Fifth Sunday in Lent
By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, March 22, 2026)
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us this day and forever. Amen.
This passage from the Gospel of John is the beginning of a famous story. It's the first few verses in a much longer story about the raising of Lazarus. It's a story that many of you are probably familiar with. So familiar with it that many of you may know how it ends. As we end our lesson this morning, they are on their way to Bethany. Jesus is taking the disciples with him to see Mary and Martha, and Lazarus has already died. And it's very dramatic. It's a really dramatic scene. Jesus gets close to Bethany and then Martha, Martha, who he scolded earlier in the gospel for not paying enough attention to him. Martha comes out to him first and says, "If you had been here, he would not have died." And then Mary comes and says the same.
And then, famously, the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus weeps.” And the people who are standing around, the religious leaders in particular, see Jesus weeping and say, "See how he loved him. Why couldn't he save him?" Everyone's asking, "If you had been here, we know you would've saved him. Why didn't you come? Why couldn't you save him?" And then quite famously in a line that Alanna echoed in her prayers, Jesus says, "I am the resurrection and then the life." I come out of the Episcopal or the Anglican tradition, and in our tradition, we say those lines at the beginning of every funeral service. I've pronounced those lines at many memorial services and many funerals.
And then, perhaps most dramatically at the end of the scene, Lazarus comes out of the tomb. They move the stone away, and he comes out bound in the linens, and Jesus says to the crowd, "Unbind him and let him go." The word he uses for let him go is the same Greek word as the word for forgiveness. And I love the idea that this group gathered as part of the resurrection. They need to unbind him. They need to let him go. That's such a dramatic scene. Read the rest. Certainly would do so before Holy Week.
It's a beautiful story and a dramatic one. I have to confess, it's also bothered me ever since I was a teenager. I can't remember the exact time, but we read it in church one Sunday, and I was thinking about it, and I thought it's wonderful, of course, that Jesus did what he has said to have done, but it didn't take. As far as I know, Lazarus isn't still walking around someplace. At some later date, at some later time, Lazarus died again, and Mary and Martha grieved again, and they laid him in the tomb again, and they sealed that tomb again.
It occurred to me, or it occurs to me now, that Jesus in this scene has not removed grief and loss. Maybe he's delayed it. He's changed it. I want to think about that today. How has he changed it, and what does it mean for us? But also, in particular, this beginning of the story. We only have these first few verses of the story this morning. I want to pay particular attention to what's going on here, especially with the disciples, especially with Mary and Martha here at the beginning of the story, because I think it speaks to us and to the story we might want to tell about our discipleship.
This dramatic scene is actually part of a series of dramatic scenes in the Gospel of John. These lessons were not meant to be read a paragraph at a time in a church; they were meant to be read as stories. And this is part of the escalating narrative of John's gospel. This escalation starts two chapters ago in chapter 9, when Jesus heals a blind man. Alana preached on that last week, and I'll talk a little bit about something she said in the sermon, which I think is right. But he heals a blind man and then in chapter 10, he goes and he makes this, outrageous to them, scandalous pronouncement. He says that the Father and I are one. We too are one. And the leaders try to stone him for it. Things are escalating.
And now here, chapter 11. And the escalation is not ... And here, as you know, we're headed towards Holy Week, in John's gospel, that's direct. After Jesus raises Lazarus, the religious Lazarus, the religious leaders gather, and they say, "We can't handle this. We have to arrest him." This escalating series of events is the thing that leads the religious leaders at that time to decide to arrest and try Jesus. It is a series of events that are meant to be read together, and they are all pointing towards next week, all pointing towards Holy Week, to Palm Sunday and the Passion, and all the suffering and loss that are going to happen in the days to follow.
And so they're bound together as the whole gospel is, but these series of scenes since chapter 9 bound together. And there are actually these words and phrases that are repeated from chapter 9 through Good Friday. And there's one word I want to focus on in particular because it's the word that does not sit well with me, and it didn't sit well with Alana last week, and that word is the word glory.
Chapter 9, when Jesus is healing the blind man, they ask him, "Why is he suffering? Who sinned that he would suffer like this?" And Jesus says, "No one did. He's suffering so God's glory can be shown." And here, why delay? Why not go see Lazarus, save him, save these sisters from their grief and loss? Jesus says, "So God's glory could be revealed." And this word glory will repeat at the farewell address at the Last Supper. Jesus will say again and again, "Now is the hour of my glory. Now I have been glorified, and God has been glorified in me." This word's over and over again, glory.
But like Alanna, it doesn't sit well with me. I'm teaching a pastoral care class right now, and I have to tell you, if someone comes to you and you're a pastor and they ask you, "Why is my loved one suffering?" the wrong answer is "For the glory of God."
The Greek word glory, that we translate as glory, is doxa. It's got an interesting etymology. You know I like my Greek etymologies up here. It comes from the verb “dokeo,”` which means to appear. And so in its oldest format, doxa is about appearance, about perception, even about reputation, about what we perceive about a thing or know about a thing. What happens though is when the Hebrew Bible is translated into Greek, the Hebrew word for God's majesty, for God's profundity, for the weight of God, for the godness of God is translated as doxa. So in this one word in Greek, we're capturing a couple of things. It's capturing the majesty, the full majesty and godness of God, but also what that majesty and godness of God looks like to us, how we perceive it.
