His Excellency,
The Most Reverend Edward K. Braxton, Ph.D., S.T.D.
Diocese of Belleville
March 24, 2024, 5:00 PM Mass
St. Teresa Parish, Belleville
Untie Him and Let Him Go Free
(This is the text as originally written. During the actual delivery, some passages were omitted and other comments were added spontaneously. Nota bene: This text has not been thoroughly proofread. Therefore, there may be errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.)
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ:
Let’s face it; today’s reading from the Gospel of John is completely unbelievable. Most people would not believe this gospel account of Jesus raising His friend Lazarus from the dead. Do all of you gathered here believe this biblical story is LITERALLY true? You might find the deep friendship between Jesus and the family of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus quite moving. You might be struck by the difference between the two sisters. Martha was the sister who loved to serve Jesus and others. Mary was the sister who loved to sit at Jesus’s feet and listen to His challenging words. She is the same Mary who washed the feet of Jesus and anointed them with perfumed oil to prepare Him for His burial.
You may be touched because the story says Jesus loved Lazarus. The only other person the gospel says Jesus loved is John, the beloved disciple (the gospels do not even say that Jesus loved His mother, Mary). You might be moved that Jesus wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus, one of the few times in scripture that Jesus shows every day human emotions by crying.
But do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth literally raised a dead man to life again? Scholars have debated this for centuries. Many say the story must be viewed as a religious parable on the importance of faith and not taken literally. But many other scholars argue that, if this story is not literally true, our faith in the Resurrection of Christ himself, which this story anticipates, is called into question.
This amazing story is NOT in the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Why would such a dramatic episode in the life of Jesus be omitted from these three older gospels? Could it be that they didn’t know this faith-inspiring story?
The raising of Lazarus is one of three great teaching stories about Jesus, found only in John. We hear all three passages during lent. All three are stories about faith in Jesus Christ. This is why we use them to instruct the catechumens preparing for baptism at the Easter vigil.
The first teaching story, John 4:4-26, tells of the meeting between Jesus and the unnamed Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Jesus asks, “Will you give me a drink?” She says, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan and a woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” Jesus: “If you knew who it is who asks for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would give you living waters.” Samaritan Woman: “You have nothing with you to draw the water and the well is deep!” Jesus: “Whoever drinks the water I will give them will never thirst. The water I will give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Gradually, the woman realizes that Jesus is the expected messiah and proclaims her faith in Him. This first story of faith is filled with baptism symbols - living waters.
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The second teaching story is that of the man who was blind from birth, John 9:1-12, in which Jesus restores sight to the unnamed blind man. The crowd asks, “Who restored your sight?” Blind Man: “Jesus.” “How did He do it? Pharisees say this Jesus is a sinner. How can He perform such a wonder?” they ask his parents. “Yes, he is our son. Yes, he was blind from birth. Now he can see. We don’t know how he can see. Ask him!” The Pharisees confront the Blind Man: “Jesus is a sinner. How could He restore your sight?” Blind Man: “I don’t know whether He is a sinner or not. The one thing I do know is I was blind and now I see.” Jesus then seeks out the man and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is He so that I may believe,” asks the blind man. Jesus says, “I AM He!” The blind man responds, “Lord, I believe!” This second story of faith tells of the transformed vision of the world that comes from living by faith in Christ and not by sight!
The third teaching story, John 11:1-45, of Jesus raising His friend Lazarus from the dead is the most remarkable because it anticipates the Easter story of the Resurrection of Christ Himself, and it intimates that we, too, are called to share in the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection. Surprisingly, the story ends with these words: “Now, many of the Jews who saw what Jesus did began to believe in Him.” Only MANY? Wouldn’t you think that ALL who saw such a wonderous sign would have believed in Jesus? But some did not! Would you have believed it, if you had seen it with your own eyes?
Let’s take a closer look at the story. Clearly, the gospel writer gives Jesus an all-knowing perspective. There are NO surprises for Him in this story. Jesus is told that the man whom He loves is gravely ill. Yet He waits 2 days to travel to Bethany. He must have had a reason for this delay. He tells His disciples, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Why does Jesus wait 2 days before going to Bethany? Because the Gospel writer wants Lazarus to be already dead when Jesus arrives. This is the crux of the story.
Jesus tells the disciples that Lazarus has fallen asleep, but He is going to wake him up. The disciples propose to let him sleep and he will feel better after resting. Then Jesus tells them bluntly, “Lazarus is dead!”
The disciples may have wondered how Jesus knew Lazarus was dead and how He felt about the death of someone who may have been His dearest friend. What was Jesus thinking about how Martha and Mary were feeling about his death? Was He anticipating their confronting Him with exactly the same words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Then Jesus says, “For your sake, I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” But when Jesus finally arrives, Martha expresses her disappointment that He is too late. Jesus tells Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha replies, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” something in which many Jewish people in Jesus’s time believed. But Jesus urges her to expand her faith, “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 replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
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These are not words that anyone would normally say. This may be a creedal formula that John has put on Martha’s lips for OUR benefits. Are these not the very words that our catechumens and we ourselves are called to proclaim in the face of the Easter mystery? Moments later, when Jesus saw Mary weeping, He was deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They took Him to the tomb. “Jesus wept.” Perhaps the shortest verse in the bible. Grief is the price we pay for loving deeply. The Jews said, “See how He loved Lazarus!” But some said, “Could not He who opened the eyes of the man blind from birth have kept this man from dying?”
And yet, Jesus arrived at the tomb and 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 four days.” John wants to be absolutely clear that Lazarus really is dead.
So, they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward saying, “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.” Then He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” The dead man came forth, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a burial cloth. Jesus said to Martha and Mary, “Untie him, and let him go free!”
This is the whole point of the story. This is the whole point of Lent and Easter. Jesus wants to untie us from the death caused by our sins who lets us go free to live the new life with the risen Lord. He lets us go free. Let us go free to live lives full of Easter faith, hope, and love. But humanly speaking, the story remains unbelievable. The question the gospel of John puts before us in these last days of Lent is obvious: DO WE BELIEVE IT?
The Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well would believe it! The man blind from birth would believe it! I invite each of you tonight, or tomorrow morning, to reread John 11:1-45 and enter fully into the spiritual drama of the remarkable story of the death of Lazarus, who may have been Jesus’s best friend, an incredible story in which death is overcome by life, a story in which Jesus is struggling to untie each one of us and to let us go free.
Believe what you read!
Teach what you believe!
Practice what you teach!
If you do this, then for each of us, when Easter comes and we celebrate the inscrutable mystery of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, it truly will be Easter that lasts forever!
Praised be Jesus Christ. Both now and forever. AMEN!