Sunday Sermon - 22 March

The rising of Lazarus is possibly my favourite Gospel story because of this simple fact: it begins with a friendship and reveals Jesus at his most human. You see, Jesus and Lazarus were not strangers nor were they distant acquaintances. They were friends. The Gospel makes that very clear. Jesus had a deep relationship with Lazarus and with his sisters, Mary and Martha of Bethany. They had sat at their table, shared meals, and walked dusty roads together. Their lives were woven into one another.

This really matters because our faith—everything we believe as Christians—is rooted in relationship. Our relationship with God, and our relationship with one another. Sometimes we describe this as the vertical and the horizontal:

The vertical: our life with God.
The horizontal: our life with one another.

For all who deeply believe that God walks with us, we cannot separate the constant connection between our relationship with God and how it impacts our relationships with one another. You cannot separate the two. You cannot claim to love God and remain indifferent to your neighbour. You cannot truly love your neighbour without being drawn deeper into your life with God.

This story begins in relationship, and it is in that relationship that we encounter loss. Lazarus dies. When Jesus arrives, he is met with grief. Martha meets him with words of faith and frustration. Mary falls at his feet in sorrow, “Lord, if you had been here…”

It’s a sentence I expect many of us have prayed in one form or another. I prayed this prayer a couple of weeks ago, with different words - same prayer - same intent- “Is the Lord among us?”  

We read Jesus’ response to the sisters. It is written simply, direct, and deeply human: “Jesus wept.” Just two words but perhaps the most powerful in the entire passage.

“Jesus wept.”  Imagine that. Feel that. We all know how it feels to be so deeply moved by grief that we don’t just cry or shed tears, we weep, from the depths of our soul when we lose someone we truly love. Now here’s the real powerful crux of it all. This is Jesus. Jesus Christ, the one who has the power over life and death. The one who knows that in just moments Lazarus will walk out of that tomb, and yet he does not rush past the grief. He does not bypass the pain. He stops, embraces and accepts his emotional response. He weeps.

He weeps because his friend has died. He weeps because the people he loves are hurting. He weeps because he wasn’t there to help his friend in his time of need. He weeps because death, in all its forms, is not what God intended for this world.

In that moment, we see something essential about God. God is not distant from suffering. God is not unmoved by the pain of this world. God enters it. God feels it with us. And God weeps, just as we do.

If that is true—if God weeps—then we must ask: Where is God weeping today? Surely, God weeps where war continues to devastate lives in Ukraine. God weeps where violence spreads and tensions rise in places like Iran, Lebanon, Israel and throughout the world. God weeps where families are displaced, where children grow up in fear, where communities are reduced to rubble. God weeps where creation itself is suffering. In forests lost to fire. In waters rising beyond their shores. In places where water is poisoned or non-existent. In the slow, steady strain of a climate that is changing faster than we can repair or can adapt. God weeps there.  In this world, with us.

Closer to home, God weeps in quieter, often hidden places. In the person battling addiction. In the family navigating grief. In the individual who feels invisible in a crowded world. In the elderly person sitting alone, longing for a voice, a visit, a touch.

My friends these are not abstract issues, these are human lives. These are relationships. These are our lives in our world. These are the places where love has been strained, broken, or lost. Where desperation lays bound in a tomb. These are the places that can feel like the valley described by the prophet Ezekiel—a valley of dry bones.

And into that valley, God asks a question: “Can these bones live?” It is a question not just for Ezekiel. It is a question for us. Can this world live? Can these broken places be restored? Can hope rise again where it seems to have died?

The answer Scripture gives is yes—but not in the way we might expect. In Ezekiel’s vision, life does not return all at once. There is a process. The bones come together. Flesh appears but no life. Not until the breath comes. The breath of God. The Spirit of God. The same breath that gives life in the beginning. That is where this Gospel and Ezekiel’s vision come together.

After Jesus weeps, he does not remain in that place of grief. He moves toward the tomb and he calls out to his friend “Lazarus, come out!”  and Lazarus does, but he comes out still bound—wrapped in his burial cloth. Jesus turns to those around him and says: “Unbind him, and let him go.” This is where for me the message is clear, this is where I see us, for we are one of those with him, today in our desperate world.

We journey through Lent to Easter with Jesus because resurrection is not only something Jesus does. It is something the community participates in. They are the ones who unbind him. They are the ones who help restore him to life, and this is where we begin to see our role.

If God breathes life into the world, how does that breath move today? Through us. We are the breathing wind of God in an arid world. Through ordinary, everyday acts of love. Through the quiet, often unseen ways we show up for one another. Every time you sit with someone who is grieving and simply listen to their sadness you are breathing life into a place of sorrow. Every time you take the time to really see another person—not just pass by them, not just exchange pleasantries, but truly see them—you are breathing life into someone who may feel invisible.

Every time you forgive when it would be easier to hold onto resentment, you are breathing life into a relationship that might otherwise die. Every time you offer help, share resources, or stand up for someone who is struggling you are helping to remove the grave clothes. Every act of compassion. Every act of kindness. Every moment of patience.

These are not small things. They are the very breath of God moving through the world.

Sometimes we underestimate this. We think the problems are too big. War, climate change, injustice—these feel overwhelming, and they are, but the Gospel does not ask us to fix everything. It asks us to be faithful in something. To be present. To love the person in front of us. To unbind where we can. To speak life where we are able.

Resurrection often begins in small, quiet ways. A conversation.  A gesture.  A moment of care. From there, life begins to grow. Which means that even in a world that feels broken, even in a world that sometimes feels like a valley of dry bones, the breath of God is still moving. Still restoring. Still calling people out of their tombs.

My friends, today we are invited into this beautiful story for we are called to become part of the work of restoration of healing and life giving. We are God’s people, a people who do not turn away from suffering but enter into it, even lean into it, with compassion. For we are the people who see death as more than an end, we see it as a gateway to new life and live as though resurrection is already beginning. For it is.

In other words, we are the people, God’s people, those in relationship with Jesus at the entrance ways of today’s tombs, who in our own small but meaningful ways carry the breath of God into the world and are called to unbind.

The God who weeps is also the God who calls life out of death. That same God is breathing even now through you, through me, and through all of us— bringing life into a world that so desperately needs it.

In a few minutes we will sing that beautiful hymn Breathe on me breath of God. As you do, I invite you to sing it as a prayer, let the words not just come from your brain and your mouth but from your heart. Committing yourself anew, again, to being God’s loving breath in our world.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill me with life anew,
that I may love the way you love,
and do what you would do.

Amen.