5 Lent/Year A/March 26, 2023
Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; John 11:1-45
Opening prayer: written by Nancy Johnson
Holy God, Creator of Life, you call us out of our dark places, offering us the grace of new life. When we see nothing but hopelessness, you surprise us with the breath of your spirit. Call us out of our complacency and routines, set us free from our self-imposed bonds, and fill us with your spirit of life, compassion, and peace, In the name of Jesus, your anointed one, we pray. Amen.
On the 1st Sunday in Lent, we heard the familiar gospel reading, that begins with Jesus, being led by the Spirit into the wilderness, after his baptism…
The wilderness story every year, unfolds with the devil, the tempter, Satan, challenging Jesus in his time of extreme hunger and weariness through a variety of ways…trying to tempt him to give into the empty power of the ways of the world, that leave us famished way beyond any 40 day fast in the wilderness. Jesus emerges from his time in the wilderness, having wrestled with some questions about his purpose and calling after his baptism… Bishop and author Jake Owensby posed these questions simply, and suggested that they are two questions that we ought to consider, too throughout the season of Lent: “Who or what is your God? Who are you?”
As we come to the 5th Sunday in Lent, and our final week of Lent set to begin…I’m hoping that you’ve had a chance to spend some time with these questions the past several weeks of your Lenten journey, discerning your own answers to these questions…“Who or what is your God? Who are you?”
Those questions are certainly important and profound ones to consider on this day when the gospel reading prompts us to consider what we believe about God and ourselves, in the context of death, grief, and suffering…
In our gospel reading today, the raising of Jesus’ beloved friend, Lazarus, we are given a glimpse into a story that opens to us not only a window into the lives of those experiencing the death of a loved one, but we get a glimpse of Jesus, being fully human, who was deeply immersed in the lives of others. We see that he was not just a heavenly, spiritual being only…Jesus had skin, flesh and blood, and had deep connections and relationships with others
. He experienced anger, discouragement, frustration, sadness…profound love for others…deep sorrow in his own heart…we were shown how he reached out with compassion, with empathy…and after a brief back and forth conversation with Martha and Mary, pouring out her heart over the loss of her brother, and seeing how she and the others were weeping and so deeply grieved…Jesus, too, began to weep. Jesus wept.
Weeping, crying, sobbing, tears…this is the most universal human response to what deeply grieves our hearts and unites us to Jesus and one another.
Jesus wept. We weep for our loved ones, we weep for ourselves, we weep for all those suffering, we weep for a broken world, where not everyone knows they are a beloved child of God…we weep for those who wait and long for answers in times of grief and suffering…waiting for the Lord; more than watchman for the morning… more than watchman for the morning…
Jesus knows what grieves our hearts, as human beings. And Jesus is right there with us, in the waiting, when we wrestle with so many questions, that don’t have easy answers…Jesus knows…
We can trust and believe that indeed Jesus sees us, hears us, knows us, and loves us…most especially in those times we might feel like no-one could possibly understand us or what we are going through…
This is the hope and the good news we can hold onto…
Jesus offers us hope in these words, too when he proclaims this good news:
“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.”
And then he asks the question: “Do you believe this?”
“Do you believe this?”
In our minds, from the vantage point of our being fully human…it may be hard to make sense of Jesus’ words or believe them. How can we be alive if we die, how can we never die? That’s not possible, we tell ourselves…we know that all of us will die someday…because of illness, diseases, accidents, from our bodies growing tired and breaking down…
Yet, here is one small nugget of hope that can help us believe this good news proclaimed by Jesus: On the day of our baptism, surrounded by loved ones and our faith community, we are reminded that in life and in death, in body and in spirit, we belong to God and each other… We are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever.
We belong to God, Jesus reminds us of that…our baptisms remind us of that…
Our bodies and our spirits belong to God… our baptisms remind us that we belong to one another, too…
Not just for today…but for all the days ahead…in this life, and in the life yet to come…we are marked as Christ’s own for ever…
This is the hope and the good news we can hold onto…
“Do you believe this?”
Let us pray: Hymn after sermon: (H) 335 - vs 4 & 5
4 I am the resurrection,
I am the life.
They who believe in me,
even if they die,
they shall live for ever.
And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up,
and I will raise them up on the last day.
5 Yes, Lord, we believe
that you are the Christ,
the Son of God
who has come into the world.
And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up,
and I will raise them up on the last day.
Rev. Julie Platson, Rector
St Peter’s by the Sea Episcopal Church, Sitka, Alaska