Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 26, 2023

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 29, 2023 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 26

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 26, 2023

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 confusion and pain. 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. Yes, death stinks in more ways than one.

Death 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.

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, those whose prayers seem to have gone unanswered. We pray fervently for God to intervene when we are sick or when someone we love is sick. We pray fervently that God would come and help. We pray fervently for healing, for the surgery to be successful, for the tumor to be benign, for the chemo to work. By all means we should pray for these things, and when our requests are met, we should give thanks.

When they aren’t, however, that’s when the stink eye often shows up. That’s when the disappointment can set in. That’s when one’s relationship with God sometimes becomes strained.

When Jesus was confronted by these two grieving sisters, he didn’t give them an excuse for why he didn’t respond right away, in the way they would have liked. 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. Instead, he wept 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.” But Martha said no. She said no because death literally stinks. “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Tombs weren’t something you just opened up again. They were filthy places. They made you unclean, both physically and, in Jewish tradition, spiritually as well. But Jesus loved Lazarus enough to get dirty.

I once knew a man whose wife died. He had adored this woman. He was the kind of husband who doted on his wife, holding her hand whenever he could with a big smile on his face. He just lit up whenever she was around. He cared for her so lovingly in her final days. Then he found himself standing at her graveside in his best suit. He insisted on staying until she had been lowered into the ground. People milled around for a while, but he lingered, and lingered, and lingered. He just didn’t want to leave her. Eventually it was just me and him and the funeral director left there when he got down on the ground next to her grave. He got down on his belly and reached his arms down to his wife, calling 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.

“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 stench wafted out. Jesus called out his name: “Lazarus, come out!”

And Lazarus came out.

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.”

While Jesus didn’t respond to the sisters in the way they wanted him to, while he didn’t grant their request and come quickly to heal Lazarus, Jesus did do what gave God glory. He said no in order to say yes to something better. He let Lazarus die so that he could show his power over death. And many came to believe in him as a result.

The Christian church has always seen human life as precious, from womb to tomb. The Christian church has always sought to preserve human life. Christians literally invented the hospital so that sick people would be nursed back to health and diseases might be treated and people could go on living as long as possible. We can and should pray fervently for anyone who is ill, asking God to intervene and heal them.

But no matter how much we pray, and no matter how wonderfully advanced medical technology gets, death will come. It will come for the people we love. It will come for each of us.

That stinks, but Christ Jesus does not leave us alone when death comes. Though we might wonder where he is, though we might be disappointed that our prayers aren’t answered in the way we would like, Jesus does come to us. He comes to us in the same way he came to Mary and Martha.

Jesus comes to us with 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 will not hold us. It will not have the last word for us who trust in him.

As we encounter death, Jesus has compassion for us. He has empathy for us. He weeps with us. He knows the toll death takes on our hearts and our lives. He knows the aching absence. He loves us so much that he weeps for us and with us. And so we are never alone in our grief. Even when it feels like it, even when our heads are swimming with a swirl of intense emotions and we can’t make sense of anything, Christ Jesus is right there beside us, accompanying us in our grief, walking through it with us. We grieve, but, as St. Paul says, “we do not grieve as those who have no hope.” We have a promise from our Lord that gives us hope in the face of death.

When we are one day lowered into our grave, or scattered, or interred, Jesus will do 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, calling us to come out.

It is then that we will be unbound from death. It is then that we will be truly healed. It is then that we will bask in the fullness of the glory of God. It is then that we will rise up to live with Jesus and all the saints forever.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 19, 2023

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 22, 2023 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 19

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 19, 2023

John 9:1-41

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

When I was serving in my first call at American Lutheran Church in Chinook, Montana, I had a member there named Terry. Terry was blind. He had been blind his whole life. Terry gets around just fine though, thank you very much. He leads a full, busy life. He is an active member of the congregation. He is a person of deep faith in Jesus. Out in the narthex of the church there is a Braille version of the Lord’s Prayer Terry had done.

I would often see Terry around town with his walking stick, tap-tap-tapping along the curb. He’d joke with people that he kept trying to get his driver’s license, but that, for some reason, they just wouldn’t give it to him, so he had to walk everywhere. I was always amazed at Terry’s sense of humor. I was also amazed by this ability to find his way to the store or the post office or the church without being able to see, just by tap-tap-tapping his cane.

But there was another amazing thing about Terry. Terry could recognize people. Even without sight, he could recognize people simply by hearing their voices. I remember running in to him at the grocery store just a few days after arriving in Montana. He obviously couldn’t see me, but he said, “Hi Pastor!” I hesitated to say it, but I was so shocked I just had to ask: “Terry, how did you know it was me?” “Oh, I recognized your voice,” he said. Terry had met me exactly once before, at a meet and greet during the call process, but he knew who I was. Just by hearing my voice, he recognized me.

Even more remarkable, things often got busy and chaotic and noisy down in our church basement, but Terry always knew who was there. He could pick out the voices in the crowd, even on the other side of the room. He recognized people better than some people with perfect eyesight! He would hear their voices, even just a snippet in the midst of all the hub-bub, and he knew who they were.

