A Dead Man Lives

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Who doesn’t love a good team-up story?

We are coming up on the 14th anniversary the first Avengers movie. Back in 2012, six superheroes teamed up to save the day, and save the world against an alien invasion. Seven years later, when Avengers Endgame came out, the number of heroes had swollen to over 60, in one of the best team-up stories in movie history.

• But these were not the first team-up stories, by any means. I grew up in the era of the Super Friends cartoons in the 80s, where heroes like Batman and Robin, Superman, and Wonder Woman teamed up every episode. Each had their own powers, but only when they joined forces could they save the day.

• But even before that, some of you know the history of the Justice Society of America. All the way back in 1940, some of the earliest comic book heroes like Green Lantern and The Flash teamed up to protect the world from those who would do it harm.

For a long, long time, we have been enamored with this idea of a group of super-powered individuals teaming up, each using their own abilities and powers, doing what needs to be done, and in the end saving the world. What if the entire Gospel of John were actually a team-up story like “Avengers Assemble”? Save that question in the back of your mind, as there are two other questions that I want to address first…

When we talk about powers and abilities in Scripture, we usually think about the miracles of Jesus, and specifically the healing miracles. In our series on “Hurting, Healing, and Hope,” these have been some of the stories that we have explored together. But have these stories ever seemed to not quite make sense to you?

If we are being honest, there is an incompleteness to Jesus’ healing program. One might even call it an inefficiency. It is amazing to read about the healings that take place here in the Gospel of John, but they beg the question “why this person and not this person?” To put a finer point on it: why didn’t Jesus heal differently?

• Why didn’t Jesus just walk in and heal the whole pool of people at Bethsaida, instead of only one man who had been paralyzed for 38 years in John 5?

• Why didn’t Jesus heal every person born blind in John 9, or every person blind in any form or fashion in Judea?

• And here is a big one from today’s text in John 11: if Jesus could bring Lazarus back to life, why was he the only one? Why would Jesus not bring anyone else, or everyone else back to life? Why didn’t Jesus heal differently?

We aren’t the first ones to ask this question, and even Jesus himself was often asked some version of it:

• In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus told his townspeople in Nazareth that he had heard the grumblings, that he was healing people outside of his hometown and not people closer to home.

• In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus lamented to the disciples that he could not heal in communities marked by unbelief.

• And here in John’s Gospel in the 11th Chapter, we hear it over and over and over again….

20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

All of these questions involve some kind of challenge to the way that Jesus chooses to heal. They assume that he must be doing something wrong. That his healing is inefficient or incomplete or even illogical? Why did he heal these people that he had never met before, but not come back for someone he loved, like Lazarus? Why didn’t Jesus heal differently?

Why didn’t he heal more people, near and far? It looks like he could have done so much more, but then he stops short. This is the question that hovers in today’s passage, throughout the book of John, and in our own conversations as Jesus followers. Why didn’t you heal more, Jesus? I think we can rule out a few answers to that question. At least in the Gospel of John, the answer doesn’t seem to be:

• that he cannot heal. John doesn’t ever question Jesus’ ability, or even his time. Other Gospels talk about the practical issue of so many hours in the day, but John does not.

• or that anyone is short on faith. Faithlessness doesn’t seem to be part of the equation.

• or that Jesus doesn’t care. The Gospel of John tends to lean into Jesus’ divine side, more than his human side. But here in John 11, we see one of the most beautiful pictures of the humanity of Jesus. When Jesus chose not to return back in time to save Lazarus’ life, it seemed to tear him up inside. His conversation with the disciples showed the struggle of the decision that he had to make to linger for two more days. And then when he did return, the women lead him to the side of the tomb, where we read a short but profound verse: “Jesus began to weep.” Even though he knew what healing power he had at his fingertips. Even though he seemed to know what was coming next, when the power of death and grief stared him in the face, the very human Jesus cried. When faced with death, the Incarnate Word and Co-Creator of the Universe…wept.

Which is, I think, at the heart of this theological question about the who and why of Jesus’ healing. When we ask why Jesus didn’t heal this person in the text, or more people in the story, perhaps it is because we wonder if the healing work of Jesus isn’t missing something because there is someone in our lives that we feel got missed. Why didn’t Jesus heal my loved one of cancer? Why didn’t Jesus protect my child in that car accident? Why didn’t Jesus cause the lame to walk again and the blind to see when they were part of my family? And if Jesus can walk up to the tomb and call the dead back to life, why oh why will he not do the same for my parent, my spouse, my child, my friend? We get it when every person in the story asks why Jesus didn’t do more, didn’t act sooner, didn’t choose them when it was time to heal?

I have sat in hospital rooms and living rooms for nearly two and a half decades with heartbroken folks asking those questions, and I have had to admit that I simply don’t have a good enough answer for their grief and anger and pain. At least not one that can take it all away.

But this morning, I want to suggest a second question that might not be inappropriate for those hospital rooms, but might be important for us to wrestle with in moments when the grief is not quite so raw. And that question is this: “what if the healing isn’t about the healing?” Or at least only about the healing.

