Some web-commentary I’ve found interesting as I look at the gospel text for this week:
From John J. Pilch’s Historical Cultural Context, Commentary and Spiritual Perspectives, Lent 5. Commentary, historical background, poems and readings. Center for Liturgy, St Louis University.
Like other New Testament communities, that of John experienced a great crisis of faith when any believer died. If Jesus gave us eternal life, why must we still die? The evangelist therefore has added symbolic interpretations to this story of the death of Lazarus, the faithful disciple whom Jesus loved (11:5,36).
Martha represents the community with its real but inadequate faith: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” If only Jesus had not left at his ascension, he would still be with the community and believers wouldn’t die. After all, whatever Jesus asks of the Father will be given, won’t it? (v. 22).
John’s Jesus must correct this misunderstanding. He is indeed “the resurrection and the life” (v. 24). But resurrection does not mean the restoration of life to a corpse, it entails rather a transformation of life.
Moreover, the eternal life that Jesus gives his followers does not abolish death but rather transcends it. To continue to believe this firmly is the challenge posed to the survivors by each believer’s death.
There’s an extended discussion of this passage at Paul Nuechterlein’s Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, which includes the exegetical/translation problem of Jesus’ emotion at John 11:33-35. Neuchterlein includes Gail R O’Day’s discussion of the issue and cites Brian Stoffregen’s commentary for this week. He offers Gil Bailie’s interpretation as the best solution (see extended treatment at Neuchterlein’s site):
Gil Bailie, however, answers in the affirmative -- yes, John means to imply that Jesus' shedding of tears, dakruo, is different from what is meant by klaio in describing what it is that Mary and the Jews were doing. Bailie suggests that klaio points to the ritual wailing that was common in such circumstances. Klaio is the more common word for "weeping" in the NT, and it by no means has the connotations of ritual wailing wherever it is used. But John gives us the important clue by choosing for Jesus' shedding of tears a word that is not used anywhere else in the entire New Testament (nine times in the LXX). That Jesus' weeping (dakruo) in v. 35 might be more of a spontaneous nature can then be contrasted with the intentionality of weeping (klaio) implied in v. 31: "The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there." Do they seek to join Mary in going to the tomb and see if they feel like crying with her? No, v. 31 is about the more intentional "weeping" of ritual wailing, isn't it? Jesus encounters them all carrying out the ritual wailing in v. 33 and gets angry with them. How this difference in "weeping" suggests an answer to the problem of Jesus’ anger is what is outlined below under resources…
Neuchterlein’s reflections and questions for this week seem especially interesting, including:
Compare John 9 and 11. In 9 the physical miracle comes at the outset, and all that follows is a spinning out on the meaning of blindness as something much deeper than the lack of physical eyesight. In John 11, the lesson involving the real power of life over death comes as a long prelude to the physical miracle. John uses two differing narrative approaches to show us the real meaning behind these miracles. In the first Jesus begins by healing a man born blind and then the rest of the story, primarily through the Pharisees and scribes, shows us the blindness of humanity since we were born, i.e., our blindness to the expulsion mechanism on which our human community is based. The healing of the man born blind is a "sign" of the deeper healing of blindness which Jesus came to bring us. By contrast in John 11, the physical miracle climaxes the narrative, with its most vivid sign coming in Jesus' final words: "Unbind him, and let him go." That is a 'sign' for what Jesus has been trying to do for all his followers in all that has led up to this moment. Jesus has been trying to unbind us from death's hold on our lives.
At Preaching Peace commentary, Lent 5, Jeff Krantz & Michael Hardin (don’t miss their discussion of this passage at the link):
We begin by noticing that the raising of Lazarus occupies the same place in the FG (Fourth Gospel) as the Cleansing (sic) of the Temple does in the Synoptic. If, for the Synoptic tradition, it is Jesus’ action in the Temple that provokes the authorities to take action against him, in the FG it is this astonishing revelation of power, eschatological power, ultimate power. In raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus has thrown down a gauntlet to the reigning principalities and powers. How so?
There is a delicious irony in the text. It is to be found first of all in the term doxa (glory), second in the term embrimaotai (be deeply moved/be angry) and third in the note regarding the plot to assassinate Lazarus in 12.9-11.
