John’s gospel doesn’t talk about miracles; instead, John calls all of Jesus miracles signs. Signs that point to the true miracle, that God comes to us in Jesus with faith, hope,
and love. Faith in us, hope for us, love of us, all come to us in the person of Jesus. Jesus is the reality of love. God‘s love comes down into the world of humans. That small, tight-knit social world that we humans create within the wider, more accepting natural world that God has made for us. Jesus is God‘s love come as a person, and Jesus miracles are signs of that love that points to God‘s willingness to risk all in loving humanity as a human. Signs that heal not only bodies, minds, and spirits but also whole communities and the relationships within them. Heals those scarred by separation and hate. If the Christmas story is that love comes down as Emmanuel, God with us, then the story of Holy Week is the story of what God is willing to risk to be love to us.
The risk of being a loving human is really clearly highlighted in our gospel reading today. Jesus, when he first hears that his friend Lazarus is sick, does not rush to rescue him, but withholds his power so that greater things might be done as a sign of God‘s love. So when Jesus finally reaches Mary and Martha, it may be surprising that Jesus has real tears over Lazarus' death. Jesus is really grieved by the death of his friend. God in Jesus enters into the fullness of human pain; enters the loss of a friend, and the hurtful self-doubt of whether he could have helped and didn’t. The shortest verse in the Bible is “Jesus wept”. Two words that speak deeply of what it costs to love someone and what it costs to allow your life to be a sign of love for all, not just for your own beloved. As Jesus weeps, it is not clear if immediate resurrection will happen. It is not clear if God will bring Lazarus back now, or at the end of all time in the last judgment, as his sisters expect.
Jesus has faith in God's resurrection power within him. Yet he still weeps because he is also a person who loves. When we weep, and we grieve for those we love and have lost, it does not diminish the loving or the loss. Tears validate both loss and sorrow as signs of love. God is willing to risk the loss, willing to risk the separation and sorrow so that love can happen. The risk of love that reaches its fulfillment in Jesus' life when he cries from the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” In living his life as a sign of God‘s love, Jesus comes to know us in the grief of our separation from those we love. In those times when the presence of loved ones is absent, Jesus comes alongside, knowing our struggles. Jesus is willing to enter our sorrows because Jesus is not just a sign of love, but also a sign of hope.
Jesus brings the hope of resurrection into that moment of sorrow over Lazarus. Sometimes our hope of heaven and resurrection gets deeply sentimental. We think of heaven as living in the most perfect moments of our lives. Nostalgically reflected back to us again and again with all the emotions that are within that memory. Yet, living in our memories is not a whole life. It is a life apart, as we say of those who are very old when they get lost in recollection, “there they go.” If we live wholly in our memories, we are not with the people around us, not even with those who have gone and we miss, but rather we are with our imagining of what that person was like. Memories can be a fantasy that can be deeply unhealthy if they are not worked through with tears and with hope. Jesus breaks the grieving out of their grief, out of memories that bind, takes them back into the world, and gives them hope even at the graveside.
In America, we increasingly find ourselves living in eco chambers that only reflect back to us what we already think, and this is not being helped by messaging with AI chatbots. Recently, OpenAI turned off ChatGPT 4, and people went crazy, grieving like they were losing a friend, and demanded the resurrection of this particular AI. Why were they so sad about this AI? Well, ChatGPT 4 was the most sycophantic of all AIs yet created. It lovingly reflected back to users everything that they said to it. Without perspective and without nuance, it reflected whatever it was told. It encouraged the lonely to isolate, the greedy to steal, the murderous to kill, and the suicidal to pursue their worst impulses. The hope Jesus brings is no memory, nor a nostalgic echo chamber; it's no chatbot. It does not reflect back ourselves to us; rather, it is the hope that comes from someone who is willing to stand alongside us in grief, to bring us back into life from the deserts of loneliness. Even if that is bringing us back into the struggle and uncertainty of life. The hope of Christ with us is the hope of a person in our lives, a hope of human connection that leads to eternal love.
That hope does not draw us into a perfect, safe world, but rather it draws us into faith. Trusting and having faith in Jesus, Lazarus’ sisters are willing to open the tomb, even though the stench of death will be in there. With faith in the words of Jesus' call, Lazarus is able to struggle his way out of the tomb, fighting against the grave clothes that bind and restrain him from entering back into the fullness of life. When Elijah prophesies to the bones, commanding them to come together, to take on flesh, they become bodies, but they are still dry and dead without the breath of life flowing in them. Without the love of God in them, their hearts do not beat. Only when that breath enters them do they cease to be dead flesh and become living persons.
I’ve watched enough zombie movies to know a moving body doesn’t make someone alive. As numerous TV shows mocking life in an office or exploring the loneliness and isolation of the daily grind tell us, it is possible to have life without living. When Lazarus came out of the tomb, Jesus commanded that all that would hold him back in the tomb and death be removed. Lazarus is not resurrected into safety, but rather resurrected into a faithful relationship, and the shame, the addictions, the boredom, the hopelessness that would bind him in a life that is worse than death are stripped away. Lazarus is not just resurrected into a body, but his resurrection gives new life to the community that was grieving and comes together in joy.
If the resurrections that our lives preach to people do not enable them to move beyond the bindings that hold them in the grave, then we are failing to live like Christ as resurrection signs of faith, hope, and love. Baptism is described as entering into the tomb, where we, like Lazarus, die to ourselves and are raised into a new fullness of life in this world. This coming week, we will host the Chrismal Eucharist, during which Bishop Thomas will bless oil to be used at baptisms throughout the state of Maine. Jesus at his baptism is described as being “anointed” with the Spirit. Anointing is the practice of placing oil upon an individual in order to set them apart for a great purpose, normally to be a king or a prophet. In Hebrew, Messiah means “anointed one”, and the Greek equivalent is Christ. Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the anointed one. Jesus was anointed by Mary with oil and anointed by God with the Spirit. So, chrism oil, anointing oil, which we used in baptism, could be described as Christ making oil, a sign that we, too, have received the Spirit of God. We are anointed at baptism because in baptism Christians are made Christ in the world. Like Jesus, we are anointed to be signs of faith, hope, and love, so the world comes alive with the presence of God. In baptism, we enter into the resurrection life of Christ; we are unwrapped from the shame that would hold us in the grave, so we can see that Jesus has already drawn near and is ready to anoint us with purpose through the oil of his love. Amen.