"If I Had My Life to Live Over"

John 11:1-45

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But 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." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" Jesus 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. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

When 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." And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The 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. When 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." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus 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." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I 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." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The 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."

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

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            This morning I want you to imagine with me that you and three other people are standing on different corners of a 4-way stop and we watch an accident happen.  We each go home and we write about what we saw from our different perspectives.  I use this analogy because that’s how many people believe the gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – were written.  The problem is it’s not.  It’s much more complex.  Alfred North Whitehead used to say that for every question there’s a simple answer and a hard answer – the simple answer is usually always wrong.

            You see if we use the analogy of a car accident happening at a 4-way stop with the gospels it would look like this.  Mark was probably the only person who saw the accident really happen and then 30 years wrote about it.  Matthew and Luke come along even later some 40 or 50 years later and they basically retell Mark’s account of what happened adding some more material that they got from other sources and we’re not sure if they were really there or not.  Then last on the scene is John.  John wrote his account anywhere from 60 to 90 years later.  That’s why for some preachers – especially me – preaching on the Gospel of John is such a challenge.  John is probably the farthest removed from the historical Jesus.  John is a great place to begin if you’d like to know what the early church believed and thought about Jesus the Christ but not so much if you want to get as close as possible to the car accident to move back to our metaphor for a moment.

            So that was the first challenge in thinking about the story of Lazarus this week.  But it certainly wasn’t the only one.  Many commentaries I consulted this week referred to this as the “resurrection of Lazarus.”  I’m not sure I would agree with that summary.  For me, this story isn’t about resurrection but resuscitation of a dead corpse.  You might be wondering – what’s the difference.  Resuscitation is breathing life into a mortal body.  It’s Lazarus’s old body having the breath of life returned to it.  I think that the lectionary elves – the folks that decide which passages from scripture we’re going to hear when – decided to put this passage on this Sunday to give us a preview of coming attractions.  A little something to look forward to on Easter Sunday.  But for me it’s not resurrection.  Resurrection is Jesus on that first Easter morning when the women come to the tomb and it’s empty.  When people meet the resurrected Christ and don’t recognize him at first but think he’s a gardener.  Jesus’s own mother doesn’t recognize him at first because he doesn’t look the same.  For me, that’s resurrection.  It’s not life being breathed into a dead corpse, but it’s something new.  It’s receiving a body that is different that doesn’t have the same limitations as a mortal body.  It bears traces of our old bodies because everyone is able to recognize Jesus and see the marks in his hand but it’s not.  How many of you with your current bodies can walk through walls or enter a room that is tightly locked?  That, for me, is resurrection.

  

          For me the story of Lazarus has much to teach us, especially for those of us living in a Good Friday world where it seems that we are constantly surrounded by images of suffering and death.  For one, it teaches us that the abyss of God’s love is deeper than the abyss of death.  It was because of God’s love shown through Jesus at Lazarus’s tomb that he was brought back to life.  Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary were dear friends of Jesus and he couldn’t help but to be moved by Lazarus’s death.  Jesus has a natural human response and weeps when they get to the cemetery.  But out of his love for his friend he does something about it – he brings him back to life.

            What’s interesting about Lazarus, however, is that he never says a word in the fourth gospel.  If you do a word search in the Bible you’ll find two passages in John and a passage from Luke where Lazarus pops up.  In Luke, as you’ll remember, it’s the story of the rich man and the poor man who die and go to the afterlife.  The rich man is in Hades where he is tormented.  The poor man who is named Lazarus is in “Abraham’s bosom” and there is a great gulf which separates them.  I’m not sure if this is the same Lazarus as in John’s gospel or not.

            Lazarus also shows up later in John sharing a meal with Jesus before his final Passover.

            I think for me this passage teaches us about the sacredness and importance of life.  It also teaches us that we never know when we’re going to die so to live each moment to the fullest and to cherish our relationships with friends and family. 

            I want to share with you an article I ran across this week by an 85-year-old woman from Louisville, Kentucky entitled “If I Had My Life to Live Over.”

            If I had my life to live over, I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.  I’d relax.  I would limber up.  I would be sillier than I’ve been this trip.  I would take fewer things seriously.  I would take more chances.  I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.  I would eat more ice cream and less beans.  I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.

            You see I’m one of those people who live sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day.  Oh I’ve had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them.  In fact, I’d try to have nothing else.  Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day.  I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute.  If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

            If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.  I would go to more dances.  I would ride more merry-go-rounds.  I would pick more daises. 

            Not too shabby advice, huh?

            And one more perspective from a poet by the name of Jane Kenyon, who was the poet laureate of New Hampshire who wrote this poem as she was dying from Leukemia entitled “Otherwise”:

I got out of bed


on two strong legs


It might have been


otherwise.

I ate


cereal, sweet


milk, a ripe, flawless


peach. It might


have been otherwise

. 
. . .


All morning I did


the work I love

.
 . . .


We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks.


It might have been otherwise.


I slept in a bed


in a room with paintings


on the wall, and


planned another day


just like this day.


But one day, I know


it will be otherwise.


(from Otherwise, Graywolf Press, 1996)