Let me explain. Scholars point out that there is a 3-part pattern in the Gospel of John, sometimes referred to as “Sign. Debate. Discourse.” Jesus performs a miracle—often referred to as a “sign” in the book of John. Then people get together and argue about it—debate its meaning, or whether it should have even happened. Finally, Jesus delivers a discourse, or a sermon about what it is supposed to mean. Sign…Debate…Discourse.

You may not have noticed this pattern, because I have been cheating a bit and usually not reading all 45 verses of the text to see this whole pattern. I have tended to read only the part about the Sign. Which now, in hindsight, might have been the worst thing I could have done! Because what if this whole time, these signs were not the only point. Throughout John, Jesus does a thing, but what seems to matter most is that Jesus says a thing. I am the Good Shepherd.  I am the Living Water. Or in today’s passage, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Some of the most amazing theology that Jesus preaches come from John!

So what if the healing isn’t about the healing? Or for today’s passage, what if the most amazing part of the Lazarus story isn’t even bringing a man back to life?What if it is about a teacher teaching us what life really means? A teacher who points the way to us understanding life in its fullness? From the beginning, Jesus has tried to make it clear that we are not just biding time until heaven. Be “born again.” Receive “abundant life.” This life matters. When Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he is not being redundant. He is telling us that he has come to bring life beyond this life and life within this life. He holds the power to resurrect and gather us into his eternity, and he holds the power to make this life worth living. That “and” is one of the most important words in the text today, and throughout the Gospel. In today’s story, that 3-part pattern is reversed, almost as if John is trying to get our attention: something is different here!

Scholar Meda Stamper says it this way: Being in relationship with Jesus means facing death and grief with him and learning that still, in spite of the death and the dryness and the finality of the door at the entrance to the tomb of our hopes, he can still be said to be life. Nothing is ever so dead that it keeps him from being that in himself and for us. And in John that life is not only a future hope. Abundant life is always ever now.

Which brings us back to the question of the team-up. Jesus has been teaching from the beginning. But he has also, low-key, been putting together a team. Early in the series, I talked about the concept of an “antisociety” that Jesus was building. That the marriage of the political and religious worlds in Jesus’ day were creating a dangerous hybrid that missed the point of what God had been up to in the beginning. So, the mission of Jesus was to create a community that stood over and against the ways of the “Judeans” or the “world” or the “darkness” that so many had bought into. To recruit into that community those who could use their strengths and abilities to, quite simply, save the world! No, none of the figures in John are big green hulks or flying heroes with super strength. None of them have magic lassos or hammers. But Jesus’ team of heroes are those who embrace what he is trying to say about life and death and resurrection and eternity. Because of Jesus’ teaching, they understand what he is up to, and are ready to tell the story. Look at the team-up that Jesus put together:

• A handful of imperfect but faithful followers who know the power of creative invitation, telling their loved ones to “Come and see.”

• A religious scholar who is wise enough to admit when he doesn’t understand something and follows an uneducated rabbi to understand who God really is, even if he has to stand against the power structure of his day.

• A woman who is done with the stares and the judgment and the in justice she faces every day, but when she finds living water, she runs to offer it to the very people who shunned her.

• A man who has found himself isolated over 38 years of illness and despair, learning and embodying what it means to hope again.

• A man born blind who sees better than the religious experts, and schools them in a debate that no one saw coming.

And in today’s passage, look who joins the team up! I would offer that the hero of today’s story is not Lazarus. He doesn’t do much in the story. Instead, the antisociety heroes in today’s story are his sisters: Mary and Martha. Look at the fierce trust that they both brought to this moment. They were hurting, and grieving, and each of them honestly shared their anger that Jesus had not come sooner. But with that honest emotion came trust. Martha, in a beautiful picture of trust amidst grief tells Jesus, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” She calls him the Messiah, the Son of God, and opens the door for others to see and trust. And Mary, even in her pain, kneels in worship before her Lord. It is foreshadowing to the next chapter, when she honors him with an extravagant gift of perfume which she pours on his feet. These two women demonstrate trust and power and show that they are core to the work of the antisociety Jesus is building.

Perhaps you have figured this out, but that antisociety is…you. It is the Church. You are part of the team-up! When you embrace Jesus’ teaching and identity, when you bring your gifts and powers and abilities to bear, Jesus still saves the world!

I have one more superhero reference, and one that some of you might already have guessed. A rabbi…teacher…professor who gathers together those with special abilities in order to build a separate community…a separate school. That teacher sees something special in those he recruits, even when the rest of the world does not. And he teaches them to use their powers to help others, defend the vulnerable, and save the world. Of course, many of you have guessed that it is the X Men, where Professor X found those marginalized and rejected mutants whose powers he believed could save the world, not destroy it. Together this “antisociety” could make a difference among others who were hurting, vulnerable, at-risk in a world that doesn’t understand.

Church…X-Men…superheroes all…are you ready for the team up? Are you ready to join that antisociety that takes up the message of Jesus, to proclaim that death is not the end. To live fully into our grief AND to know that even death is being transformed by the love of Jesus. This season, we find so many isolated in fear and anger…perhaps it is time that we gather together in strength. Let me be the ones who Jesus has called us to be. Let us be the Church of Jesus today!