New World Syndrome

John 11:1-45   |   3/17/2002

We're scavenging for sustenance in bookstores and Internet chat rooms, but what we often find in these places is stuff that is salty, fatty and sweet: New World junk food. What we really need is the nourishment of resurrection and life.

Micronesians dropping dead in their 50s are not dying for reasons commonly associated with the developing world. There is no famine here and little evidenThe people of Micronesia, in the western Pacific Ocean, are getting fat from eating Spam and potato chips and turkey tails. They are turning into what might be called "MACRO-nesians," and the change is killing them.
ce of the diseases that cut life short in places such as Africa. The big killer is what some epidemiologists are now calling "New World Syndrome" -- a constellation of maladies brought on not by viruses or microbes or parasites, but by the assault of rapid Westernization on traditional cultures.

It's not the problems of poverty that are killing them, but instead the scourge of affluence. They are just now beginning to face the diseases that knock us off here in the United States: malaria, dysentery and diarrhea have been replaced by diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. They're facing these problems because they have discovered our fatty, sweet and salty foods: Spam and corned beef and Vienna sausages, cake and muffin mixes, soda and beer and candy bars and potato chips.

Go into a Micronesian grocery store, and you can find plenty of unhealthy imported food, but you can't buy fresh bananas, papayas, breadfruit, coconut or mangoes. Apart from a fish shack or two, and a few stands hawking bags of the island's famous green tangerines, there is nowhere to buy local produce. Most islanders once grew fruits and vegetables on family plots and pulled tuna and other fish from the sea. But the majority of modern residents don't have time or energy to farm or fish -- they are too busy with their office jobs.

Welcome to the New World -- the promised land of diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.

Not that our problems in the United States are purely physical. Our spiritual diet is bad for us as well, and it's hurting us at younger ages all the time. We're victims of our own brand of New World Syndrome, getting sick from all the junk food that we ingest in our rapid-fire, multitasking, point-and-click, radically individualistic, consumer-oriented culture.

Today, a shrinking number of people are eating the fruits of traditional religious culture. At the same time, a hunger for personal spirituality -- cut off from religious institutions -- has been soaring. Jabez-junkies are feeling spiritually dead, and like Lazarus in the tomb, they're searching for life in online chat rooms, in exotic religions and in the self-help sections of shopping mall bookstores.

What's missing in all this is what Jesus proposes for us. In John 11:25, Jesus prescribes what might be called an "R and L antidote" to spiritual death: "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live." This is not too salty, sweet or fatty, and it provides us the spiritual nourishment we need for abundant life, now and forever.

To grasp the full significance of this suggestion, we need to take a careful look at the story of the raising of Lazarus and gain a deeper understanding of just how Jesus confronts -- and then conquers -- the powers of sickness and death.

You might be in for a surprise.

For starters, it is clear that Jesus is not untouched or unmoved by physical and spiritual destruction. He takes fatal illness seriously and personally. Going to the tomb of his dead friend Lazarus, Jesus encounters the sisters Martha and Mary, and when Jesus sees Mary weeping, he is greatly disturbed in spirit and is deeply moved. He begins to weep himself, prompting some onlookers to say, "See how he loved him!" (v. 36).

What a powerful image this is: God's own Son, the King of Kings and Lord of lords, so overcome by grief over the loss of his friend, and by anger over the destructive power of death, that he breaks down in tears.

Death is not a minor annoyance for Jesus. It is something that affects him so profoundly that he is overwhelmed by emotion and he cries. And just as he weeps over Lazarus, he weeps over physical deaths in Micronesia and spiritual deaths in our country.

But then, suddenly, another group of onlookers in the story speaks up and makes a less sympathetic observation: "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man [Lazarus] from dying?" (v. 37). Ouch. That sounds rather heartless and cutting, doesn't it? But don't dismiss it too quickly. It's a question that a great many people ask every day.

Think about it. Why doesn't the universe-creating God create miraculous cures for little children with cancer?
Why doesn't the death-conquering Christ beat the heart disease of elderly church members?

Why doesn't the apostle-inspiring Spirit of God give special powers to rescue workers at accident sites? [Substitute your own local prayer concerns for these generic situations of need.]

