Fifth Sunday in Lent

Fifth Sunday in Lent (A)

April 2, 2017

Text: John 11:1-53

            “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26; ESV).  We will see death’s ultimate defeat two weeks from today, on Easter Sunday, in our Lord’s victorious resurrection from the dead.  Today we get a foretaste of that victory, as Jesus is on the cusp of His suffering and death for our sins.  Death is as real as your sagging flesh, your wrinkling skin, your failing eyes, your aches and pains.  Grim reminders are these that from the womb of your mother you are spiritually dead and physically dying.  It is the great tragedy of humanity.  Death was never meant to be.  Mankind was made for life and unending fellowship with God and with one another.  Already this is broken in the beginning, in the Garden, with the first mouthful of forbidden fruit.  In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.  Not just you, Adam and Eve, but all of us, your children.  The wages of sin is death.  No one gets out alive.  Except Jesus, and those who cling to Jesus.  And as our Lord shows us, the only way out of death is through it.

            Death is always tragic.  We do our best to dress it up so it doesn’t look so bad.  Funeral homes do amazing things with the bodies of our loved ones, and we stand around the casket and lie to one another about how peaceful our dearly departed appears.  But we know better.  Death is a slap in the face of all we are created to be, and no amount of mortuary makeup can cover it up.  That’s why even Christians cry at funerals.  Sure, we know that those who die in Christ are in heaven with Him, which is far better.  Sure, we know Jesus is coming again to raise the dead on the Last Day.  But death is sad.  Jesus, with full knowledge of what He was about to do, came to the tomb of Lazarus and wept (John 11:35).  Why does He weep?  Because He loves Lazarus, who lays rotting in the tomb.  Because He loves Mary and Martha, who weep bitter tears and cry out to Him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (vv. 21, 32).  Because death is the epitome of all that has gone wrong in creation as a result of the fall.  “See how he loved him!” (v. 36).  See how He loves you and all humanity.  These are real tears, the tears of God, the tears of God who is a man, for you.  They are the tears of a man who is God who is determined to undo death by diving into its belly.

            The great surprise in all of this is how Jesus uses death against itself.  It doesn’t appear that way at first.  After Jesus hears His friend is ill, because He loves Martha and her sister and Lazarus, He stays where He is two more days (v. 6).  He doesn’t come to the rescue.  He lets the worst happen.  It’s the strangest thing.  But He says it’s “for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (v. 4).  Great comfort, Jesus.  Thanks.  I’m glad it all worked out so well for you.  What is He doing?  Well, for one, we know He is setting the stage for doing a great sign that will show us who He is and what He’s come to do, a sign that will be a great comfort to us our whole life long and in the face of death.  He comes to raise Lazarus.  Lazarus has to be dead to be raised.  And so that there is no doubt, He waits until Lazarus has been in the grave four days.  When Jesus commands the stone be rolled away, Martha objects that by this time there will be a great odor.  The King James says, “Lord… he stinketh” (v. 39).  His flesh is rotting.  This is a vital component to the miracle.  Everybody has to smell it, for the glory of God, so they know this death is real.  And then what?  Jesus cries out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out” (v. 43).  And “The 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’” (v. 44).  Jesus unbinds Lazarus from death.  He has come to do the same for you.  God is glorified as sinners are released from sin’s wages, as the breath of life, the Holy Spirit, gives new life to dry bones (Ez. 37).  This is what it means when Jesus says, “I am,” YHWH, “the resurrection and the life” (v. 25).  Jesus has all the authority of God, because He is God, to loose from death and give life. 

