Sermon: March 26, 2023, Fifth Sunday in Lent

Preacher: Rev Ryan Slifka

Scriptures: John 11:1-45

Today I want to talk about death. Actually, I don’t want to talk about death. But the topic is unavoidable in today’s scripture passage. Here it’s unavoidable. Death casts a shadow over the whole thing.

Jesus receives word that his friend Lazarus is sick. Lazarus is the brother of a couple of his other friends/ disciples, Martha and Mary Magdalene. His sisters send Jesus a carrier pigeon with a note urgently pleading for Jesus to come before it’s too late. To come and perform one of those miraculous healings of his. To save their brother from immanent death.

For reasons not entirely explained Jesus decides to take his time in getting there. But Lazarus is already gone. He arrives four days late, and his sister Martha points out that there’s a stench. I prefer how the King James Version puts it. “He stinketh.” The point being that Lazarus’ body has already begun to decay. It’s too late for Jesus to work those healing powers.

What’s most striking in this scene is the level of grief. It’s brutal.

When Jesus shows up four days too late Martha’s mad. “If only you’d been here Jesus!” She says. “You could have done something. If you’d been here my brother would still be alive.” It’s not a rare thing to have grief expressed through anger. In my experience it’s rather common, actually.

And Lazarus’ other sister, Mary, she’s crushed, too. She doesn’t even come to see Jesus, initially. She just stays home. I imagine her pulling the covers over her head, hoping that some sleep’ll stop the flow of tears. And when she finally does come, she collapses at his feet with the same accusation her sister leveled at him. “Lord, if you’d been here, then my brother wouldn’t have died.” But with less anger, more devastation. She just cries. Not only does she cry, but a whole cadre of friends who came with her are crying, too.

Now, none of this is surprising, exactly. Because if you’ve ever lost someone you deeply loved, too soon, or both, you’ll know the exact feeling of devastation. Death has its own sting.

What’s surprising in this scene, though, is Jesus. When Jesus sees all of this utter sadness on display, we’re told that he’s “greatly disturbed in spirit” and “deeply moved.” Other translations say that he “groaned in the spirit,” (KJV) and that a “deep anger welled up inside him” (NLT). Then there’s the shortest verse in all of the Bible: “Jesus wept.”

This is surprising because he’s supposed to be the Son of God. But notice that Jesus doesn’t say “don’t cry.” Or “there there. It’s ok… he’s in heaven.” Or even “don’t worry… he’s in a better place.” No. He doesn’t hand out any of the platitudes that I’m inclined to repeat in situations of grief. If anybody should be stoic, should be faithful. If there’s anyone who shouldn’t be distraught at this moment, it’s Jesus. He declares himself the “resurrection and the life.” And yet, in response to this death, the Messiah joins in on the grief. The Son of Man, too, feels the anger and the pain at the loss of his friend. It’s surprising that in the face of death, Jesus wept.

In the face of death, Jesus wept. Why? Often interpreters will say this is an example of divine sympathy. Which is true. God isn’t pure reason, or some abstraction who is unaffected by our plight. God doesn’t literally have tear ducts, but God is sympathetic. God cares for, is moved by, the suffering of her creatures.

But it’s also more than that. It’s the anger that’s most surprising. I mean, God created the world. You’re God’s Son. Who you so mad at?

Well, the answer is: death.

The fourth century church father John Chrysostom said in one sermon that, here, Jesus is angry and distressed at the power of death in the world.[i] Jesus is not only sympathetic towards us, God is righteously angry to the verge of tears at death itself.

Now, to be clear, we’re not just talking about the fact of dying in of itself. First of all we’re creatures, not God. We’re created as mortals, which means we die. Death is part of who we are. What defines us as human. There isn’t much to be mad about if you die in your mid-nineties after a good life, surrounded by family. I mean, there can be sadness. There can be fear. But anger… not so much.

No. Because, you see the Bible understands death as more than a fact. It understands death as a power, along with sin and Satan, at work in the world. As a supernatural force that holds sway over our lives. One that strikes fear, one that oppresses, one that causes havoc. A power that isn’t natural, but a fear and a driver that entered the world through our own human brokenness.[ii] It looms so large that the Apostle Paul calls it the “final enemy to be defeated.” Death is not simply a fact of human existence. But a reality actively working against God’s good intentions for the world. Jesus isn’t angry about the fact of death. What angers Jesus is death’s power to cause suffering and sadness and fear and destruction.

It’s a hard thing to think about in our culture. Because death for us is so hidden and avoided, even denied.  Some of us can go our whole lives without seeing a dead person, let alone touching one. More and more obituaries read “no service by request.” I met a forty-something year-old woman who’d never been to a funeral before—either nobody she’d been close to had ever died. Or she’d simply skipped her share. And I read about a woman who works as a “death midwife.” Someone who helps people deal with their final stages of life. She said that they don’t talk about death. It’s just a “transition” into a different way of being.

