April 10 sermon

Text: John 11:1-45
Preached April 10 at First Lutheran


Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Lazarus of Bethany was ill. I bet you know what it’s like to be ill.
Lazarus’s sisters, Mary and Martha, were distraught and grieving. I bet you know what it’s like to be distraught and to grieve.
Lazarus died. He was bound in cloths and laid in his grave. Perhaps you don’t know what it’s like to die and to lay in your grave.

But I bet you can imagine it. I think there are plenty of graves to be found in our lives.

When you feel the weight of your many sins and your inability to correct them, doesn’t it feel like you’re bound in your own weakness and lying in your grave?

When you’re very sick, or intensely lonely, doesn’t it feel like you’re bound in sorrow and lying in your grave?

When your family is collapsing or you’re watching helplessly as someone you love suffers, doesn’t it feel like you’re bound in despair and lying in your grave?

I think we do know what it’s like to lie in our graves, just like Lazarus.

It’s a good thing, then, that God is not afraid of graveyards. “Come and see,” say the mourners when Jesus asks where Lazarus is laid. So Jesus goes. Jesus is not one to deny the reality of death and grief. He doesn’t hesitate to face even the stench of death, which lingers in the grave with Lazarus.

Of course, death is not what Jesus is really about, is it? Jesus is about resurrection and life—Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Jesus tells Martha exactly this, but neither she nor her sister knew what this meant for Lazarus yet, did they?

At this point, Jesus doesn’t seem much like resurrection or life. After all, they sent word to him when Lazarus was ill, but he waited two days before going to Bethany! By the time he got there, Lazarus had been dead four days. Mary and Martha certainly wouldn’t have expected that from this Jesus who loved them and their brother.

When have you felt like God was tarrying? Like God was absent? Like, just when you needed him most, God was refusing to show up and do something? I know I’ve had this experience, and perhaps you have too. Turns out resurrection and life doesn’t always come on our schedule, nor does it always look like what we expect.

But we are not alone in our grief. God is present, whether it feels that way or not. Jesus is Emmanuel—God with us—and he suffers with us in our sorrow.

As Jesus approaches Lazarus’s grave, three times we hear that he is greatly disturbed and even moved to tears at the sorrow that surrounds him. Jesus knows exactly what he’s about to do. Jesus knows he will call Lazarus forth from death and back into life. And still he weeps. God suffers when his people suffer.

And God does something about that suffering, although it isn’t always what we expect. In fact, sometimes it looks more like death than like resurrection and life. But even when God’s action looks a lot like death, we know that death does not have the last word.

As the mourners gathered around Lazarus’s tomb, they heard Jesus’ command: “Lazarus, come out.” And they saw Lazarus emerge from his grave, bound in the linen cloths in which they had wrapped him!

Jesus said Lazarus’s illness did not lead to death, even though Lazarus died. Jesus knows the difference between illness or pain or grief that leads to death and illness or pain or grief that leads through death. After all, there can be no resurrection unless there is death.

And, in Christ, there is resurrection. There is new life. In our baptism, God called us out of our graves, raising us from sin and death to new life in Christ. And someday all who have died in Christ will hear his call to come out of their graves to enjoy the final resurrection and eternal life with God, the perfection of God’s good creation where there will be no more sin, no more death, no more sorrow.

So how do we respond to this Jesus, who is the resurrection and the life? How do we faithfully await the fulfillment of this great promise?

We take a cue from the psalmist, who pours out both sorrow and hope. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!” This psalmist knows the despair of death that precedes resurrection.

“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” This psalmist also knows the hope that comes from trusting in God, trusting that God is both willing and able to act, knowing that God can and does bring life from death.

Mary and Martha echo the psalmist as they approach Jesus in their grief. Each sister says the same thing to Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Is there anger in their voices? Is there accusation of Jesus’ absence and doubt about his love? Are they crying out to Jesus in their pain as the psalmist does? Perhaps they are.

They are also expressing deep faith in Jesus even in the midst of despair. Martha says, “But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Jesus didn’t show up when Martha needed him, and her brother died. Now there seems to be no reason for hope, but still Martha hopes. Even when the miracle hadn’t yet happened, and Martha didn’t know that it would happen, she confesses faith in Jesus, the resurrection and the life.

How else do we await God’s promise of resurrection and life? We hear that promise over and over, lest we forget it. And we embrace the resurrection and life that God brings us here and now.

For, even as we await the future fullness of God’s kingdom, God is calling us out of our graves. Sometimes God brings healing when all hope seemed lost. Sometimes God sends just the person we needed to support us in our suffering. Sometimes God renews struggling families and it is nothing short of miraculous. The new life that God brings through Jesus Christ can and does break into our lives even now.

God forgives the sin that binds us in our grave. God soothes the sorrow that covers our tomb like a stone. God wipes away the tears of despair that blind us. God is a God of resurrection and life, revealed and given to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Soon after he returns to life, Lazarus finds himself at the table sharing a meal with Jesus and other loved ones. Each week when we gather, we find ourselves at the table, sharing a meal with Jesus and other loved ones. We are the beloved of God in this place, and the beloved of God of all times and all places, united at one table. At this meal our faith is reborn as we receive Christ himself with the bread and wine and the words, “given and shed for you.” This is resurrection and life here and now.

So we embrace it and, at God’s invitation, we share it. At the grave of Lazarus, Jesus commanded the mourners to take away the stone. When Lazarus emerged, raised to new life, Jesus commanded them to unbind him and let him go. God raised Lazarus, but Lazarus certainly couldn’t unbind himself. Jesus invited the community into the miraculous work of God.

How do we participate in this work of God as the body of Christ? How do we affirm life in the face of death? How do we share the hope we have in Christ, who is the resurrection and the life? How do we help unbind those whom God has called from their graves so that they may enjoy the abundance of their new life?

We can start by forgiving others as we have been forgiven. We can say “thank you” and “I’m sorry” and “how can I help?” We can give of our time and money to support the work of God’s kingdom. We can work for justice for all of God’s people. And we can proclaim to those around us the love and mercy of the living God made known in Christ, who calls us from our graves and into new life.

Our God is not afraid of graveyards, and he meets us there again and again. Through our baptism, through the word, through the meal, God calls us to rise up, come out of our graves, and live anew in Christ. God calls us not merely to survival but to joyful and abundant life, full of hope in God’s presence, because where God is present, death does not have the final word. In Christ, we have life, to the glory of God. Amen.