John Got This One
Wrong
September 8, 2021
There’s a well-known story in the
Gospel of John. Well, there are many well-known stories in the Gospel of John,
but there’s one I want to talk about here. It’s the story of Jesus raising
Lazareth from death. You’ll find it starting at John 11:1. In that story Jesus’
friend Lazarus is ill. His sisters Mary and Martha (who incidentally are not
the Mary and Martha in the story about a Mary and a Martha in Luke) send Jesus
a message telling him that Lazarus is ill. Soon we learn that Lazarus has died
and that Jesus knows that he has died. Jesus does not go to Lazareth when he
learns that he is ill. At first he does not go to Mary and Martha when he knows
that Lazareth has died. Eventually he does go, has them open Lazarus’ tomb, and
brings Lazarus back to life.
We’re told that Jesus loves all
three of the siblings in this story, the sisters Mary and Martha and their
brother Lazarus. So it seems odd that the didn’t go to them when he learned
first that Lazareth was ill and then that he had died. What’s worse than odd in
this story is why Jesus didn’t go to his three friends whom he loves when he
learned of what has happened to Lazareth. Now, there could be legitimate
reasons why he didn’t go. He could have had other obligations he had to tend to
that he couldn’t get away from. He could have been too far away to get there in
time. He could have been ill himself and unable to travel. Yet neither any of
these nor any other legitimate reason is why he didn’t go. It’s what the story
gives as his reason for not going that we need to correct.
The story tells us that Jesus’
doesn’t go to his friends precisely so that Lazareth would die and Jesus will
be able to use his death to glorify himself. Really. That’s why he doesn’t go. When
Jesus learns that Lazareth is ill he says, “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.” John 11:4. When Jesus knows that Lazareth has died he tells his
disciples that Lazareth has “fallen asleep.” John 11:11. He says he going to go
“awaken him.” The disciples quite understandably say that if Lazarus is just
asleep he’ll be fine. They assume, I suppose, that he'll just wake up like we
all do when we’ve been asleep. No problem. So Jesus tells them that Lazareth
actually is dead. Then he says, “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so
that you may believe.” John 11:15. Then he says to them let’s go to him, they
do, and Jesus raises Lazareth from death as only he could.
The unavoidable inference in this
story is that Jesus intentionally let his friend Lazareth die though he could have
saved him so that he could do his God thing, get people to believe in him. and gain
glory for God and for himself as the Son of God. Every time I read that part of
this story it brings me up short. The Gospel of John would have us believe that
Jesus as the Son of God let a tragic thing happen that he could have prevented
so he and God would gain glory and people would believe in him. That contention
is something I simply cannot accept.
There are at least two things wrong
with the theology behind this part of the story. The first of them is the
notion that God and Jesus somehow need to be glorified and that they need to
create situations in which they will indeed be glorified. God already has all
the glory God could ever need. “The glory of God” appears many times in the
Bible. In the Old Testament, for example, Psalm 19 begins, “The heavens are
telling the glory of God.” That is, in the heavens we can see some of the glory
God already has. God doesn’t need us to give God glory. In Luke’s story of
Jesus birth in the New Testament we read, “Then an angel of the Lord stood
before them [the shepherds], and the glory of the Lord shone around them….”
Luke 2:9. God already has glory. God doesn’t need any more glory, and God
definitely does not need to get glory from us. That’s the first thing that’s
wrong here.
The second thing that’s wrong here
is, I think, even more important. It is the notion that God would allow or even
cause some preventable tragedy so God could bring something good out of it. I
have no doubt that God can and does bring good out of tragedy. I have
experienced that happening in my own life. Back in 2002, when I was in the
first few months of service as pastor of my first church, my wife of thirty
years, the mother of my children, died of breast cancer at age 55. Her death
was and remains the most tragic thing that has happened in my life. Yet as I
continued my work as a pastor I knew that my having experienced her death and
felt all of the emotional anguish the death of one dearly loved can cause made
me a better pastor. When I was pastor to people who were going through anything
similar they knew that I understood because I had been through it myself. They
could relate to me, and I could relate to them, better than would have been the
case had I not been through what they were going through. My being a better
pastor was a good thing that came out of the very bad thing of my wife’s
premature death.
Does that mean that God killed my
wife to make me a better pastor? Of course not! The very thought of such a
thing is beyond absurd! It is in fact blasphemous because it makes God a
monster. It makes God a killer. It says God will cause or allow a tragedy to happen
so that some good with importance orders of magnitude less than the importance
of the tragedy can come about. Yes, God can and does bring good out of the tragic
and even evil things that befall God’s people in this life. There is no
doubt that that is true. But is it
absolutely not true that God causes or even just allows tragic and evil things
to happen so that something good can come out of them. Any theology that says
God does that blasphemes our God who is not a God of violence or indifference
toward suffering but of love.
The Gospel of John uses its story
of the raising of Lazareth to say that that is exactly what God, present among
us in the person of Jesus really did do. It has Jesus thinking that he’d just
let his friend Lazareth die though he could have prevented his death so that he
could do a spectacular God thing by bringing Lazareth back to life so that
people will see his divine glory and believe in him. The Jesus I know, love,
and seek to serve would never, ever do any such thing. God, and God in Jesus
Christ, always act out of love not out of a need for self-aggrandizement; yet
that is what John has Jesus doing here.
So mister author of the Gospel of
John whoever you were, you got this one just flat wrong. Jesus may have
restored dead people to life. There are several stories in the Gospels in which
he does. But he never, ever did it to bring glory to himself. People who saw
him do it may have believed in him because of what they saw, but he never, ever
did it to get people to believe in him. He did because he could, and he did it
out of love. Not love of himself. Not even love of God. Love of each and every
human being, each and every child of God. I can love that Jesus. I can’t and
don’t love the Jesus of John’s story of the raising of Lazareth. I hope you can’t
and don’t either.
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