Easter 3 – Evensong, Cirencester Parish Church.

If you visit the Holy Land, one of the sites that the tour organiser will take you to is the possible location of the tomb in which Lazarus was placed.

It is just outside Jerusalem, and for those who are a bit challenged on the fitness side, it is not an easy tomb to get into. Like a number of sites in the Holy Land the tourist or pilgrim probably has to take a bit of a leap of faith to accept the veracity and historicity of what is claimed.

What was wrong with Lazarus – how had this friend of Jesus died. My conclusion is that Lazarus had leprosy, and it may not be too far fetched to accept that the site of this tomb was indeed the village of Lazarus.

For a start, we have to accept that although we wish to make biblical claims for this site, it is now in the Palestinian Autonomous area, so it is in the hands of Muslims who are not over keen to promote the Christian faith (though admittedly commercial reasons might be worth compromising for). However this village in Arabic is called El Lazario and has been for many hundreds of years. Might this be indicating something to us?

In mediaeval Europe the church had a ministry to look after lepers. They were the outcasts of society, and their illness was indeed infectious. Special hospitals were set up for people with leprosy. Indeed we know of one in Germany in a town called Isenheim. In this town the hospital had a chapel where the lepers could come to worship. In that chapel there was a very special triptych above the later – that is a three panelled altar piece. The artist is known to us as Matthias Grunewald, and the central painting of his altar piece is perhaps one of the best known altar panels in mediaeval art history.

The Isenheim altar piece, as it is known, shows a crucified Christ with a body marked as some of the lepers’ bodies would be marked. It illustrated to them that Christ died for lepers, just as much as he had died for everyone else – even they, the social outcasts of their culture, were not excluded from Christ’s work on the cross.

At the time of the painting of this altar piece such hospitals with their chapels were called Lazar Houses – clearly derivative form the name Lazarus.

So the friend of Jesus was most likely a leper. It was the common accepted view that all illness was a punishment from God for some sort of sin. It may have been the sin of the individual, but it could just as easily have been the sin of someone three or four generations ago – yes, in the commandments it says that God will visit his anger on the third and fourth generations of those who turn away from him.

Thus in the time of Jesus sickness was God’s punishment, so the sick person not only had to endure the consequences of physical or psychiatric illness, but also the stigma inflicted by fellow hard line religious people that you had been struck down for a reason.

Jesus comes, after some delay, to the tomb where his leprous friend has been buried. The human Jesus is very evident in this episode. He weeps for his friend. Despite the prevailing view that if Jesus had arrived on time he could have healed Lazarus, Jesus is there in time for something even greater to happen. It suits the writer of the Fourth Gospel that this is so, because a ‘thauma’ a wonder is about to happen.

Jesus brings forth his dead friend from the tomb, if you read on from this passage tonight. In John’s theology here is yet another piece of witness evidence that Jesus is indeed the Word made flesh, and that through Jesus the glory of God is being revealed in creation.

‘I am’ sayings in John have a great poignancy. They also rubbed up orthodox Jews, in particular the Pharisees. How can anyone take the Lord’s name in vain. Thousands of years before God had said to Moses that the one who had revealed himself to Moses is ‘I am’. So when Jesus says ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ there is a deliberate association with the God whose name could not even be uttered.

In this Easter season we focus on the Christ who not only was raised from the dead, but who is also the resurrection and the life. We have today prayed for remains that have been disturbed in the re-ordering of this church. What does it matter? They are only bones – and we would all wish to say that with faith in the resurrection there bones are not the people, for they have been raised in Christ. However, what we have done this evening is important.

When Jesus arrived at Bethany – El Lazario – he wept for the death of his friend Lazarus. We could have argued that his spirit was now with his Creator and that he did not have to come back to life. But Jesus did not. Jesus witnessed to the glory of God his Father and a great and wonderful thing happened. In the honour we have given to these bones today, we have seen, in our own time, a resurrection happening. We disturbed them, but in doing so we now, if we have the eyes of faith, can see a wonderful new and resurrected life in this sacred place.

It will make itself evident in all manner of ways and at different times. Today at lunchtime we had the first of our ‘long table lunches’. A group of us who had worshipped here, at Holy Trinity, and at St. Lawrence, all met in the same north aisle where these bones have been buried, and we had a lunch – simple in setting up, but as good a lunch as you could get anywhere – and as tourists entered the church we invited them to come and join us at the long table. 14 or 15 people came and sat with us, and a group of cyclists came and had coffee with us. Here was a living church, in the same place as the bones of those who were the living church hundreds of years ago. Here we were witnessing in a new way, a fresh way, to the God who is the God of resurrection, the God who, in Jesus Christ, brought forth Lazarus from the tomb.

In this Easter season, we must proclaim in word and deed, that Christ is risen, and that for us, as for those people hundreds of years ago whose bones we have buried, he is the resurrection and the life.