Unbind Him and Let Him Go

A sermon by Kenneth Padley for Passion Sunday

Reading: John 11.1-45

Unbind him and let him go!

As we head into the holiest season of the year, the call of Jesus for Lazarus to be released reflects a crucial juncture in the fourth gospel. Today’s unusually long miracle marks the termination of the public ministry of Jesus and pivots the narrative towards Holy Week. Throughout this story, the evangelist John carefully balances his account with momentum and suspense, peppering it with devices that emphasise the enormity of what is going on.

This begins in the very first verse when we are told that the setting is a village called ‘Bethany’. Jesus’ historic association with this settlement is attested in all four gospels. However, John would also have found symbolic resonance in the placename, Bethany meaning ‘House of Affliction’.

John would also have known that ‘Lazarus’ means ‘God helps’. Whether this proper noun is providence, coincidence, or evangelistic inspiration is a subject of scholarly debate – and in many ways doesn’t matter. Something which is worth noting is that the only other Lazarus in the Bible is also associated with death. In the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus tells a parable about a destitute man called Lazarus who dies outside the gate of a plutocrat’s palace. It is also noteworthy that this Lazarus is the only character in any of Jesus’ parables for whom we have a name. So whether the Lazarus in Luke and the Lazarus in John are characters of history, creatures of literature, or somewhere in between, the takeaway is that they were known and valued as individuals. We are being reminded of the message of the Psalmist that ‘precious in God’s sight is the death of his saints’ (Ps 116.13).

The tension which starts in the first verse of John chapter 11 builds as Jesus deliberately delays his trip to Bethany despite knowing that his friend is sick. ‘This illness does not lead to death’, he says in verse 4, ‘rather it is for God’s glory’. Expanding on this, he restates an earlier motif that he is the bearer and embodiment of God’s radiance – verses 9-10, ‘Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of [the] world. But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.’ This statement then becomes occasion for the fateful resignation of Thomas to travel south to Judea with Jesus– ‘Let us go also, that we may die with him’.

Having arrived in Bethany, the tension ramps up further. Jesus enters conversation with the sisters of the dead man, Martha and Mary in which we are told important things about Jesus’ identity and purpose. At the centre of this is the astonishing assertion ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ (verse 25), a distillation in a few words of the miracle which Jesus is working.

I am the resurrection and the life is one of seven statements in John’s gospel in which Jesus speaks the Greek equivalent of the Jewish name of God, words translated into English as ‘I am’. God told Moses from the burning bush that ‘I am who I am’. Now in John 11 and in the other famous ‘I am’ sayings of John’s gospel, Jesus insists not that he exercises powers from God – but that he is God himself. The divinity who declared Herself to Moses as sheer self-existence now stands incarnate in the one promising resurrection and life for others.

I reiterate that there are seven ‘I am’ statements in John’s gospel, seven being the Jewish number for God – think of the story of creation and the days of the week. And the seven I am sayings are interwoven around seven symbolic miracles which St John terms ‘signs’. Of these, the raising of Lazarus is the last and greatest. For John, the meaning is in the miracles, and the miracles illustrate the message.

Note also at this point how Jesus’ claim to be resurrection and life seems to collapse the structure of time itself. Martha says ‘I know that Lazarus will rise on the last day’ [future tense]. Jesus says ‘I am the resurrection [present tense]… those who believe in me even though they die will live’. This conflation of present and future is a foreshadowing of John chapter 20, in which Jesus’ resurrection, ascension and Pentecost all concertina into a single Easter event. The one who is sheer self-existence is not constrained by the dimensional boundaries as we conceive them, not even by the ultimate frontier of death.

That said, in today’s story, we must, for a while, walk with Jesus to the tomb. Pathos is magnified by the wailing girls in verse 33 and Jesus’ own tears in verse 35 which – useful quiz knowledge – is the shortest verse in the whole Bible. ‘See how he loved him’ [v36] the onlookers observe in response.

Having arrived at the tomb, the finality of Lazarus’ condition is laid bare as we are told that he has been in the tomb for four days and that there is a stench [vv17, 39]. This is not just reference to Mediterranean rates of decomposition because it may reflect a rabbinic belief that the soul hovered near a body for three days after death – but by the fourth day had left such that there was no hope of resuscitation.

Putting together the foregoing we see something of the web of scriptural allusion & theological interpretation with which the evangelist presages Jesus’ dramatic summons that Lazarus be unbound and set free – freed from his shroud and freed from the death which imprisons him.

With typical Johannine irony, this raising of Lazarus triggers Jesus’ own persecution. In the verses immediately after today’s reading, the opponents of Jesus are so disturbed by his signs (of which the raising of Lazarus is the last and greatest) that they gather to plot against him. Together they affirm the dangerous expediency of the priest Caiaphas that, quote, ‘it is better for one man to die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed’ (verse 50).

Unbind him and let him go!

To be unbound and set free is a pretty neat summary of the Mystery of Salvation. Over the next fortnight we will walk with Jesus that extraordinary path of redemption. We will commemorate in word and song, silence and sacrament, the healing of our brokenness, the supersession of our imperfection, and the cancellation of our guilt. Manifold is the deep path of atonement, our at-one-ment with God.

• We are unbound by Jesus as we accept his teaching of the Kingdom and as we seek to follow his selfless example.
• We are unbound by Jesus through his resolution of divine justice, an exchange conceived in biblical terms as a cancellation of debt (that’s St Paul) and as the culmination and eclipse of the culture of animal sacrifice which dominated the ancient world (that’s the Letter to the Hebrews).
• And we are unbound by Jesus as at Easter he tramples down the gates of hell, death and destruction. Needing no third party to unbind him, the risen Lord embodies his promise to Martha and reveals his summons to Lazarus to be but a foretaste of his gift to all believers.

Lord, as we walk with you to the cross and beyond, unbind us and let us go.