Fifth Sunday in Lent

Sermon on John 11:1-52 (ESV) | by The Rev. Paula L. Murray, STS |

¹Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ²It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. ³So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” ⁴But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ⁵Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. ⁷Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” ⁸The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” ⁹Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. ¹⁰But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” ¹¹After saying these things, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.” ¹²The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” ¹³Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. ¹⁴Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, ¹⁵and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” ¹⁷Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, ¹⁹and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. ²⁰So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” ²⁸When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” ²⁹And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. ³⁰Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. ³¹When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. ³²Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. ³⁴And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus wept. ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” ³⁸Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. ³⁹Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴²I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” ⁴⁴The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” ⁴⁵Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, [⁴⁶but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. ⁴⁸If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” ⁴⁹But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. ⁵⁰Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” ⁵¹He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, ⁵²and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. ⁵³So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.]

Gospel: John 11:1-53

Your hiking down the road of the pilgrim’s way.  Your new hiking boots aren’t so new anymore, in fact, they’re well broken in and your feet feel awesome in spite of the many miles you’ve tread.  You’ve found your rhythm, physically, spiritually, and you are so very grateful for all you have unexpectedly received on this pilgrimage.  You expected to reinvigorate your prayer life and feel a little closer to Jesus, but you did not expect the punch to your center you got when the enormity of His grace hit you.  So now, getting close to the end, you are walking the pilgrims’ way and praising God and all is going well, and then, suddenly it isn’t going at all. You’ve hit the wall.  The brisk pace you’ve maintained becomes impossible to sustain, your rhythm falters, and as you drop your unimaginably weary body on a wayside bench you fear you will be unable to complete your pilgrimage physically or spiritually.

I know this far too well as a one-time hiker and runner, and I suspect many of you have had similar experiences.  I’ve hiked a lot throughout the Four Corners region of the desert southwest, southern California, Oregon, and my native Idaho.  But although I have trod many trails I cannot say that I ever got good at it.  It’s the same with climbing; I fell 15 or 20 feet off a boulder once, a boulder!  And then I spent the next three days lying in a hot water bath.  And running? I loved it, but six miles was my limit, and I only got to six miles because when I hit the wall at 4 plus miles I could remind myself over and over again that I would get my second wind and I could finish.

We’re all looking for our second wind here.  Granted, this has been a more difficult Lent than many, and stranger, to boot.  But there is no perfect Lent and never has been.  Think of Jesus’ via crucis, His final pilgrimage, disrupted by desperate people by the hundreds and thousands seeking healing for disabled children and grandmothers with breast cancer and dads with heart disease.  The disciples incomprehension of Christ’s work, the disdain of some in His own family and among His old neighbors, the reality that Israel’s spiritual leadership as well as the civic leadership of the day sought to destroy Him sent by God to bring forgiveness of sin and death to death. Obstacles to our pilgrimages rarely rise to the level of those Jesus faced on our behalf.  We can hope and pray to keep a holy Lent, one that is not rushed by busy family and work schedules or overwhelmed by the events of the day and the needs of our nearest and dearest. But events do threaten to overtake our pilgrimages of faith, including this one, this Lenten pilgrimage we take to the cross that we may witness the death of God’s own Son on that dreadful thing and get punched in the gut yet again by the wickedness of our sin and the enormity of His grace.

This Lent is no different than any other save for the nature of the bump and the global spread of its impact.  Truthfully, there is no pilgrimage of faith, physical or spiritual, that is not disrupted by bumps in the road or our own failings.  Long, long ago the prophet Ezekiel, on his own journey of faith, was led to a wilderness valley covered with the bones of dead Israelites, and watched as God clothed desiccated skeletons with sinews and flesh.  Those dry bones, then and now, illuminate the feckless faithlessness and weakness of human beings from the Fall, and their new life the eternal faithfulness and strength of the God and Father of us all.  “Behold,” says the Almighty, “I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. ¹³And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.” And the dead live.

