A Sermon Preached by Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

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.’

¹⁷ When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for 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.’

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?’
Jesus Raises Lazarus to Life

³⁸ Then 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 for four days.’ ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’

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.’

"Death That Brings Life ”

A Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

at the

First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Jesus says these words to Martha in this morning’s lesson from the Gospel of John, and I often share these comforting words at funerals. And there have been a lot these past few months; since November, this community has lost Audrey Foster, Elaine Mattingly, Margie Barley, Dorothy Stone, Carol Manson, Ruth Gray and Rena Phillips. And Nicole Danilchuk, Patty Walker, and Mike Mauriello have all lost parents recently.

I have shared with many of you that my husband John died when our daughter Elizabeth was eight years old, and our son Ian was only eight months. In the ensuing years, as Ian grew old enough to understand that his Daddy was in heaven, we talked about death, and he asked the question that perhaps we all ponder sometime in our life: “Mummy, why did God make it that people have to die?”

I mumbled something about life being more precious when you know it won’t last forever. Indeed, we live most fully and poignantly in the awareness of our own mortality. In his book Credo, the late William Sloane Coffin states unequivocally that “Death is more friend than foe,” and he challenges us to consider the alternative. “Life without death would be interminable – literally, figuratively.” Sloane points out. “We’d take days just to get out of bed, weeks to decide ‘what’s next?’ Students would never graduate, faculty meetings and all kinds of other gatherings would go on for months.” Coffin then makes this statement: “Death cannot be the enemy if it is death that brings us to life. For just as without leave-taking there can be no arrival; without growing old there can be no growing up; without tears, no laughter; so without death there can be no living.”¹

“Death cannot be the enemy if it is death that brings life.” But that doesn’t make death any easier. Death rips our loved ones from our embracing arms. Death rents a hole in the fabric of our lives. Death breaks our hearts and causes us to weep. On this fifth Sunday in Lent, Jesus draws ever closer to Jerusalem and his own death on the cross. But today, in the story of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus offers us a foretaste of God’s power over death, and shows us how death can lead to new life.

In this morning’s passage, we meet again sisters Mary and Martha who live in Bethany, a village just outside of Jerusalem. We remember Martha as the hostess who worked industriously in the kitchen while Mary sat in the other room, taking in all that Jesus had to say. And Mary was the one who anointed Jesus with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair. In this morning’s passage, the hearts of these two sisters are breaking over their dying brother Lazarus. Many of us have stood in the same place as Mary and Martha – that place where hope is fading, and death is coming, and all we can do is weep and wail. It is in those moments that we wish with all our hearts that death was not a part of life.

Desperate, Mary and Martha summon their friend Jesus, whom they know is of God. The disciples urge him not to go so near Jerusalem, where there have been threats on his life. But Jesus knows he needs to go to Lazarus’ bedside; he needs to save his friend, and he needs to show the power of God at work.

However, Jesus waits several days before heading out, and by the time he arrives, Lazarus has been dead for four days. According to rabbinic tradition, the soul would hover by the grave for three days in hopes of rejoining the body; but on the fourth day, the soul would finally depart. In other words, by the time Jesus arrives, the situation is hopeless; and Martha angrily confronts him: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

Jesus goes with Mary and Martha and the other mourners to the tomb, and he tells his friends to roll away the stone. "Lazarus, come out!" Jesus shouts. And out stumbles Lazarus, still wrapped in the strips of cloth in which he has been buried. Jesus shouts again, “Unbind him, and let him go,” and Lazarus is set free -- not just from his burial shroud, but also from death.

We hear very little of Lazarus again. However, we can imagine that, having come so close to death, he lives the rest of his life differently, more fully, with greater appreciation for how fragile and precious it is. “Death… teaches us to ‘number our days’ and to live every one of them, to live with our eyes and ears open, to drink it all in, every single day of it… Death… teaches us gratitude every morning, teaches us to not be wasteful, to make every day count because every day is a gift we did nothing to earn or deserve.”²

Jesus says to Martha “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?" And she replies, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” What about you? Do you, like Martha, believe in the new life that Jesus offers? We may not be physically dead like Lazarus, but many of us can experience a spiritual or emotional death while we are still living.

Our spirits may retreat into tombs of depression, regret, shame, guilt, disappointment or denial. For some, living death might be despair over a major loss: a loved one, a job, a sense of purpose and meaning. For others, living death might be an addiction or broken friendship which robs life of joy. “Death” may be in the form of a job which is "killing” you or a relationship which saps the life right out of you.

What is keeping you from living life to its fullest? What are the stones that are locking you in, blocking you from wholeness? How are you bound up like Lazarus, unable to experience the joy of life?

Jesus shouts to you and to me, calling each of us by name as he called Lazarus and commanding us to be released from whatever entombs or binds us, whatever is making our lives feel like living death and keeps us living life as God intends.

Jesus shouts so that we might hear him, that he might penetrate our cluttered and distracted lives, that he might be heard over our weeping and wailing. Jesus shouts that his voice may rise above our rationalizations and hesitations to take responsibility for the dead parts of our lives. Jesus shouts that his voice might be louder than any victimization or domination or repression we might be experiencing.

Pastor and writer John Buchanan notes that “Down through the centuries, the raising of Lazarus… has brought courage and hope to people living under political oppression, people who understandably knew themselves to be living in the midst of death and who decided not to allow death to have dominion over them. It was a favorite story for American slaves literally bound by their chains, and for house churches in Central America as death squads threatened and brutalized and killed; to blacks living in the nightmare of apartheid in South Africa. And this story can be your promise that Jesus Christ is on the side of life, your life, as you look for the strength and courage to walk away from whatever holds you back, and keeps you from living fully the gift of your life.”³

Those who, like Lazarus, come forth from the tomb of their discontent and disillusionment will discover the gift of God’s Spirit which not only reverses the powers of death, but also releases us to enjoy the new life Jesus offers. Like he does to the woman at the well, Jesus gives us living water which satisfies our want and thirst. Like he does to the blind man, Jesus brings us out of our darkness and into his Light. Like he does to Lazarus, Jesus brings us back from the death of our disappointments, our dysfunction, and our destruction and offers us new life.

Today, as Jesus turns his face toward Jerusalem and his own death, we have a foretaste of God’s promise that death will not have the last word; we have the promise of resurrection. May we live believing in that promise; may we live fully and gratefully for the gift of life now and life everlasting. And may we live believing in Jesus’ words, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Amen.

¹William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2004), p. 168.

²John M. Buchanan, “Enough to Make a Grown Man Cry,” March 13, 2005, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL.

³Buchanan, Op. Cit.