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Sermon for Lent 5A

March 17, 2002

Today we have the last in a series of Lenten Gospel stories in which Jesus offers enlightenment to someone by taking them from an ordinary, earthly understanding to an extraordinary, spiritual insight. In these stories, Jesus has taken everyday things like birth, water, sight, and has made them point beyond themselves as symbols of God’s holy love. Today’s story is the most dramatic of them all: in the raising of Lazarus, Jesus takes life itself and makes it point beyond itself to the eternal grace of God.

The story actually begins a little before the passage we read today. Lazarus, Martha, and Mary are friends of Jesus—they’re not just among the crowds and disciples that follow after him, but they’re real personal friends—and Lazarus has fallen ill. Martha and Mary send word to Jesus, believing that Jesus would be able to heal their brother. But Jesus doesn’t come right away. In fact, Jesus delays for several days, so that by the time he does arrive, Lazarus has already died, and has been dead for four days. That number of days is important: in Jewish belief of that time, it was held that the soul of a dead person would linger near the body for three days, but after three days the soul would begin to dissolve into Sheol, into the shadowy underworld. The fact that Lazarus had been dead for four days means that his soul is gone and there is no longer any hope for him at all.

It is into this situation of hopelessness that Jesus finally arrives. It is this feeling of hopelessness that Martha gives voice to when she comes to speak to Jesus. When Martha hears that Jesus has come, she doesn’t even wait until he arrives at the house, but she runs out to meet him at the edge of town. “Lord,” she says to him, “if you had been here my brother would not have died.” There are so many emotions packed into those words! Martha is feeling sadness at her brother’s death. Martha is feeling anger at Jesus for not coming earlier and preventing her loss. Martha is feeling confusion over how Lazarus’s death can be part of God’s will. But above all Martha is feeling hopelessness, a kind of blank despair that cannot see any way forward and so dwells in the past, an emptiness of the heart that cannot get beyond what might have been. “If only you’d been here,” Martha says. “If only things had been different. If only you hadn’t let me down. If only there was some hope for something more.”

Jesus hears the hopelessness in Martha, her “stuckness” in the past—but he doesn’t leave her there. Jesus points her to the future: “Your brother will rise again,” he says to her. And she accepts that: “Yes, Lord,” she says, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” And Martha is giving voice here to what was a fairly common Jewish belief in Jesus’ time. While the Sadducees and some of the upper-class priests denied it, the Pharisees and most of the Jewish “regular folk” believed in the general resurrection described in the prophet Daniel—when, at the end of the world, the graves would be opened, and the Book of Life would be unsealed, and the righteous would shine like stars in the firmament of heaven. We Christians sometimes think that belief in a resurrection is something that began with Jesus, but it was there already in the Jewish thought-world that Jesus lived in. Martha did believe in it: “Yes, Lord,” she agrees, “my brother will rise again.” But that seems like such a long time away: the resurrection at the end of the world is so far in the future, it is such a remote possibility, such a distant potential, that it feels like it has no real bearing on what she has to deal with in the here-and-now. The resurrection is a great promise of God, to be sure; but it is such a distant hope that it feels like no hope at all. “My brother will rise in the resurrection of the just,” Martha says, “but how does that help me now?”

And in response to that Jesus says something that goes beyond the general belief of the day: “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” God’s promise of eternal life, Jesus says, is not just something that is far off in the distant future, a hope on a horizon far far away. God’s promise of eternal life is something that we can begin to experience here and now. Jesus surprises Martha by redefining resurrection, by putting the very idea of resurrection into a whole new context, a whole new orbit of meaning. The surprise is that, with Jesus, resurrection is not just about life beyond this world; but with Jesus resurrection is about finding a way when it seems like there is no way, with Jesus resurrection is about discovering new possibilities when it seems like all the possibilities are used up, with Jesus resurrection is about kindling hope when everything seems hopeless. And it is that surprising new glimpse of resurrection that is the key to Martha’s enlightenment.

Martha tells Jesus that she believes that enlightening insight; and she is soon called to act on her belief. Jesus comes to the cave where they’ve buried Lazarus; and, moved with pity for the sorrow of his friends, and grieving his own loss of his friend Lazarus, Jesus weeps. And then he orders them to take away the stone. Now, Martha knows that four days of death have left no hope for Lazarus; but she has also come to believe that Jesus can bring hope where there is no hope. So although she’s afraid of what may be in the tomb, she gives her permission—and the stone is rolled away, and Jesus calls, and Lazarus comes out.

And that is where the double meaning of the story speaks to us. The physical miracle of restored life is given to Lazarus; but the spiritual enlightenment of a whole new way to embrace life is what is given to Martha; and both of those gifts are good news for us. Like Martha in the story, the gift of enlightenment comes to us when we see that in Jesus the promise of resurrection is not just something in a far-off future, but is something we begin to know here and now. In Jesus the promise of resurrection for us is the discovery of possibilities where there were no possibilities, the revival of hope when there was no hope.

And as Christians, as people of faith, it is part of our calling to be witnesses to that resurrection wherever we find it—to be witnesses to resurrection as the revival of hope and the renewal of possibility in the extraordinary circumstances of our own very ordinary lives.

We witness resurrection in the alcoholic who finds the courage and the humility to turn to a higher power and break out of the bondage of addiction and become available again for relationships of giving and receiving in love in everyday life.

We witness resurrection in the teen girl who faces her anorexia, and who finds new ways to esteem herself, and care for herself, and accept that others value her and care for her just the way she is.

We witness resurrection in the polluted abandoned railroad track that is cleaned up and planted with trees and shrubs and becomes a trail for walkers and bikers and a greenway for animals and birds.

We witness resurrection in the church community that discerns God’s call to a new kind of ministry, and breaks through the barrier of “We’ve never done it that way before” to discover new possibilities for faith and service together.

We witness resurrection in the woman who finds the courage to leave an abusive relationship, and who thereby breaks the cycle of violence and is opened to new potentials for her life and her dignity.

We witness resurrection in one who grieves the death of a beloved spouse, but who doesn’t become stuck in the past, but instead looks forward to the fulfillment of all promises of happiness in God.

As people of faith, who have been given the gift of enlightenment in Jesus, we can see the reality of resurrection wherever a way opens where there was no way, wherever new possibilities spring up when there were no possibilities, wherever hope is kindled when it seemed like all hope was dead. Like Martha in the story, we can learn that our life here points beyond itself to eternal life in God’s unending love—and we can learn that that love is already at work in us in service and worship and transformation and hope.

That is the Gospel Good News for us today—and that is the eternal promise that carries us from Lent to Holy Week to Easter and to all our life beyond.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.