Sermon: Fifth Sunday in Lent, John 11:1-45, March 26, 2023 Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Fifth Sunday in Lent, John 11:1-45, March 26, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

It goes without saying that we humans have trouble with death. Some of us are terrified of dying. Others simply try to keep that ultimate reality at arm’s length with many and various distractions.

Some of our avoidance or even denial of death is evidenced in the language we use about death – that people pass away, or pass on, or have gone on to a better place. Or, when we’re joking about death as a kind of whistling in the dark out of fear, we might use the phrase “call it a day.” And there are surely many other euphemisms about dying.

Moreover, there’s a tendency these days not to call funerals funerals anymore – rather it’s common to refer to those occasions as celebrations of life. Again, we human beings are often not willing to call a spade and spade when it comes to death, our mortal end.

In today’s gospel reading, even Jesus at first employs a euphemism to refer to the death of his friend, Lazarus: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,” Jesus said, “but I am going there to awaken him.”

Of course, the disciples didn’t get it: “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.”

That’s when finally “Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead.’” He told it like it was.

Death is a formidable reality. Now that I am in my 60’s, I’m beginning to be conscious of my coming death in ways that I’ve not known or experienced when I was younger. That day of our death is not getting any further away. Rather, it’s closer each and every day. That’s the truth about the human condition.

And the gospel writer John drives home the point of Lazarus’ death in very visceral ways – as Martha, Lazarus’ sister acknowledged when Jesus was about to go into the tomb for Lazarus: “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”

The processes of decomposition had begun. But that grim reality doesn’t stop Jesus from entering into the tomb, and that’s the whole point. It is the stench of the reality of human mortality into which God the Father sent Jesus, his Son. Even at the point of our death, Jesus conveys and embodies yet again that he is Emmanuel, God with us.

And Jesus enters into our mortal reality, into the anguish of grief and loss at death with the depths of feeling, revealing the fullness of his humanity alongside his divinity.

Note this: “when Jesus saw [Mary] weeping and the Judeans who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” The English translation doesn’t quite capture the biblical Greek which suggests that Jesus muttered, groaned, or even thundered in spirit as he was deeply moved. And when Jesus saw where Lazarus had been laid, he began to weep – the shortest verse in the whole New Testament, and one of the most moving in its poignant simplicity. In an older translation, it’s simply two words: “Jesus wept.”

“Jesus wept.” Oh, how beautiful and compelling this simple statement. “Jesus wept” reveals the depth of compassion, of empathy, of Jesus’ suffering with us as Emmanuel, God with us even in our deepest pain and grief. We are not orphaned in our plight. The very word of God who was and is God is with us through thick and thin, even with us at the time of our death and in the places where we repose at our mortal end. Let this sink in, the radical extent of God’s love for us in Christ.

Then, the human-divine Jesus mustered the power and glory of God the Father and cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

And revealing at that moment the glory of God, Lazarus, the dead man, “came out [of the tomb], “his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth.” Then Jesus commanded, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

It’s quite the dramatic story, and would make a great movie.

This story, on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, a week before Passion Sunday and Holy Week and Easter, prepares us for those Holy Days. The raising of Lazarus by Jesus prefigures Jesus’ own death and resurrection – and then the raising of Lazarus also points to Jesus’ role in raising all the dead, all of us, at the resurrection on the last day when Christ comes again to usher in the fullness of God’s good and glorious reign.

But here’s the thing: we share even now in that promised future resurrected-life-reality when we are raised up out of the waters of baptism, when Jesus cries out to us by name, “child of God, come out!” Hear your own names on Jesus’ lips! And then Christ gives the command concerning us: “unbind them from their sin and captivity to death and let them go.” That’s what baptism means. That’s what baptism does in granting to us the gift of eternal life, a share in the eternity of God, even now in this life – all through the simple powers of word, water, and the Spirit working to the glory of God through baptismal washing.

Thus, in Christ, we see in the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead that death does not have the last word, as much as we might fear that it does. Rather eternal life in Christ, eternal life that begins even now according to John, has that last word. Thanks be to God.

This resurrection reality is also foreshadowed in today’s story from Ezekiel and the valley full of dry bones when Ezekiel prophesied and “suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone….” For this is the promise in the word of the Lord God: “I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 3712-14)

Folks, this is our promised future, a future we also share in even now through the waters of baptism.

And there’s more, as revealed by the words of Paul in today’s passage from Romans: “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through the Spirit that dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11) Again, that Spirit is given to us at the time of baptism, and that Spirit of the living Christ dwells with us individually and communally in the church throughout our lives.

Think of it. Let this soak in. Doesn’t this good word stir you to awakened faith, to renewed trust in Christ who weeps with us in our suffering, who dwells with us in the stench of human sin, and who calls us forth even now to life eternal? 

And doesn’t this promise, this reality stir you like the dry bones, drawing us together in community, and make you want to get up out of your seats to do something good for our dying world, a world captive to the fear of death and in the grip of death?

For that’s our calling, that’s what we get to do as participants even now in the eternal life made possible by Christ’s own death and resurrection. As Christ called Lazarus out of the tomb, Christ calls us out of our seats and out of the doors of the church, unbound and free, to offer ourselves to our neighbors for meeting their needs in the name of Jesus, motivated by God’s love.

When we serve our neighbors, when we advocate for God’s justice, we bear witness to the Christ who raises us all from the dead. Our loving service to our dying neighbors, dying in body or dying in spirit, bereft of hope, brings some life to them, a taste of resurrected life in Christ.

Our loving, life-giving service reveals the truth of the words of Paul, this time from 1 Corinthians: “‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:54b-58)

Thus, freed from the fear of death, liberated from the grip of death, we go on our way, steadfast, immovable, excelling in God’s work with our hands, propelled by Christ’s life in the Spirit to bring some life to our dying world. Amen, Lord Jesus, amen; let it be so among us.