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Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026
John 11:1-45
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Death stinks. It literally stinks, of course, but it stinks in every other way as well. It stinks because it brings grief, which can be overwhelming, even debilitating at times. It stinks because it means loss. Death brings an aching absence in your life that used to be filled by the person who died. If it was someone especially close to you, this absence can be as profound as losing a limb. Death also stinks because it can also make us confused about what God is up to in our lives. It can make us wonder whether God hears our prayers, whether God cares about us.Yes, death stinks in more ways than one.
You can almost picture Martha and Mary giving Jesus the stink eye when he showed up a day late and a dollar short after their beloved brother died. “If you had been here, Lord, our brother would not have died,” they each said to him. When these sisters sent word to Jesus that their brother Lazarus was gravely ill, Jesus didn’t rush to their side. He didn’t immediately respond to their request.
John tells us, “Though Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” It is almost as though John feels a need to reassure us that Jesus loved them, because his dallying, his delayed response, sure didn’t look like love. By the time Jesus headed out to Bethany, Lazarus was already dead. And so came the stink eye directed towards him from Martha and Mary. Then came the thinly veiled disappointment in him as they said, “Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.”
I sometimes hear echoes of Mary and Martha’s words in the grief and the disappointment and the confusion and the anger of those who have lost loved ones. When grief is raw, it can feel like God has failed us. When grief lingers, years or even decades later, we struggle to feel God’s comforting love. When things don’t happen the way we would like, Jesus can feel cruelly absent.
When Jesus was confronted by these two grieving sisters, he didn’t scold them for how they felt. He didn’t scold them for their passive aggressive comments. Instead, he gave them a promise. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus said. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Jesus didn’t give these two disappointed sisters an explanation for why he allowed things to unfold as they did. But he did weep with them. Even though he knew what would ultimately happen, Jesus had empathy for them. He understood what death did to people. He was moved by their grief and shared in it. His emotions flowed so freely that some in the crowd noticed it, saying, “See how he loved him!” Others were cynical about it, saying, “If he loved him, why didn’t he come a little earlier and save him?”
But Jesus did love Lazarus. He loved Lazarus so much that he asked to be taken to the tomb. They brought him to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone lying against it to seal it tight. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha said no. She said no because death literally stinks. “Lord,” she said, “already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” I like how the King James Version translates this passage, which has Martha objecting because, “he stinketh.” Tombs weren’t something you just opened up again. They stinketh! They were filthy places. They made you unclean, both physically and, in Jewish tradition, spiritually as well. But Jesus loved Lazarus enough to enter the stink. Jesus loved Lazarus so much that he was willing to get dirty.
I did a graveside service for a woman once. Her husband, who absolutely adored her, had been taking care of her for a long time, during a long illness, and now he found himself in his best suit, standing over her open grave. He insisted on staying until she had been lowered into the ground. When that was done, he still didn’t want to leave. People milled around for a while, but he lingered, and lingered, and lingered, until it got awkward and people started to head to the reception.
But not him. He wouldn’t budge. Eventually it was just me and him and the funeral director left there. Before he finally left, he got down on the ground, laying on his belly next to her grave. He reached his arms down to his wife and called out her name. It didn’t matter to him that he was getting mud all over his nice suit. He loved her and he didn’t want to let her go. It was gut-wrenching and beautiful at the same time.
Jesus loved Lazarus enough to get dirty too. This is the kind of love Jesus had for him. It’s the kind of love he has for you too.
“Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” Jesus said. So they opened up the tomb. Jesus came right up next to it. Jesus spoke into that dark cave as the stink wafted out. Jesus called out his name: “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus came out. Jesus said to the people, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
If there was any question about whether Jesus loved him before, there wasn’t now. If there was confusion about what Jesus was up to, it had now given way to the joy and wonder of Jesus’ power over death. If there were any doubts about Jesus before, they now gave way to faith in him. As John tells us, “Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
Although Jesus didn’t respond to the sisters in the way they wanted him to, he did transform Lazarus’ death into an opportunity to show the glory of God. He did use it as an opportunity to show that his voice, his word, is more powerful than death.
Many heard this word and came to believe in him as a result. They heard this word and trusted in him, even in the face of death.
The stink of death has been wafting through our congregation over these past few months. I have some mementos from David Lura’s ministry in my office, which are an honor to have, but which also remind me how much I miss him. We had a memorial service this past week for Gene and Dottie Gilbert, and I was talking with a couple of our members about how we now have one remaining charter member who is active in our congregation. Sande Mulkey is being remembered today. I’ll be meeting with Nancy Tipton’s family after Easter to bury her, and in the meantime, I still look out expecting to see her in her usual spot. I’ve talked to others recently who have had to travel for funerals, or who have lost loved ones and have marked milestones and birthdays and anniversaries which have stirred up a fresh round of grief. In the past 10 days or so two of our council members have lost loved ones. There’s been a lot of death lately, and a lot of grief, and it stinketh.
Jesus can take your stink eye, if that’s what you are feeling towards him. He can take your questions, your disappointment. Mary and Martha had similar reactions, and Jesus never once scolded them for it.
What he did do is give them a promise. What he did do is weep with them. He came alongside them in their grief, sharing in it. What he did do is bring glory to God by showing his ultimate power over death
Jesus does the same for you. He gives you a promise. He says, “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.” Jesus acknowledges the reality of death, saying, “even though they die,” but he promises that death not have the last word. He will.
Jesus weeps with you. He knows the toll death takes on our hearts and our lives. He knows the aching absence. He weeps for us and with us, and so we are never alone in our grief. Christ is with us.
Best of all, Jesus has shown us his power over death. What happened here with Lazarus was a sneak preview. God was just getting warmed up! The raising of Lazarus is a foreshadowing of what we will be celebrating just two weeks from now when we gather to bask in the resurrection of Jesus, which breaks the curse of death for all of us.
Because of his resurrection, even now our Lord begins to move us from confusion to hope and peace, perhaps with time even joy and wonder.
Because of his resurrection, even now our Lord Jesus begins to move us from disappointment and doubt, to believing in him as our savior and trusting in his power over death.
Because of his resurrection, we can go to our own graves trusting that Jesus will do for us what gives God the greatest glory. He will come to our tomb. He will open it up. He will get down into the dirt and stink of it all to be close to us, refusing to let us go. In his great love for us he will reach his arms down into our graves and call out our names. And his voice has a power that ours do not. His word is more powerful than death.
And so when we die, the first thing we will hear is the voice of our Lord Jesus calling our name. It is then that we will be unbound from death, and that stink will be gone forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church