And this is especially apt, I think, for us Christians who say that Jesus is God in flesh. To be fully human, he has to be recognizable as human, but also there's something hidden there, something else. What do we see? What is the thing? What is the godness that is revealed in this man? And I think when we see miraculous acts like this, what we want to say is, oh, that's the glory. The raising of the dead is the glory. The deed of great power, the miracle is the glory. But I think Jesus is actually suggesting something different here.
What is the glory of God? What is God's great glory? What is the weight of God? What is the majesty of God? What is the godness of God? When Jesus in that farewell address that we will revisit on Maundy Thursday, when he's saying, "This is God's glory. God is glorified," he tells us what that is. The glory of God is love. God's glory is God's love. And the question for us is, what does that love look like? Where do we see it moving and alive in the world? How do we know it when we see it?
Jesus gives us some answers to that as well in the farewell address. But the thing I want to talk about this morning is that we can say that God is love, we can even say that God loves, and that the glory of God is God's love, but love also takes an object. Love is not just general and abstract; it's directed. I love you. You love another. If we say that God loves, we are also saying that God loves someone or something.
Now we look back to last week when Alana preached about the blind man. And Jesus says, "Why is he suffering? Who sinned?" And Jesus says, "No one sinned." He says, "God will be glorified in him." It's a little end to that thing when Jesus says, "This is God's glory," he says, "God is glorified in him, in this one that you have rejected, in this one that you have condemned, in this one that you have spit upon, an outcast. God is at work in him. That is where God is. Because the glory of God is love, and God loves him. So look for God in him."
And it's what's going on with Lazarus today, too. Jesus is not saying that illness glorifies God. Jesus is not saying that death glorifies God. I don't even think he's saying that raising Lazarus from the dead glorifies God. Jesus is saying that even where there is illness, even where there is death, God is there, God's love is there. And wherever God's love is, God's love is God's glory. The love of God works and moves and lives among the sick and among the dying and among the outcast and among the anxious and the grieving and even the dead.
I know some of you in this church who are healthcare workers or who are pastors with more experience than me have seen more of death and grief and loss and sickness than I have, and they're terrible things and I wish I could like Jesus undo them. But having stood in those rooms and prayed, having sat at bedsides, as many of you have, the one thing that is indisputably present in those places and in those moments is love. Love despite everything, living and moving and acting. And that is God's glory.
The glory of God is that there is no place God's love won't go. It doesn't matter how outcast, how out of the way, how condemned, how lost. God's love will go there. 20th-century theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, has this beautiful analogy talking about the reach of God's love. He says, "However far we wander from God, however far we go, even if we wander to the deepest pit, even if we go to the furthest reach of depth and hell, trying as hard as we can to get away from God's love, Jesus will go right there with us and take one step further than us so that always, always, we remain within the life of God, always within God's infinite reach."
So let me turn back to this passage, to the beginning of the story, the story that we know the ending of Lazarus will be raised, the story that we know the next ending of Lazarus will be lost again. This is only the beginning of the story. And I think that's what's important about it for us this day in this church, that they are at the beginning of the story of trial and grief and loss and separation, because I think that we are in a similar situation. I don't mean just liturgically, it's true liturgically. Next week is Palm Sunday.
We're moving through the season. These things are going to happen. I think I mean spiritually and socially and even politically. I think American Christianity is in this moment.
For years and years, American Christianity operated with strength and power and dominance in this culture, and you can see Jesus' ministry for three years operating with the same kind of fanfare and power and strength, but something now it seems is passing or changing. We are losing something, or maybe it's already lost. We don't know what's going to happen. We look at the world around us, we look what's going on, we look at what's being done in Christianity's name and we, I'll speak for myself, I am scared and I'm frightened. There are bad signs, bad omens everywhere.
And I think we are reacting the way you can see the disciples reacting then. Some are coming to Jesus and saying, "Just promise to keep us in power. Give me power." And others are ready to betray it for the sake of their own salvation, and others are ready to flee as we face all this uncertainty, all that's so frightening, all this loss and change.
But not every disciple acts that way. And I think three great examples are right here in the verses we have this morning, because the sisters don't do that. Mary and Martha don't do that. The sisters respond by sending word to Jesus. They make no ask of him in this passage. They do not tell him to come save their brother. They simply name the truth. "We know you love him, and he is ill." They simply say out loud that their brother is beloved, and then they wait for Jesus to come and tell them what to do.
And then Thomas, at the end of this passage, who's scared to go back because the religious leaders tried to stone him, stone Jesus, he does not expect a miracle. He does not expect a resurrection. In fact, he expects the opposite. He says, "Well, if we're going to go and die, let's go." He doesn't believe that Jesus will do a miraculous thing and make everything better. All he knows is that he loves Jesus and he's going to follow. All he knows is that the love is the glory, that the love is the victory. And so he is frightened and worried and anxious, but also resolute and willing to follow.
Over the past few weeks, more than that, the past year and a half, and, I guess, more than that, the past 10 years or more, I've been asking myself what it means to be a Christian. What does it mean in this moment to be a disciple, to follow Jesus? And we have lots of disciples in our scripture who do well and do poorly. I think these three, Mary, Martha, and Thomas in this passage might be our best examples in the moment we share in this nation, in this church, and in our world.
What does it mean to be a Christian in this time? I think it means to know, like Mary and Martha, with confidence who Jesus loves. To say it out loud, to name it in front of all the leaders like the sisters do here, to say that those who suffer and are outcast are exactly the ones that Jesus loves. To say it without ask or apology, to name it as true, and then wait for Christ and keep listening. And then it means, like Thomas does here, it means to follow Jesus into all those places where the beloved children of God wait still today to be raised.