Thankyou for welcoming me here to share in your worship this afternoon.

Thankyou, Victoria, for the invitation to spend this short, but to me very precious time in the diocese, and in the city of Christchurch… this far-flung outpost of Canterbury diocese.

But as I’ve said before, in this last 24 hours, I know that the people of Canterbury city, and the congregation of Christchurch Cathedral, Canterbury, would want to send their love and their prayers and their solidarity to all of you here.

Because I know that the events of the last couple of years have gone very deep into peoples’ thinking and feeling in the other Canterbury, and you’re in their hearts.

The end of the gospel reading we’ve just heard gives us a very extraordinary picture.

At first sight, it’s almost like something out of a horror film.

We’ve seen The Mummy – out of the tomb, comes this figure, wrapped in linen bands, groping its way, presumably – because there’s a cloth covering its face.

And Jesus says: ‘Unwrap him.’

Reveal his face. Let his hands flex again, let his feet move freely.

But it’s that moment of lifting the cloth from his face, that is somehow so powerful here.

Lazarus is called back to life.

And the sign of that calling back to life is that his face is uncovered.

Our life, our new life in Christ, is very profoundly a matter of faces being uncovered.

We read about that in Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, where he speaks of how all believers “with unveiled faces” look into the glory of Jesus Christ, and have that glory reflected in their own faces.

Somehow, the new life enables us, as if for the first time, to be ourselves, to show our faces to God, and to one another.

Coming clean to one another

We are, in the language of St John’s gospel, we are last allowed and empowered to live in the truth, to live and walk in the light. We don’t have to hide any longer.

And there’s a very poignant fragment in one of the very early stories about The Desert Fathers, the Egyptian monks of the fourth century.

Where a monk gets into a conversation with a departed soul – don’t ask for details, it’s all quite complicated – but the departed soul says that, unfortunately ,he’s in hell, and the worst thing about being in hell is that you’re never allowed to see anybody’s face.

In hell, we don’t see each other’s faces.

Now, whatever we may think about hell, and the eternity of hell, it’s certainly the most powerful picture we could have, isn’t it, of what hell might be like?

Our faces hidden from everyone, everyone’s face hidden from us, all of us hidden from God.

And Lazarus steps out of the tomb, and Jesus says: ‘Unwrap him.’

Loose him. Let him go free – and lift the veil from his face.

So, the first thing to think about, as we digest that gospel story, is how that works in our own lives.

How the new life in Jesus Christ helps us reveal our faces. Come clean to one another – by which I don’t mean that Christians ought to spend all their time pouring out their personal problems and their personal insights to one another without invitation.

That is a recipe for congregational collapse in a very short period indeed.

But it is about remembering that we are to be, somehow, transparent.

We are, somehow, not to be afraid of one another.

And to discover a freedom to be ourselves with one another. To share what we need to, to receive what we need. Our faces unveiled.

And sometimes, as we all know, it takes experiences of challenge, even of trauma, to bring us to that point.

Touched by crisis, by judgement, and by grace

As Bishop Victoria said, I spent a bit of time last night at the concert, and had the chance to talk to some of the young people who had been involved in the student volunteer army.

And that certainly made me think of how crisis can reveal, in and to people, that they are capable of what they never thought they could do.

That they’re more generous than they thought they were. That without really noticing it, they’d been behaving unselfishly. They sort of look back and think: ‘Good heavens. How did I do that?’

And that’s also part of the unveiling that goes on when grace and new creation are around.

Discovering more of ourselves.

Discovering that we hadn’t fully realised what kind of beings we were. Hadn’t perhaps realised what the image of God in us might become, when touched by crisis, by judgement, and by grace.

So, worth thinking, perhaps, about those times in our lives, when we have discovered something about ourselves – had something of our own face revealed, unveiled to us, by a moment of deep challenge. Personal failure. Disaster. Loss.

And we find something fresh.

And we find that God is working in that freshness. And taking us on – and making us that little bit more capable of living in the truth, living without defences and fears, with one another.

But there’s another dimension of this unveiling of Lazarus’ face which I find, in some ways, more disturbing than that.

It’s captured wonderfully in a novel written about Barabbas some decades ago. A novel written by a Swedish novelist called Pär Lagerqvist – and I’m sure you all read Swedish novels, all the time, and know all about it.

It made a bit of a splash in its time, but has been largely forgotten, and it was made into a truly terrible film.

