Resurrection and Life – Life and Resurrection

Last week we heard the story of Lazarus. We know that Lazarus is Jesus’ friend, that he died, his sisters are grieving and also accusing Jesus for being late as, if he’d come earlier, Jesus could have saved him…there’s a theological discussion about life and the after life and then, after 4 days in the tomb, Lazarus is called back into life… the grave cloths wrapping him around are removed and he walks back into life.

Jesus has claimed during this story that he is the resurrection and the life. This could be also be understood as the ‘life and the resurrection’ or as ‘resurrection life’ & is therefore available and to be lived NOW…before one has died. We need to toss these ideas together, like a great salad, weave them into one another like a beautiful garment and mix them together completely like a good Gin&Tonic

Today  the story/reading continues but it is now a call for death – Jesus death. He has given someone life and now his own is threatened. The raising of Lazarus is the catalyst for a formal death sentence – a Fatwa

A fatwā; pl. فتاوى, fatāwā) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (sharia) given by a qualified Islamic jurist in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist issuing fatwas is called a mufti, and the act of issuing fatwas is called ifta’.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwa – cite_note-FOOTNOTEHendrickson2013-1 Fatwas have played an important role throughout Islamic history, taking on new forms in the modern era. Khomeini’s most publicized fatwa was the proclamation condemning Salman Rushdie to death for his novel The Satanic Verses

Though, interestingly, some say that Khomeini’s fatwa did not order Rushdie’s death, but some who heard him understood it that way.

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We can understand this story literally or metaphorically – either way it has great things to teach us. If Jesus raised Lazarus from death, then he has all the power of God over all the creation, and as a Divine One, an Incarnated one – God in human flesh, he can do what he likes with the created order…

If it is metaphor only then it still says to us, LIVE! Listen to the voice of Jesus who also calls us to life, abundant and free. Get up and live, he is saying. Come alive, wake up, get on with it, don’t sleep your life away in a tomb of your own making!!!! This is something many of us do, sadly, accidentally, inadvertently- because many of us live our lives half asleep…

The promise of resurrection is not lodged in some distant event, it’s not even or just after we have died – it is available now in and through Jesus…

Jesus’ words make explicit what the reader of the gospel (and we) already knows, Jesus shares completely in God’s ability to give life.

His challenge now is to live his life in the shadow of death, in the shadow of his own end. We face the same challenge Jesus did…we live our lives in the shadow of our end, our own death. This is what it means to be human.

Many attempts have been made to arrest or kill Jesus before this in John’s gospel.
The signs he does, along with Lazarus’ resurrection do not effect faith in the leaders of the day-  quite the opposite. They despise him.
Empire has meant power for some Jewish people and they do not want any ‘disturbance’ or challenge to the status quo.
The irony here is that they’re trying to save something that we, and the readers know, is destroyed in 70 AD.

There are apparently ill-conceived and effective ‘Dobbers’ in the crowd say O’Day and Hylen in their commentary on John.
The authorities have sought him. They have wanted to try him and now they plan to kill him – a formal death sentence – a Fatwa
There are bookends in this story. John 7:14 speaks of Jesus ‘going openly in the Temple’ and now we read that Jesus ‘no longer went about openly’ 11:54.
John often speaks about Jesus ‘time’ or his ‘hour’.
What happens in Jesus’ life is under his own power, discretion & direction.
Even their solid plans are subordinate to his plan/his own will.

They want to link Jesus’ death to the festival. They get this wish, but only because Jesus allows it, even plans it himself. (O’Day and Hylen)

Like Lazarus, Jesus will arise but unlike him, he will be free of the bonds of death – in John 10:18 in the Inclusive Bible we read, ‘No one takes my life from me, I lay it down freely. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again. This command I received from my Abba.’

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This freedom to live, die, resurrect is well illustrated in a story of the Mahavatar Babaji told in Autobiography of A Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda Ch33

On one occasion Babaji’s sacred circle was disturbed by the arrival of a stranger. He had climbed with astonishing skill to the nearly inaccessible ledge near the camp of the master.

‘Sir, you must be the great Babaji.’ The man’s face was lit with inexpressible reverence. ‘For months I have pursued a ceaseless search for you among these forbidding crags. I implore you to accept me as a disciple.’

“When the great guru made no response, the man pointed to the rocky chasm at his feet.

“‘If you refuse me, I will jump from this mountain. Life has no further value if I cannot win your guidance to the Divine.’

‘Jump then,’ Babaji said unemotionally. ‘I cannot accept you in your present state of development.’

The man immediately hurled himself off the cliff.

Babaji instructed the shocked disciples to fetch the stranger’s body. When they returned with the mangled form, the master placed his divine hand on the dead man. Lo! he opened his eyes and prostrated himself humbly before the omnipotent one.

‘You are now ready for discipleship.’ Babaji beamed lovingly on his resurrected chela (Disciple or server).

‘You have courageously passed a difficult test. Death shall not touch you again; now you are one of our immortal flock.’ Then he spoke his usual words of departure, ‘Dera danda uthao‘ (raise the camp stick/ let us move camp); and the whole group vanished from the mountain.

 

However we hear or receive these stories, we need to let them cohabit with us. We need to let hem dwell in us, unsettle us and we should listen to the deep truths they contain so that we can be truly and fully alive – so that we are completely awake and living every single moment of this life. One day we will receive our ‘fatwa’, our own, personal death sentence… May we all be ready to die because we are utterly exhausted from living out fully our resurrection/ed lives!

 

HA! I wonder if on the day we die, Jesus will be there, just on the other side, holding out a hand, calling us to life and saying, Now you are ready to be my disciple….

JA