Transcript
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. Please be seated.
So, apparently Jesus is wrong. Or actually, okay, don’t save that as a sound clip of my ministry. Instead, maybe the correct way of saying it is Jesus says something that seems to contradict our comprehension of the words and their meanings in perceived reality. That’s the sound clip because Jesus says that Lazarus’s illness does not lead to death. And yet, after staying where he is for two days longer, Jesus learns that indeed the illness did actually lead to death. Lazarus is dead. Jesus even says so plainly to the disciples.
So perhaps when Jesus said that the illness Lazarus was suffering from wouldn’t lead to death, perhaps Jesus already knew what would come next because death seems so permanent. And yet for Lazarus, death doesn’t stick. And to be honest, for Jesus, death doesn’t stick either.
It’s interesting that on the fifth Sunday in Lent, we get a resurrection story. We’re one week away from Palm Sunday in the beginning of Holy Week. In just two short weeks, Jesus will have entered Jerusalem, been arrested, been triedish, been presented to the crowd, been dismissed by the crowd, been abandoned, denied, rejected, been tortured, been crucified, been killed, and will have already descended to the dead, and will have already resurrected. In just two short weeks, we’ll be looking at an empty tomb. We’ll be hearing how Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener. We’ll be laughing at the disciples who ran away because they did not understand. We’ll be celebrating that indeed death is not the end because Jesus overcame death to save all of us from damnation and to show us the way to God’s heavenly kingdom.
I’m curious if anyone else senses the parallels between what we will experience during Holy Week and today’s gospel reading. There are only two resurrection stories in all of scripture. There are a few ascension stories, you know, ascending to heaven, but that’s for later in the lurggical year. Right now though, we get one of those resurrection stories, a story of death and no longer death. Of course, the other one everyone knows it’s Jesus. And Jesus’s resurrection appears in all four gospels and acts and is mentioned throughout scripture. Lazarus resurrection only appears in John.
Interestingly, according to John’s gospel, it is this miracle, the raising of Lazarus that upsets the officials enough for them to decide that Jesus has got to go. And yet the resurrection of Lazarus, perhaps Jesus’s greatest miracle until his own resurrection, isn’t talked about anywhere else. I think it is because Lazarus resurrection could risk overshadowing Jesus’s resurrection. But we know that isn’t the case. Because while Lazarus gets this amazing, theologically rich, vividly visual story, Jesus gets even more. which is why I want to officially invite each of you to join me for Holy Week.
I’ve already mentioned that in two weeks times we’ll be celebrating Easter. But before we get to the resurrected Lord, we must journey with him to the cross and death. Next Sunday is Sunday of the Passion and Palm Sunday. We’ll start each service with a special acknowledgement of the palms, the branches that were laid down at Jesus’s feet as he entered into Jerusalem. This is the celebratory honoring of the Messiah, the king who has come to take his rightful place, as the one who will save the Israelites, the one who will return Jerusalem to its rightful owners, the one who will chase out all of the oppressors. We will sing Hosana in the highest. And on Sunday, we will experience that journey, following the cross to the church, pressing in on one another as we wander to our pews, feeling the crowd’s energy and excitement by dramatically acting out the embodied liturgy of palms and journey.
By the end of the service though, the mood will change. Then it will be passion Sunday. We will hear the reading of the passion, the final 12 hours of Jesus’s life. The agony in the garden of Gethsemane, arrest, trial and torture, crucifixion and death. We will literally end the service with so they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and then silence and exit.
Palm Sunday is a foreshadow of what will come the rest of the week. It is for those of us who will not or cannot attend the rest of the services. It is a listening and a feeling and a wondering. But the rest of the week is a believing, an embodiment of Jesus’s last 12 hours.
On Thursday, we’ll gather for a mighty Thursday service, footwashing, institution of the Eucharist, and the stripping of the altar. We will hear Jesus tell us explicitly what to do. As Jesus’s followers, he will say, and I quote, “I give you a new commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”
We will get down on our own knees and take the posture of a servant washing the feet of our fellow church members. We will hear Jesus tell us to take, eat, and drink this all of you as he foretells of what happens next. And then in silence, as the lights slowly dim, we will strip the altar item by item until nothing is left but a stone slab waiting in sacred silence.
After the dramatic end of the Motty Thursday service, we will gather again on Good Friday. Not to celebrate, but to mourn. To mourn the loss of the man who was the Messiah, whom we refuse to recognize as the Messiah, who went to the cross for each and every single one of us. We will hear the story again of Jesus’s arrest, trial, crucifixion, and death. And then we will witness the cross.
Two crass, roughly huned themes joined in the middle, a weapon of torture and now a symbol of hope. And we will lay our burdens down at the foot of the cross, handing all we carry over to our Lord God. Heart-wrenching and moving. Good Friday is not happy, but it is so good for the soul as it rests from the weary world around us.
And then Saturday, the Easter vigil, awaiting and a watching and an anticipation, my favorite lurggical season, the new fire lit outside to show that darkness will never overcome the light. Candles and readings and hymns, the story of our salvation beginning with Genesis and woven through the Old Testament. We will be reminded of all that God promised. And we will be reminded of our own promises as we renew our baptismal vows.
Until just when we are at the edge of our seats with anticipation, it will be. And we will flip on the lights and shout with joy, the waiting, the watching, the agony of not knowing. It will all be over. and we will proclaim the very first Easter acclamation of the season and celebrate the very first Easter Eucharist. I would say it now, but I’ve already messed up and said the A word during Lent, so don’t need to do that again.
And then finally, it will be Easter. We will have journeyed through the unknown, the darkness, the brokenness of the world. We will have found the empty tomb and the risen Lord will be revealed to us. Crowds will fill the church. Liies will fill the altar and joy will fill the air. Death will be no more as Jesus overcame it for all of us.
At the end of today’s gospel reading, when Lazarus emerges from the tomb, Jesus tells the crowd to unbind him. And the crowd comes to believe in the miracle and the power of the miracle and the power of Jesus. At the end of Holy Week, we will be that crowd.
We will be the ones who experience the grief of Jesus’s passion. And we will be the ones who believe because we have also experienced the joy, the overwhelming joy, not of a perfect life we each have, but of a life that is perfectly prepared for each of us. A life that even in death does not end because of Jesus. Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.
Now it is our turn to live the journey of Jesus’s passion and death and resurrection. So that we may say, “Jesus, come out.” And so that we may live as people who know Jesus rose so that we would be saved. Come join me on this amazing journey. It begins right here next Sunday. I’ll see you there.