This week was my first time putting together a “full” online worship service, something I continued doing for about two months. This service is for the 5th Sunday in Lent, March 29, 2020, and the text for the sermon is the story of Lazarus, in John 11:1-45.
Here’s the full service video. The sermon text is below.
According to John’s gospel, this story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is a turning point. Forty-four verses was long enough for one gospel reading, but the story of Lazarus doesn’t actually end with him coming out of the tomb.
The next few verses in John 11 tell us that many of the people who saw Jesus do this miracle believed in him. They got it. They figured out that this guy has power over life and death, power that belongs only to God, and so he’s probably worth following.
But some of the witnesses went the opposite direction. They went to the religious leaders and told them what Jesus had done. The powerful religious leaders don’t see Jesus as a savior, but as a threat. With each sign he performs, the crowd following him grows, and this miracle is the last straw. Jesus is getting too powerful, and something has to be done. Verse 53: “From that day on, they plotted to take his life.” The path to the cross is clear.
As I’ve been wrestling this week with this story, there are two points that stick out to me, well, really two emotions: Grief, and frustration. The grief is pretty obvious: Lazarus has died. His family and his friends are grieving. I’ll come back to that.
But there’s also a lot of frustration in this story. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, because grief often comes out as frustration, but it’s a little surprising to me in a Bible story just how frustrated people get with Jesus. And not just people, but Jesus’ friends. I appreciate it, though, because frankly, I’m kind of frustrated with him in this story myself!
First, when Jesus hears his friend Lazarus is ill, rather than leaving immediately to rush to his bedside, he waits two days in the place where he is. Then, when he does decide to go, his disciples get frustrated with him for walking into dangerous territory, going back to a place where people have already tried to kill him.
By the time Jesus comes strolling into Bethany, Lazarus has already been in the tomb four days. Martha, the sister of Lazarus and a friend of Jesus, says to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” You can hear her frustration. Where were you? What took you so long?
Then a little later, Mary, the other sister, the one who in another story sits at Jesus’ feet learning from him, Mary says the same thing. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” John even records some of the bystanders later asking, “Could not he who opened the eye of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Doesn’t he have the power? Or doesn’t he care?
I think all these questions are legitimate, and apparently, so does John, or he wouldn’t have recorded all of them. If you’re like me, I imagine you too are wrestling with the same kinds of questions right now. Why has life been disrupted? Can’t God miraculously stop the virus? Doesn’t God care? The questions aren’t going to go away, and there are no easy answers.
I’ve seen some people proposing that perhaps all of this is in God’s plan, perhaps that God has sent this coronavirus to take away all the things that distract us from God. Some people have even proposed that this whole pandemic is a punishment from God. I simply don’t believe that’s true. We can use this time to refocus on God. If you have extra time now with fewer distractions, I hope you do use some of it as sabbath time to grow in faith – we can use some re-orienting. But God does not cause people to suffer and die so the rest of us can learn some lesson.
Last week in the story of the blind man, we heard Jesus say the man was not born blind because he or someone else had sinned. It’s not that easy to point to a cause. But his blindness became an opportunity for Jesus to reveal God’s glory.
Similarly this week, God did not kill Lazarus to make him an object lesson. But once again, Jesus turns tragedy into an opportunity for God’s power and glory to be demonstrated.
The remarkable thing in this story is that Jesus ends up doing more than anyone was asking of him. Mary and Martha both believe in him. They recognize him as the Messiah, and they know that he has the power to save their brother. But their best hope, now that he’s died, is to be reunited with him on the last day, in the final resurrection. But Jesus gives them far more than they dared to hope for: He calls Lazarus back to life here, now, in this world.
I understand the frustration in this story, because it’s the same frustration many of us share. It’s the ultimate theological question: Why does God allow bad things to happen? And in this story, we don’t really get an answer.
What we get is the other emotion that sticks out to me: Grief.
One of the most familiar verses in the Bible is John 11:35. In many translations, it’s the shortest verse in the Bible, so it’s everyone’s favorite to memorize: Jesus wept. Jesus, the messiah, the word made flesh, the Son of God, knows exactly what he’s going to do. He knows that he’s about to raise Lazarus back to life. And yet when he comes to be with Mary and Martha, he shares their grief.
The best answer I know of to the theological question of suffering is God’s presence. When we suffer, God comes and suffers alongside of us. God entered the world to share in our human life, to share in our suffering. Faced with the pain of losing a friend, Jesus began to weep. Faced with the deep grief of two sisters who’d lost their brother, Jesus began to weep.
I believe that when Jesus encounters our grief, our loneliness, our fear, Jesus weeps with us. No matter what you’re going through, no matter what you’re grieving today, God is with you. Whether you’re grieving someone’s death, or the loss of a job, or just the loss of routine, God is with you. You are not alone.
As Jesus began to weep, some of the people watching said, “See how he loved him!” They’re absolutely right: We see God’s love not only in the good things God does for us, in the miracles that do happen, but in Jesus’ weeping with us in our suffering. God doesn’t cause the suffering, but it can be an opportunity for us to recognize the truth that God is here with us.
And even when Jesus raised Lazarus, he didn’t fix everything. He didn’t erase his sickness, his death, or the days of mourning and weeping. The effects of the grief still lingered, the weeping is real. And of course, at some point later, Lazarus still dies.
This pandemic is going to have lasting effects. Even those of us who are healthy are missing moments in life that we won’t get back, sports seasons, festivals, and holidays. We’re grieving. Even when this is over, the effects will linger. There will still be frustrations and grief.
And Jesus will still be with us. He is and will continue to be the resurrection and the life. He continues to call us, to call you out of the tomb and into life.
Amen