But there’s one chapter in it, which is relevant to this story. It’s a novel about Barabbas, about how Barabbas lives with the extraordinary realisation that he is alive because Jesus stepped into his place.

Rendered speechless

In that sense, of course, it’s about the Christian life itself, in a very mysterious way. Barabbas cannot understand what’s been going on.

He hears rumours about this person who stepped into his place, and died for him. He hears stories, he meets people – and still can’t fit it all together.

But one of the people he hears about is Lazarus, who was raised from the dead by this mysterious stranger. And he decides he’s got to go and meet Lazarus, to find out what happened.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, he finds he’s sitting across the table from Lazarus – who can’t say anything. Who can’t find words for what he’s been through.

And all Barabbas can do is look at the face of this person, who had been into death – and returned.

And I think that is a really challenging picture to reflect on.  I think that if I’d been around at that moment when Lazarus came out of the tomb, I might not have wanted to look into his face.

I might have thought that to look into the face of someone who’s been into death, and beyond, is just too frightening. How do I cope with that?

Because it makes me realise I have to look into the face of death at some point.

I have to look into the darkness – and I can’t really cope with that.

People have said of the great picture of the resurrection by Piero della Francesca – that the figure of Christ, looming up out of the tomb in that extraordinary painting, staring out you, with huge eyes, directly out of the frame – that is the face of someone who has been into death and come out again.

And that’s what makes that picture so remarkable, so unique.

But what would it be like to look into the eyes of someone who really had been into death?

As I say, we would have to come to terms with the fact that we were mortal, that we were going to die. And none of us much wants to do that.

And I have a feeling that Lazarus would have had a rather lonely life after his return from the tomb.

I don’t imagine people would have very much wanted to sit down with him, and pass the time of day.

Just as we are all of us, aren’t we, so often embarrassed or frightened when we have to sit with people who are looking death in the face.

People who are dying, people who’ve been bereaved.  People who, in one way or another, have faced death. We tend to shy away. We don’t really want that reminder.

‘There’s Lazarus. He looks quite alive, doesn’t he?’

And yet part of – to go back to where I was earlier – part of living in the truth, part of living in the light is, by one of those great and strange paradoxes, being able to look honestly at death.

To look at the fact that we have limitations. That we’re not immortal, or infallible, or invulnerable.

That’s the truth. And the gospel constantly nudges us towards that recognition.

Look into death. Look at your own fragility. Look at your own mortality – and don’t panic.

Look there. It’s true. This is what you’re like. If it’s true, you can live with it.

And if that truth is shown to you, in the light of love – a love which says you’re not abandoned in your mortality, and your frailty, you’re not abandoned even in your death – well then, you can indeed look into the face of death, and survive.

You can perhaps even look into the eyes of Lazarus and cope with it.

A chapter or two later, John tells us that people were coming out to Bethany to see Jesus, and to see Lazarus, whom he’d raised from the dead. But I imagine they were keeping their distance, a bit.

‘There’s Lazarus. He looks quite alive, doesn’t he?’

And back to Jerusalem in a hurry.

But Jesus and his disciples, as you will remember, stay around. They stay in the house of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and they eat there.

Jesus and the disciples spend time with this man whose eyes have looked into the darkness.

And I like to think that Jesus gently encouraged his disciples in those days, to sit with Lazarus, and to look into his face, as a kind of preparation for the far greater mystery they were going to have to face just a few days later, when he himself returns from the pit of death. And challenges and gifts his friends through his resurrection.

Saying: ‘Now. Look into my face. Look into my eyes. Know that you are mortal. Know that you are frail – and know that you are loved, and don’t be afraid.’

St John tells all his stories with enormous subtlety and sophistication. He never has an idle or useless detail.

But I think in this story, in the raising of Lazarus, St John is very, very carefully preparing us for that greater mystery, which is the resurrection of Christ.

Telling details

The details about the grave clothes… they’re picked up later on when John describes the resurrection, the empty tomb. The grave clothes in this case, folded neatly away.

So we should expect, as we read this story of the last and most dramatic of Jesus’ miracles – we should expect to be jolted and pushed and prompted to reflect on the death and resurrection of Christ, and how that works in our own lives.

How it works , in terms of a new creation in which we are able at last, to unveil our faces, by the grace of God. How it works in terms of being given the strength to look at frailty, and mortality, and not panic.

