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Summary
Depressed, lonely, and anxious, I was advised by my counselor to read a good book.
• I read a book titled, Snow White. But then I got to page 78 and read that she bit the apple and lay “lifeless on the floor.” How depressing! I stopped reading and threw the book in the trash.
• Feeling lonely, I read a book titled, Dumbo. But then I got to page 31: “The other elephants turned their back on him.” Rejection! Just what I’m trying to avoid. I stopped reading — into the trash!
• The Lion King held promise, but then I got to page 53: “’If it weren’t for you, your father would still be alive,’ snarled Scar.” Utterly traumatizing! I don’t want anything to do with that story. Trash!
• Beauty and the Beast: I got to page 7: “That makes you no better than a beast—and so you shall become a beast.” I want beauty, not beasts. I don’t even want to think about beasts. Into the trash.
So, I decided to read my old journal. It reminded me of the apple, rejection, failure, and the beast. I thought, “No one should ever read my journal. It belongs in outer darkness.” I threw it in the trash.
I read my Bible and all hell broke loose: fruit from a tree, people born in sin, children who nail their father to a tree, and a lot of beasts. I went to throw it in the trash and thought, “Hey, maybe I could just read parts of it and read it to take knowledge of Good and evil that I could then use to re-write my story, so I’d never bite the apple or end up in the trash.”
Of course, I’m joking. And, of course, I’m not joking at all.
In John 1, we learned that all creation is a story that God is telling and has already told. Jesus is the Beginning, End, and Way in between. Jesus is the Word of God, the Plot. The Plot is revealed on the sixth day of creation, sixth day of the week, just after the sixth hour of the day, when hanging on the tree in the garden, Jesus cries, “It is finished.” That’s the edge of the seventh day, when “everything is good.” It’s also the beginning of the seventh sign that is the substance: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
John 11 is the sixth of seven public signs in the Gospel of John: The Resurrection of Lazarus.
The name “Lazarus” shows up 17 times in the New Testament in two places — here in John 11 and in Jesus’s “story” of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16. “Lazarus” is the Greek form or the Hebrew name, “Eliezer.” Eliezer was Abraham’s faithful servant, actually his Syrian slave. You can read about him in Genesis 15 and 24. He literally sacrifices everything (the inheritance of Abraham) for the love of God, Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and the Jews.
The Rich Man in Jesus’ story (with five brothers and “the law and the prophets”) looks just like Judah, father of the Jews. And Lazarus (Abraham’s bosom buddy) looks just like Eliezer. Remember the Rich man is in Hades and Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham. If so, the Rich man will inherit everything promised to Abraham, but Lazarus has already inherited Abraham and all things with him. He’s “in his bosom.”
You can see why a Jew — and a Pharisee in particular — might feel a little ambivalent about the name “Lazarus” and the events in John chapter 11.
As we preached last time, Jesus seems to arrange for all this drama: Lazarus is sick, Jesus delays, and then he arrives after Lazarus is dead and everyone is weeping.
John 11:23, “Jesus said to [Martha], ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
The implications are staggering. It means that the plot to all of space and time is “the Resurrection.” And we’ve already learned that Life is an eternal communion of sacrifice in freedom called Love. God is Love and Jesus is the Word of Love — the Plot to everything that’s anything.
John 11:33, “When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept. The Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’”
John 11:44, “[Jesus] cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus come out.’ The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.”
Can you imagine the scene? All that sorrow turned into Joy. They would be hugging Lazarus and each other — all of them, “bosom buddies” (like Abraham and Eliezer). They had lost Lazarus and found Lazarus and all things with him.
Imagine that scene: Those that had lost their lives and found them at the funeral.
And imagine this scene: Those that attempted to save their lives and lost them at the Sanhedrin.
