Dear Faith Family,

"Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him."
(John 11:11)

Knowing how the story ends sometimes keeps us from epiphany in the middle. Like with the famed Psalm 23. With the Lord as our shepherd, we know we'll end up beside "waters of rest" as we're led on "right paths" to "dwell in the house of the Lord forever." And while we may not ignore the fact that the "right path" takes us straight "through the valley of the shadow of death," we certainly don't choose to dwell there.

Perhaps because we naturally (and rightly!) seek and expect relief and comfort, rescue, and consolation from the Lord, we are prone to ponder their apparent fulfillment in both the Psalm and the nearly as famed story of Lazarus. Yet, as we discussed on Sunday, it is not the end of the story that provides the "awe ha." Instead, the revelation is found right smack in the middle.

You might think it odd to connect Psalm 23 and the story of the death and resurrection of Lazarus, but that is what John does in his Gospel. In John 10, Jesus reveals himself to be "the good shepherd" who knows and lays down his life for his sheep (10:10-18). Not long after this, one of his own, Lazarus, whom Jesus loved (11:3,5), falls ill (11:1).

What a chance this is for Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to demonstrate just how good he truly is by coming to the aid of his dear and needy friend. Instead, Jesus, the one who does what no "hired hand" would do nor worthwhile shepherd could do, "stayed two days longer in the place where he was" before making his way to Bethany (11:6).

Don't you find it interesting, especially knowing how the story ends, just as Jesus apparently did (see 11:4), that he doesn't rescue his friends from the pain and suffering of death on the front end? It's not like Jesus needed to prove his power. After all, bringing people back from the dead isn't something new for Jesus (see Mark 5:21-43 & Luke 7:11-17), nor was healing them from a distance (John 4:46-54). So why another object lesson? Especially when Jesus' own resurrection just a few weeks later will make Lazarus' seem redundant?

Perhaps Jesus, as he does in each of his "I AM" statements, desires to reveal something more than a literal interpretation. Perhaps, Jesus is offering more than mere comfort to his faith-filled, grieving in hope friend when he says to her and us,

"I AM the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die."
(11:25-26)

Perhaps, like the psalmist, Jesus is revealing that the "right path" doesn't take us around death--whether physical (we all know that!), nor spiritual, emotional, circumstantial, relational, vocational, aspirational, etc.--but rather through death to life eternal now, and always:

"The Prince of life is ever the conqueror of death [all the "little deaths" too]. Not only is he this by and by in the resurrection on the last day;
he is this always.[1]

Jesus does something to death, not just at the end, but in all the ways death makes its way into our living in the middle. Jesus does something through death, especially for his "friends." He transforms death from an end, from a "deep darkness" casting its shadows over life, to a sleep from which we are awakened into a new day.