Third Sunday of Advent – Joy
Jesus Comes to Bethany – John 11:1-7,17-44

There’s nothing more annoying (for me at least) than arriving in the rec room in the middle of a movie and having no idea what the story line is or who the characters are. Maybe that’s why, whenever we jump into the middle of a gospel, or any other Biblical narrative for that matter, I have this urge to begin my message with one of those voices you hear at the beginning of TV shows, “Previously in the Gospel of John.”

So, here’s what’s been happening so far.

Things had been pretty hairy the last time Jesus was in the Jerusalem area. In the previous chapter he had been accused of being demon possessed and his enemies had twice tried to seize him and stone him to death, but he had managed to elude them and get out of the country, across the Jordan, and into the neighbouring region of Perea. At the end of chapter 10 it says, “Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp. Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days. Here he stayed and many people came to him.” (John 10.39-41) He had left the country until things cooled down a bit and it was safe to return to Jerusalem.

That meant that he was no longer staying with his friends in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. We only meet Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, at this point in John’s Gospel, but they appear much earlier in Luke’s, and it’s quite probable that Jesus usually stayed with them when he was in town. Even today that’s common for people who travel a lot. When Glenn Westfall flies down to Denver every month he stays with his daughter. When I used to travel a lot in Asia there were particular people that I would normally stay with in Kabul, Islamabad, Lahore, Delhi, other places. And there were all kinds of people who would stay with us on their way through Peshawar. (It’s something we miss in Hamilton; we’re not really on the way to anywhere.)

Jesus doesn’t always come on our timelines

So, the relationship between Jesus and Lazarus’ family was pretty important. They weren’t just passing acquaintances; they were his friends. So, when Martha and Mary send news to Jesus that his friend is sick, there is a clear obligation on Jesus’ part to respond. I mean, hadn’t he been the recipient of their hospitality time and time again? Didn’t he owe them?

But what did he do when he got the news? He said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” But then he did nothing. John clearly feels the tension here because he slips in a little editorial note. ⁵ Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶ Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.

John is at pains to let us know that Jesus really did love Lazarus and his family… and yet he still delayed two more days before leaving. What’s going on here?

Well, for one thing, Lazarus is already dead by the time the courier delivers his message to Jesus. How do we know that? Bethany is about 35-40 kilometres from the place where Jesus was teaching. That’s about as far as it is from here to Brantford. That may seem like a long way to walk, but for someone who’s used to walking as a means of transport, that’s just a good day’s walk. So let’s say the messenger leaves Bethany on Monday morning. He gets to Jesus late afternoon or evening on Monday. The absolute earliest that they could set out would be the following morning, because no-one travels by night. But Jesus stays two more days and doesn’t set out until Thursday morning, to arrive back in Bethany late afternoon or evening on Thursday. At that time he’s told that Lazarus has been in the tomb four days.

If he had died on Monday they would have had to bury him before evening (that’s the law.) So, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday = four days. And that means that when the messenger arrived with his message for Jesus, Martha and Mary were already putting their brother in the tomb. Jesus knew this, and we know that he knew because he tells his disciples, before he leaves to go to Bethany, that Lazarus is already dead.

This year, we're using Steve Bell's song "Even so, Lord Jesus, Come" as the theme for our advent season; and we're looking at what it means for Jesus to come to us, and what happens when Jesus comes into a situation. We’ve looked at his coming, in his mother’s arms, to Simeon and Anna. We’ve looked at his coming, walking on the water, to the disciples in the storm. And the first thing we learn about Jesus’ coming from this story, is that Jesus comes on his own timetable, not necessarily when we think he should.

But that isn’t because he doesn’t care. John takes great pains to point out that Jesus loved this family in Bethany very much. But there are other factors involved in Jesus’ coming. For one thing, he had work to do where he was. Jesus isn’t controlled by other people’s agendas, even his friends’. Again and again he talks about doing what his Father sent him to do. But Jesus also has more information about our lives than we can possibly imagine. He already knew that Lazarus was dead and that he could take the time to finish what he was doing in Perea before going back to Bethany.

