Fifth Sunday in Lent

John 11:1-45

Grace and peace to you.

Sometimes when stories, like this morning’s gospel, are character-rich, the pastor preaches a first-person account, imagining the story from the perspective of one of the lesser characters. It’s one thing to hear the story and place ourselves in the roles of Mary or Martha, but imagine being the messenger who brought the news that Lazarus was ill, full of expectation perhaps that Jesus would return with him to Bethany. Or being one of the disciples who cautioned Jesus against returning to Judea, preferring to stay out of sight and away from the attention of religious authorities. 

What we hear, and see, depends largely on where we sit, or where we find ourselves in the story.

As I listened to the story this week, I found myself sitting with the ones who are grieving alongside Mary and Martha.

During these first two weeks of precautions to slow the spread of coronavirus, my grief has not been as immense as the grief that accompanies the death of a beloved, but it has been real grief all the same,

certainly for the loss of our in person gathered community and for the sacrament of Holy Communion, and for the absence of visits to congregation members in nursing homes and assisted living;

but also well beyond our congregation and ministry:

for the high school theater productions that won’t make it to the stage;

for grandparents who don’t get to visit newborn grandchildren as quickly as they planned;

for people living with illness or pain who are having to postpone medical procedures and operations;

for high school and college seniors whose plans have been disrupted;

for teachers who don’t know if they’ll see their students again this school year;

for employees who have lost work and pay, and for Shelby’s small business owners who have worked so hard to make uptown alive.

I expect you can add your own half-dozen or more laments.

And I want to give you a minute to do just that.

In the chat or comments, aloud from wherever you are this morning, or silently in your hearts, name something you have lost during this time of social distancing and staying at home.

In our grief it would be easy to join Martha and Mary in saying, “Lord if you had been here,” it would have been different. (v. 21, 32)

But Lazarus didn’t die because Jesus wasn’t there.

It’s true that Jesus stayed away and it’s true that Lazarus died, but there’s no cause and effect relationship between the two events. As much as we want to see one, because we want an explanation that makes sense, there isn’t.

Similarly, I have heard and read where people are saying the coronavirus is like God hitting a reset button, or that God is getting our attention by letting the virus spread, so that we will pay attention to first things and return to God.

I absolutely believe God is present in the midst of this disease and our community’s response, but I do not believe that God willfully let more than 30,000 people worldwide, each one beloved by God, die because we weren’t devoted enough.

“The way of Jesus doesn’t avoid death.” Facing the reality of human mortality and finitude, that death cannot be avoided, Jesus didn’t perform a miracle. Jesus knew that God’s future hope for the world is persistent, that God is at work even when all we can see is the death in front of us.

So when Jesus met Martha and then Mary away from their home, he didn’t hurry their grief or ignore the weight of their loss. He grieved alongside the sisters, weeping for the loss of their brother and his friend.

And then, together they waited for the Lord because, in the words of the psalmist, in God’s word is our hope. (130:5)

In John’s prologue we read, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us….”(John 1:14). In Jesus, God’s Word is alive for us even when all we can see is the death in front of us.

Grief is complex. There is grief for what we have lost, there is grief at our circumstances now, and there is anticipatory grief for what will be different in the months ahead. Martha and Mary bear witness to the complexity of grief and how we can hold anger, frustration or disappointment and faith at the same time.

Unnamed grief creates separation and distance, cutting us off from others. But Jesus embraces the sisters letting them name their disappointments and reminds them what they know about God’s saving power. Together at the tomb where Lazarus is buried, Jesus then calls out to him by name and commands him to come out, telling the people around him to unbind him and let him go.

Again this is God’s Word at work against death. God’s call restores us to community, whether we are buried by grief or entombed, behind heavy stones. God calls us to come out of the places where we have been stuck, even when the stench of whatever sin binds us still lingers. And God invites others to help us find freedom and new life.

“The way of Jesus doesn’t avoid death.” But it does defeat it. And that is Good News indeed.

Thanks be to God.