John 11
First
Presbyterian Church, Clarksville
and
Harmony
Presbyterian Church
The
Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry
When I was in
third grade in Putt Robinson’s Sunday School class at Second Presbyterian
Church the time came for us to receive our gift bibles from the church. Over the years the expectations on the third
graders had changed. As my grandmother
was fond of pointing out, when my father got his black leather King James Bible
signed by the pastor and the clerk of session and ceremoniously presented
during worship, the children were required to learn the first ten questions of
the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
Itself a requirement she thought somewhat lax.
By the time I and
my cohorts arrived on the scene the process had ceased to be one of
memorization of the historic catechism to receive your bible and become a game;
memorize a verse of scripture and get a donut.
Oh, and while we are at it we will give you a bible in worship one day
soon as well.
As the day
approached and I had yet to memorize my scripture, I asked my mother for
advice. She suggested that if I was not
keen to learn a long passage I might just learn the shortest verse in the bible
which, in the King James Version, is of course John 11:35,””Jesus wept.” In an
exquisite feat of parental manipulation, she did not tell me where to find
it. “Somewhere in John,” she said. And after reading the preceding ten chapters
and thirty-four verse I learned that indeed she was right. And the following Sunday, Jesus wept and I
got a donut and eventually a bible.
That story is a
family favorite and gets told from one perspective or the other from time to
time. It is a sentimental childhood
moment. I suppose there is something to
be sentimental about in that story since the genesis of it is in a story long
romanticized and sentimentalized by the church.
Lazarus, the
brother of faithful Mary and Martha, has died.
Jesus, their friend and comforter, comes and before raising Lazarus from
the dead, weeps with them. Jesus joins
them in their sorrow and shares their grief.
It is a good
story. The stuff of pretty stained
glass, Sunday School lessons and gentle accessible sermons for gentle
nonthreatening Sundays in a placid and sentimental world. There is a place in the church for a story
that illustrates a moment of tender and genuine human connection between a
grieving family and a loving Lord.
There is room for
those texts, the sentimental favorites, and there is much that commends them to
us.
After all, ours
is a culture increasingly defined by conflict, division and the widening gap
between peoples and nations. One of the
great ironies of the present age, and I am hardly the first to make this
observation, is that as trade barriers and borders disappear, as technology
allows us to stay in closer touch with loved ones, as 24 hour news makes world
events available with the click of the remote control, we have become more
divided as communities and nations, more distant in our relationships and more
disengaged from the world than at any time in recent memory. And those realities lead to a fever pitch of
anxiety, especially in the church.
If ever there was
a time for a story of gentle presence and simple human kindness, it is
now. That those needed things come
wrapped in a miracle of resurrection makes them all the more cherished.
In the context of
our world, it is no wonder that we cling to these moments of human warmth
afforded by sentimental stories of the ministry of Jesus. We need these stories. They help calm the anxious waters of our
lives and our world.
Like so much in
scripture, though, there is yet danger lurking beneath the surface. When Lazarus is raised and we get our happy
ending, part of us wants to stop reading there.
We want to learn this story, get our donut and let that be it. Yes, it is far too easy to stop there. To let that be all there is to the
story. But just as there is no manger
without the cross, the story of Lazarus is not complete without what comes
next.
I suppose we
should have seen this next bit coming.
After all, John loves to use those pairs of contrasting realities to
paint a more fulsome picture of the world we share. Yes, there is light, but there is also
darkness. We who experience the fullness
of the spirit must also know the emptiness of the soul. Those times of great abundance must never
cause us to forget the very real experience of scarcity.
Even here, in
this heart-warming and spirit-filled story of resurrection and new life, there
is yet death or at least the plotting of a death.
Yes, Lazarus is
raised and Jesus has wept and there is reason to celebrate this moment of
miraculous importance. But all the
while, lurking behind the portrait of reunion and miracle, there are
conspirators at foot.
Caiaphas, the
chief priest, and the council gathered to talk about what to do with this
Jesus. He had been a thorn in their
collective side for a while, but now things have gotten out of control. He has raised a man known to have died. There was no explaining away this one. It was a miracle, he did it, and this needed
to be dealt with.