Because people today are hungry for answers, they're scavenging for spiritual sustenance in highly saturated fats. Junk food. And so they remain malnourished and fall victim to spiritual New World Syndrome.

Martha admits that she expects a straightforward healing miracle when she says to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (v. 21). She is confident that Jesus holds power over illness, and she believes that he would have chosen to use his power to help her brother Lazarus.

But then Jesus says something very interesting, and very unexpected. Instead of explaining to Martha that he is going to raise Lazarus in just a few minutes, he says, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" (v. 25)

This is not a straightforward healing. It's the R & L antidote.

Rather than promising Martha a miracle, he invites her to trust him to work for new life. There's a big difference between these two. Instead of saying, "I'm going to step in and make everything okay," Jesus says, "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live." He promises that the dead will rise, but he doesn't predict just how.

So what does Martha do in response to this invitation? She says "yes." She believes. She proclaims, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world" (v. 27).

The very same invitation is extended to us today. Jesus says to us, in the vortex of our physical and spiritual illnesses: "I am the resurrection and the life .... Do you believe this?" Do you believe that I am working for radical new life? Do you believe that I am the resurrection, the one who conquers death? Do you believe that I am leading you, right now, in so many unexpected ways, from dying to rising?

Sarah Hinlicky is studying for her Master of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary. She recently spent time visiting with her dying grandfather, a time of sadness and grief that was complicated by the fact that her grandfather really didn't approve of women in the ministry.

On her last visit, she offered to pray with him, and then began to cry. "He opened his arms," she reports, and "I threw myself down on his chest, wondering if I might accidentally crack one of his brittle ribs, and he wrapped those dying arms around me. I gripped them. There was something miraculous about them. They were so unlovable, objectively speaking, so ugly and powerless. They looked like death. They pointed to death. They even called out for death. But to me, they were the embodiment of love, love right in the middle of death. I wanted to touch and hold them, to examine their discolored spots, to keep them near because they were telling me that death can't annihilate our love.

"His yellow hands stroked my hair, and I started to pray, not very well, not very eloquently, not very coherently. He prayed, too, calmly, quietly, humorously even. He said, 'Let Sarah be a good conservative theologian for her church,' because to my grandpa, 'conservative' is the logical equivalent of confessional and orthodox.' I had to giggle through my tears.

"But then, a confession and an admission. He prayed, 'Lord, I didn't know what to think of this business of letting women be ordained pastors. But I see that you have called my granddaughter into it, so I think it must be a good thing after all.' And there it was, at the very end: The man who had baptized me was now blessing me to carry on his work in the world." When we face physical or spiritual death, there is only one antidote: resurrection and life. It comes to us through believing in Jesus and through trusting him to be at work for unexpected new life in every time, place and situation.

Although once dead, we are now alive. Call it New Life Syndrome.

Sources:
Hinlicky, Sarah. "The great reunion beyond."
Christianity Today, February 3, 2001, 53.

Shell, Ellen Ruppel. "New world syndrome."
The Atlantic Monthly, June 2001, 50.

Commentary

Unique to the gospel of John, the raising of Lazarus is a remarkable story, and not only because of the event it records -- the author's ability at weaving this lengthy account together is a wonder in itself. The story works on a number of levels at once.

John perches the story of Lazarus' resurrection at the pinnacle of Jesus' miracles or signs. The first 12 chapters of John's gospel are referred to as the "Book of Signs." Within this book, the Lazarus miracle stands as the seventh and greatest of Jesus' wonderworks. In John's gospel, there are no other resurrection miracles except for this one -- a fact that increases the singular status John accords this story.

Furthermore, this author has tucked into the story all sorts of references to events in Jesus' ministry that have either already occurred (analepsis) or have yet to occur (prolepsis). The story of Lazarus' resurrection invites readers both to mull over what they have already read and at the same time, to hold in the heart the clues given here for future reference and elaboration. From its exalted mid-point position, this story spreads its fingers of influence backward and forward throughout John's gospel.

The story portrays numerous characters with distinct and active roles. We are first introduced to the Bethany family of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. An immediate emotional connection is made between this family and Jesus -- a connection that reveals a part of Jesus' selfhood the gospel writer had not yet developed in any way. Up until now, Jesus' emotional life has been virtually ignored. Although we have seen him tired, we have not seen Jesus express great sorrow or passion or anger in any of the situations he has faced.

