I had to take my car into the shop in Binghamton last week, and I had a lot of time to kill. The waiting room didn’t look very inviting, so I decided to do something I haven’t done in a long time: I took a walk. At first it seemed as if the world had been put on pause, or at least slow motion; the scenery around me just wasn’t changing as fast as I was used to. But I was amazed at how quickly old memories – very old memories – began flooding back, memories of walking the blocks between home and grade school as a kid. Kids don’t hurry, and neither did I, back then. I knew those streets – every bush, fence, store, house. I knew every crack in the sidewalk and even the stones in the road. When a new one caught my eye I would pick it up and hold it to the light; if it sparkled it got stuffed in my pocket: a new treasure for my collection. That’s the kind of experience I was having that day, walking the streets of Binghamton. I stood before vestiges of grander times as well as signs of new life; I felt the whispers of its sorrows and its hopes; I touched its scars, read the memorial words of bygone generations. I encountered its people, and I heard its stories.
Before then, if Binghamton wasn’t my “Point B” for the day it was just the space I had to travel through to get from A to B. You know travel isn’t about the journey anymore, but just getting from here to there as fast as possible, as close to the speed limit – more or less – as possible. And for me the trips are usually made with a Bluetooth screwed into my ear so I don’t miss any of what passes for communication today, since we’ve come to want to ‘converse’ at about the same speed we drive. Taking it one step further, we’ve even stripped words down to their minimum meaning content, then packed them into one letter apiece so we can send and receive in staccato bursts of three- and four-letter groups that pass for conversation – or not so much, IMHO (in my humble opinion).
In this environment, what chance do the Gospel stories have? They tell of events that unfolded at the speed of life, not the speed of light. Of unhurried hours spent on hillsides and plains, absorbing the words and the spirit of the Master. Of long hours on the road, journeys made at sandal speed, watching the Master’s face, hearing the inflection of his voice, paying attention to how he treated the people he met. But we tend to hit the gospel road without changing gears or throttling back; so we race through them at the speed limit – more or less – and miss so much; sometimes the very heart of God’s word for us.
The gospel you heard as part of this morning’s liturgy was the story of the raising of Lazarus, from the 11th chapter of John. I’d like to park the liturgical bus for just a few minutes and walk this stretch of gospel road with you. And I want to take time to pick up a couple of the ‘stones in the road,’ the parts we tend to drive around and just keep on going because it takes too much time to stop, hold them up to the light and figure out if there’s treasure there or not.
The first ‘stone’ we stumble over isn’t far down the road. Jesus has been told that Lazarus is sick. Then in verses 5 and 6 we hear, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” Does that make any sense? Actually it does – it makes sense as God’s word, not as human words, and that’s what makes it a stone. This morning we’re going to hold it up and let the light of the rest of the gospel shine on it.
So let’s pick it up and backtrack one verse. Verse 4 says that when Jesus heard Lazarus was sick, he told his disciples, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Here is the first clue that something bigger than Lazarus’ life is in the balance. And if we stand still for a minute we will be able to hear in this verse the echoes of another story, just a short way back up the road, in John chapter 9, when Jesus and his disciples encountered a man born blind. His disciples ask him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” And Jesus answers, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,…but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Lazarus’ illness, as was the man’s blindness, will be an occasion for the works of God to be displayed, the glory of God to be made manifest in Jesus.
Let’s hang on to this stone and walk a bit farther down the road. Jesus has been trying to get his disciples to understand what’s going on, but they just don’t get it, so finally Jesus has to tell them plainly in verse 14, “Lazarus is dead.” And he adds, “for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” The stone’s starting to glitter, isn’t it? Belief is the objective of the God event that will take place.
Ok, just one more stop with this stone and then we’ll put it all together. Martha comes to Jesus, and Jesus asks her if she believes, and tells her – and us – in verses 25 and 26, “I am the resurrection and the life…whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” Belief in Jesus leads to eternal life. And the entire gospel message tells us that this eternal life, the life in the Kingdom of God, is at hand – there to begin living the instant we receive Jesus, not something only to be realized some distant day on the other side of time.
Now this little stone in the road shines. Now we can piece together its message: it was so important to Jesus that people believed in him that we waited two days before going to Bethany, to make sure that the God event would be clear, that the ones he loved – the disciples who followed him as well as Lazarus’s sisters – would be left with no doubt of who he was, and would let him give them the gift of eternal life. His delay was a deliberate act of intense love.
