All in the timing

In 1789, speaking about the new United States Constitution, Benjamin Franklin said, “our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”.

In this last year, Franklin’s vision of the permanency of American democracy has been tested to the limits but his understanding of both death and taxes remains a pretty solid truth.

In these days of extraordinary public borrowing and spending, it is tempting to write an article about the moral propriety of paying our taxes and there is a particularly rich theme around the need to understand that taxation, as it applies to humble individuals or major corporations, should be seen as a contribution to the common good rather than some kind of necessary evil. Given that the Bible has much more to say about money than it does about most other topics –a meditation on the relationship we have with our purses and wallets will no doubt feature soon enough. However, with Easter in view this is an opportunity to think about how we understand the first of Franklin’s certainties – death.

Bereavement, especially in this last year of pandemic, has been no stranger to any one of us. It is unlikely that there is anyone reading this article who has not known the deep pain and the searing loss of someone close. The Gospel of John records how Jesus experienced this deep sense of loss – weeping as he stood at the place where his friend Lazarus had been buried. There is no shame in tears, indeed it can be said that there is great strength to be derived from our weeping.

Aside from the deep sense of loss expressed in the story of Lazarus it is a pivotal story in the development of the Christian understanding of death as part of a continuum – where life that comes from God returns to God. It is an interesting feature of John’s account of Jesus’ life that he describes the extraordinary things that happen around Jesus as signs rather than miracles. In John’s gospel there are seven signs – of which the raising of Lazarus is the seventh. You can be sure; therefore, that in the mind of this old mystic there is a sub-text.

You see, the Old Testament says singularly little about an afterlife. The ancient Hebrews believed that the souls of the just and the unjust went down to the “place of shades” (sheol) – they had no formed ideas of heaven or hell, they lived noble lives or scurrilous lives with no sense of ultimate reward or punishment. By Jesus’ time, however, there is an emerging belief that is being confirmed in the text of this story. Jesus asks Martha if she believes in the resurrection of souls – if she does, then she is siding with an emerging faction of unorthodox scholars who believe in the resurrection. I think we can safely say that in this the last of the seven signs of his Gospel John is placing Jesus in the school of this belief that death is not the end.

“The sign of Lazarus and the message of Easter is the hope that death has lost its sting in the victory of God in Christ.

But there is more to this sign. Almost everything in what is being played out at Bethany is a sequence of events that will mirror the story of Jesus’ own death and resurrection. There are, in fact, enough things happening in this story that will make the Easter experience more readily accessible when it happens. Everything about this sign is in the timing. If Jesus’

Kingdom is not going to come by the spectacular route of political overthrow and if he is to be dead within the month – then some living sign of a different Kingdom has to be left behind.

The sign of Lazarus and the message of Easter is the hope that death has lost its sting in the victory of God in Christ.