The Message of Lazarus:
Only as Dead and Stinking in Our Sins
Are We Able to Rise with Jesus
Only as Dead and Stinking in Our Sins
Are We Able to Rise with Jesus
Great and Holy Saturday
I was thinking about the phony concept of the faith that is very popular now, especially at this time of the year. You see Jesus suffering on the cross and you try to stir up sorrow because He is so good and you’re so bad. Then when you have gotten yourself sufficiently depressed by the whole deal, now comes the Resurrection and you're told that not only did He suffer so much but now He shows us He is God and humiliates you even more. But no one seems to ask the question: what's in it for me? And if it doesn't have anything to do with me, you can see Him suffering on the cross but it's all like a distant historical event unrelated to me - today!
This is all by way of suggesting that God had a larger purpose in all of this than to show us how good He is and how bad we are. By dying for us on the cross, He is trying to show you that your sins aren't worth anything in comparison to His goodness. Because by nature we want nothing more than to be loved - and to he loved by God. St. Augustine said, "The heart is made for Thee and has no rest until it rests in Thee," and what frustrates that desire is the conviction that we would contaminate God by any contact with Him. The effect of that kind of thinking is that you withdraw from God and that is the beginning of all sin. By nature you must be loving someone. When a man finds himself in bed with a prostitute it must he that he thinks he can't find the real thing anywhere else. The beginning of all sin is the conviction that you can't be loved and this goes right down to the roots of your being. The natural effect of sin is to hide from God like Adam and Eve because you fear God will punish you and you don't think He can possibly love you. So God’s purpose in His death and resurrection is to convince us that our sins are as nothing in comparison to His blood. That's why He said. "Come over to Me all you who are burdened."(Mt 11:28)
We can see how the sinner and the Pharisee, are in each one of us: we want to throw stones at ourselves when we're "caught in adultery" (Jn 8:1-11); that is to say, we want to punish ourselves, do violence to ourselves, try to fix ourselves up, when we see ourselves as sinful. If you don't understand how deep in you is the conviction that you can't be loved because you're dirty, then the death and resurrection of Jesus won't mean anything to you because these great events won't reach you. It is like Jesus trying to heal a disease and you don't even know you have the disease. What else did He mean when he said "I came to save sinners" (Matt. 9:13) except to make it clear to you that this is what we do and this is what we are. And when you know you’re hopeless in yourself then there is a potential for knowing that your hope is in Jesus Who died for us.
So I would say that is what He would want you to learn today. When you see that His dying on the cross and His rising from the dead doesn't mean too much to you, He doesn't want you to work yourself up into a state of fake compassion or depression. He wants you to ask a simple question: why doesn't it mean anything to me? And the reason that it doesn't is because you're not simple and honest about your sins you don't live in the knowledge of your hopelessness.
If you repress your guilt, you're not burdened by your sins, you're burdened by the sins of others! So it would be a good idea to examine yourself and see how much of your energy is spent in running away from what you are. What other meaning would there be for Lazarus except that Jesus allowed him to die and lie stinking in the tomb for four days in order to remind us that He wants our resurrection in His? He wants us to die in the fullness of knowledge of our hopelessness and without that Pascha can't mean anything. Then the death and resurrection will mean something to you because you will see that you're in the tomb - and the truth is that if you're not stinking in the tomb, you won't move out of it.
But it is only in the knowledge that you're loved that you can face your corruption. That is the whole point of meditation. But in your meditation you have to see what a hypocrite you are and how much of your life and energy you spend covering up the horrible reality of what you are in yourself so there is no potential in you to rise from the dead. Unless you're in the tomb you won't be called out of it. And without faith you won't even know you're in it; you can't face it. There would be an instinct against despair: if a person has an incurable cancer why would he want to know about it? So if you're convinced that you're hopeless in your sins, what motive would you have to see your corruption? It is a little bit like Job's wife saying, "Curse God and die."(Jb 2:9)
So we have to meditate on the fundamental truth of faith: that our sins are nothing, that God loves us only because He is good and that in proportion to the blood of Jesus our sins are nothing. The only impediment in the end is that we don't believe.
Otherwise you worry about this or that sin, straining after a gnat and swallowing a camel. (Mt 23:25) Your corruption can never stand in the way of God's love unless you believe it does. So you should ask that question: what's in it for me? This is what's in it for you:everything!
COMMENT: The thing is to see how you cover up your sin, because it must be different for each person.
But the cure is the same. You have to meditate in order to convince yourself that despite everything you do you're still lovable.
COMMENT: Then the more we're convinced God loves us, the more open we are to his love.
What makes you open to God's love is the conviction that He loves you together with the realization that there is nothing in you to deserve it. Like a vacuum sucks in the air when it is empty, so we suck in God's love in the knowledge of our sins. Otherwise it is like being entirely surrounded by God but all the valves are closed.
