"Unbind him and let him go!" An invitation to join me for a Lenten quiet day and reflections on the Raising Lazarus from the Dead

Please join me on Saturday morning March 8 at St. Paul's for a Lenten Quiet Day. I will offer a series of reflections on the Gospel of John, and specifically on the story of the Raising of Lazarus from the dead. It is the hinge point in John's gospel; it is the moment that leads to Golgotha and the Cross. 

I would also suggest that the story is key for not just understanding John's deeply mystical gospel, but it is also crucial to understanding the meaning of Jesus being God's son and the meaning of the Cross.

We will begin at 10 am with a brief Morning Prayer and a reading of the story of the Raising of Lazarus from the dead. I will then offer a series of reflections and give you time to yourself for reflection, prayer and quiet (or private conversation). We will end at 1 pm (please bring your own lunch), but you are invited to continue your quiet reflection on your own as you feel able.

To give you a head start, here is the story of the Raising of Lazarus from the dead:

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The Raising of Lazarus from the dead

John 11:1-44

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 for 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 for 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 upwards 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.”

Visions of Heaven: Are they so rare?

Dr. Eben Alexander

There has been a fair amount of buzz around my parish about Dr. Eben Alexander’s book, Proof of Heaven. So when he was featured this week at the Virginia Festival of the Book, I went to check him out and hear what he had to say.

His audience packed an old downtown church that is now used for our community homeless shelter, The Haven. I rather liked that as the venue for a talk about Heaven. Quite a number of members from my parish were in the audience, as were a handful of pastors from Charlottesville.

You could have heard a pin drop for the next 90 minutes as Dr. Alexander spoke. The audience was that enthralled.

For those unfamiliar with Dr. Alexander and his book, he is a neurosurgeon who has taught medicine at Harvard and worked here at the University of Virginia. He lives in Lynchburg, south of here.

In 2008, Dr. Alexander contracted a rare form of bacterial meningitis and fell into a coma for seven days. For all intents and purposes, he was brain dead. Then he came to. He has spent the last several years trying to explain what happened to him while he was in a coma. Medicine has no explanation, as he painstakingly described for us.

During his time of being “out” he experienced what he calls “ultra-reality.” He saw golden orbs in the sky, and a beautiful young girl who guided him through a lush fertile valley filled with life and joy. I won’t spoil the book, but when he came to, he was a transformed to his core and he knew he had experienced an all-knowing and all loving God.

“You are loved and cherished forever,” he said he heard. “You have nothing to fear.”

Ezekiel's vision,
painting by Raphael (1483-1520)

As I listened to Dr. Alexander, I kept thinking of the prophet Ezekiel, whose vision sounds much the same. Ezekiel sees an orb in the sky, and then a lush valley springing to life all around him. “I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures… (Ezekiel 1:15)…wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live…” (Ezekiel 47:9).

Someone in the audience asked Dr. Alexander if his experience could best be explained by Buddhism. That made me quite sad that our culture has so lost touch with the Christian mystics through the ages.

I was especially struck with how Dr. Alexander’s descriptions sounded so similar to the mystics I’ve studied over the years, for example Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) and Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), who described their own near-death experiences with the same imagery and the same sense of love and wellbeing.

Julian, who hung near death and had visions of being with “Our savior who is our true mother,” spent the next 30 years writing about her vision. She wrote of how God and love are inseparable and “between God and the soul there is no between.” When she came back from near-death, she said she knew to the depth of her soul that despite appearances to the contrary, “all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

And then, as I listened to Dr. Alexander, also thought of this: the tomb of Lazarus, which so happens to be the reading assigned for Morning Prayer today (John 11:1-44).

As I read the familiar story, I hear it with new ears. Although our scientific materialistic minds might hear the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead as merely a metaphor, might it really be a true story of a man who, like Dr. Alexander, really did come back from the dead?

We don’t hear from Lazarus, though, and that is unfortunate. We don’t hear what he experienced. But we do hear that his family and friends threw a dinner party for him (John 12:1-10). The story continues with Jesus walking to his own death and his reappearance among those who loved him – Easter.

I am struck by how many of the biblical stories might be descriptions of near death experiences, and how those experiences transformed those who had them. It may be that these experiences aren’t rare at all, but have happened to thousands – millions – of people over for the millennia back beyond the time of recorded history. They’ve told about their experiences in language that people of their own time and place could understand.

Perhaps Dr. Alexander is among them precisely because he is a scientist – a brain scientist – and could explain this experience to us in our own scientific way of thinking.

I am struck with one common thread: these experiences are filled with love and hope. I close with a quote from the end of Dr. Alexander’s book:

“Not only was my journey about love, but it was also about who we are and how connected we all are – the very meaning of all existence. I learned who I was up there, and when I came back, I realized that the last broken strands of who I am down here were sewn up. You are loved.” (p. 170)

 By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

The Raising of Lazarus and the emptiness of Hell

Today comes the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, found in John 11:17-44, the only place in the New Testament where the story is found. Jesus goes to the tomb where his friend, Lazarus, has been dead for three days. He hears the anguish of Mary and Martha, and so Jesus orders the dead man to come out, and then tells the startled onlookers "Unbind him and let him go."

For many it is a dark, broody disturbing story. Jesus weeps, Jesus is "disturbed in spirit." The dead man has a stench, we are told, and his new life will not last long. The authorities, hearing of this, immediately begin to plot the death of both Jesus and Lazarus.

The incident can also be heard as a foretelling of the Holy Saturday story of Easter, when Jesus himself goes into the tomb, and to Hell itself to unbind everyone and let them go. The unbinding of people in Hell is at the heart of message of the Gospel, and makes Jesus more than a mere rabbi or wisdom teacher. It is why we describe Jesus as "Savior" and divine.

You will note there is no "Jesus died for your sins" in these stories, and maybe that is another reason the story is hard to take for some. This unbinding comes as a pure act of love with no strings attached, no conditions. Lazarus has not asked to be saved, but salvation comes to him.  It makes all this the harder to comprehend. Humans don't act this way. Only the divine is capable of that.

The placement of the story of Lazarus on the last day of Christmas and the Eve of the Epiphany is meant, I think, to show us the true meaning of the light of Christ coming into our lives. It's not really about magi bearing gifts to Christ, but Christ bearing gifts to us. This light comes in the hardest moments and at the gates of death itself. It is a reminder that Christmas is inextricably connected to Easter and the Resurrection and the empty tomb.

Many theologians have tried to explain this, and many a preacher, including me, has tried as well. The poets sometimes explain this better with fewer words, so I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite contemporary theologians and with a short poem:

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“With this we can say… that Hell exists, as the Church has always maintained; nevertheless it is perfectly possible that there is nobody at all there.”

James Alison, Raising Abel, 1996

HELL

But if they were condemned to suffer
this unending torment, sooner or later
wouldn’t they become the holy?

Franz Wright, God’s Silence, 2006

Art: "Mary, Martha and Lazarus," by He Qi