“Jesus comes on his own timetable.” That sounds great as a theological statement. It doesn’t really help a broken heart. Verse 20 says, and you have to hear this through tears, ²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. ²¹ “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” They must have been talking about it before he arrived because Mary says the very same thing when she comes out to meet Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  

The reality of grief is that we all look for someone to blame. Now, many of the commentaries say that Martha isn’t rebuking Jesus here, but it sounds awfully like a rebuke to me. Listen and tell me if you hear a difference. “If you had fixed the faucet, the sink wouldn’t have overflowed.” “If you had shut the gate, the dog wouldn’t have gotten out.” “If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” Sounds like a rebuke to me.

But I don’t think they’re rebuking Jesus for being late. They must have known that the messenger wouldn’t have even gotten half way to Jesus before their brother was already dead. I think they’re rebuking him for ever leaving in the first place.

“Where are your priorities, Jesus? Who are those people on the other side of the Jordan to you? They’re just crowds of people, strangers; but us, we’re your friends! When your family rejected you and said you were crazy we took you in, at no small risk to ourselves. And then, when we need you, when our brother is sick and dying, you’re not here. You’re off somewhere else, “doing ministry.”

But then Martha catches herself and realises who it is she’s talking to and says, ²² But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Just a couple of seconds ago she was telling Jesus off for not being there when she needed him. Now she’s saying it’s never too late with Jesus and holding out the hope that, even now, Jesus’ coming can make a difference.

That’s the way that faith works for most people, much of the time. We’re like Martha; often sad, upset, angry – at God and at others – and yet, even while we’re still angry with God, we can turn to him and ask him to intervene.

Jesus’ coming reveals the depth of his love for us

And Jesus does intervene. All hope was gone. Jews believed that the soul of a dead person hung around for three days after death in the hope of returning to the body. This was the fourth day. Lazarus was really dead. Then Jesus asks Mary, “Where have you laid him?” and off they go to the tomb.

Different cultures mourn in different ways. As English speaking Westerners we are heirs to the British tradition of the “stiff upper lip.” Our funerals, like most of our ceremonies, tend to major on reserve. If you’ve ever been to a middle eastern funeral you’ll know that that isn’t the case. It’s expected that you will show emotion at a funeral, the more the better. It’s a measure of how much you cared for the deceased. And so Jesus walks into the midst of a crowd of people, weeping over Lazarus’ death, and he joins them in their weeping.

And this is where Christianity is different from so many other faiths. In some faiths “the gods” are little more than overblown humans with all the same petty squabbles. In Buddhism there is no God and the goal is to not feel anything, so you’re untouched by the suffering around you. In Islam, God is so far removed from our pains and concerns that he remains always unmoved by anything that happens here on earth. (Unfortunately there are also a lot of Christians who act as if they believe that to be true about God.)

But the truth of the Incarnation, the truth of Christmas, is that God comes to us in Jesus. That word “incarnation” crops up in a number of Christmas carols at this time of year. It’s a Latin word that means that Jesus is “God skin on.” If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus. That’s why he came, so we could, to use Jesus’ own words, “see the Father” by seeing Jesus.

And when Jesus sees the pain and grief of Martha and Mary at the loss of their brother, he cries too. Does God feel your pain? Yes he does.

[In 1996 Marilyn and I were invited to be worship leaders for the staff retreat of another organisation in Pakistan. The speaker was a man by the name of Alec Brooks, and he was speaking from the first chapters of Genesis. The first day he spoke about God’s greatness. The second day he spoke on God’s goodness. Then on the third day he spoke on God’s grief, on how much it hurt God to see his creation twisted and how much it hurt God to see people hurting and dying.

A friend had to stand in for me and play guitar for the end of the session. I was bawling my eyes out. Not just crying, but great heaving sobs that went on for more than an hour. You see, as Alec spoke from Genesis, God had shown me that he had wept over the death of my father 18 years earlier, but in all that time, I had never shed one tear. In fact, apart from when Jason almost died in 1989, I hadn’t cried for over 25 years, since I was about 15.