COMMENT: The worst sin, then, is not believing that you're loved.
Yes, because that is the beginning of despair. When you don't believe you're loved, there is no hope.
COMMENT: When I teach people that their sins mean nothing, they might interpret it as an excuse for sin.
When you say your sins mean nothing it means sin is like zero in comparison to infinity, and this means in comparison to one drop of Christ's blood. Yet Jesus said to the woman in the Gospel, "Go and sin no more."(Jn 8:11) Because of His love you hate sin. You have confused sin in itself with sin in relation to the blood of Jesus. Even when you turn from sin you're being moved by Jesus, though you may not be aware of it. Similarly, you can become aware of your breathing but you're not aware of your heart and your lungs working to make you breathe. Whatever good you do, you're being moved by God.
But that distinction between sin in itself and sin in relation to the blood of Christ is very important. The moderns deny sin because they want to get rid of despair, but our hope is in Jesus and you're loved by Him in spite of what you are. So if you're denying sin you're denying the mercy of God.
But then to make this practical, you have to examine your life and see how you really hide your hopeless corruption and then there is no potential for the precious gifts of His death and resurrection.
COMMENT: What does hopelessness mean?
Suppose you were making a model airplane and you worked hours and hours on it. Then the first time you flew it, it crashed. So you start all over again and the same thing happens over and over. Wouldn't you feel pretty hopeless? So when you see yourself doing evil things over and over again you would come to the conclusion that you love sin. Of course to see your evil you would have to apply a measure, like putting a ruler over a crooked line. If you think that whatever you do is right you have no measure; so there is nothing to be hopeless about because you never do anything wrong, only others do, so you begin to feel hopeless about others. But when you realize that you are hopeless and can't overcome your evil by yourself because as soon as you think of sin you sin again - that is when you turn to Jesus. Our hope is in God alone, through Jesus. That is why He said, "I have come to save what is lost."(Lk 19: 10) So you must experience the feeling of your hopelessness in yourself to appreciate the mercy of God in Jesus.
You can hardly experience this hopelessness if you don't think you need to be saved. That is why it is so important to take away all those repressions and cover-ups. I think that is one of the effects of psychiatry, because God raised up people outside of the Faith to discover the hopeless reality of what you are in yourself. But then psychiatrists can only imitate the real thing.
When we say, "the righteous love thee” (Cant. 1:3) a better word to use than "righteous" would be "straight": straight, not crooked, which would signify the hypocrisy of trying to justify yourself. The meaning of Judas in the Gospel is that to see your evil by yourself leads to despair. But to see your evil in relation to Jesus' blood is the solution because then truth and hope go together.
When you hear the words of truth it is like a catalytic agent: it brings you to Jesus. What is behind real preaching is one sinner speaking to another. I don't communicate that I have something that you don't have. If I believe Jesus is the cause of my justification I communicate that He is the cause of yours. Faith is the belief that you're justified only by the blood of Jesus and when you believe that, you communicate it to others.
COMMENT: This repression isn't just one thing; it is a network of guilt underlying everything you do.
That's right. Repression is a kind of system you have developed to keep a kind of equilibrium.
COMMENT: Could you want God's love just to erase your own sinfulness?
You could even want God's love to take delight in yourself, but real love ends in ecstasy. There is a false piety which relates both to God and your neighbor and the final cause of it is delight in yourself.
COMMENT: But God doesn't show us what we are all at once.
In a way it's like the mother bird who breaks up the worms for her young. In fact it is a sin to want to know more than what God wants you to know. The measure in everything you do is God's will. Your mind has to be the instrument of God's mind and only he knows how much he wants us to see. So the resolution is always in Jesus. Otherwise you want to get your peace out of the fullness of your own knowledge of evil.
Aristotle said the right thing to do is what a prudent man would do in the given time, place and circumstances. The prudent man for us is Jesus Christ. So if you want to know what is right to do, get in contact with Him and then you can say with Paul, "I use the things of this world as though I use them not”(l Cor 7:31); that is, even as I use my mind I am being used by God.
We're slaves of Christ and a slave is a human instrument; so with all this talk of freedom in our society, our intention as Christians is to be slaves of Jesus Christ.
COMMENT: You can't just go to Jesus, isn't there something else you have to do?
There are many things you have to do, but whatever you do that is good, God is the total cause and you're the total cause. [Ed.: Orthodox know this as the operation ofsynergy.]
The very act of your going to Jesus comes from Him. If you understand this, you shouldn't have any fear that you're neglecting your work. That is the way Martha (Lk 10:40ff) was thinking.
When you turn to Jesus, you do what He wants and then whatever you do will flow from that. When the devil pushes people around it isn’t because that person is evil. God is using the devil to show that person his hopelessness in himself, just as Lazarus in the tomb and dead for four days was utterly hopeless in himself. But then Lazarus knew that his rising was only in the power of Jesus.
