Living in the Resurrection and the Life

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A
Sermon for March 22, 2026

My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

Good morning, Epiphany. I remember two weeks ago telling you we had a long gospel reading, so I was going to avoid it… this one is even longer. We have had a lot of reading these last few weeks! Bob preached last week on 41 verses from John 9. I’m going to pull something from these 45 verses in chapter 11. Goodness gracious. But first, a brief story.

On Friday morning, our elementary school had their spring concert, divided by grade, over at Listiak, at the high school. Nora’s second grade went first at 9:30 with their 20-minute performance, and Jane’s kindergarten performance was at 11, so I had an hour to spare, and I stopped in at Country House Furniture to look at clothes dryers; ours has been giving us some trouble. While there, in a relatively quiet store, I heard a man suddenly yell, “Noooo!” and I looked up in alarm to find him walking quickly across the back of the store, staring at his phone. He then yelled, “No way!” and showed his phone to a friend. At this point, given the state of the world around us, I assumed something horrific had happened on a global scale; an assassination, or New York City had been nuked, or Iran had taken out Jerusalem or something. But then the man said: “Chuck Norris dead, age 86! Chuck Norris can’t die!” The man and his friend were visibly shaken by the death of the world champion martial artist and actor; I was relieved we had no global catastrophe. Death, it seems, comes for us all, even the mighty Chuck Norris.

I start this sermon with this story about Chuck Norris because even in Country House Furniture this week, I could not avoid the topic of death. Death is all around us. Without any intention or desire on our part, it has been the theme of our season of Lent here at Epiphany in 2026, and perhaps appropriately so as we look toward the crucifixion of Jesus next week. But I deeply wish we had not had to deal with death so personally, so close to our hearts. The death of loved ones is a moment worthy of grief, of mourning, and the surprise deaths of two of ours at Epiphany in February were especially difficult. I preached both of their funeral sermons already; I promise not to do that again today.

Jesus, in today’s gospel, Jesus experiences the death of a loved one too, the death of a close friend. Jesus experiences all of life, just as we do, and this is the beauty of the incarnation, what marks our faith as unique: God fully with us, incarnate in the Middle East, 2,000 years ago. As I preached about on Christmas Day, Emmanuel, “God with us,” is our backbone, our foundation, our example of love and ministry, as we go out to love and serve the Lord, to “be with” others, not just “for” them from a distance, but with them in the midst of difficulty, trouble, poverty, oppression, and yes, in the midst of grief.

Jesus runs through all the emotions in these 45 verses as he is with his friends, Mary, Martha, Thomas, and the rest of the disciples. Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus is dying, and Jesus takes his time getting there, because, as we will find out, Jesus does not view death in the same way we do; death is not the final word. More on that in a minute.

In 1974, Ernest Becker wrote a book called “Denial of Death,” one I came across in my readings this month, one that won him the Pulitzer Prize. In it, he writes about how our culture – not just Western culture, but particularly so – how we cannot face the truth that we are all dying, that we all will die. We fear death on a fundamental level. We build our entire lives around this fear, from the trivial to the globally consequential. We have skin creams and vitamins and diets and workout regimens; we have violence and wars and military incursions and “short-term excursions” to make sure we are not ourselves in the slightest bit threatened. Becker argues in his book that “fear of our own death is the primary driver of human activity,” not anxiety as Freud claimed… and certainly not love.

In this story today, Jesus sees his friends fully immersed in death, but he hears the report that his friend is dying, and then he continues about his business. This first paragraph of our reading today seems calloused on first glance: he does not run to his friend’s bedside. Some commentators have interpreted this as Jesus intentionally letting his friend die so that he can raise him, showing his power and glory, transitioning the gospel story from one of teaching to one of miracles. But I think Jesus has more compassion than that, and I think the rest of this story confirms that, that this is about something more than power.

Jesus does make his way to Lazarus’s side, after telling his friends plainly that their friend is dead. Thomas, already grieving, is dramatically ready to die with his friend, “Let us go that we may die with him,” how can life go on without our Lazarus? Martha, upset that Jesus had not saved her brother from death, almost blames him for it, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus then reminds her that he himself is the resurrection and the life, which is a mind-blowing thing to say to someone who is mourning in real time. We could discuss that verse, that statement for hours and not touch the depth of it, of resurrection and life residing in a person… so we’ll come back to it.

Because after Thomas and Martha, Jesus runs into Mary, who echoes Martha, and is weeping alongside all Lazarus’s friends. You can feel the depth of mourning here. The text says that on seeing their tears, Jesus is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved,” and then, the shortest verse in scripture tells us, Jesus wept, or “Jesus began to weep.” Jesus himself, part of the Trinity, the very Son of God, Jesus weeps over this death, over the death of his friend, and perhaps, over death itself. He grieves; he is deeply moved. Death is not the final word, but it does cause us so much pain, and that pain is legitimate and worthy of our tears. If even Jesus Christ grieves, so can, so must, we.

And yet, here’s the gospel turn, the good news: living among these people 2,000 years ago is someone who is the embodiment of God, someone who calls himself resurrection and life, who sees death itself differently. Jesus then literally raises Lazarus from the dead, dramatically here by rolling away the stone from in front of the tomb, looking to the clouds, praying thanks to God, and ordering the dead man to rise, echoing our Old Testament reading of Ezekiel and the dry bones given new life. Lazarus’s resurrection of course prepares the people for Jesus’s resurrection too, but Easter is still a few weeks out, and we need to stay with death for a minute, here on the Fifth Sunday of Lent.

Death, grief, pain, they are real, we know this, we have experienced them, and I hate to say it, but we will experience them again. We may be experiencing them now, as we fear death, as we see death on the horizon, for ourselves or for our loved ones. But in Christ, in the love of this place, we have life. We have life now, today, and that is what Jesus is inviting us to, to life. We cannot expect Jesus to call our loved ones out from the tomb, but we can, and must, live into this resurrection life that he offers us now, one that calls us to love and not to fear, one that pushes us to “be with” those who are suffering, not run from them or bomb them or deport them or ignore them or shut them out. We are invited into a life of love with the hope of glory, not one built with fear of death as the primary driver of human activity. Can you imagine if love was the primary driver instead?

I think that is what Jesus is mourning in this passage. Yes, the death of his real-life friend is upsetting, we know this. Yes, seeing his friends suffering, in mourning, weeping at the graveside, it is beyond difficult. It should lead him and us to grief and tears of his and our own. But as son of the creator God, Jesus also knows that our time on earth is short, that the history of Creation is very long in comparison, and that death is part of it for all of us, from our plants to our beloved pets to Chuck Norris to our own parents and yes, to our children too. Living in the fear of death is living with grief before it is due, it is living outside of the life of unending love that we can grasp while we still have breath.

Friends, this morning, I ask that we try to view life and death as Jesus does. It is a mighty task, but I ask that we try to live in that life of love, that we live in the light of a Christ who is himself the resurrection and the life that we long for, who gives us love, joy, peace and kindness as fruit. Lazarus’s body is dead, his resurrection was temporary at best, but the life these gospel people lived is still changing the world thousands of years later.

May we come to know death is part of our created order, may we mourn that, grieve it well, and then may we live in resurrection while we’re lucky enough to have breath, may we live in the light of Christ that is eternal life, that is love. And, may we do so for our own good, for the good of those we love, and for the good of the world God created. Amen.