A QUESTION OF FAITH

With John Moore member of St John’s Church and chairman of Hinckley and Burbage Churches Together

John 11: 17-46 IN AN eerie silence broken only by the sound of birds, a dead man bound in grave clothes walked unsteady out of a tomb. Bystanders held their breath and looked on with a mixture of horror and disbelief, too petrified even to scream.

But it was no nightmare. It took place in the cold light of day. And there is a village of confused and bewildered people pinching themselves and the once dead man to prove it, their traditional week of mourning cut short when the impossible became real and the unthinkable forced itself upon them.

If anyone needed a further reason to mark out Jesus of Nazareth as a man unlike all others, it was this. In the latest and most bizarre of all his miraculous signs, he called his friend Lazarus back from the grave. But in doing it he may have signed his own death warrant. For the religious leadership in nearby Jerusalem, Jesus raising Lazarus was more than they could accept.

Lazarus was a wealthy man who lives with his unmarried sisters, Mary and Martha in the village of Bethany, he had befriended Jesus in the early days of his ministry, most certainly they were on close terms. Once when Lazarus had thrown a dinner party for friends and neighbours to meet Jesus, Martha had complained bitterly that her sister had been too preoccupied with Jesus’ teaching to take her fair share of the cooking and preparation. Yet ironically, when Lazarus was taken seriously ill it was Martha who sent for Jesus, while the inconsolable Mary fell to pieces. Jesus was far away, and as his disciples later revealed, he waited mysteriously for two further days before setting out to see his friends. By the time he arrived, Lazarus had been buried for four days.

He had missed the opportunity of healing him. He had even missed the funeral. Martha certainly didn’t miss the chance of reminding Jesus of this fact. Jesus poured out his own grief and frustration it seemed, with anger at the obscenity of death itself, in heaving sobs at the graveside.

After recovering his composure, he took all those observing this scene completely by surprise. He ordered the rock across the tomb entrance to be removed, ignoring the stale and pungent air which escaped from it. Then he commanded; “Lazarus come out” When the mummified figure emerged, he was unbound and welcomed back into the land of the living by his awestruck family.

By this action had this man named Jesus really signed His own death warrant?

Think about it. God bless