I was thinking about the phony concept of the faith that is very popular now, especially at this time of the year. You see Jesus suffering on the cross and you try to stir up sorrow because He is so good and you’re so bad. Then when you have gotten yourself sufficiently depressed by the whole deal, now comes the Resurrection and you're told that not only did He suffer so much but now He shows us He is God and humiliates you even more. But no one seems to ask the question: what's in it for me? And if it doesn't have anything to do with me, you can see Him suffering on the cross but it's all like a distant historical event unrelated to me - today!
This is all by way of suggesting that God had a larger purpose in all of this than to show us how good He is and how bad we are. By dying for us on the cross, He is trying to show you that your sins aren't worth anything in comparison to His goodness. Because by nature we want nothing more than to be loved - and to he loved by God. St. Augustine said, "The heart is made for Thee and has no rest until it rests in Thee," and what frustrates that desire is the conviction that we would contaminate God by any contact with Him. The effect of that kind of thinking is that you withdraw from God and that is the beginning of all sin. By nature you must be loving someone. When a man finds himself in bed with a prostitute it must he that he thinks he can't find the real thing anywhere else. The beginning of all sin is the conviction that you can't be loved and this goes right down to the roots of your being. The natural effect of sin is to hide from God like Adam and Eve because you fear God will punish you and you don't think He can possibly love you. So God’s purpose in His death and resurrection is to convince us that our sins are as nothing in comparison to His blood. That's why He said. "Come over to Me all you who are burdened."(Mt 11:28)
We can see how the sinner and the Pharisee, are in each one of us: we want to throw stones at ourselves when we're "caught in adultery" (Jn 8:1-11); that is to say, we want to punish ourselves, do violence to ourselves, try to fix ourselves up, when we see ourselves as sinful. If you don't understand how deep in you is the conviction that you can't be loved because you're dirty, then the death and resurrection of Jesus won't mean anything to you because these great events won't reach you. It is like Jesus trying to heal a disease and you don't even know you have the disease. What else did He mean when he said "I came to save sinners" (Matt. 9:13) except to make it clear to you that this is what we do and this is what we are. And when you know you’re hopeless in yourself then there is a potential for knowing that your hope is in Jesus Who died for us.
So I would say that is what He would want you to learn today. When you see that His dying on the cross and His rising from the dead doesn't mean too much to you, He doesn't want you to work yourself up into a state of fake compassion or depression. He wants you to ask a simple question: why doesn't it mean anything to me? And the reason that it doesn't is because you're not simple and honest about your sins you don't live in the knowledge of your hopelessness.
If you repress your guilt, you're not burdened by your sins, you're burdened by the sins of others! So it would be a good idea to examine yourself and see how much of your energy is spent in running away from what you are. What other meaning would there be for Lazarus except that Jesus allowed him to die and lie stinking in the tomb for four days in order to remind us that He wants our resurrection in His? He wants us to die in the fullness of knowledge of our hopelessness and without that Pascha can't mean anything. Then the death and resurrection will mean something to you because you will see that you're in the tomb - and the truth is that if you're not stinking in the tomb, you won't move out of it.
But it is only in the knowledge that you're loved that you can face your corruption. That is the whole point of meditation. But in your meditation you have to see what a hypocrite you are and how much of your life and energy you spend covering up the horrible reality of what you are in yourself so there is no potential in you to rise from the dead. Unless you're in the tomb you won't be called out of it. And without faith you won't even know you're in it; you can't face it. There would be an instinct against despair: if a person has an incurable cancer why would he want to know about it? So if you're convinced that you're hopeless in your sins, what motive would you have to see your corruption? It is a little bit like Job's wife saying, "Curse God and die."(Jb 2:9)
So we have to meditate on the fundamental truth of faith: that our sins are nothing, that God loves us only because He is good and that in proportion to the blood of Jesus our sins are nothing. The only impediment in the end is that we don't believe.
Otherwise you worry about this or that sin, straining after a gnat and swallowing a camel. (Mt 23:25) Your corruption can never stand in the way of God's love unless you believe it does. So you should ask that question: what's in it for me? This is what's in it for you:everything!
COMMENT: The thing is to see how you cover up your sin, because it must be different for each person.
But the cure is the same. You have to meditate in order to convince yourself that despite everything you do you're still lovable.
COMMENT: Then the more we're convinced God loves us, the more open we are to his love.
What makes you open to God's love is the conviction that He loves you together with the realization that there is nothing in you to deserve it. Like a vacuum sucks in the air when it is empty, so we suck in God's love in the knowledge of our sins. Otherwise it is like being entirely surrounded by God but all the valves are closed.
COMMENT: The worst sin, then, is not believing that you're loved.
