The Sixth (or Seventh) Sign (John 11:1 - 45)

The second part of the Gospel of John is called the “Book of Signs,” because it seems to be structured around seven—or maybe six—signs. And whether seven or six, it doesn’t matter for our purposes, except to note that this one, the raising of Lazarus, is the final one in that section. And you might well ask—and I’m glad you did—what they are signs of? Well, they’re signs of the Kingdom of God. And so, right off the bat, we’re going to look at that oft-misunderstood concept, which is referred to by multiple names in the Bible, names like “the rule of Christ” or “the day of the Lord” or “the kingdom of heaven.” Reference to this concept are rife in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, and my favorites in the Old are from Isaiah and Micah: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them . . . [the nations] shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

In the New Testament, Jesus tells parables about the kingdom—like the mustard seed growing into a tree with home for all the birds and animals—and there are those six—or is it seven—signs in John, the last of which we just, but nowhere is it more clear than in Luke, where Jesus gives his mission statement which is, of course, to embody the Kingdom: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Now. What are things all those descriptions have in common? Well, right off the bat, they’re surprising . . . who ever heard of a mustard seed—little, tiny, producing normally a little herb—growing up into a tree? One big enough for all manner of birds to nest? And the laying down with the lamb? Puh-leeeze. The lion fricasseeing the lamb, is more like it . . . but here, in the kingdom of God, the lion and the lamb will lay down together, and you can take that literally, or symbolically, like it was surely intended, but one thing is clear: the lamb, which ordinarily would be dead, is alive.

And that leads us to a second thing in common with these descriptions . . . life arises where seemingly it would not. In the case of the mustard seed, it would normally produce life—in the ancient mind, the seed was considered “dead”—but it produces life overflowing, life abundantly, it makes life—living space and food and nourishment—for the birds of the air. And the lion and the lamb, and interaction which normally produces death, instead—inscrutably and unaccountably—engenders life.

Now. To see where I’m going with this, the first thing I thought of when I read this morning’s lection was the Kingdom of God, and—the Spirit moving in particular ways as it does—in Christian Ed we just happen to be studying discernment, and one of the spiritual disciplines within it is learning to see where the kingdom of God is breaking out around us. In other words, to look for signs of the Kingdom of God. We do this by asking ourselves—and one another—a simple question: where have you seen the Kingdom of God (or the rule of Christ or the day of the Lord or the kingdom of heaven—breaking through into the world? Where have you seen signs of the Kingdom of God?

And one of the things we’ve started to do in session—and I hope committees and boards will join in the fun—is asking ourselves every month “Where have you seen signs of the Kingdom breaking out in the last month.” And as I contemplated this, I imagined how another session meeting might have went, the Session of Brownhills Presbyterian Church of Judea sitting down, and their moderator—a completely handsome, charismatic kind of guy, as are all moderators—asking them “Ok, where have you seen the Kingdom of God breaking out in the past month.” And the elders kind of shrink down in their seats, and shift nervously around, they won’t meet his eye, but finally Fred of Bethany pipes up: “Uh, well . . . I was trudging home one morning after working the swing shift at the tannery—we’d just gotten a big order for Roman bullwhips, and I was dog tired—and I cut through the graveyard—I usually don’t go that way, ‘cause it’s so creepy, all those dead people—but I was tired, so I cut through the graveyard and there was this high keening sound, it set my teeth on edge, and for a moment, I thought all the banshees of Hades were after me, but it turned out to be just ritual weeping, and I thought ‘Cripes, it’s a funeral, the traffic’a gonna be so heavy, and Mildred is gonna be so mad’ . . . she’s always telling me ‘Come right home, Freddie, don’t you dare stop and have one with the boys, and don’t be bringing any of your mangy friends over, either. You don’t make enough at that so-called job of yours for us to be feeding the whole countryside . . . ‘”

And the moderator gently interrupts him “The kingdom, Fred? Where did you see the Kingdom?” and Fred blushes and says, “Oh, yeah . . . well, it turned out it wasn’t a funeral after all, but it’s hard, even now, to say what it was . . . I guess it was the exact opposite of a funeral . . .” “Why do you say that?” asks the moderator. “Because they weren’t putting somebody in a tomb, they were letting somebody out. This . . . guy . . . walked up to a tomb, and it looked like any other tomb, just an eerie hole in the rocks . . . and I could see the stone that the workmen had rolled aside, and this man walks up to the tomb and yelled ‘Lazarus, come out!’ And immediately, I knew what was what, ‘cause that was my cousin Lazarus in that tomb, and I’m thinking ‘Say what??? He’s been in that hole for four days, his spirit has had time to get out of dodge, and he’ll certainly be kind of, ah . . . ripe.’

“And sure enough, I caught a whiff of graveyard stench, and I started down there, fixing maybe to stop that circus, make ‘em leave poor ol’ Lazarus alone, hasn’t he suffered enough, when, in the doorway to the tomb, in that dank hole in the ground, I saw a white smudge, just a little lighter than the surrounding darkness, then it became more and more clear and it was as if the darkness of the tomb turned to day, and the keening and wailing shut off like someone turned a faucet, and my mind was screaming ‘No . . . no . . . this can’t be happening,’ but before my very eyes the blob resolved into a white-bound figure, stumbling into the light, and he would have fallen, but the man—is he a faith healer? An exorcist?—the man caught him in an embrace that was incredibly tender, entirely loving. And the man looked up, and told the crowd ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ And they did.”

Fred sits for a long time, head bowed, lost in thought, then the moderator says, again gently—for all moderators are gentle—“So why, for you, was this an demonstration of the Kingdom of God?” And Fred looks up, kind of startled, as if he thought it would be self evident: “Well, it surprised the living Hades out of me . . . you hear a lot about resurrection in the final days, in the Day of the Lord, maybe, but you don’t exactly expect to see it coming off the freeway . . . and the last place you expect to see it is in a graveyard. I mean, really: life springing up out of all that death . . . death in the air, death in the dust, death in the very ground and there is life. Unlooked for, unpredicted, unforeseen . . . Life.”

And the other members of the Session of Brownhills Pres of Southern Judea just stared, some transported, some puzzled, but all touched and thinking and feeling the kingdom of God. Amen.