Now the veil lifts from the emotional life of Jesus. It falls away in the revelation that Jesus "loved" Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary (v. 3, 5). Some scholars posit that the emphasis that John places on Jesus' love for Lazarus may indicate that Lazarus is in fact the unnamed "beloved disciple" referred to later in the gospel. Others view Lazarus as Jesus' best friend.

Yet this love does not immediately compel Jesus to rush to the ill Lazarus' side. Instead, Jesus delays even beginning his journey for two days, and does not arrive at Bethany until Lazarus has been dead for four days (v. 17). This delay, of course, heightens the literary tension in the story and emphasizes the importance of this journey. Jesus is now on the way to Jerusalem. (We are explicitly told that Bethany is only about two miles away from Jerusalem in verse 18.). The author carefully takes his time moving Jesus along the path. He must first re-enter Judea; then he remains just outside Bethany; and finally (v. 38), Jesus reaches Lazarus' tomb. As he reveals in verses 4 and 40, Jesus' dawdling serves to proclaim God's glory. Despite, or because of, Jesus' great love for this family, he proceeds toward their crisis at a pace that in the end will do the most to glorify God.

In the first portion of this text, while Jesus is winding his way toward Bethany, the disciples play a surprisingly dense, almost comical role in this story. First, they exhibit cowardice at the thought of returning to Judea (v. 8). Jesus' rather cryptic remarks in verses 9-10 assure the disciples and convey his sense that his time has not yet come and that he is not yet in any danger.

But the disciples next play the fool in response to Jesus' quite transparent remark about Lazarus being "asleep." Until Jesus blatantly tells them Lazarus is dead, they haven't a clue. In light of their previous behavior, Thomas' outburst in verse 16 appears as pure bluster. In the Lazarus miracle story, the disciples, for the first time in John's gospel, are pretty poor examples of devoted followers.
The one who does stand out in this story as faithful, perceptive and brave is strategically located at the crucial center of this whole episode. Martha, Lazarus' sister, is a centerpiece in John's narrative. Both Raymond Brown and Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza have suggested that because of Jesus' great love for Martha (v. 5), she should be included with the Beloved Disciple as a full-fledged disciple of Jesus. But what is most revealing about Martha's status in this text is that she makes the most insightful and sophisticated christological confession in John's entire gospel.

Martha is already an example of faith when she runs out from her house of mourning to meet Jesus as he journeys toward them. Her initial confession of faith is in Jesus' healing abilities (v. 21). Yet she intimates that she may be ready to believe even more is possible (v. 22). When Jesus promises, "Your brother will rise again," Martha reveals her solid knowledge of traditional Jewish doctrine. She knows that Jesus speaks the truth, for Lazarus will rise "in the resurrection on the last day" (v. 24). Jesus now reveals to Martha the realized eschatology that he represents: "I am the resurrection and the life."

Martha demonstrates that she has moved to a new level of understanding once Jesus has revealed himself to her. Whereas in verses 22 and 24, Martha had gladly confessed to Jesus what she "knows" to be true, in the light of this new information

Martha now moves beyond knowledge to belief. She confesses, "I believe." Her faith is articulate and complete. She perceives Jesus as "the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world" (v. 27).

But if Martha's faithfulness evokes a revelation by Jesus of his true identity as the Christ, it is Mary's simple, yet overwhelming, grief that reveals Jesus' genuine humanity. Martha interrupts her grieving to have a theological discussion with Jesus. Mary interrupts Jesus' slow progression to the tomb with her emotional outburst. It is in response to Mary's tears, as well as to the weeping of the other Jewish mourners, that Jesus is ultimately moved to tears. When he lays eyes on the tomb of his best friend, Jesus, too, begins to weep.

The actual miracle is briefly delayed one more time so that Martha and Jesus may have one last discussion. As he had indicated at the beginning (v. 4), Jesus once again affirms that what he is about to do will magnify God's glory. Martha is asked to recall that her newly confessed belief assures her of seeing this glory in the here and now. With that, Jesus prays directly to God and then shouts, "Lazarus, come out!" (v. 43).