Yes, because that is the beginning of despair. When you don't believe you're loved, there is no hope.
COMMENT: When I teach people that their sins mean nothing, they might interpret it as an excuse for sin.
When you say your sins mean nothing it means sin is like zero in comparison to infinity, and this means in comparison to one drop of Christ's blood. Yet Jesus said to the woman in the Gospel, "Go and sin no more."(Jn 8:11) Because of His love you hate sin. You have confused sin in itself with sin in relation to the blood of Jesus. Even when you turn from sin you're being moved by Jesus, though you may not be aware of it. Similarly, you can become aware of your breathing but you're not aware of your heart and your lungs working to make you breathe. Whatever good you do, you're being moved by God.
But that distinction between sin in itself and sin in relation to the blood of Christ is very important. The moderns deny sin because they want to get rid of despair, but our hope is in Jesus and you're loved by Him in spite of what you are. So if you're denying sin you're denying the mercy of God.
But then to make this practical, you have to examine your life and see how you really hide your hopeless corruption and then there is no potential for the precious gifts of His death and resurrection.
COMMENT: What does hopelessness mean?
Suppose you were making a model airplane and you worked hours and hours on it. Then the first time you flew it, it crashed. So you start all over again and the same thing happens over and over. Wouldn't you feel pretty hopeless? So when you see yourself doing evil things over and over again you would come to the conclusion that you love sin. Of course to see your evil you would have to apply a measure, like putting a ruler over a crooked line. If you think that whatever you do is right you have no measure; so there is nothing to be hopeless about because you never do anything wrong, only others do, so you begin to feel hopeless about others. But when you realize that you are hopeless and can't overcome your evil by yourself because as soon as you think of sin you sin again - that is when you turn to Jesus. Our hope is in God alone, through Jesus. That is why He said, "I have come to save what is lost."(Lk 19: 10) So you must experience the feeling of your hopelessness in yourself to appreciate the mercy of God in Jesus.
You can hardly experience this hopelessness if you don't think you need to be saved. That is why it is so important to take away all those repressions and cover-ups. I think that is one of the effects of psychiatry, because God raised up people outside of the Faith to discover the hopeless reality of what you are in yourself. But then psychiatrists can only imitate the real thing.
When we say, "the righteous love thee” (Cant. 1:3) a better word to use than "righteous" would be "straight": straight, not crooked, which would signify the hypocrisy of trying to justify yourself. The meaning of Judas in the Gospel is that to see your evil by yourself leads to despair. But to see your evil in relation to Jesus' blood is the solution because then truth and hope go together.
When you hear the words of truth it is like a catalytic agent: it brings you to Jesus. What is behind real preaching is one sinner speaking to another. I don't communicate that I have something that you don't have. If I believe Jesus is the cause of my justification I communicate that He is the cause of yours. Faith is the belief that you're justified only by the blood of Jesus and when you believe that, you communicate it to others.
COMMENT: This repression isn't just one thing; it is a network of guilt underlying everything you do.
That's right. Repression is a kind of system you have developed to keep a kind of equilibrium.
COMMENT: Could you want God's love just to erase your own sinfulness?
You could even want God's love to take delight in yourself, but real love ends in ecstasy. There is a false piety which relates both to God and your neighbor and the final cause of it is delight in yourself.
COMMENT: But God doesn't show us what we are all at once.
In a way it's like the mother bird who breaks up the worms for her young. In fact it is a sin to want to know more than what God wants you to know. The measure in everything you do is God's will. Your mind has to be the instrument of God's mind and only he knows how much he wants us to see. So the resolution is always in Jesus. Otherwise you want to get your peace out of the fullness of your own knowledge of evil.
Aristotle said the right thing to do is what a prudent man would do in the given time, place and circumstances. The prudent man for us is Jesus Christ. So if you want to know what is right to do, get in contact with Him and then you can say with Paul, "I use the things of this world as though I use them not”(l Cor 7:31); that is, even as I use my mind I am being used by God.
We're slaves of Christ and a slave is a human instrument; so with all this talk of freedom in our society, our intention as Christians is to be slaves of Jesus Christ.
COMMENT: You can't just go to Jesus, isn't there something else you have to do?
There are many things you have to do, but whatever you do that is good, God is the total cause and you're the total cause. [Ed.: Orthodox know this as the operation ofsynergy.]
The very act of your going to Jesus comes from Him. If you understand this, you shouldn't have any fear that you're neglecting your work. That is the way Martha (Lk 10:40ff) was thinking.
When you turn to Jesus, you do what He wants and then whatever you do will flow from that. When the devil pushes people around it isn’t because that person is evil. God is using the devil to show that person his hopelessness in himself, just as Lazarus in the tomb and dead for four days was utterly hopeless in himself. But then Lazarus knew that his rising was only in the power of Jesus.
