I am the Resurrection and the Life
Sermon preached on Sunday 11am 17 March 2024
Job 19
Romans 8
John 11
Today is called Passion Sunday as we enter Passiontide and prepare for Holy Week – and so it is apt that we have the Lazarus story to reflect on, and the music of sackbuts and cornetts to accompany our choir today - as part of the Cathedral’s Early Music weekend.
Lazarus is restored to life – in a way his story is more about the resurrection than the passion. And to have today’s music is fitting for the Lazarus story because the music of sackbuts – these early brass instruments that resound so beautifully here, wonderfully played by the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble – used to be particularly associated with death and the afterlife in the late medieval and early modern period. Their sound was considered especially noble and solemn among renaissance instruments and so sackbuts were thought to convey a sense of the divine presence, and speak of God’s judgement and mercy. They sound out as a call from beyond this life, a call into eternal life.
In the Bible in early German translations, the angels are said to play sackbuts (Posaune as they are called in German) to herald the last judgement and the general resurrection. In the famous passage of I Corinthians which we heard sung last night in the inspiring performance of Messiah, in German it is not ‘the trumpet shall sound…’ but (rather charmingly to our ears) ‘the trombone shall sound and the dead shall be raised’.
Sackbuts were used in church music from the early 1500s and our mass setting today dates from the highpoint of their sacred use in the 1580s, with Lassus writing for the Bavarian court at Munich where he was Kapellmeister.
Right up until the mid 19th century, in Germany especially, funeral processions and solemn occasions of mourning were accompanied by sackbuts or, later, trombones playing in trio or quartet: heralding the call to eternal life. Beethoven wrote funeral motets for trombone quartet - and four trombones would lead Beethoven’s own funeral procession.
In the light of the joint focus today of the Early Music weekend with our Lazarus theme through Lent, it is wonderful also to have a new music commission this morning to be sung at the end of Communion. Using words of our patron Thomas Becket from his final days, the piece was specially written for today to be accompanied by sackbut and cornett ensemble. Symbolically, then, these instruments are being resurrected today – brought back to contemporary life and contemporary music, raised to new life not just after Lazarus’s four days but after four centuries since Lassus.
The raising of Lazarus is placed in John’s Gospel immediately before Palm Sunday – it is the prelude to Holy Week as it were, and John suggests that it is the single main cause of the plot against Jesus which leads to his arrest and crucifixion. Those conspiring against Jesus, John tells us, hope to put Lazarus to death again as soon as they can since so many people have begun to follow Jesus because of this miracle.
Medieval tradition would go on to give Lazarus quite a vivid career after the Resurrection of Jesus, travelling widely to tell the Good news of new life. The Orthodox held that he went to Cyprus, while Western tradition has him travelling to the south of France, becoming the first Bishop of Marseilles, preaching & evangelising – interestingly - together with his sisters Mary and Martha.
In John’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus has a double focus – anticipating the resurrection of Jesus and of each believer. There was an opinion among rabbis that the soul hovered near the body for three days but after that it departed leaving no hope of resuscitation, so it is significant that John tells us Lazarus was in the tomb for four days: Jesus is here achieving the utterly impossible, to bring his friend back to life.
The Gospel account is also remarkable for the extreme emotion that Jesus shows. Jesus wept: that famous shortest sentence in the whole Bible. It is a powerful statement about Jesus’ capacity for love and loss. Before the tomb of his friend, Jesus is twice said to be ‘greatly disturbed in spirit’ and deeply moved. The unusual Greek word implies shuddering with emotion, and almost a sense of flared nostrils as if Jesus is ‘snorting with fury’. This suggests a reaction from Jesus of deep indignation as well as grief: a response of anger almost at the powers of evil that cause sickness, grief and death, anger at the powers of dis-ease that prevail in the world and hold so many people captive.
So, as an ‘advance’ on the victory Christ will win over death through the cross, Jesus calls Lazarus back from the dead. He who has said to Martha ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life” now shows his power over evil and death in raising Lazarus, anticipating both his own resurrection and the resurrection to come for us all. Jesus gives physical life to Lazarus whom he loved, as a sign of his power to give eternal life to all of us, for all of us are loved by Jesus. Eternal life, and the power of the Resurrection, begins within this life - free from fear of death and the physical limitations that restrict us.
John tells us that Christ calls with a loud voice ‘Lazarus, come out’ and the dead man is called to new life. We are told he still wears the grave clothes because he will die again – whereas Jesus at the Easter resurrection will leave the grave clothes behind because he rises to eternal life. It is a loud call from Christ, like a trumpet call perhaps – the call to new life resounding like the call symbolised by the music of our sackbuts and cornetts.
There is a lovely medieval discussion of the fact that Christ calls ‘Lazarus, come out.’ Lazarus is called by name by Christ to come out of the tomb. This is a detail we might miss – but medieval scholars said that Christ clearly had to name Lazarus, otherwise his loud shout ‘Come out’ would have been answered by all those who had died, and the whole of Hades would have been emptied as all the departed responded to Christ’s call.
The call of Jesus will come by name to us all, and the promise of Jesus is to us all: to come out from fear and doubt, from failure and despair; to be set free from the grip of evil and sin and death. Jesus offers a quality of life that is eternal, which physical death cannot limit.
I am the resurrection and the life, says Jesus – before he calls Lazarus from the grave.
I am the resurrection and the life says Jesus, as he calls each of us
to enter into that promise of eternal life.