Although Lazarus himself does indeed come out of the tomb, a careful reader, familiar with the entirety of John's gospel, is immediately led to think of another resurrection scene. When John describes Jesus' own tomb, the writer takes special care to labor over the burial head-cloth left abandoned inside (John 20:7). Thus, as Lazarus stumbles out, his head still wrapped in burial cloths, it is the glory of God revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ that springs to mind.

Animating Illustrations

Death and resurrection. The empty tomb calls us from the shadow of the cross. Faith continues to visit the empty tomb, or, as in the case in the following story, continues to ring the bell of resurrection.

During the long years of the Civil War, America's oldest college, William and Mary, was closed. Many accepted its future as doomed. An old custodian refused to accept this verdict, however. Each day for five years he rang the bells of this ghost college as though it still lived. At the end of five years, he rang them for a reopening that vindicated his vigil of faith.

--Douglas V. Steere, Dimensions of Prayer (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1997), 90.

The disease of modernity is not limited to food intake. We're assaulted by passive advertising and annoying technological advantages. For example:

If you've ever been distracted in the middle of your sermon by a cell phone ringing in the audience, you're not the only one bothered by it. More than three out of five adults say it's annoying to hear ringing phones and cell phone conversations in certain public places.

Many people -- 44% -- said it's most distracting in houses of worship, 20% named movie theaters, 15% said restaurants, and 12% said theaters or concert halls.

--Opinion Research Corporation for Cingular Wireless, USA Today, cited in Rev.,
November-December 2001, 79.

An Episcopal priest named Robert Morris speaks about the commonplace and frequently unnoticed ways that people rise above their loneliness and fear as "ordinary resurrections." He points out that the origin of "resurrection" is the Greek word anastasis, which, he notes, means "standing up again," and, as he puts it unpretentiously, "We all lie down. We all rise up. We do this every day." The same word, as he notes, is used in Scripture: "I am the resurrection and the life." But, in an after-note directed possibly at fellow members of the clergy, he observes, "The resurrection does not wait for Easter."

--Jonathan Kozol, Ordinary Resurrections (New York: Crown Publishers, 2000),
107-108.

Here's the ultimate test for the presence of new life:

There is a story about a pastor who was building a wooden trellis to support a climbing vine. As he pounded away, he saw that a little boy was watching him. The youngster didn't say a word, so the pastor kept on working, thinking the lad would just leave.

But he didn't.

Finally, the pastor asked, "Well, son, are you trying to pick up some pointers on gardening?"

"No," he replied, "I'm just waiting to hear what a preacher says when he hits his thumb with a hammer."

--Thanks to Wesley Taylor,
Tualatin, Oregon.

Tertullian wrote of men already civilized and under the illusions of their very culture. Every culture has its illusions, its grand ideas that seem true from inside the culture, but are false.

The most prevalent illusion of our day is affluence .... It is a twist on Luke 12:15: "And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.'" But our culture believes in the illusory happiness and fulfillment of affluence.

Galbraith writes of this in The Affluent Society. Most men in history, till recently in developed Western culture, have been poverty-stricken. But now we are all rich and it has changed our view of life. You might say, "I'm just a man of humble means and would like to get in on some of the wealth." You already have.

The incident that led Jesus to make the statement in Luke 12, and to tell the parable of the rich fool, was of a man who felt he didn't have his fair share, and if he but could, he would be happy. That is the illusion of today. ...

The most precious commodities in life are non-negotiable: love, friendship, trust, accomplishment in what makes one happy.

A man's life consists in his relationship with his God.

--M. Thaxter Dickey, "Illusions of our culture," Sermon for September 1, 1996,
Dickey.org.

Church attendance makes a difference in school performance for kids in low-class neighborhoods, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. In fact, the poorer the neighborhood, the stronger the link between kids going to worship services and doing well at school, in part because of the strong sense of community in these neighborhoods. The percentage of kids in low-poverty neighborhoods who say that religion is very important to them is 36%, compared to 57% in high-poverty neighborhoods.

--"Insight," Rev., November-December 2001, 82.

Walk along any seashore, like as not you will be picking your way through waste: gobs of oil in the sand, nylon cordage lacing together the seaweed, broken bottles and aluminum cans, plastic floats and sandals in the shingle. Our flotsam and jetsam is found in most public places. Streets littered with polystyrene french fry containers, parks with dogs feces and candy wrappings, the countryside with plastic fertilizer sacks and abandoned cars. What careless, irresponsible behavior. If only everyone were as environ- mentally concerned as you and me.

