Show Notes
Depressed, lonely, and anxious, I was advised by my counselor to read a good book.
• I read a book titled, Snow White. But then I got to page 78 and read that she bit the apple and lay “lifeless on the floor.” How depressing! I stopped reading and threw the book in the trash. • Feeling lonely, I read a book titled, Dumbo. But then I got to page 31: “The other elephants turned their back on him.” Rejection! Just what I’m trying to avoid. I stopped reading — into the trash! • The Lion King held promise, but then I got to page 53: “’If it weren’t for you, your father would still be alive,’ snarled Scar.” Utterly traumatizing! I don’t want anything to do with that story. Trash! • Beauty and the Beast: I got to page 7: “That makes you no better than a beast—and so you shall become a beast.” I want beauty, not beasts. I don’t even want to think about beasts. Into the trash.
So, I decided to read my old journal. It reminded me of the apple, rejection, failure, and the beast. I thought, “No one should ever read my journal. It belongs in outer darkness.” I threw it in the trash.
I read my Bible and all hell broke loose: fruit from a tree, people born in sin, children who nail their father to a tree, and a lot of beasts. I went to throw it in the trash and thought, “Hey, maybe I could just read parts of it and read it to take knowledge of Good and evil that I could then use to re-write my story, so I’d never bite the apple or end up in the trash.”
Of course, I’m joking. And, of course, I’m not joking at all.
In John 1, we learned that all creation is a story that God is telling and has already told. Jesus is the Beginning, End, and Way in between. Jesus is the Word of God, the Plot. The Plot is revealed on the sixth day of creation, sixth day of the week, just after the sixth hour of the day, when hanging on the tree in the garden, Jesus cries, “It is finished.” That’s the edge of the seventh day, when “everything is good.” It’s also the beginning of the seventh sign that is the substance: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
John 11 is the sixth of seven public signs in the Gospel of John: The Resurrection of Lazarus.
The name “Lazarus” shows up 17 times in the New Testament in two places — here in John 11 and in Jesus’s “story” of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16. “Lazarus” is the Greek form or the Hebrew name, “Eliezer.” Eliezer was Abraham’s faithful servant, actually his Syrian slave. You can read about him in Genesis 15 and 24. He literally sacrifices everything (the inheritance of Abraham) for the love of God, Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and the Jews.
The Rich Man in Jesus’ story (with five brothers and “the law and the prophets”) looks just like Judah, father of the Jews. And Lazarus (Abraham’s bosom buddy) looks just like Eliezer. Remember the Rich man is in Hades and Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham. If so, the Rich man will inherit everything promised to Abraham, but Lazarus has already inherited Abraham and all things with him. He’s “in his bosom.”
You can see why a Jew — and a Pharisee in particular — might feel a little ambivalent about the name “Lazarus” and the events in John chapter 11.
As we preached last time, Jesus seems to arrange for all this drama: Lazarus is sick, Jesus delays, and then he arrives after Lazarus is dead and everyone is weeping.
John 11:23, “Jesus said to [Martha], ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
The implications are staggering. It means that the plot to all of space and time is “the Resurrection.” And we’ve already learned that Life is an eternal communion of sacrifice in freedom called Love. God is Love and Jesus is the Word of Love — the Plot to everything that’s anything.
John 11:33, “When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept. The Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’”
More from The Sanctuary Downtown / Relentless Love
“The mere idea of you, the longing here for you. You'll never know how slow the moments go till I'm near to you. I see your face in every flower, your eyes in stars above. It's just the thought of you, the very thought of you, my love.” My wife and I have spent a lot of time on romantic vacations listening to those words sung by Billie Holiday or Nat King Cole.
Sometime around 1968, I learned about germs in school. They can be found in dirt and most of all, in the very pinnacle of depravity: poop. So, I began to wash my hands... a lot. I washed and washed, but I am a producer of human excreta, and so is everyone I know. So, it felt as if I was never finished. I was driven to cleanliness and then to the doctor, for my hands were red, raw, cracked and bleeding — open wounds susceptible to germs! I had been better off with no knowledge of “germs” and “not germs.” The doctor looked at my hands and said, “Stop (Shabat in Hebrew)! Stop washing your hands.” They hurt like hell, but it was hard as hell to stop.
John 18:38-40: “Pilate said to [Jesus], ‘What is truth?’ After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, ‘I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?’ They cried out again, ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ Now Barabbas was a robber [lestes: a taker].”