"The Lazarus Incident"

 

John 11:1-44

March 22, 2021

 

Jesus knew that if he went back to Judaea to help Lazarus, he was walking into his own death.  John says that he had gone to Jerusalem shortly after he had given sight to a man born blind and that some of the authorities in the temple were trying to figure him out. 

“How long will you keep us in suspense?  If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” [John 10:24]

He told them to look at the signs visible in his life and decide for themselves, so some of them took him as making himself equal to God, a blasphemy punishable by death.  Some of them picked up stones to stone him with and others sent for the temple guard to arrest him, but he escaped and skipped town.

“He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier,” [John 10:40]

which was kind of a signal of defiance to Herod and his supporters: “You chopped off John’s head, but you didn’t destroy his message, because it came from God.  You can try to destroy me, now, and watch what happens.”

            So when the word came from Mary and Martha, from Bethany (which was just outside Jerusalem),

‘Lord, he whom you love is ill,’ [John 11:3]

Jesus was being called to more than a casual visit, even with a healing thrown in.  The unspoken question was whether Jesus was for real. 

            The gospel of John, just before it tells us about all of this, repeats some of Jesus’ teaching, including his words,

“I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.  The hired hand runs away because the hired hand does not care for the sheep.  I am the good shepherd.”  [John 10:11-14a]

Here the question was put right in front of him: “Do you mean that?”  And the answer was, “Yes.”

 He took his time, maybe so that the confrontation between the powers of life and death would be all the clearer, maybe for some other reason.  But when he headed for Bethany, he knew the danger and the likely outcome of the trip for everyone involved, not just for Lazarus.

“Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’  Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’”  [John 11:14-16]

            When he arrived, there was all of the give-and-take with Martha and Mary.  There was the blame:

“If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” [John 11:21]

There was the sort of passive-aggressive demand:

“But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” [John 11:22]

There were the consolations of faith where:

“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’”  [John 11:23]

There was Martha’s recognition that she may have asked too much as

“Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’” [John 11:24]

            But then Jesus went off-script.  There was not going to be a need to wait until the last day.  The glory and power of God were right there in front of her in the person of somebody so familiar that she had asked him to make her sister help her wash the dishes. 

 “Jesus said to her, ‘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.’” [John 11:25-26]

Right then and there, Jesus had already shown up for her and for Mary and (they would soon see) for Lazarus at what would be the risk of his life.  Soon they would see – along with everyone else gathered there – that Jesus had shown up at what would be the cost of his own life.  As John retells the amazing events of Lazarus return, he can’t help throwing in details that make us think about Jesus’ own burial and resurrection.  Jesus meets Mary, crying outside a tomb with a stone that has to be rolled away to let her brother emerge, and somebody (who must have been pretty brave and with a stomach strong enough to stand the stench of a rotting corpse) removes the burial wrappings, like the ones that were found folded up in the tomb from which Jesus would rise not long afterward.

            The most amazing thing, though, would be expressed later in a letter sent a few years later to some of Jesus’ followers living in Rome.  This miracle of raising Lazarus had led Jesus into a place where his life was threatened, and he went out of love for Lazarus and his sisters.  But when it came time that the people who had wanted him killed got hold of him, that his love for the wolf would be no less than his love for his sheep. 

“Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  [Romans 5:7-8]

Those words were written by someone who at one point took part in the arrest of many of Jesus’ followers and who stood by, approving the stoning of at least one other. 

Jesus gives life, and renews life, and gives his life for our own.  Ask Nicodemus, who had grown weary and was questioning everything.  Ask the Samaritan woman at the well, whose history left her without dignity or respect.  Ask a man born blind who was given sight and then had to figure out how to relate to his new situation.  Ask Lazarus, who was a literal corpse.  By Jesus’ grace, we’ll all have a chance to do that – and they may have some questions for us, too, and the answer will be something that Jesus has done.

"First Sight"

 

John 9:1-41

March 15, 2026

 

¹As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ³Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, ⁷saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. ⁸The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ ⁹Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ ¹⁰But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ ¹¹He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’ ¹²They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’

¹³They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. ¹⁴Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. ¹⁵Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.’ ¹⁶Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’ And they were divided. ¹⁷So they said again to the blind man, ‘What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.’ He said, ‘He is a prophet.’