But the pollution crisis is about more than individual behavior. It breaks over us in giant waves. Take acid rain. Half of West Germany's trees are dying from acid rain. That same pollutant is fast destroying Athens' Acropolis. Take nuclear power. The accidental dumping of half a ton of uranium in the Irish Sea helps ensure those waters are the most radioactive in the world. Cancer rates around the Sellafleld/Windscale nuclear power station are six times the national average for children. Take heavy metals. There's so much lead in London's air it's unsafe to eat lettuces grown there.

So waste is not just a messy habit of individuals. It is evidence of industrial growth -- both Western and Eastern bloc -- which can never recognize when enough is enough. Each waste crisis is a signal that the irresistible force of our affluent expanding economies has collided with the immovable object, the finite resources of the planet. Specifically, the collision is with that most precious, invisible and taken-for-granted of nature's bounty, the ability to dissolve and cleanse. We are overburdening the planet with our rubbish; the effluence of our affluence.

--Dexter Tiranti, "Affluence and effluence," New Internationalist, March 1986, OneWorld.org.

New World Syndrome has taken hold throughout much of the South Pacific. The problem in Kosrae [an island in Micronesia] pales by comparison with that in the Republic of Nauru, a tiny, crowded island known as the Kuwait of the South Pacific. Nauru's citizens grew rich from the mining of phosphate deposits, which long ago eclipsed fishing as the state's major revenue source and are now nearly depleted. This rocky island's few patches of arable land were laid waste years ago by mining, so Nauruans subsist almost entirely on imports. Prosperity has brought them Japanese televisions, German luxury sedans, and Australian filet mignon. It has also brought them what [epidemiologist Steven] Auerbach calls "the worst of 1950s American cuisine" -- processed foods with plenty of fat, salt, sugar, and refined starches. As a result Nauruans have among the highest rates of obesity and diabetes on the planet, and a life expectancy of only fifty-five. In contrast, the region's poorest nation -- Kiribati, thirty-three islands that straddle the Equator, with little money for imported food or anything else -- has in its rural regions the lowest rates of noncommunicable disease in the South Pacific.

Scientists have studied the health status of native peoples in the South Pacific for decades and have noted the explosion of diet-related disease in Nauru and Micronesia, among other islands.

--Ellen Ruppel Shell, "New World Syndrome," The Atlantic Monthly,
June 2001, 51.

All it takes for seeds to germinate are the right conditions. The right temperature and moisture level. And when the right conditions are achieved, cellular activity starts up. The seed becomes alive. Scientists can explain some aspects of this life, death and life cycle, but they cannot fully understand the moment of animation.

In real life, some seeds do fail to germinate. They fail to do their job. However, the greatest overall determining factor is not the seed, but the soil and conditions. Just like in the parable. A seed's job is simply to sprout life where there was none and hope the surrounding conditions will allow for growth. A seed is just the beginning.

--Paul Peterson, "Tending the Seed", BigHole.com/church/sermons.

Do you know on this one block [in New York City] you can buy croissants in five different places? There's one store called Bonjour Croissant. It makes me want to go to Paris and open a store call Hello Toast.

--Fran Lebowitz

Children's Sermon

Hold up a stick and a rock, and ask the children to complete the following verse, "Sticks and stones may break my bones..." They'll fill in, "but words will never hurt me." Ask if that little poem is true or not: Wouldn't they agree that words can sometime hurt us? Find out what kind of words hurt. And then ask them to name some other things, besides sticks and stones and cruel words, that can cause us pain. Quiz the children on whether they think Jesus was hurt by the same things that hurt us. Yes! Then ask them if Jesus ever cried. Of course! Point out that in the gospel of John, Jesus began to cry after his good friend Lazarus died (John 11:35). Emphasize that Jesus was hurt by the suffering and death of friends, just as we are. Let them know that this does not mean that Jesus was weak, but it means that Jesus understands what we are going through when we are hurt by sticks or stones or words or deaths. Encourage them to remember one thing whenever they are feeling pain: Jesus is right beside us, and he knows just how we feel. Suggest a new ending to the old poem: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but Jesus will never leave me."

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