All Saints’ Day (observed); 7 November 2021; All Saints’ Day, Year B (RCL); Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44.
The story of the revivification of Lazarus is a complicated one, with many details that beg questions: Why does Jesus delay for two days after hearing that Lazarus is sick? When Thomas says, “Let us also go and die with him,” who is the ‘him’ — Jesus or Lazarus? In this passage, the translators do us a disservice. Jesus is not “greatly disturbed” (twice), but in the Greek, he is indignant (twice). Why? And why is Lazarus twice called “the dead man”?
The evangelist wants us to draw a sharp contrast between Lazarus’ resuscitation, and Jesus’ resurrection. Lazarus comes out still wrapped in his grave clothes, while when Peter stoops into Jesus’ tomb, he sees the grave clothes neatly folded up, and the napkin that had covered his face lying folded to the side. Jesus tells the crowd at Lazarus’ tomb, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Evidently, this is something requiring community action.
When Mary encounters Jesus in the garden after his resurrection, he tells her not to hold on to him (let him go?), because he has not yet embarked to his Father, and then tells her to tell the others that he is embarking for his Father and our Father, his God and our God. John imagines the Christian life as a new journey on the wilderness way (the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us). True resurrection is the embarkation on that journey.
The Wisdom of Solomon imagines resurrection (if we can call it that) as vindication. The passage we hear this week comes at the end of the passage we read on Good Friday, about how the unrighteous make a test of the righteous man because his way of life embarrasses them. After death, the righteous man will be in the presence of God (think of Lazarus in Luke’s story of Lazarus and the rich man). John imagines the resurrection differently — not vindication, but a journey.
The passage from Revelation imagines a new heaven and a new earth, only without the sea. At the creation, the spirit of God moved over the empty waters, to bring order out of chaos. Here, there is no more chaos, no more threat of a dissolution of order. And the new creation includes a city — not just a garden, so that human cultural effort is redeemed. The new creation isn’t just a return to a state of nature, but includes human culture.
The prophets often imagined the restoration of creation as a journey from Exile back to the city, Jerusalem, with God also returning to the holy city. Perhaps the resurrection life is a journey “further up and further in” to a human society (city) in which God dwells among us.