The Fifth Sunday of Lent ---- 29 March 2020

John 11:1-45

1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." 4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." 8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" 9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." 11 After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." 12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." 13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." 17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." 23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." 24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." 25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" 27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world." 28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" 37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" 38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." 40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." 45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

"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.”

·        The story of the raising of Lazarus is the second highest of the “signs” in John’s Gospel. This story is powerful and it is the high point of the Gospel leading up to the story of the Resurrection.

·        Here, Jesus raises his friend to life. Mary and Martha are present and Martha voices the concern any of us might have had. “Had you been here, all this could have been avoided. Still, God will hear your prayers.” We know that Jesus and Lazarus were friends; we’ve been told of meals at Lazarus’ house. We see that Jesus cannot hold back his tears in the face of his friends’ grief… and in the face of the overwhelming presence of death. Jesus doesn’t show a lot of emotion in the Gospels, but here he does, in probably the rawest possible form.

·        Jesus cries in the presence of all this dying because death is not the way things are supposed to be. The Creator deals in life, not death. God’s Word is life, not death. The power of God draws all things to life and not to death. Yet death exists. Sickness, pain, alienation, and loss exist and we and God have to deal with it.

·        So Jesus deals with death and fear and loss by tears and by prayer and by saying "Lazarus, come out!" And he does come out, all wrapped in the grave clothes. He come out of the tomb and out of death itself. Jesus tells the people around the tomb to unbind Lazarus and let him go.

·        For us, we need to remember that Jesus raises us to life from death in whatever way death show itself to us. We’ve all faced death in some way or other, whether it was our own death or the death of someone we cared about.

·        At present, we face a kind of death. The pandemic has made us face our own fragile lives, the reality of our own mortality, and even the nature of our society. We don’t know what’s next. Friendships and relationships are strained by distance and isolation. Jobs and livelihoods are uncertain because of the disruption of normal life; there is no more “business-as-usual.” We may feel helpless and powerless and even in some cases, worthless. No matter how much we’ve done, we wonder if we should be doing more. There is even anxiety over what the future will bring and what the “new normal” will be when this is over.

·        In the middle of all this, what we long to hear is our names called followed by the words “Come out!” and then “Unbind them, and let them go!” Don’t you want to be Lazarus?

·        Don’t we want to be raised from the death of fear, fear that keeps us from trusting and from moving?

·        Don’t we want to be raised from the death of loss and all the losses we’ve endured in our lives?

·        Don’t we want to be raised from the death of exile and separation from people and places we’ve loved?

·        Don’t we want to be raised from the death of any sort of slavery – physical, mental, or spiritual?

·        Don’t we all want to be raised to new life from death and all that death means? This is the greatest enemy and the source of all our greatest temptations, since we want to avoid death at all cost and we are often willing to make ourselves our own god in that struggle.

·        Jesus says I am the resurrection and the life. His statement is for the right now and not only for some unknown future. The raising of Lazarus is the sign of this and it also shows the power of God separate from the faith of all those around. Lazarus was raised to life and I’d wonder if anyone there expected that or even believed that Jesus could or would do it. They did not have to believe for Lazarus to come out of the tomb. Human belief does not to the job; Jesus’ oneness with the Father is the source. The power of God does not depend on our belief even though seeing things as the power of God might.

·        In this odd, odd time that reminds me of the strange time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we anticipate God’s power and grace, come what may. We pray that the “come what may” will lead to good, and in any event we pray that the future that is to be will find us coming to new life in the ever-present grace of God. That future begins now and builds on the present we live in now.

·        We might likely speak to Jesus like Martha: “Lord, if you had been here, this would not have happened.” Then we’d hope to hear Jesus’ words: "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.”

·        Amen and amen. Let it be so.