Lent 5A 2023

Text: “25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”” (John 11:25-27)

Our Most Difficult Relationship

Today’s readings are a reminder that we have a very difficult relationship with death.

That reminder comes in several forms.

The first way has nothing to do with the readings, themselves. Instead, it has to do with the timing. One of the things that I do as I’m preparing my sermons each week is I go back to the last time I preached on the readings for that Sunday in the church year. On rare occasions I’ll re-use a sermon, but normally it just gives me a leg up on digging into the texts. But can you guess the first thing I noticed when I looked back at the last time these particular readings came up? Last time, the 5th Sunday in Lent happened to be on March 29th. Nothing all that important about that day. But go a step further. We’re on a three year cycle of readings. So the last time these readings came up was March 29th of... 2020. So the last time I preached on these readings, I was talking to a camera in an empty room. You were watching from your living room couches. We had just begun what we called the “Lentiest Lent we’d ever Lented.” We were all wrestling with the looming prospect of death.

I bring that up because, three years on from March of 2020, you and I have the chance to reflect back on that brush with death.

That year we had an enforced Lent, if you will. Your lives were turned upside down. Everything that claims your attention and keeps you from making the effort to observe Lent was cancelled. You couldn’t claim any longer that you didn’t have the time. And, if that weren’t enough, you had a healthy dose of an awareness of death added on top of it. Now you and I are back to trying to carve out a little space in our schedules to be reminded of our need for repentance, our ongoing battle against the devil, the world and our sinful flesh. You try to find time to prepare to remember the suffering and death that Christ endured to fight and win that battle for you. What did we learn from the whole thing?

I would suggest to you that we learned that we don’t handle death well. We saw the whole range of reactions three years ago. There were many who were desperate to do anything to stop the threat. Even the smallest risk was too great. And there were also many who were in stubborn denial— they didn’t just believe that the danger was exaggerated, they believed it was a complete fraud. Now, there were a lot of factors involved there, but I suggest to you that, a large part of the problem is that we simply do not handle death well. Many avoid it at all costs while others are just in denial.

Did we learn anything, through all of that, about what really matters? At the time, I was curious to see what would be different when everything re-opened.

They say that a near-death experience changes you. It reorients your priorities. It teaches you what’s really important. What was different when things re-opened? Did we learn anything about what’s really important in this life? Did we fix our priorities at all? Or did we rush to go back to ‘normal’, as if nothing ever happened?

I would suggest to you that one of the biggest lessons from that experience is that we do not handle death well.

And that’s not the only place we see that struggle. In recent years our culture has shifted away from “funerals” to a so-called “celebration of life” service. Why? What does this mean? What is changing about the service?

Every part of the service is planned and shaped to reflect the life of the person who has died. So, for example, “suppose the [person who died] was a boot-wearing, hat-sporting cowboy named Wyatt. [Wyatt’s “Celebration of Life” might look like this:] Rather than using a hearse, why not a covered wagon to transport Wyatt’s body to the cemetery? His saddle, bridle, and favorite rope could be displayed at the service. Since he was more into George Strait than [the hymn writer] Charles Wesley, country and western songs could form the musical background of his celebration. If there’s a procession, his horse could plod along in it. And, since most services include a meal afterward, a BBQ would be right down Wyatt’s alley. In all this, the perspective shifts from the tear-filled reality that Wyatt is dead to the smile-filled remembrance that Wyatt was once alive. Every detail in this Celebration of Life must reinforce that death is not mourned so much as life is celebrated.”[1]

It sounds harmless. Even, perhaps, healthy. Except it’s not. One writer by the name of Chad Bird puts it this way, “it is individualism’s last hurrah, in which not God, not death, not resurrection, not even mourners are the focal point, but the deceased, who is host of his very own posthumous party.” It is our ego’s last chance to make something “all about me.” Could there be a better picture of the effects of our sinful nature than making even the funeral “all about me”?

Now, it would be equally wrong to scrub any mention of the specific person who has died from the funeral service. So, perhaps, there could be some place for a “Celebration of Life” in a Christian funeral. Except there’s another problem: it doesn’t take death seriously. Or, at a minimum, it comes from a much different—and an un-Christian—world view.

“[For Christians], neither life nor death are ‘natural.’ Life is always a gift from God and death is always the consequence of sin. …Any talk of life which fails to talk of death, its origin and cause, is like drinking from a mirage.

When a funeral degenerates into a Celebration of Life, mourners may find temporary relief in the nostalgia of the memories, but they will be deprived of true and lasting healing that comes only after confronting death and finding life in Another.”[2]

We don’t handle death very well, do we?

“I Believe...”

This morning, in Martha, you have a magnificent example of how to look at death. Did you notice how correct Martha’s answer was? When Jesus asked her if she believed in the resurrection, she didn’t just get the answer right, she got the answer EXACTLY RIGHT. “Yes, I believe that you are the Christ…” (v. 27).

