John 11:1-45
March 26, 2023
Oscar Romero
Bishop of El Salvador
Like
the woman at the well,
The story of Jesus raising Lazarus
only appears in the gospel of John.
Miracles
for John are always more than just miracles,
they are signs of
something larger.
They point to
something about Jesus and
they are there to show us something about the
activity of God
and the Holy Spirit in our world.
John actually calls them “signs”
So what is this miracle showing us?
Jesus brings resurrection and life, obviously.
But not just that, there’s more to it.
To decipher it, we have to review the story a
little.
There are a bunch of different details to look
at,
but I specifically want to look at Jesus
interaction with Martha.
So
Jesus is in another town and he gets word
that his friend Lazarus is very ill.
Now , you think he might go quickly to see him
and help him.
It says Lazarus and Mary and Martha were
special friends of Jesus.
He had gone to help other people,
you might expect that he would have made
a special effort to go and help Lazarus. But
no.
Jesus takes his time and stays a while longer
wherever he was.
So
it’s four days after Lazarus is dead,
for four days Mary and Martha were grieving
over their brother.
And when Jesus arrives at Bethany,
you can kind of feel the anger in the air.
Martha meets Jesus on the road and says,
“If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t
have died.”
I mean she’s seen him cure so many people
before,
so many strangers, he could have come and
helped his friend.
So
Jesus tells her “Your brother will live
again.”
And Martha tells him:
“I know
he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.”
Now,
Jewish people at that time believed
in the resurrection
on the last day,
It was what the Pharisees were teaching,
So Martha is giving this line back of normal
rote stuff
everyone would have been taught in their
religious education classes.
“Yes, yes, he’ll rise on the last day. I know eternal
life.”
She may have even been annoyed by Jesus
religious response.
And
I can completely understand that if she was.
When someone dies, lots of people’s
inclination
is to tell the person who is grieving
“It’s okay, your loved one is in heaven now”
or “God needed another angel” or some other
platitude like that.
But telling someone those things are not usually
consoling.
Especially when the death is unexpected, or
the person is young,
their loved ones still have to remain here,
and deal with the pain and loss,
and pay the bills, and live alone,
and raise the kids by themselves.
Practically speaking, saying to someone,
“Your husband, or brother, or wife, or child
is in heaven”
is not comforting in every situation.
And it wouldn’t have been in this one.
But
it’s apparent that is not what Jesus meant.
Jesus doesn’t quite correct her, but he says,
“I am
the resurrection and the life.”
Jesus is saying, while I’m here, new life is
possible.
He’s not talking about the after-life
He’s talking about resurrection here and now.
And that’s exactly what Jesus does.
Jesus
calls to the previously dead man:
“Lazarus come out” and Lazarus walks out,
his body still wrapped up in the cloths
he was buried in, and Jesus tells the rest of
the people to
“Unbind him and let him go”.
And that is the sign that this miracle points
to in John’s gospel.
Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
Not only in some point in the future,
but right here and right now.
That doesn’t mean that Jesus is literally
bringing
dead people to life these days, that’s never
been a ministry of the Christian church,
but the gospel of the unconditional love and
forgiveness of God
has the ability to bring people, communities,
and the world
back to life, right here on earth in this
realm
in real time, all the time.
And
when religion doesn’t get in its own way,
the community of Christ can be part of that.
Jesus gospel of love and forgiveness has the
power
to empower and give life to the world.
So
it’s sad and ironic that lots of people
in the Christian church haven’t gotten past
the idea that Christianity is ONLY about the
after-life,
and going to heaven or hell after you die.
That Jesus and his church ONLY have rule
over the after-life is a much safer story to
tell.
It is not disruptive to the status quo.
It leaves the powers of this world to run
everything here.
But this sign of the raising of Lazarus points to the fact
that Jesus means to bring resurrection and life
right now.
And according to John’s Gospel, this was the very
last straw.
This was the thing that pushed the religious
leaders over the edge.
This was the moment, hearing about this
miracle,
that convinced them that Jesus needed to die.
But some people went to the Pharisees and told
them what Jesus had done.
So
the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council and said,
“What are we to do? This man is performing many signs.
But
one of them, said to them, “You know nothing at all! 50
You
do not understand that it is better for you to have one man
die for the people
than to have the whole nation destroyed.
So from that day
on they planned to put him to death.”
This is how the world reacts to resurrection and new life.
This is how people react to God’s presence in
the world.
It’s controversial, it’s dangerous, it’s a
scandal, it’s a threat.