John 11:46, “But some of [the Jews] went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council [The Sanhedrin] (The Sanhedrin was composed of the rich and powerful of Israel, who believed that they controlled the story) and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs?” (READ THEM!) If we let him go on this, everyone will believe in him (What’s the problem with that?) and the Romans will come and take away both our place (they met in the temple) and our nation. But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish (He wants to sacrifice Christ to save himself, his place, and his nation).’ He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.”
So, the High Priest of Israel attempted to seize control of the story by taking the life of Christ on the tree called the cross. And Jesus, the High Priest of all creation, writes the story of creation by giving His life on that same tree, the cross.
Caiaphas sacrifices Christ to save himself but damns himself, while Christ sacrifices Himself to save Caiaphas and set all of us free. Caiaphas attempts to take Christ’s life as a penal substitute. But Christ gives His life that he would live his life in each one of us. Jesus is the Scapegoat who offers Himself as the Sin Offering, the Burnt Offering, and the Passover Lamb. He freely surrenders Himself to the Father in order that, with Him, we would freely surrender ourselves to the Father and so be bound together as one — the resurrected body of Christ.
Like Caiaphas and Adam, we all attempt to write ourselves out of the story that God is telling —that’s called sin. But with His Word, God writes us back into the story — which is the story that God has been telling all along — that’s called Grace. With the Word of Grace, God creates Faith. That’s how humanity is made in the image and likeness of God — and that story is called “the Gospel.”
John 11:53, “So from that day on, they (the Sanhedrin) made plans to put Jesus to death.”
They have all the facts and don’t know what any of them mean. They have the signs, but reading them doesn’t even occur to them. They have the Law but hate what it describes: The Life of Love.
They have perhaps the greatest prophetic word ever uttered; they have “knowledge of the Good”—that one would die for all — and so, they crucify the Good, and the Life. They have all the events in the story, and they don’t know what any of them mean; they don’t know the Plot.
If you trust the author, you surrender to the events in His story (history); You let them move you with sorrow and delight through conflict and resolution. You experience the facts, and that’s how you come to know the plot — the plot which reveals the meaning of every event in the story. The Plot doesn’t change, but you can only know the plot by allowing the plot to change you and make all things new.
John 12:10, “The chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well.” THAT’S CRAZY!
Who would NOT want to see Lazarus raised from the dead? Who would NOT want to see Jesus (The Resurrection) raised from the dead? Who is it that so thoroughly hates resurrection stories?
Maybe all of us. . . at least part way through. One day as I was complaining to the Lord in prayer, my wife heard Him say, “There is no resurrection without crucifixion.”
We all hate resurrection stories and try to avoid them, but people in power who exercise the most control are usually most successful at NOT becoming one — a resurrection story — at least for a time. Do you see why they might believe in Christ at the funeral and yet be incapable of believing at the Sanhedrin?
I have so often wondered why the institutional church, who has all the facts, has such a hard time believing what Scripture so clearly says: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.”
This week in prayer, I think I heard an answer: “It’s not only that Pharisees don’t want everyone to rise from the dead; Pharisees don’t want anyone to rise from the dead, for that’s NOT a story that they can write.” They don’t know that they’re already dead, that they’ve already bitten the apple, been born without faith, gotten their Father killed, and become beasts or the beast.
Every fairy tale we tell our children is a resurrection story that ends with “And they all lived happily every after.” Children believe, but adults are addicted to writing their own story. The Pharisees-r-us.
When I refuse to truly read His Story, I refuse to read my own story with Him, and I refuse to read others’ stories. I think I’m casting them out, but I’m trapping myself all alone in outer darkness —like trash. So, what happens to the Pharisees?
Well… no one’s story is over until they come to the End, or the End comes to them. Jesus is the End, the Plot, and the Resurrection. He descends into Hades, destroys every chasm, and makes all things new.
But still, I would suggest going to more funerals to weep with those who weep and spending less time worrying about the Sanhedrin and saving “your nation” or “your place.” You must lose your life to find it in the story; that’s the Plot — the Logic (Logos) of Love.