            But there is more.  Not only is God to be glorified by Lazarus’ death, but the Son of God, Jesus, is to be glorified through it.  Not just by the adulation resulting from the miracle.  In fact, that’s really not it at all.  What happens among the chief priests and Pharisees as a result of Lazarus’ resurrection?  They conspire to kill Him!  Caiaphas, being high priest that year, prophesies: “it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish” (v. 51), and “not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (v. 52), which is to say, you.  The raising of Lazarus gets Jesus killed.  But the true glory of Jesus is His death on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins and to give you eternal life.  Jesus has authority to lay down His life and to take it up again (John 10:18).  It is paradoxical.  It is incomprehensible.  Jesus is glorified in the humiliation of death.  Jesus defeats death by submitting to it.  And on the Third Day He bursts a hole right through death’s belly.

            Now what Jesus did for Lazarus physically, He does for you spiritually.  He raises you from spiritual death, which would be eternal death in hell were it not for our Lord’s saving work.  He sends preachers to call to you in the darkness of death, “Sinner, come out!”  And you, who were dead in your trespasses and sins, come into the light and life of Jesus Christ.  Now, when you come out of this darkness, you stinketh, the stench of sin.  So it is very important what Jesus commands His servants, His preachers, to do for you next.  They are to unbind you and let you go.  That is to say, they are to pronounce Holy Absolution, forgive your sins, unbind you from your transgressions and throw those transgressions into the tomb of Christ, and let you go, let you depart in peace.  In this earthly life, in this time between our Lord’s calling you out of death by Baptism and preaching, this unbinding is a daily thing.  Daily you sin.  Daily you return to your Baptism in repentance.  And as often as possible, you come to the Church to confess your sins and be absolved, not because you are dead again, but because your sins stink to high heaven.  Here Jesus applies His death and resurrection to your sins so that they are removed from you as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103), that they never trouble you again, that the perfume of Christ’s righteousness cover you, a pleasing aroma to the LORD your God.

            But there is more.  What Jesus did for Lazarus physically, He will do for you, physically, on the Last Day.  And when He does it for you, it will be even better than Lazarus’ resurrection.  Lazarus was only a type, a foreshadowing of our Lord’s resurrection and our resurrection in Christ.  But Lazarus had to die again.  His was only temporary.  On the Last Day, Jesus will raise you and Lazarus and Mary and Martha and all the dead, and give eternal life to you and all believers in Christ.  In a new heavens and a new earth.  No more pain.  No more sorrow.  No more sickness, or grieving, or death.  Only the eternal joy of our Lord.  On that Day, Jesus will call your name, as He called to Lazarus.  And you will come out, and you will be unbound forever, never to stink again, never to die again.  This isn’t pie in the sky, feel good theology, like the lies we tell ourselves around the casket of a loved one.  This is true.  This is real.  Your bodily resurrection is as real as our Lord’s empty tomb on Easter morn.  He is risen.  You will rise.

            And now a remarkable thing happens at the Christian funeral.  Oh, there is weeping and there is sadness.  But there is so much more.  When Christians gather for a funeral, of all the things one might do in the face of death, we sing!  Not gloomy dirges, either, but songs of hope and joy, of resurrection and life.  Death and the devil sulk and seethe with rage as we rejoice!  And we laugh!  You’ve been to the after parties we call the Church funeral luncheon.  There is not a lot of gloom.  Amidst the very best of food, made with love by the matriarchs of the congregation, there is laughter and joy.  We tell our stories about our loved one and we catch up with family and friends we almost never see, and we smile and we laugh (and we cry) and we love.  And it’s like we’re dancing on death’s grave.  We are.  Because Christ is risen.  He died.  And He defeated death.  And He doesn’t leave us in the grave.  He calls us out.  He unbinds us.  He has the authority over death and the grave.  He is the resurrection and the life.  And so whoever believes in Him, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Him shall never die (John 11:25-26).  Not really.  When you die, you who believe in Christ, you go on living in heaven with Jesus.  And on the Last Day, you rise.  How can you call that death?

            The last enemy to be defeated is death.  But he is already mortally wounded.  The final and everlasting Easter is coming soon.  The time is short.  Rejoice, beloved.  Laugh and sing, even through your tears.  Jesus gets the last Word.  His Word is life.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.