THE UNSPOKEN WORD, March 29, 2020, Fifth Sunday of Lent - John 11: 1 to 45
“Lord, the one you love is sick!” This is the cry we hear throughout our County, State, Country and planet. It is frightening, poignant and despairing. I asked myself whether today’s Scriptures can offer us any insight, consolation or hope. At the very least, we can empathize with the heartache of Martha and Mary and the confusion of those who cared about them. But there may be more. Let’s see.
“Lord, the one you love is sick!” How odd. Saint John has just told us, at the beginning of this episode, that the “one” is Lazarus who, along with his sisters, Martha and Mary, were all close friends of Jesus. So why is the message not, “Lazarus is sick. Come quick”?
Remember how each of the four Gospels was formed. They are separated in time over about 35 years, from Mark to John. Although they tell many of the same events, especially the Passion, death and Resurrection, they diverge significantly in other areas - and none so dramatically as St. John’s Gospel.
There are hints - and hints is all they can be at so far a remove in time - that Saint John’s Gospel may have strong ties to St. Luke’s. For example, only these two Gospels tell us anything of Martha and Mary. St. Luke tells the story of Martha’s embarrassment when Jesus refuses to dismiss Mary from his company to help with the chores of hospitality. Both women display the same tendencies toward action and contemplation in today’s story. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells a story about a beggar named Lazarus, who dies outside the gate of a rich man’s home and finds the solace of eternal life “in the bosom of Abraham.” Finally, the unnamed woman in St. Matthew’s Gospel who washes Jesus feet in preparation for His burial while the Lord is dining at the house of “Simon the Leper” in Bethany might possibly have transformed itself, over time, to the story of Mary, the sister of the restored Lazarus doing the same thing for Jesus at a similar dinner in her home in ... Bethany!! Still, it’s all conjecture.
Remember, too, that St. John’s Gospel is a series of stories, linked together by teachings of the Lord. They begin with His open invitation to disciples of John the Baptist to “Come and see!” what he is all about. Jesus makes enormous quantities of wine for a wedding. He speaks with a Pharisee named Nicodemus who is ambivalent about following Jesus. He charmed a Samaritan woman, a loose-living heretic in the judgment of pious Jews, into becoming a believer. Last week, we saw Him cure a blind man, whose cure triggered bitter infighting among the Pharisees and a harsh rebuke from Jesus. In both of the last two stories, Jesus uses the powerful expression “I AM” to define Himself to those who are open to seeing beyond what’s right in front of them. He will do it again in this week’s story.
“The one you love is sick.” Jesus gets the message but does not immediately return to Bethany. He tells the disciples of the illness, referring to Lazarus as “sleeping.” He invites them to come along to “wake” Lazarus, on a journey filled with danger. When the disciples misunderstand the metaphor, Jesus tells them plainly that Lazarus has died and says that He is “glad” for their sakes, so that they will come to know the power of God. And off they go.
Martha is the first to meet Jesus. She leaves Mary to sit at home. Whether or not this refers to the contemporary Jewish custom of “sitting Shiva,” the point is that Martha is brash in her approach to Jesus. Her greeting is far from polite. In emotional terms, she is expressing the rage that comes with raw grief when a loved one dies.
“If you had been here, my brother would never have died.” Jesus deflects her rage with a platitude: Your brother will rise.” Martha’s response, expressing vague belief in a resurrection “on the last day,” allows Jesus to get to the heart of the matter. “I AM” - there it is again - “I AM resurrection and life!” This is what Jesus needs Martha to believe. She expresses hope for a Messiah. Remember, last week, that the blind man moved from simply acknowledging the goodness of Jesus, to seeing Him as another in the line of great Hebrew prophets, to viewing Him as a singularly great person, to accepting Him as “the Son of Man.” Martha is moving through the same steps.
Mary will help. She finally “comes out” to where Jesus is and says the same thing her sister had said, but without the sharp edge of accusation and disappointment. It causes Jesus to break down, allowing His genuine human emotions to get the better of Him. But when His request for them to unseal the tomb is met with the obvious objections about decay, He reminds them - with the crowd listening in - that they must believe in order to see the “glory of God.”