Living the life of resurrection, the new life of Christ here and now, is emphatically not living in some kind of cocoon or bubble.

It is much more experiencing, more deeply than ever, that our feet are firmly planted on the soil of this earth, and that our mortal, corruptible flesh is here – and in it, God is at work. And that’s why we don’t fear.

Paul in 2 Corinthians once again spells this out with more and more detail and depth with a wealth of metaphor, and sometimes quite complex argument – to try and get us to see, that it is in this very fragile, moral body, that life is bubbling away. Coming to the surface. Changing everything.

Which is why when Christians face mortality, and vulnerability and threat, when they face the tragic reality of disaster in the way that this city has faced it, they’re not looking for explanations. They’re not even looking for happy endings.

They’re just looking, steadily, into the depths, the depths of darkness – beyond which is always, and only, God. The inexhaustible Creator. The Saviour and Lover, who will not let go.

That’s what we’re looking into when we look into the eyes, into the face of Lazarus. The one who’s been there.

But even more, when we look into the face of the risen Christ, and see, in the depths of the darkness, glory slowly dawning, reflected in our own eyes, and our own faces.

And so again we might reflect a bit on what we’ve learned from people who really have been to the edge, who’ve been into the darkness – and who, somehow, have helped our faith by theirs.

One of the privileges of being Archbishop of Canterbury is, strange as it may sound to say it, is that sometimes you get to go to places where people are living very near the edge.

Whether it’s in Congo, last year, or sometimes even in South London, where you’re brought in a way that’s deeply privileging and deeply unsettling, brought alongside people who have gone very far down the road towards death and despair.

And who yet look back at you with eyes that have seen the worst, and lived.

No simple story

Last year in Congo, I sat on the grass with about a dozen women who’d been raped and otherwise abused in civil wars in that country, and listened to their stories.

Almost unbearable to hear – and yet there they were, their eyes open, their faces unveiled, telling me these dreadful stories, because they believed that they were not alone, and they did not have to hide the horrors that had happened to them.

That they had something to share because they were, in spite of everything, alive in Jesus Christ.

No happy endings there. No simple story of healing, over and done with, certainly no explanations –but the bare fact, of a face looking back at you, from the edge, or beyond, of death and horror.

Well, many of us will have had experiences a bit like that. Not, perhaps, in the dramatic way that it plays itself out in some of the darkest places of our world, but perhaps just in the life of someone near you with eyes that have seen the worst and lived.

In the experience of this city in the last couple of years there will be stories like that.

But I guess that in an awful lot of families, and in an awful lot of networks, there’ll be at least some people who have seen the worst – and yet look back, faces unveiled.

And we are called to look, and absorb, and learn, in our fellowship with them.

And part of the importance of our fellowship as a church is that we are a place where people can bring all of that, know that it will be understood, and held, and prayed with, and learned from.

I’ve often quoted a saying from one of my old students who remarked once that church is the place where you put stuff that won’t go anywhere else. And that’s not a bad definition of the church.

There are enormous, overwhelming human experiences at the edge or beyond around death and failure and loss, which our culture gives us very little help with.

The church should be able to say – and actually, I believe this city has been able to say – we’re not afraid of this. Come, with open face. We will open our eyes and our faces to you.

So, let’s simply pray that our church may go on being that kind of place. A place where we, each one of us individually, is learning something about our fragility, something about the fact that we are going to die, something about the fact that, yes, we have limits, and learning that we don’t have to be afraid.

So church is a place where the wrappings are being peeled away, where for ourselves and for one another we can be real, we can be transparent, we can be there for whatever comes up.

God has given us, in Jesus Christ, the possibility of living in the truth. And the spirit God has given to the church is the spirit of truth. That’s what we seek to live our way into.

And that dramatic, frightening, horror-movie moment, when the bandages come off the face of Lazarus should jolt us into recognising what we’re called to…

Jolt us, yes, shock us a bit – but also, excite us with the sense that at last, at long last, we can be what we’re meant to be, and who we’re meant to be, because of the glory of God shining from the face of Jesus Christ, taking away our fear, taking away our guilt, and our imprisonment, and allowing us to look at one another with wonder, and to look at God with praise and delight and thanksgiving.

So, Lazarus, be our friend.

Be among us.

Help us to look into the face of the one who raised you, and will raise us.

Amen.