In our gospel reading for today we meet a man who, like Terry, was born blind. Jesus and his disciples encountered this blind man, which led to some interesting conversation among them. The disciples assumed that either the man or his parents had done something wrong, and that was why he was blind. This was a common enough belief at the time. You even come across it sometimes today.

But Jesus dismissed the idea altogether. Instead, Jesus focused on what God could do with this unfortunate situation. Then Jesus spat on the ground and made a little salve of mud. He put the mud on the blind man’s eyes and told him: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.”

The man heard Jesus’ voice and recognized it as a voice he could trust. He trusted him enough to do what he said. He went to the pool of Siloam, washed, and his sight was restored. He could see again!

But this was only the beginning. As wonderful as the miraculous healing of this man’s eyes surely was for him, the real wonder of the story comes at the end of the reading.

After he was healed, an almost humorous chain of events unfolded. The Pharisees started an investigation which had them running around like the Keystone Cops. They were upset that Jesus did his healing on the Sabbath. There were rules about practicing the healing arts on the day of rest. There were even rules about kneading things together, which Jesus did to make the mud. So, they launched an investigation looking for something, anything, that could trap or discredit Jesus. They questioned the man. They questioned his parents: “Is this your son, who you say was born blind?” They questioned the man again, who said, “Look, all I know is I was blind, and now I see!”

When the Pharisees kept pestering him, he dropped a sick burn on them, saying, “Why are you so interested? Do you also want to become his disciples?” When the Pharisees suggested that Jesus was not from God, that he was a sinner, the man argued back that he had to be from God. “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

This man showed that he recognized, at least to some degree, who Jesus really is. The Pharisees, in spite of all they have seen and heard, clearly did not. They saw, but they didn’t recognize.

Jesus heard that the now formerly blind man had been driven out (this probably means he was kicked out of the synagogue) so he came back to pay him a visit. Like a doctor following up on a procedure, Jesus came back to check on him. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asked him. In other words, “Do you believe in the one promised by God? Do you believe in the Savior God promised to rescue his people and restore all things?” “Who is he, sir?” the man responded eagerly. “Tell me, so that I may believe in him!” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is he.” And the man replied, “Lord, I believe.” This formerly blind man now recognized Jesus not only as coming from God, but as the promised Savior. He recognized him as his Lord, and he worshipped him.

The healing of this man’s eyes was a wonderful thing, but it was a sign that pointed to something even better. The restoration of this man’s eyesight was a true miracle, but it was a miracle that pointed to something even more significant. This man didn’t just see, he recognized. He recognized who Jesus is.

The Pharisees bumbled around on a wild goose chase, unable to recognize who Jesus was. They stumbled around in the dark, the blind leading the blind. Their spiritual blindness prevented them from recognizing Jesus as the Son of Man, the promised Messiah, the Savior from God.

The real miracle in this story is the miracle of faith. The real miracle is the miracle of seeing Jesus and recognizing him as Lord and Savior.

So, how’s your spiritual eyesight these days?

Like the Pharisees, we can have perfectly good vision, physically speaking, but, like them, we all have our spiritual blind spots. Our stubborn, self-righteous, know-it-all attitude is probably the biggest blind spot we have, as it was for the Pharisees. This is also the most dangerous, as it keeps us from seeing our need for Jesus, as it did for them.

There are also shadows and valleys we walk through that make Jesus hard to recognize. It is easy to lose sight of Christ’s presence among us as we experience difficulty or struggle. It is even easier to lose sight of him when things are going well, when our lives are full of all kinds of pleasant distractions.

We can be blind to Christ’s presence with us. We can be blind to his claim on our entire lives, not just the parts we want to give him. We can be blind to his call to follow him and serve him and obey him. We can even become blind to the salvation and new life he gives to us as a free gift of grace.

We all have our spiritual blind spots, to be sure. And those who are blind in this way, Jesus says, are stuck in their sin.

But Jesus doesn’t leave us in this blindness. He doesn’t leave us in the dark. He has come to open our eyes too. He comes to show us that he is the light of the world.

Today Jesus calls us back to the font of our baptism, our own pool of Siloam, so that our eyes might be opened once again. Jesus comes to us today through his Living Word so that we might hear his voice. He comes to us in his Holy Supper so that we might see and taste and touch his grace. The sign Jesus did in restoring this man’s eyesight points to the bigger miracle he continues to do today, which is to open our eyes in faith, in order to let his light in.

Note that the man didn’t fully recognize Jesus until he spoke to him, saying “the one speaking to you is him.” He didn’t fully recognize Jesus until Jesus spoke the word which revealed himself as the Son of Man, the promised Messiah, the Savior from God. It was then that he called Jesus his Lord and worshipped him.

Some among us struggle with their physical eyesight. All of us have spiritual blind spots. But today all of us can hear and recognize Jesus by his voice. Today Jesus speaks a word to us that reveals himself to us as our savior. He says, “Your sins are forgiven.” He says, “This is my body, my blood, given for you.” He says, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

We can recognize him by his voice. And in so doing, the eyes of faith are opened. We recognize that he is here with us. We recognize him as our Lord, and we worship him.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church