Come out

 I heard a sermon about the raising of Lazarus that talked about how even though Jesus of Nazareth called Lazarus out of the tomb, Lazarus still had to decide how to react to such a command.

Which is wrong.  I'll explain why.

I'd wager that you haven't heard of this movie outside of me talking about it, but there was a movie from the 1980s called 'return to horror high.' This movie had in it a very young George Clooney who, before he was a big star, got written out of the film first. The film is all about the making of a film, a film within a film, as it were. In this film, while the cast are being horribly murdered, the cast are still trying to make a movie, and do so with the usual director / cast interplay. And this interplay is at its most interesting in a discussion between the director and a cast member who is portraying a corpse in the scene.

Corpse: What's my motivation in this scene?

Director (Exasperated): You're dead. Dead people have no motivation. They don't do anything! They just lie there!

Fin.

I'm sure I have now spoken more about 'return to horror high' more than any of the cast or crew in the last two decades. But be that as it may, the content of the conversation is very important to talk about Lazarus in relation to it. What do dead people do? Nothing. They don't do anything. Importantly, they have no motivation. When we talk about Lazarus and his decision to respond to the call of Jesus, you have to think about his status as a corpse before we think about anything else. If he is incapable of motivation on account of being dead, then he is also incapable of responding to any kind of call. Go ahead, give commands to the pork chops on your table, and see what transpires. Pretty much nothing, right? Being dead meat, they don't get to decide how to respond to your commands. In order for the decision to be made, the individual must first be able to decide, which necessitates them being alive in the first place. In other words, you're going to have to be alive to make any choices, including the choice to listen to Christ or not. He literally can't make any decisions about how to react to Jesus before Jesus makes a key decision for him - to make him alive. 

That is the choice upon which every other choice depends, and in reality, it is the choice that none of us can make. Oh sure, we can decide to stay alive, to avoid death and thereby to continue making choices, but the choice to be alive is a choice that only someone else can make for us. In the first birth, that was our parents, as we were all born by the will of parents, but in the case of the second birth (being born again), it's of the will of God. You see, the scriptures talk about us as being dead in our trespasses, and there being no health in us. That may seem like bad news, but it's surprisingly good news. 

It's good news because it takes the responsibility for salvation away from you and your responses, and places it where it belongs. With God. The Lord doesn't have a reasoned discussion with Lazarus, allowing him to decide where he falls on the life or death equation, rather Jesus grants him life, and then all further decisions from Christ will proceed from that one. When we're talking about our Christian life, we're talking about a life that begins with Baptism, with us being called out of our death in trespasses and to new life in Christ. Once we have been awakened to Christ, then any excellent decision we make can flow from that first one. Not without it. Any decision that we can make that is good and God pleasing flows from that in the same way as Lazarus walking from the tomb is predicated on being alive in the first place. 

Once you work that out, then the grace of God carries a lot of weight - it is the difference between death and life, you know. The reality is that you're not going to make a lot of decisions if you're dead, and you're not going to make a lot of decisions for Christ if you're dead in your trespasses. That's why Jesus calls it a new birth, being born again. That means that your life in Christ is his will not yours. So you don't have to worry about if you did it right, or decided correctly. You did not choose him, he chose you. That's why the rest of the decisions you can possibly make all flow from that.