Fifth Sunday in Lent

Firth Sunday in Lent (A)

March 26, 2023

Text: John 11:1-53

            Our Lord Jesus knows your grief.  He is with you in it, and He weeps with you when you weep.  He knows that, ultimately, all grief results from the tyranny of death.  Everything dies, and everyone dies.  People die.  Beloved pets die.  Dreams die.  Relationships die.  You will die.  And you are dying.  Sickness and pain are just symptoms of the coming physical death.  And of the present spiritual death that is so pervasive in a fallen world, and into which you, yourself, were born as a son or daughter of Adam.  Born spiritually dead.  Headed for physical death, all of us.  And, apart from Christ, eternal death.  And so, grief.  It’s enough to drive God Himself to tears.  Death is not His plan.  It was never His plan.  But here we are, and so… at the tomb of His friend Lazarus, and at the tears of dear Mary and dear Martha… “Jesus wept” (John 11:35; ESV).

            But He isn’t only sympathetic to your tears, or even empathetic, though He is most assuredly those things.  No, you know what Jesus does?  He gets right up in the face of your enemy, death.  Toe to toe.  Eye to eye.  He marches right up to the tomb and commands the stone to be rolled away.  It doesn’t faze Him that there’s a rotting, stinking corpse inside.  Nothing can deter Him.  He marches right up to the carcass.  And He speaks.  He cries out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out” (v. 43).  And the dead man comes out.  All wrapped up, mind you, in the bonds of death.  So Jesus speaks again, and this is very important.  “Unbind him, and let him go” (v. 44).  Loose him from the bonds of death, and set him free to live.

            Beloved, what Jesus does for Lazarus of Bethany, He does for you.  He knows your grief, and He knows your death, and He weeps with you, and He is “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (v. 33).  But He marches right up to all the places death has touched you… all the tombs, graves, and mausoleums; all the shattered dreams and broken relationships; all the sickness and pain, the people you’ve buried, the brokenness in your own body and soul, the sin, the guilt, the humiliation and shame…  He marches right up to the rotting, stinking corpse.  And He speaks.  He cries out in a loud voice, “Dear Christian, come out!”  And that speaking is the life of you.  It happened when Jesus spoke you His own in Holy Baptism.  It happens every time He speaks your sins forgiven in Holy Absolution.  He preaches the life into you every time you hear His Word.  He is doing it right now.  And not just any old life.  His life.  Himself.  The Risen One.  It’s the beginning of the end for death in you.  No longer spiritually dead, and no more threat of eternal death.  And what He does for you now, of course, He will do finally, and fully… bodily… on that Day when He comes again.  He will undo physical death.  Jesus is Life, so death doesn’t stand a chance around Him.  “I am the resurrection and the life,” says Jesus.  “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (vv. 25-26).

            I always marvel at words in the beginning of our Holy Gospel, when Mary and Martha send word to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (v. 3)…  First of all, what a great example of prayer for us all to follow.  The sisters don’t tell Jesus what He needs to do, and how He needs to do it, although we know from the text they have their thoughts on the subject.  But they simply tell Jesus the problem, where it is that death is touching them, and they leave it in His hands.  But the part I marvel at is how John tells us, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.  So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (vv. 5-6; emphasis added).  He loved them, and because He loved them, He didn’t immediately come to their aid.  He waited for the situation to get worse!  What on earth is going on here?

            Well, this does let us in on a little secret about how Jesus operates in response to our prayers and cries for help.  He doesn’t always immediately deliver us.  Sometimes He does.  But often He doesn’t.  But He knows what He is doing, and He always does all things well.  When He delays, it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through the particular affliction (v. 4).  Now, we don’t have time for a full explanation of this, but in the Gospel of John, the glorification of the Son is specifically His suffering and death on the cross.  In the case of Lazarus, the raising of the dead man leads directly to the Son’s glorification by His murder on the cross: “from that day on they made plans to put him to death” (v. 53).  “We can’t have a guy going around raising the dead, or people will think He is actually the Messiah!  And that will ruin the good thing we have going.”  But in the case of your afflictions, the Son is glorified as you come to know that there is no escape from death’s tyranny apart from Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

            He delays because he loves you.  If death is any less dire than… well, death… then you can live with it, and you don’t need Jesus.  You certainly don’t need a crucified, dead, and buried, and on the Third Day risen Jesus.  So for your good, and out of love for you, Jesus lets the situation get worse.  He brings you to the very bottom, to the grave.  Because you have to be dead for Jesus to raise you from the dead. 

