Glen Avon Presbyterian Church

“Waking the Dead”

Rev. Lon Weaver

In John’s gospel, Jesus makes a crucial decision to turn toward Jerusalem. It’s a decision to face, at last, the forces hostile to his words, his acts, and his purposes. A prelude to the epochal events of Holy Week and Good Friday is a stop along the way to Jerusalem, a visit to the home of Lazarus. In John 11, we read these words of Jesus to the apostles:

“Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.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 11:11-16)

What he meets upon his arrival is a clan and community mourning the death of Lazarus. Jesus is so moved by the scene that we read the briefest verse in the Bible offering a view of Jesus found nowhere else in the gospels: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) Death has overtaken the community. However, rather than avoiding the weight of that fact, Jesus enters the midst of it, fully embraces the emotions embedded within, and ultimately offers life to it. The hint of Easter’s aroma wafted through the village of Bethany that day.

The season of Lent can be precisely that precursor to Easter, that prequel to the Easter drama, that prelude to the death knell of death for us, as well. Lent is an invitation to look for the places in our lives which are death-dealing, to face them, to absorb them in all of their deepest significance, and then to defy them with the life-giving force of resurrection faith.

As we make our way through the month of March, as we celebrate with the rest the northern hemisphere the awakening of the planet from winter’s dusk to spring’s dawn, may we walk with the apostles once again as they accompany Jesus to a little village called Bethany. May we get a taste of the resurrection miracle, just enough to whet our appetites for the main event on Easter morn. Amen.