Twice, Saint John describes Jesus as “perturbed” - as our English translation puts it. This is merely a transliteration of the Latin verb, “turbo”, from which we get English words like “turbulent” and “perturbed.” It’s hard to know exactly what the Gospel writer meant. He seems to say that Jesus either groaned - a reasonable reaction to the upset of those around him and His own sadness at Lazarus’ death and the grief of His friends - or He muttered to Himself, an odd reaction and somewhat off-putting for us.
However, suppose Jesus is wrestling with His own emotions, torn between His Divine knowledge of the eternal fate of Lazarus and of His own power to undo the horror of this death and His reluctance to place Himself more pointedly in the public eye at a time when He is already a target of a growing list of enemies. His raising of Lazarus will drive the final nail into His own coffin.
Nonetheless, He stands before the open tomb and commands, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man comes out, still entangled in the winding sheets used for burial. Then an odd thing happens. Instead of rushing Himself to aid Lazarus in the final step of freeing himself from death, Jesus tells the onlookers to assist Lazarus: “Unbind him and let him go free!” Notice the word “unbind.” It is one of John’s keys to the story.
The scholars are not in agreement as to the connection between the “John” whose name is the title of this Gospel and the “John” who wrote the Book of revelation. If they are the same, it would explain some things. If not, they clearly were dealing with some of the same critical issues of the early Church. At the start of Revelation, the Risen Lord Jesus appears in a setting of worship and, offering each of seven “churches” a word of praise or encouragement then calls them to account for sinful or heretical behavior.
“Lord, the one you love is sick.” Jesus, at the right hand of the Father, continues to love His Church, His people, with a Love beyond all telling. His Churches are sick - some prostrate with fear of persecution, others infected by disturbing alterations of the Christian Gospel, co-opting it with superstitions and idolatrous pagan practices. Christ is on a continual journey, through time and place, bringing the people of every age to repentance, faith and salvation. It is always a journey fraught with dangers from within and without. The only proper response of His followers is, “Let us go and also die with Him.” From the “safe house” at Bethany prayers are sent to the Lord. (It is quite possible that a home in Bethany, perhaps belonging to people like Martha, Mary and Lazarus, may have been an assembly house where John’s church to gather for the Lord’s Supper.) Perhaps the assembly, as a group, clung to the safety of their numbers in perilous times, refusing to “go out” and find the Lord on His and their own missionary journey. Some of their prayers are sedate; some frantic; but all are importunate in their desperation. Christ first offers the consolation of the truth: the faithful will rise to judgment and reward; I AM has said so.
That will not do for this crisis. Jesus must act. Although He does respond to these anguished prayers, the task must be shared by the bystanders. They cannot expect God to do for them what they themselves are capable of doing. “Whatever you bind on earth, shall be held bound in heaven. Whatever you unbind on earth, shall be held bound in Heaven.” “Receive the Holy Spirit! If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven; if you hold them bound, they are held bound.” The Church, praying for its errant members, must also exercise the power of reconciliation. They must “unbind” the person dead in sin. Recall, also, that one of the most ancient forms of “unbinding,” after Baptism itself and reception of Eucharist, was the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, detailed in the Epistle of St. James. It is one of the ways of “unbinding.”
What John’s Gospel tells the Christian community at the turn of the second century, the Gospel tells all Christians at all times.
“The one you love is sick.” Through our Baptism, we have something others don’t necessarily have. We have sanctifying grace. Our prayers are powered not by wishful thinking; rather - by the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity - they are powers of mind and heart God gives us to be in relationship with God’s own self. All our Sacraments, significant as they are, are “outward signs” of this abiding grace and power. Now, when the world that we love is sick, teetering on the brink of catastrophe, the prayers of the Baptized - all of us members of Christ’s Mystical Body - are the prayers of Christ Himself. Christ groans within Himself. Christ weeps. Christ calls, “Lazarus, come out!” But Christ also tells us that we are required to assist in this great unbinding. Social distancing. Careful hygiene. Self-quarantining. Generosity and gratitude.