And so I wept. I wept for my father’s death. I wept for the lost years when he was never there. I wept for all kinds of things that I didn’t have words for, and still don’t.]

And I believe that God wept with me, just as Jesus wept with Martha and Mary. And the response of the people around them was “See how he loved him!” It doesn’t matter what kind of pain you’re in. It doesn’t matter where that pain came from; someone else, your own actions, or even just the brokenness of creation. God loves you and weeps for your pain and for your grief.

Jesus’ coming restores us to life

That in itself would be something worth celebrating at Christmas, that God is not distant and unfeeling, but close by and identifying with us in our pain. But there’s more.

³⁸ Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹ “Take away the stone,” he said. And I love the detail here, “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

This is the same person who just said “I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Her heart wanted Jesus to intervene and do something special, but her practical mind was having a hard time keeping up, so she points out the logistical problems in opening the tomb. “It’ll be a bit smelly!”

But they opened the tomb and, “Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.””

Can you imagine how his sisters felt? They got their brother back. Can you imagine the joy in their hearts?

Jesus changes Lazarus’ story. Our stories all have the same shape. We’re born. We live. We die. Every week, the back page of Macleans magazine has a column called, appropriately enough, “The End.” It carries the life story of someone who died recently in ironic circumstance, like the Iraqi woman who survived two wars, breast cancer and suicide bombings in Baghdad, only to die when a disturbed Vietnamese refugee went on a shooting spree in a refugee centre in New York. All the stories have the same shape, birth, life, death. Jesus changes the shape of Lazarus’ story. Death wasn’t the end for him.

But this is about more than just a happy ending for Lazarus and his sisters.

Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life

I skipped a couple of things in the story. I skipped the part with Jesus talking to his disciples, because I wanted to focus on what was happening in Bethany. We’re not going to look at that this morning.

But I also skipped the rest of Jesus’ conversation with Martha, because I want to finish with that.

²¹ “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” ²³ Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴ Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Belief in the resurrection is core to Biblical faith. We’re not talking about resuscitation (which is what Jesus will do for Lazarus a few minutes after this conversation.) And we’re not talking about some kind of disembodied, eternal existence in heaven (which is what most contemporary people think of in these contexts.) We’re talking about God, at the end of all things, restoring the earth to the way he intended and placing real people in real bodies on it. That’s what Martha confessed her faith in, as a good Jew.

But then the conversation goes further. ²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; ²⁶ and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷ “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

The ultimate confession of faith, what makes you a Christian rather than a Jew, is made by Martha, a woman. In all of the gospels Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. But John has these words twice, once in the mouth of Peter and once, here, in the mouth of Martha.

Jesus takes Martha’s confession of faith in the resurrection and makes it very personal. He centres it on himself. He is the one who is the resurrection and the life. He is the one who will overcome death, not just a temporary overcoming of death in Lazarus’s case but a permanent victory over death at the cross. Anyone who believes in him, even though they will die at some point, will live on in the resurrection.

The reason we can have joy at Christmas is not because a little baby was born, although sometimes you get that impression with all the sentimental mush around Christmas. It’s because of who that baby is. He is the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world to overcome evil and death and to give the gift of eternal life.

Lazarus would eventually die, along with Mary and Martha and everybody else in Bethany that day. And Mary and Martha’s newfound joy in having their brother restored to them would turn to grief again. Everybody in Bethany that day would die, including Jesus. But Jesus would rise again as the firstborn from the dead, proving that he had conquered death once and for all. And that’s the real source of our joy at Christmas. Not the gifts or the time with family, although they can bring real joy. Not the celebrations and programmes. Not even the baby in the manger.

Our joy at Christmas is rooted in the knowledge that this child came to remove the curse of death from all who believe in him.

Now that’s something worth rejoicing about!

Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; Let every heart prepare Him room, And Heaven and nature sing,
No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found,