How many of us, in Martha’s place, would have answered, “Yes, I believe in the resurrection”? Not Martha. Her answer wasn’t that she believed in the resurrection—that she believed the doctrine—but that she believed in Him. “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world” (John 11:27). She could not have given a better answer.

God grant each of us such faith!

The challenge, of course, is that this promise is hidden. It’s hidden beneath your aches and pains. It’s hidden behind the fact that God’s people aren’t immune to sickness. It’s shrouded in fear. It’s hidden beneath the growing darkness, beneath the shadow of death that gathers over our world.

And yet, as you were reminded during the season of Epiphany, “16 The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned” (Matthew 4:16). You haven’t simply been taught about a resurrection. Jesus Christ has come to you.

Jesus Weeps

Jesus weeps over death just as you and I do. If anything, He feels it more because He remembers what this world was supposed to be. That’s why He comes to you.

God was under no obligation to do anything about death. The wages of sin is death. This was entirely our choice. When He said, “Let there be light,” when He hung the sun, moon, and stars, in their places, when He separated the waters with dry land and filled both land and water with life, and especially when He formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, that’s all that there was— life. No sickness, no frailty, no death. Only life. Until Adam and Eve chose death for themselves and their offspring. But, even before He pronounced the judgement that they had earned— the pain of this life and the hard reality that they would return to the dust from which they had come— He promised them life, once again.

God Himself left His throne in heaven and came down to become one of us so that He could live the perfect life that you and I could not live, so that He could take your sins and pay the full price for them, so that He could bear the full weight of death and hell as hung on the cross.

“4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5).

And then He passed through death and the grave to eternal life. “21For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21–22).

In the process, He redeemed this creation and promised that, on the Last Day, He would made all things new (Revelation 21:5).

Resurrection Has Come

And Jesus— the One who is the Resurrection and the Life— has come to you.

Yes, that promise seems hidden for now. But, as Johann Gerhard has written, “Everything that [Christ has] promised to [you] for that future life and for which [you] now hope is as certain to [you] as all those things that [He has] provided for [your] use in this life. …[Christ’s] mercy precedes and follows [you] (Psalm 23:6). It precedes [you] in justification and follows in glorification. It precedes [you] and helps [you] to live a godly life. It follows so [you] may live with [Him] forever.[3]

The promise is hidden, so He came to you in baptism and gave you the Holy Spirit as a pledge. The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you and he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (Rom. 8:11).

Storms and tempests of doubt may strike your heart, the boat in which Christ sails, but He has given you the promise of salvation and He is the faithful God (Psalm 31:5). How can you doubt whether [His] words of promise are immovably and unchangeably certain? ... [You] can be as certain about the benefits promised to [you] by [His] grace as [you are] about those things [you] see with [your] eyes. [Your Heavenly Father feeds you] with the body and blood of [His] Son. [He has] seal[ed you] with the internal certainty of faith granted by the Holy Spirit. How could [He] confirm the promise of salvation to [you] by a more certain testimony or a more precious pledge? In the Supper, [you] know that [He is] with [you] in the tribulations of this present life (Psalm 91:15). [And you will] also enjoy [His] presence in the most blessed comfort of eternal life[.] If [He gives you] so much while [you] live in the peasant’s hut of this world, how much more will [He] give [you] in the palace of heavenly paradise?”[4]

The One who died for you on the cross will stand by you in death. The One who was unjustly judged will protect you in the day of Judgment. When this earthly tent of yours has been destroyed (2 Corinthians 5), He will bring you, body and soul, into the dwelling of your heavenly home.

Through the holy wounds that He endured as He suffered on the cross, He will grant that you are able to overcome the fiery arrows of Satan with which he attacks you even in death. The price for your redemption has been paid in His blood.

By His death, He destroyed death. By His resurrection, He merited for you a blessed resurrection to eternal life. And He will grant you a blessed departure from this wretched life and a blessed entrance to eternal life on the day of resurrection.

Even when your body returns to the earth—ashes to ashes, dust to dust— even when the promise is hidden, not just by our frailty but by a casket and a gravestone, it is guaranteed by His cross and His empty tomb.

“25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” (John 11:25–27) God willing, we will never face another time like we did three years ago. But death isn’t going away. [You] can try to fight it at any cost, try to eliminate any risk of it from your life. You can ignore it and pretend it’s not there. But it will be there every single day. That’s why it’s worth fighting back against the crush of the world around you that wants you to go rushing on as if nothing had changed. But you can’t keep going on like nothing happened. Death is there every single day. But Easter is almost here. And the promise of Easter is forever. Christ is the resurrection and the life. And He has come to you.

[1] Bird, Chad. “The Tragic Death of the Funeral.” http://thefederalist.com/2013/12/06/funeral-funeral-celebration-life-one-last-hurrah/. December 6, 2013.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Gerhard, Johann. Meditations on Divine Mercy, “Thanksgiving for the Eternal Promise of Salvation”

[4] Ibid.