New Life in Christ

John 11.1-45

1A certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

7Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ 8The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ 9Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ 11After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ 12The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ 13Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ 16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’

17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ 23Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’
28When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.’ 40Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

45Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Sermon by John Pridmore in Church Times

IN THE Cappella degli Scrovegni, the Arena Chapel, in Padua, there is a cycle of frescoes by the 14th-century Italian artist Giotto. Giotto’s sublime work is both an unmatched masterpiece of Western art and a profound reading of the Christian story. One of the most remarkable of these frescoes depicts the raising of Lazarus, the story we turn to this Sunday.The artist pictures Lazarus emerging from the tomb, still wrapped in grave cloths. Giotto vividly captures the range of responses that the miracle elicits. The various reactions reflect our own. We must step into the fresco, and decide with whom we belong.

Where are we in the picture? It is the question we must always ask when reading the Gospels.Jesus’s disciples, grouped behind him, are spectators. One has an admonitory finger raised, but he seems unmoved by what is happening. After all, they have been trailing around after Jesus for some time, and have seen this sort of thing before.They look a lukewarm lot. Some, one fears, might end up in the church in Laodicea (Revelation 3.14-22). We, who have read the 11th chapter of John’s Gospel once or twice before, may be in the same boat.Most of the bystanders, the good folk of Bethany, are overwhelmed by astonishment. Giotto’s treatment of them is a study of stupefaction. The response of one of them, however, is more complex. He leans towards Lazarus, staring at him, one hand to his chin, the other hand gesturing behind him towards Jesus.He is questioning what it all means. He seems poised between scepticism and a dawning awareness that perhaps something of eternal consequence is happening here. This, he feels, is more than another tuppeny-wonder produced by one of the countless wandering miracle-workers who conjured a living from the credulous in the ancient world. It is as if he is almost persuaded to believe.Two figures either ignore, or simply do not notice, what is going on. They are the two lads manhandling the huge stone that they have shifted from the mouth of the tomb. In his poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts”, W. H. Auden famously remarked:
About suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters; how well, they understood.Its human position; how it takes place.While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

The cemetery attendants have their job to do, and they get on with it. In much the same way, no doubt, whoever actually was the gardener where they buried Jesus continued to weed and prune that Easter Day, as on any other. For most of our contemporaries, neither the raising of Lazarus nor the resurrection it prefigures is of the slightest interest or importance.

“About suffering they were never wrong”: how we misread this story. The tale of Lazarus is touched by tragedy. “Jesus wept.” Certainly, he shared the grief of those lately bereaved of one dear to them. Certainly, he mourned the passing of one who was his own friend, too. Certainly, he cried — and still he cries — for How things are makes Christ howl. Jesus indeed wept. But he wept not only because of what had happened. He wept because of what he must do. We look at Giotto’s depiction of Lazarus, and we hear the words of Lear on his cold lips: “You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave.”The raising of Lazarus signifies that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. The sign prefigures the raising of Jesus and of all who are his. It floods our hearts with hope. As Ezekiel learned, bones can live.Yet, for this one obscure resident of Bethany to be restored to mortal life, only to suffer yet again the tiresome business of dying, is a very mixed blessing. No wonder Giotto’s Lazarus looks peeved.

Sylvia Plath rids us of any naïve supposition that he must have been glad to be back.

The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot“Lady Lazarus”

Two other figures call for our attention in Giotto’s fresco. They are the two Marys who kneel before Jesus. Are they prostrate in praise and thanksgiving for what he has done, recognising in him the one who holds the keys of life and death, theirs as well as Lazarus’s? Or has Giotto freeze-framed this detail, so that what we are seeing is the sisters still pleading with Jesus for what they scarcely
Giotto is an artist, and so he does not tell us. His sublime picture, like what it depicts and like the greater narrative of which it is a part, is a gift for each of us to unwrap and to make of it what we will.

In drafting these reflections, I have drawn on an as yet unpublished commentary on the frescoes of the Arena Chapel by my cousin, the art historian Brian Bishop, to whom I am deeply grateful.