We have noticed that doxa is a term in the FG that refers to the kavod YHWH of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is used this way in the Prologue for example (along with skenao). But like hupsao(to exalt/to raise up) it has its most important referent in the cross or death of Jesus. It is in the death of Jesus that the glory of God is truly revealed. God is exalted in the humiliation of the Son. When Jesus says (vs 4) that the death of Lazarus occurred “for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” we might suppose that Jesus means that it will be the display of power that will bring him glory. But on the Johannine level, it also refers to the death of Jesus. The resurrection of Lazarus will eventuate in Jesus’ death.
More than that, the raising of Lazarus while culminating in a plot against Jesus also culminates in a plot against Lazarus. This wonderful ‘display’ of eschatological power causes the death mechanism of the principalities and powers to be engaged. Death will have nothing to do with life and death-dealing gods will have nothing to do with the God of Life or the One who is ‘the resurrection and the life.’
Don’t miss "The Confession of Saint Martha," Susan Russell, Proclaiming Gospel Justice: Reflections on the Scriptures and Progressive Spirituality, The Witness, 2005.
I am convinced that the same kind of transformation that turned Saul from the persecutor to Paul the evangelist -- that turned Peter from the blustery fisherman who denied Jesus in the courtyard into the "rock" on which the church was founded -- changed Martha from a woman whining about needing help in the kitchen to a woman empowered to go out and ask for what she wanted.
That transformation is nothing less than the power of the Spirit of God calling each and every one of us to health -- to wholeness -- to realizing our full potential as children of God and to the life abundant which is our inheritance. It is a change that isn't about making us someone we're not but making us more authentically who we are. It is a change described best for me in a song I learned years ago at a women's retreat:
I will change your name. You shall no longer be called
Wounded, Outcast, Lonely or Afraid
I will change your name. Your new name shall be
Joyfulness. Confidence. Overcoming One.
Faithfulness. Friend of God. One who seeks my face.
At "First Thoughts on Year A Gospel Passages in the Lectionary: Lent 5," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia:
The point of the saying, and ultimately of the narrative as a whole, is to make and celebrate the claim that people who believe in Jesus find life. It is eternal life, which includes timelessness or eternity in the temporal sense, but the focus is quality not quantity. It is sharing the life of God here and now and forever. The claim made in 11:25-26 uses the narrative as a springboard to jump to a different level of reality that leaves the original story behind and no longer applies to it. People who remain at the basic level of the story will have a faith like that of Martha and Mary. They need to move beyond that. If they do not, they will be left looking for the next miracle and failing to see, that from John’s perspective the miracles are signs of something else.
As we retell the story today we will have some who are as happy with the miracle as John was. We will have others who find such reports problematic and question the point of telling them if they are not repeatable in other situations of need. For the former an event becomes the setting for a claim which goes far beyond it. For the latter the narrative is a mythical drama, but to make the same claim.
To acclaim Jesus as resurrection and life is ultimately to say something about God and to do so we need to ensure we think theologically. How do we understand this God who through Christ is shown as life and nourishment? We then find ourselves talking about compassion and challenge. John’s gospel keeps doing this: making claims which need careful exposition because the content is implied. At worst the claims become slogans of propaganda which are made also about others (that they are truth, the way, etc). At best we tell the whole story and know its summary: God so loved the world; God is compassion. That is the light that challenges the darkness, the truth that challenges the falsehood, the caring that challenges the abandonment - and so leads from death to life.
I’ve been thinking during Lent that these passages we’ve read in John all “say the same thing.” It’s more difficult, however, for me to figure out exactly what it is that they say, and to restate it any better than the stories do themselves. But it seems that there is some progression here – perhaps parallel to the progression of the synoptics, which brings Jesus toward death and resurrection, and brings us to whatever “faith” or “life in Jesus” or “life in the Spirit” may be.
As I ponder this, I’m struck by how easily I get caught up in either particularities (as that of each individual story) or abstractions (as of some grand Platonic “form” of abstract orthodoxy). I wonder what it would mean for us as individuals to be “Martha” in this story – to play the dialectic between particularity and abstraction, to truly experience New Life in Christ and the True Transformation (as opposed to rhetorical transformations of any kind) which accompanies such faith and faithfulness. I wonder, though, whether living within either abstractions and particularities are tombs which have become so expected that we no long even recognize them as tombs.