Let’s stuff that stone in our pocket and keep walking; there’s one more we need to pick up. Mary has now come to Jesus, and in verse 33 we read, “When Jesus saw her [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” For a long time we’ve wanted to moderate and harmonize this verse, paved over it so to speak, by understanding only its surface meaning, seeing here nothing more than a manifestation of Jesus’ compassion. Only recently have scholars picked up this stone themselves and wrestled with its deeper meaning. The Greek phrase translated “deeply moved in spirit” actually expresses a very specific emotion: anger. Frustrated, disappointed anger, so strong that it erupts in physical expression. The Greek phrase literally says that Jesus “snorted in spirit.” And the word that here is rendered as “troubled” really connotes a disturbed, agitated state. Why? Rather than drop this stone back on the road and move on we’re going to stop here and look around for an answer.
And actually we’ve already got part of the answer in our pocket. As with Jesus’ entire life, this was intended to be a theophany, a manifestation of the glory of God, that would bring people to belief in Jesus and his message, that would open their hearts to the gift of eternal life. But his disciples weren’t getting it; Mary, who had on a previous occasion sat at his feet listening to him speak wasn’t getting it; and the Jews, the very chosen people of God to whom Jesus had been sent with the good news, weren’t getting it. Jesus knew the Pharisees wanted him dead and that his days on earth were numbered. His whole life was coming down to this: he had come to give eternal life to those God had given him, time was running out and nobody was getting it. “Will no one come to belief?” one commentator offers as Jesus’ state of mind. Here is the cause of his anger, his frustration, his utter disappointment. This is why, as the Greek says, he snorted in the spirit. And this frustrated anger and agitation is the reason why, as we read in verse 35, “Jesus wept.”
Then, on top of everything else, as if to add insult to injury, some of the Jews show that they only see the surface reason for his tears: “See how he loved him!” Others don’t have the slightest clue something bigger is happening, remembering the incident of the man born blind but missing the meaning: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” So Jesus once more was so angered and frustrated that, as the NIV says, “He was deeply moved.” As the Greek says, he snorted to himself.
So now we’ve got the whole picture these stone illuminate. What Jesus saw from the start as an exciting chance to bring people to belief appeared to be slipping away; and he wasn’t going to have many more chances. And bringing people to belief so he could give them eternal life was so important to him – was almost literally life to him – he couldn’t stand it.
Having taken the time to pick up these stones we now arrive at what I call a “Jesus moment” on this road, one that we otherwise might have missed. Haven’t we all at some time or other been so deeply frustrated, angry with, disappointed in someone that we threw up our hands - maybe even snorted? At that point I know I probably would have given up any idea of doing anything for the person who was the object of my frustration. Had I been in Jesus’ shoes I probably would have said, “That’s it, the Messiah is officially off the clock, Father, beam me up. I’m outa here; you’re on your own.” But Jesus didn’t. Jesus showed us what it means to love one another as he loves us. Troubled, angry, frustrated, disappointed, agitated, he still walks to the tomb, and then takes one, last-ditch shot at trying to get people to see what was happening. “Father,” Jesus begins in verse 42, “I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
Some did believe. But the verse just past the end of this stretch of gospel road tells us, “But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.” In typical Johannine irony, the act of giving Lazarus life was the proximate event that led to Jesus’ death. But our stones in the road have helped us to see that when he willingly laid down his life he was still fully, irrepressibly, irreversibly intensely in love with us – every single one us: those who believed, those who walked away; those who abandoned him, those who betrayed and denied him; those who drove nails through his body. That’s what loving like Jesus loves should mean to us.
We miss so much when we race through the gospel stories at the speed limit more or less. The thing that seems most often to get lost is the absolute humanity of the absolutely divine Son of God. In just this one passage we saw, when we took the time, the human-ness of Jesus’ emotions: he was glad, he was angry and agitated, he wept – and he loved with a single-mindedness and intensity that never flagged or diminished, no matter what.
There’s a line in T.S. Eliot’s poem Dry Salvage that says, “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” Dear heavenly Father, please don’t let us drive through life at the speed limit more or less, piling up mountains of experiences but missing the meaning, missing you, missing your love and your plan for us. And please don’t let us miss those times when we are to be the instruments through which your works, your glory, your love are to be made manifest to others, that they may believe. Help us park the car and the cellphone every now and then and take time to walk the Gospel road with your Son, hearing his words, seeing what he saw, feeling what he felt. Oh and one more thing, Father: please help us never to do anything that would make Jesus snort. Amen.