When the church remains safe behind its doors,
talking just about the after-life, everyone is
fine with it.
Even when it’s spouting off it’s tough
discriminating
rules and regulations, judgments, and condemning
people and groups of people to hell,
even when it calls for killing and death,
everyone seems pretty comfortable with that,
because that is business as usual.
But when the body of Christ comes out of the
safety of the church with words of empowerment
and new life for the previously bound,
when that new life threatens to upset the
status quo of society, then there’s trouble.
Then people get upset.
People
got threatened and upset at Jesus,
and they’ve gotten upset with other people who
have used that power to unbind and release the oppressed and hated too.
In
the 1970’s Oscar Romero was appointed arch bishop of
El Salvador. The ruling classes were happy.
He was a friend of the rich oligarchy who
ruled the country.
He was content to keep the status quo alive
even though it was crushing the El Salvadoran
people
Poverty
and hunger was rampant,
schools and health care for average people
were abysmal
or non-existent, rents for farms were
outrageous,
and poor people were taxed at a much higher
rate
than rich people. And to keep all this in
place,
corruption and voter suppression was rampant.
Meanwhile,
through paramilitary groups,
the government was putting down
any kind of opposition or any type of protest
they killed many of union leaders, activists,
teachers, students and
anyone suspected of sympathizing with the
peasants.
For
a while Oscar Romero and the church did what the church
oftne did which was support the rich and
powerful
and ignore the people.
But
in March of 1977, Oscar Romero’s friend
Father
Rutillo Grande was assassinated by
security forces in the village of peasants
that he served.
The church requested that Bishop Romero to
have the
funeral quietly in the small province
where
Rutillo Grande served, as to not bring
attention to it.
But,
against the wishes of the church,
Oscar Romero held the funeral at the
cathedral in San Salvador, the capital city.
People
flooded into the mass from all over the country
and Romero spent the time afterwards
hearing stories of suffering from peasant
farmers.
It was then that Oscar Romero was converted,
It was then that he could finally see,
and changed his life and the role of the
church in El Salvador.
He
left his comfortable Bishop’s palace,
and lived in relative poverty with the
people.
And he started to speak out against the
war, violence, and injustice happening
during his regular Sunday sermon
He preached non-violent resistance and
reconciliation
which was broadcast to all of El Salvador on
the radio.
The
Salvadoran government, backed by the
United States was wreaking havoc on the
country
in an attempt to tamp down on protests and
unrest.
On
March 23rd, in his regular Sunday sermon broadcast,
Romero called on Salvadoran soldiers
to defy the orders of the government,
obey God’s higher calling, and stop carrying
out
the government’s repression for them,
and stop killing their brothers and sisters.
The
next day, on March 24th, 1980, 43 years ago this weekend,
Oscar Romero was presiding at a mass at a
hospital
for terminal cancer patients.
After he finished his sermon, and stepped
away
from the pulpit, Bishop Romero was assassinated.
He was shot and killed, right on the altar of
a chapel.
In 2009, the state of El Salvador finally
admitted their responsibility in his murder.
A 12
year civil war would follow his killing
that caused untolled death and destruction
in that country, without the preaching
of non violence that Romero
Romero
didn‘t want one side or another to win.
He advocated for a stop to the violence and
repression.
He advocated for justice and peace and
reconciliation.
he advocated for the liberation of all the
citizens of El Salvador
who were bound by oppression and violence
no matter what side of the situation they
were on.
What the church should be advocating for.
And
that felt disruptive and threatening.
Romero
called it the “Violence of Love“
which he said feels like violence because it
upsets
the status quo and the social order of
things.
It is this love, he said,
which left Jesus nailed to a cross.
He
said “Let us not tire of preaching love;
it
is the force that will overcome the world.
Let us not tire of preaching love.
Though we see that waves of violence succeed
in drowning the fire of Christian
love, love must win out;
it is the only thing that can.”
I was
in El Salvador in 2017
and Oscar Romero is honored and remembered.
His picture was in almost every church we
went into.
There are murals of him on walls all over.
He’s still lives in the hearts of
the people there for doing what the church
should be doing: advocating for the bound and oppressed,
stepping into the complicated fray of life.
Bringing new life out of old, dry bones.
Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
And the gospel of love, forgiveness, justice,
and reconciliation
that he brings has the power to raise and
empower
the ones who were dead and forgotten
and condemned to new life.
And even though it might upset the status quo,
we, the church of Christ,
have been asked to be a part of
sharing this new life with others.
