St. John’s Lutheran Church, Toluca, IL – 5th Sunday in Lent
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45
Gospel: John 11:1-45
1Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
7Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” 11After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” 12The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” 13Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
28When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
45Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
NRSV
The Kingdom Seen, Part IV: When God Became Love for Us
I was six. Everything in my life until that point had been a constant until I asked for a sibling. It would be a somewhat risky pregnancy for my mother. A few years back, she had a severe fracture in her pelvic bone. She would have to spend the later months mostly in bed rest, for the doctors feared she could not hold the baby’s weight. My parents decided to go through it – I was persistent, apparently – and my brother was born.
It was not what I expected. The changed dynamic in the household affected me deeply. I was no longer the only child. I begin to isolate myself from my friends in school. I developed speech issues and was in therapy a couple of years later.
Talking about my friends in school, Alexandre, Fabricio, Nelson, Debora, and others had been my siblings since kindergarten. Then when it was time to go to Junior High, my parents sent me to a new school. The idea was to start preparing me for college. My therapist gave them the green light for it. I was more emotionally resilient then. She was right, but I never experienced the same level of friendship and deep connection that I did with my early childhood friends.
The next big change came when I got married. It is common for young adults in Brazil to remain in their parent’s home until the eve of their wedding. That night I wept by myself in the kitchen. I knew everything would be different from that point on. Then one day, my beloved wife, after 6 years of marriage, told me it was time to have a child. It was time to live for someone who could not live for himself. You know how that goes …
It was not until my preparation for ministry that I came to understand that all those events were losses in my life. Not major losses that lead to feelings of despair and hopelessness, but losses nonetheless. I also understood that each one caused a certain degree of grief. Even if at least some of these events represent positive steps in our growth as individuals, they taught me that something often needs to go or to die, so new and more abundant life can begin.
Through the past three Sundays, we reflected on different individuals that came to meet the visible Kingdom of God come to earth when they met Jesus, God’s incarnation among us. They all received the Spirit, were born again, and came out as new individuals beginning to see and acknowledge what God is doing for the world. At least one of those, the man born blind, at a cost. He now sees plenty but is purged out of his faith community. He is the epitome of what may need to die in order to bring new life.
Deep loss and grief are what brings us to this Sunday Gospel. Lazarus is dead, hopelessly dead. Jesus’ beloved friends are agonizing in grief. Not only because their brother is dead, but because it seems they expected Jesus to be there sooner, and if so, Lazarus could be saved. Now is too late. Days have passed, and the body is already decomposing.
The impression we get is that it was Jesus’ plan all along. Bringing Lazarus from the dead publicly in plain sight of several witnesses would cause many to see, recognize, know, believe that the Kingdom of God had come to the world. They would understand that only God can breathe new life into dying bones and so realize who Jesus is.
It worked, many believed, and strangely the growth in faith among the people would lead to another death, his own. Nonetheless, I wonder if Jesus was prepared for the visceral level of pain he would witness and feel when he met his beloved friends.
Many years later, a letter was written and attributed to John the Evangelist, who brought us today’s gospel account. There John declares that God is love. I wonder if this is the encounter that caused our Lord and Savior to fully understand our pain and despair. I wonder if this is when God became love for us and gave himself to comfort us, knowing that even when it is impossible to take away the pain, Jesus knows exactly how we feel.
John wrote in his letter:
“So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16; NRSV)
Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
Bridging Faith 