¹⁸The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight ¹⁹and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’ ²⁰His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; ²¹but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ ²²His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. ²³Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’

²⁴So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, ‘Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.’ ²⁵He answered, ‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ ²⁶They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ ²⁷He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’ ²⁸Then they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. ²⁹We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ ³⁰The man answered, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. ³¹We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. ³²Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. ³³If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ ³⁴They answered him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’ And they drove him out.

³⁵Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ ³⁶He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ ³⁷Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ ³⁸He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshipped him. ³⁹Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ ⁴⁰Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ ⁴¹Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see”, your sin remains.

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            Have you ever considered what it would be like to live to be an adult, having been born blind, and then suddenly to be given your sight?

            All around you would be things that you recognize only by touch, people you know only by their voices, foods you know only by taste and texture, flowers you know only by their scent.  Someone would have to help you learn what colors are.  A bird flying toward you might be terrifying.  Hand gestures would mean nothing unless somebody told you that holding up your index and middle finger sometimes means “two” and sometimes means “peace”.  Would you know not to look at the sun?  Would you worry that when night falls it means you are losing your sight again?  If you close your eyes, will all these things disappear?  Speaking for myself, if I had been born blind, I don’t know whether I could handle all of that, all coming at me all at once. 

            Some interpreters think that fear of such a sudden and drastic change (even when it comes from good news) is, in part, what this part of the gospel of John is about.  The arrival of the Messiah is good news, but it shifted a lot of lives around in a lot of ways reflected in John’s account of this miracle.

The book seems to have been written at a point where the community centered on Jesus and what would become Judaism as we now know it were splitting apart.  John refers to “the Jews” as a separate group in a way that Jesus himself would not have done.  We read that

“the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.” [John 9:22]

They had “already agreed”.  That sounds like a present reality for the people John was writing for.   When he says that the man’s parents were frightened of being put out of the synagogue, and that their son did have that happen to him, the hearers would have understood the fears that come from news (even good news) that make you reassess everything and rethink your life.

The whole group of people who had come to confess Jesus as the Messiah were facing a whole new world themselves.  Some of them were no longer welcome in the setting that had given shape to their faith and meaning to their lives and none of them were part of the pagan cultures that surrounded them in other ways.  That is confusing and disorienting.  It’s no surprise that the man whose life Jesus had changed was confused about that as well.  Pushed by the Pharisees to distance himself from Jesus, he wouldn’t do it.  He kept expressing his gratitude and giving Jesus credit for his new-found sight. He said,

 “‘I do not know whether he is a sinner”

 (meaning someone who would break the Sabbath to heal someone), but insisted,

“One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’” [John 9:25]

The experience of being pushed on this, in fact, just made him more defiant about it.

“They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’” [John 9:26-27]

They don’t seem to have cared for that response.

            Jesus really does change people in profound ways when he shows them a new way to view the world, whether with physical eyes or with the eyes of faith.  It wasn’t just this man.  T.S. Eliot, in his poem “The Journey of the Magi”, imagines what it must have been like later in life for one of the wise men to look back on his encounter with the child Jesus and try to make sense of it:

“All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.”

To meet Jesus is to become less comfortable with the way things are.  It is no longer to accept the terms that the world dictates to us.

            That’s going to mean questioning and rejecting a lot of what we are taught in favor of new ways of life outlined by Jesus:

“‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. [Matthew 5:38-42]

There’s a whole lot more of that in the Sermon on the Mount.  None of it is especially practical. 

It’s as if Jesus were asking us to see a whole new world, and to live in it.  He called it the Kingdom of God.  I like the way that Rachel Held Evans summarizes Jesus’ vision of that kingdom. 

“In contrast to every other kingdom that has been and ever will be, this kingdom belongs to the poor, Jesus said, and to the peacemakers, the merciful, and those who hunger and thirst for God.  In this kingdom, the people from the margins and the bottom rungs will be lifted up to places of honor, seated at the best spots at the table.  This kingdom knows no geographical boundaries, no political parties, no single language or culture.  It advances not through power or might, but through acts of love and joy and peace, missions of mercy and kindness and humility.  This kingdom has arrived, not with a trumpet’s sound but with a baby’s cries, not with the vanquishing of enemies but with the forgiving of them, not on the back of a warhorse but on the back of a donkey, not with triumph and a conquest but with a death and a resurrection.”[1]

 

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[1]  Rachel Held Evans, “Kingdom” in Searching for Sunday (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015), 252-253.

