We will be Real.

John 11:32-44

In one of C S Lewis’s shorter and lesser known works, The Great Divorce, the author and convert to Christianity explores the afterlife, the Great Divide between heaven and hell. The souls of those in hell are trapped in an ever expanding gray expanse of urban sprawl, constantly chilled and overcast in a vision of eternal torment that reflects Lewis’s horror at the ramifications of the industrial revolution and the staggering growth of cities at the expense of beauty and green space. In Lewis’s imagination, every soul in that place is trapped in a cycle of accumulation and scarcity, able to create anything their heart might desire from a decadent meal to an opulent mansion- but the meals never satisfy, and the rain falls right through the insubstantial roofs. People are sharp tongued and quick to unkindness and feuding, and no one rests anywhere long at all. The Grey Town, as Lewis names the place that isn’t heaven, is a place entirely composed of almosts and not quites and somewhats and minor discomforts and aggressions. All of life’s pleasures are available to the residents, with none of the joy or satisfaction that is expected of them. Most of the people in the Grey Town have continued the same rhythms they started in their earthly life- striving, competition, grabbing for power and prestige and possession of everything from food to buildings to people.

On occasion, for those willing and able to make it across the expanse of drizzling grey to the bus stop, there is a bus which takes its passengers away, to a different and brighter place. The good place, indeed the heavenly place, is for many of the passengers of the Grey Town simply a curiosity. Some wish to try to steal away artifacts to bring back to the Grey Town and sell. Others believe it to be a worse place than where they came from, so wide and open and bright as to be blinding by comparison to the perpetual dusk of the town. All of the visitors find as they leave the bus that there is something amiss, something very different there. At first they believe it to be the place itself that is wrong, until a small few realize it is they themselves who are out of place. The passengers from the Grey Town are phantoms, as thin and insubstantial as the walls that couldn’t keep out the rain. Their forms are not tangible, barely even physical. By contrast, the place of light is immovably solid. The grass itself is so solid that it pierces the feet of the phantoms like needles. The fruit that falls from trees is so heavy that no amount of phantom strength will move it from the ground. Even the beings who dwell in the realm of light are more real, more corporeal than their Grey visitors. The difference, for Lewis, between heaven and hell is, to put it simply, the difference between the truth and anything less than the truth. Heaven, the kingdom of God, is more real than anything below it. The eternal life we share in Christ is the true reality.

In Lewis’s imaginative exploration of the afterlife, he explores sin and sanctification and the effects of love and prayer and perseverance on the soul. Some of his phantoms find their final home in the realm of light, and others choose to return to the grey dissatisfaction of the familiar. Some heavenly beings seem to have always resided there, while others endured the startling emptiness of their previous nature before repenting and becoming whole in heaven. In all cases, there is change. In all cases, to encounter the holy reality is to be permanently altered. In all cases, going back to how it was before is no longer an option.

I have to wonder if Lazarus might have related to the imagination of C. S. Lewis. Lazarus, struck down by a sudden and fatal illness, met an untimely death and in the tradition of his people was buried shortly after. Anointed and wrapped lovingly in bands of cloth by grieving family members, the body of Lazarus was laid in a tomb much like that which Jesus would ultimately be buried in. He stayed there four days, the natural process of decay already taking hold and creating the unmistakable stench of death. Lazarus was entirely, completely, utterly dead. We as John’s audience today are meant to read that loud and clear. The raising of Lazarus was no trick of the light, not a coma or a rare natural phenomenon. The sickness and death of Lazarus, the grief of his sisters and the rest of his community, and the finality of his burial are all real. Jesus’s broken heart, his great disturbance, and his tears are just as real. At the grave of Lazarus, Jesus shows on his own face and in his own voice that even the heart of God breaks. The grief, the separation and the seeming finality of death cause us such suffering that our God cannot leave us to bear it alone. Even the fear and trembling that our very natures tell us to feel at the threat of death are felt by God in Jesus, as he prayed in the garden that he might be spared, that the cup might pass from him. But because we are not spared, he does not spare himself. Because we must all face the final steps from life to death alone, he experienced forsakenness and crossed the threshold with us. And so Lazarus first enters death and the grave. He crosses the veil, the narrow stream from this reality to another. And Jesus calls him back.

The stone has been removed and the rank stench of death engulfs them, and Jesus calls through the mists of eternity for Lazarus to come back, to come out of death and return to life. And so he does, grave wrappings and all. The final words of Jesus in this act of resurrection that would lead to his own arrest and execution are the words no one would utter at his trial. Jesus grants to Lazarus what only God can grant. Unbind him, and let him go.

The unbinding of Lazarus is not described by John’s Gospel. The reunion of the bereaved sisters with their now undead brother is left to take place offstage. Lazarus, the first man to die and be called forth from death by the living Word, returns to a life unwritten. We know that he lives on, as he will be one of many who dine with Jesus in the days leading to the cross. Indeed, it is the controversy of a resurrected man and a preacher who holds power over life and death sitting at table together in the sight of many that sparks the authorities to seek to eliminate the threat of Jesus of Nazareth. But the story of Lazarus’s own life after death is not told by any of the Gospels. We are left only with our imaginations and those of the tradition to fill in the blanks of his story.

Lazarus has seen the other side of death, and returned to prove it has lost its sting. I wonder how he would have evaluated Mr. Lewis’s interpretation of the afterlife. Ethereal bus rides and sprawling urban wastes would have been as mysterious to Lazarus of Bethany as death itself remains for us. But perhaps Lazarus would have understood the metaphor, the comparative unreality of those not yet received into the realm of light. For Lazarus returned to his life and to his sisters a changed man, there can be no doubt. He had endured a sudden and fatal illness, an event none of us can endure and remain exactly as we were before. He said goodbye to his beloved sisters, with whom he lived and worked and prayed. His sisters, having said their own goodbyes, had grieved him, had washed and anointed and laid his cold body in a tomb, wrapped with care as their mother had dressed them all in childhood. To be returned to one another cannot have felt like a return to normal, to the way things were. Neither Lazarus, nor Martha, nor Mary could have possibly continued living a life like the one they had before. To encounter death, to encounter the realm of light, to encounter the kingdom is to be forever changed. Lazarus returned to life knowing the truth, the deeper reality. In a way, Lazarus came back a little more real himself.

This is the hope we have to give the world in the face of death. This is the hope we have to offer one another in the face of loss and grief and decay. We do not anticipate our reunion with the Saints in light as a return to normal, a return to the way things were, a repetition of things as we’ve always done them. Beyond death, beyond the grave, beyond the last day, we anticipate the greatest reality. When we are returned to one another, as Mary and Martha and Lazarus were returned to one another, as Jesus was returned to his disciples and continues to be returned to us each time we approach the altar- we will be returned not as phantoms but as our real selves. We will be reunited in a way more true than our hearts can fathom in this life. The light perpetual which shines upon those who have gone before us will break across our horizon and burn away all that separates us from one another. And we will be changed. We will be unbound. With all the saints, we will be real.