Captured by their
fear, the chief priests and Pharisees began to chatter nervously, “what shall
we do? If we let him go on like this,
everyone will believe in him. Then the
Romans will come and take away both our nation and our temple!”
The text implies
that this hand wringing went on for quite a while until a solution presented
itself in the person and voice of Caiaphas, the chief priest. The answer, he says, is quite easy.
Kill him.
“It is better
that one man die for the people than the whole nation be destroyed.”
In other words,
it is either him or us and I vote him!
In many ways,
Caiaphas begs to be caricatured.
Standing there in all of his Machiavellian glory, he is the stock
villain. He is as easy to dismiss as he
is to stand up as a straw man for all that is blind and in darkness about the
truth of Jesus.
Standing there
with Jesus, Mary and Martha-and let’s be honest, that is where we put ourselves
in this story- we can look at old Caiaphas and the rest of his ilk and shake
our heads and say, “tsk, tsk, tsk. For
shame!”
It is here that I
think we get a glimpse into the brilliance of John’s Gospel. John writes, like all biblical writers,
within the context of his time and experience.
He had no concept of life in Johnson County nearly 1900 years later when
he penned these words, but he did have a keen awareness of human nature; of the
spiritual commonality of the species. It
is no mistake, I believe, that John tells the story of Lazarus the way that he
does with such sentimental and emotional force or that he caps it off with this
encounter with Caiaphas and his brazen willingness to sacrifice the Prince of
Peace for the preservation of power.
The proximity of
these stories in John’s gospel mirrors their proximity in the human
spirit. Within each of us is a yearning
for the kind of connection that Jesus shared with Mary and Martha; the sort of
vulnerable, gentle and genuine connection that brings light out of darkness and
life out of death. Still, for every moment
of spiritual illumination, of resurrection and new life, there is a part of us,
a voice of Caiaphas, saying, “this is too disruptive. This will cause problems. If you allow this to happen, if you allow the
light of resurrection to shine in your life, if you allow yourself to stand in
the light of Christ, there is the risk that the same light may just do what
light does. It may illumine those places
and those parts that we would just as soon leave dark.
When Caiaphas
realized that Jesus was the real thing, he knew then and there that this was a
light he could not destroy; it was a power he could not control.
So he tries to
shove the light back into the darkness.
He resisted the light and what it mIght mean in his carefully protected
world.
What does the
light of Christ threaten to illumine in your life?
Let me ask that
another way, what about your life makes you want to end the story at the happy
part, get your donut and go on about your Sunday?
If you are
anything like me, there are some dark and dingy corners that you would just as soon
leave in the darkness. Unfortunately for
you, unfortunately for me and certainly unfortunately for Caiaphas and his
clever plans, the light that is Jesus Christ refuses to be extinguished.
It will not be
put out by the machinations of our fears and it will not be confined to the
sentiment of a moment.
That story of
third grade Sunday School has two occasions when it comes up in family
conversation. The first is when my
mother feels the need to knock me down a peg and remind me that my journey to
ministry began in no small part with her conning me into reading half of the
gospel of John just to get a damn donut.
The second is when memories get a little too difficult and we need to
draw close the curtains of sentiment.
This and other sappy family stories make the more difficult parts of
growing up stay in the background. But
in the end, they are still there.
Sentimentality
cannot erase the past any more than it can silence the Caiaphas, the little
voice of fear, in each of us.
Still, it is
right that we embrace this story. So let
us celebrate with faithfulness of Mary and Martha; let us know the pure
spiritual peace that comes in that moment of connection in Jesus’ tears for his
friends; let us even be swept up into the sentiment of the moment. But let us also be aware of the Caiaphas in
each of us, plotting and prodding us to hedge our bets and keep the light at
arm’s length.
Both the faith of
the women and the fear of the high priest live within us.
Thanks be to God that it is Jesus
Christ who lives for us.
Sola deo Gloria!
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