Risen Lord in the garden; beyond the appearances of the Risen Lord in the locked room; and even beyond the disciples’ return to their fishing business on the Sea of Galilee. This sign points to the encounter the disciples have with a stranger on the beach who was making breakfast for them after they’d been out all night unsuccessfully catching fish. The stranger, who becomes known to them as the Risen Lord, asks Peter, “do you love me?’ three times. Three times Peter says “yes,” “yes,” “yes, Lord, you know I love you,” and the Lord’s reply to each affirmation of love for the Lord is, “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.” That is what all of the signs in the Gospel of John ultimately point to: the care and feeding of “the flock” – a widely understood metaphor for the people of God. In John, the people of God clearly include people of all ages, both Jews and Gentiles.

All of the signs point to the nature of the Divine being revealed in the care for others – feeding, tending, healing, unbinding, freeing, raising up to new life. It may be that slowing down, having a buddy, and saying our prayers can help us read and interpret these signs, especially the ones that are flashing to get our attention. I urge you to pay attention to the signs. No matter what your relationship with the Holy One is like, or how you pray (or how the Spirit intercedes on your behalf with sighs too deep for words), I am convinced that none of us can truly live unless we get to our destination of caring for one another the way Jesus taught us to care for one another. All the signs in the Gospel of John point in that direction, the direction of restoring dignity and community. That is where we need to go, even and especially when we cannot be physically present with one another.

Listen to this poem from Pádraig Ó Tuama in his book of poems called, “readings from the book of exile.”[3]

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