None of which of course acknowledge how much death sucks. It stinketh!

Because some of us know exactly how Mary and Martha felt when their brother died. A parent. A spouse. A good friend. Or a son or daughter. A tragedy. An accident. A suicide. Some of us have been there by Lazarus’ tomb. Same tears. Same anger.

Or think about the terror of COVID, at least when it was first around. Images of coffins piled up in Italy waiting for burial. Think of the fear, the anxiety, about dying—or worse, causing somebody else’s death. It almost never occurred to some of us that it would actually happen. It not only drove our personal actions it drove the actions and policies of governments around the world. For good and for ill.

Or think about all of our anxieties around what kind of future we’ve got for ourselves and our kids. Political instability, climate change. All rooted in death. Or think about what death causes us to do to eachother. There’s a story about the late Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Where he held a dinner of all of his closest compatriots. And he began to announce one after the other which one among them was going to be executed. Expecting, of course, that the ones still around would do the executing for fear that they’d be next. Whether it’s lobbing rockets at Ukraine, or malnourishing students in residential schools or sticking around an abusive partner because you have nowhere else to do.

Death is as much a source of sorrow, as much a power in our lives as it’s ever been. That’s what infuriates Jesus. “His tears express the pain that death causes human life.”[iii] Your pain, your sorrow, the cries of the world. Death is indeed, an enemy. Not only yours and mine. But an enemy of the Living God. The final enemy of the Creator of all. It stinketh!

According to John though, this enemy that causes us so much havoc, so much heartache… this ancient, cosmic enemy has been overcome. It’s no contest in fact.

Surrounded by a crowd of grievers, we’re told that Jesus stands at the mouth of the tomb, and closes his eyes and prays for his friend claimed by death. The stone’s been rolled away. He stands before the tomb, staring into the dark abyss. And he calls out to his friend a loud voice. “Lazarus!” He says. “Lazarus! Come forth.” And he that was dead comes forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes… like a wrapped mummy he scoots out into the daylight. “Loose him,” Jesus says. “Loose him and let him go.” And they do. And he’s back sitting at the supper table. Good as new.

Pretty incredible, if you ask me. I’ve never seen anything like that. As in the case of all the other stories we’ve heard John tell, from Nicodemus to the woman at the well, to the man born blind. There’s always more than meets the eye. It’s always more than just a one-off miracle.

It’s not a magic trick. He’s not resuscitating a corpse. Here Jesus is demonstrates that he is the same Word, the same voice that spoke the universe into being saying “let there be light…” and there was. Here Jesus is demonstrating that he is the light of the world, he’s demonstrating his Lordship over all things. Even the death of his friend Lazarus.

Not only that, though, but in pulling Lazarus out of the grave, Jesus gives everybody a sneak preview of Easter. This is a sneak preview of what he himself will do on the cross and rising from the tomb three days later. He’s demonstrating here that he is, as he told sister Martha, the resurrection and the life. He’s demonstrating not only his power over this one death, but his power all death. That on the cross, death itself has been thrown down and defeated. And that nothing not even the gates of hell can stand against him—nothing on earth or in heaven above can stand in his way.

This enemy that causes us so much havoc, our world so much heartache and destruction… in Jesus Christ this ancient, cosmic enemy has been overcome. The point of this whole episode is to point out that death ain’t got nothin’ on Jesus Christ. Death has been thrown down. Once and for all.

Now, to be clear, this doesn’t mean that none of us will never die. I mean, Lazarus himself doesn’t live forever. We don’t see Lazarus down at the pita pit chewing on a falafel. It’s clear that each of us is mortal. One day each of us will die, and there will still be tragedies and heartache and pain. That’s the way it is until the last day.

But it does mean that all that fear, all that worries that drive us, the great challenges of our time, and our greater losses… none of them are final. We may be in Lent, but Easter’s set in the calendar. It means that the power that death holds over us, the great shadow that looms over all creation. It’s not ultimate… life has been detonated… and death is in retreat.

It means that all that binds your life has been broken. It means that you no longer have to have your life dictated by fear. It means that you that we don’t have to let all of our decisions be dictated by despair. You can stop looking out for yourself, you can stop letting everything and everybody else take a back seat to the bottom line. It means that we can weep and we can rage, and we can hurt and we can rail against the unfairness and injustice of it all. But we can do so knowing that we can comfort, we can find courage, we can find hope in that joy cometh with the dawn. That the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. The winter is long, but in the end, you can never hold back spring.

So Lazarus! Come out!

(Name a bunch of people in the congregation) come out!

Insert your name here… come out… step out of the dark tomb of our despair and into the light of everlasting life.

Believe in him and live.

I offer it to you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

AMEN.

[i] Quoted in Gail R. O’Day, The Word Disclosed: Preaching the Gospel of John (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2002), 108.

[ii] “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” Romans 5:12.

[iii] Ibid., 110.