            You don’t have to understand it when it happens.  Mary and Martha certainly didn’t.  “Lord, if you had been here…” (vv. 21, 32).  But that, also, is a prayer.  It is a lament, like so many of the Psalms.  One of the purposes of the Lord’s delay is to drive you to that kind of prayer.  To drive you to see how utterly dependent you are upon the Lord’s saving presence with you, so that you cry out to Him. 

            And it is to open your ears to the preaching.  We take so much for granted when things are going well, but when the ground is pulled out from under us, all of a sudden, we’re all ears.  He wants us to hear, to listen, to take to heart what He says here: “I AM the resurrection and the life.”  “I AM.  Not your job.  Not your money.  Not the government.  Not your dreams or your loved ones, or even your own health and sense of well-being.  I AM the resurrection and the life.” 

            And it is to lead you to confession of that very thing.  Martha doesn’t understand what Jesus is about to do for her brother, but she does get it right in her confessional response to the Lord’s preaching: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (v. 24).  He will, of course.  This was not Lazarus’ ultimate resurrection from the dead.  Just a sign of it.  Lazarus had to die again.  But anyway, Martha has a right faith and confession that, whatever happens now, at the moment, in terms of this affliction, the ultimate deliverance is yet to come in the resurrection of all flesh.  And Jesus is the One to do it: “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world” (v. 27).  Jesus delays to bring us to confess that, and in the very face of death. 

            Because He loves you, Jesus delays, so that you’re good and dead, and everyone knows that you stink.  But He never leaves you in death.  Never.  He speaks.  “Dear Christian, come out.  I baptize you into My death, and My life.  I forgive you all your sins.  I take your death away.  I died it.  I’ve come out of it.  Follow Me to resurrection and life everlasting.  Do you doubt?  Here are My death-wounds to prove it.  Take, eat.  Take, drink.  My body, My blood, given and shed for you.”  The answer to all the places where death touches you is the speaking of Jesus Christ.  “Come out.  Come out of the grave.”  And to His called and ordained servants, “Unbind My beloved one.  Loose them from the bonds of death, and set them free to live.”  When He says that, and in all the ways He says it, you have life.

            Now, what you don’t do when Jesus speaks, is stay all snuggled up in your death-shroud in your nice, comfy coffin.  That is, hearing the life-giving Gospel, you don’t hang on to the binding strips of self-righteousness or despair.  You don’t stay swaddled in anger or bitterness toward your neighbor, in lust, or greed, or miserliness.  You don’t hold grudges and you don’t re-break the things Jesus mends.  That is the stuff of death.  It closes your eyes to the Lord’s mercy, shuts your ears to His Word, and wires your jaws shut against prayer, praise, and confession.  That is to say, it makes you a corpse again. 

            No, when Jesus speaks, “Come out,” believe His Word.  And act accordingly.  Come out.  And live!  Live as though you’ll never die again, because you won’t.  Oh, there’s that pesky funeral we have to take care of coming up in a bit, but we’ll use that to proclaim that you aren’t really dead, because you’re not, because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and anyway, He’ll be raising you bodily very soon.  So, live now, in spite of wherever death touches you, in hope, and peace, and joy.  In the forgiveness of sins.  Forgiveness from God.  Forgiveness for, and from, one another.  And in patient endurance.  The Lord won’t delay long.  The Third Day is coming.  Good Friday has its end.

            By the way, you know why Jesus had to call Lazarus by name to come out of the tomb?  Because if he hadn’t, every corpse within earshot would have come tumbling out of the cemeteries, bones rattling together, clothed with sinews and skin (Ez. 37).  That would have been jumping the gun.  Kind of like the saints who were confused and rose when Jesus died (Matt. 27:52-53).  It’s not quite time for that.  This one is just for Lazarus.  Everybody else, rest a little longer.  Soon.  Soon, it will be your turn.     

            Beloved, Jesus knows your grief, and He weeps with you.  But it is also true that He has defeated death.  He died, and He is risen from the dead.   And so, God will wipe away ever tear from your eyes (Rev. 7:17; 21:4).

            And by eyes, we mean risen ones.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.