The dead live.  Mary and Martha knew the healing power of their friend Jesus of Nazareth, but did they know He could open the grave and bring the dead once again into the land of the living? Doubtful, given their urgency when they sent for Jesus after Lazarus’ fell ill.  Their response to Jesus’ belated arrival underscores the point.  “If You had been here, he would not have died.”  Intriguingly, Martha, the first of the two sisters to see the “Teacher” does tell Jesus that she believes that even at this point God will do what Jesus asks Him to do.  But from what she says next it is clear that Martha looked to the resurrection of the dead, but at the end of time, not at the moment she stood yards away from the body of her brother decomposing in his cold, stone grave. She is so heartbreakingly down to earth when she responds to her Lord’s command to take the stone away from the grave, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”  Or, as one old copy of the King James Version of the Bible given me long ago put it, “Lord, he stinketh.”

I don’t know if the stench of death hung on to the grave clothes, beard, and skin of the newly raised Lazarus as he walked blind into the land of the living, face still covered to hide the gaping jaws of death. It may have been erased even as death was erased that astonishing day when the glory of God was seen by all then present and those of us who see that glory through the witness of the first disciples.  Unbind him, ordered Him whose life and works were the perfect reflection of the divine glory that bedazzled the family and friends of Lazarus. The unbinding of fabric chains echoed the freeing of Lazarus from the bonds of death.

Lazarus freedom from death’s dark chains was a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own coming death and resurrection as His enemies scurried off to see to His capture and torture.  The second most important words to come from this passage from St. John’s Gospel are these uttered by one of those enemies, the High Priest, Caiaphas, himself as he comforted tender consciences uneasy at the murder of a man clearly working signs on behalf of God:  “….it is better for you that one man should die for the people not that the whole nation should perish.”  In this Caiaphas spoke the truth, though the truth he spoke was beyond his comprehension.  Caiaphas sought to sacrifice Jesus to save Jerusalem and the Jews from Caesar’s murderous wrath should a rebellion be incited by those around Jesus.  Jesus chose to sacrifice Himself to save the whole of the world from sin, death, and the devil.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” said Jesus, perhaps the most important words in all of Scripture.  “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this?  Our response to the Covid-19 crisis or any other crisis soon to come our way will depend in large part on our response to that question. A priest recently died in France (Newsweek, Tuesday, March 24, 2020).  Seventy-two years old, Father Berardelli was diagnosed with the virus and, hoping to ensure his recovery, his parish apparently bought him a ventilator.  The priest sent the precious machine to the room of a much younger man also in need of help breathing.  Faith affirms a life-giving generosity, refusing to let our natural fear of death to overcome God’s insistence that we care for our neighbors. Believing that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, Father B. told his doctors that the younger man deserved a chance at a life as long as his, and then put himself in God’s hands. All men die; the priest died in a way that was true to his faith and not false.  Believing that Jesus is the resurrection and the life also tells us that we cannot expect to drive away from Sam’s Club with a truck full of toilet paper or 552 cans of Mountain Dew for fear of shortages when our neighbors have need of those same supplies.  Believing that Jesus is the resurrection and the life tells us not to abandon frail elderly neighbors to neglect or even starvation, but to check on them and provide for them, even if we leave our faith-filled offerings of love on the front porch.  Believing that Jesus is the resurrection and the life lets us see that that there are thousands of ways to be of use to our neighbors and our church family if we are willing to let faith guide us and not fear.

The dead shall live.  That is the promise at the end of the Lenten pilgrimage, that no matter how difficult the trail, at the  end we have what Jesus has promised to His baptized children, boundless love, forgiveness without end, and life that does not end in death.  We might hit a wall and hit hard at some point in our earthly pilgrimage as followers of Jesus, as we have with the virus. But just as the story of Jesus called the Christ did not end at the cross so our stories will not end at the grave.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and because He is the Christian can be courageous in the face of danger, honorable in spite of conflict, and generous when confronted with life and death decisions.

And practical.  Our belief in the atoning death of Jesus Christ does not mean that we should ignore medical advice or fail to take of ourselves and our loved ones.  Ignoring such advice is as intelligent, and faithful, as snake wrangling in the sanctuary.  Courage is sometimes doing the same thing over and over again to ensure that a community is well.  Integrity has to do with the truth we tell ourselves as well as what we tell others.  For instance, do you really need to head to the hardware store or are you just bored with your living room and willing to lie to get out?  It will get worse before it gets better, but it will still get better. This too shall pass.  But let it pass trusting in the grace and goodness of God for you and all creation.