"A Man Who Told Me Everything I Have Ever Done"

 

John 4:5-42

March 8, 2026

 

⁵ So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷ The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

²⁷ Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹ “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰ They left the city and were on their way to him.

³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³ So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶ The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷ For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

³⁹ Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word. ⁴² They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

 

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            I know that today’s gospel lesson was long.  All I can say for that is that next week’s is even longer.  John writes very differently from the other gospel writers.  He enjoys telling stories about the intricate relationships and interactions between Jesus and all kinds of people.  Last week it was Nicodemus, a leader and teacher of the Jews, a highly respected and influential man.  Today it is a Samaritan woman with a past (and a present) who turns out to be more influential in her own circles than Nicodemus was in his.  Jesus understood them both, befriended them both, spoke the deepest truth to both, and brought each of them the healing and blessing of God when they felt it out of their reach.

            The woman Jesus met at the well had two strikes against her to begin with, as far as the religious culture of that time and place was concerned.  John reminds us first that

“Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” [John 4:9]

There was a strict Jim-Crow type of segregation.  So here is Jesus asking her help with the Samaritans-only drinking fountain.  The other problem was that she was a woman.  In the Talmud, collected sayings and commentary of leading rabbis of that era, we read words advising:

“… talk not much with womankind.  They said this of a man’s own wife: how much more of his fellow’s wife!  Hence the Sages have said: He that talks much with womankind brings evil upon himself and neglects the study of the Law and at last will inherit Gehenna.”[1]

No wonder that when Jesus’ disciples found him talking with her,

“They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman,” [John 4:27]

They both go way out on a limb simply to acknowledge the other’s existence. 

Then it’s game on!  Or maybe I should say, “Game off”. She, who is supposedly a distraction from religious studies, asks him theological questions. Jesus, who is supposed to be insulated from people’s illicit entanglements, lets her know that he’s aware not only of her past five husbands [4:18] but that she’s currently keeping company with a sixth man.  She can clearly see that he’s not just well-informed but some kind of prophet – and maybe even the Messiah. 

“When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”  Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” [John 4:25-26]

The two of them – the shady-lady Samaritan and the Jewish Messiah – drop their pretenses and are just themselves.  The Savior doesn’t hold her at arm’s length, and she doesn’t have to impress him with her swagger.  They drop any prefabricated images and preconceived scripts.  Then they can really communicate openly.  Then she can speak her hopes and he can speak God’s promises.

            Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor centered in Denver.  One of her books, Accidental Saints, says on the back that

“Tattooed, angry, and profane, this former standup comic turned pastor stubbornly, sometimes hilariously, resists the God she feels called to serve.  But God keeps showing up in the least likely of people – a church-loving agnostic, a drag queen, a felonious bishop, and a gun-toting member of the NRA.”

That’s kind of an image that she has nurtured, and it is genuinely who she is – to a degree.  In the book itself she questions about the way anybody, not just her, gets in God’s way when someone holds on to a curated image too tightly or too long.  She writes,

“We carefully create a persona, but it’s always one that’s only partially true.  And maintaining this partial truth, this created personality, this assembled ‘self,’ can be pretty exhausting.” 

She points out that social media

“allow us to present an image of ourselves from just the parts of our lives and personalities we wish to project.  This is why we almost never see updates on Facebook that say: Spent the evening alone again last night. Or: Wonder if I’ll ever be loved.  Or: Just manipulated my spouse to get my own way.”[2]

            Jesus knows that about us.  The woman told her neighbors,

“He told me everything I have ever done,” [John 4:39]

none of which prevented him from treating her as someone with dignity, someone worth risking the disapproval of his friends, someone worth taking time for.  In fact, Jesus interrupted his travel plans to stay with that whole Samaritan town for two days, just to be among them and let them get to know him, to the point where

“many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’” [John 4:41-42]

People are not generational profiles.  People are not defined solely by gender or sexuality or political party or ethnicity or profession or hair color.  Don’t do that to others, don’t let others do that to you, and don’t do that to yourself.  People are not types.  If we come before the Lord trying to be anybody but ourselves, we’re not fooling anyone. 

“But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” [John 4:23-24]

            Thanks be to Jesus, the Savior of the world, we can do that. 

Amen.

 

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[1] P. Aboth 1.5 – cited in C.K. Barratt, The Gospel According to St. John, second edition (Phila.: Westminster Press, 1978), 240.

[2] Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People (New York: Convergent Books, 2015), 124.