Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 23, 2026 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 22

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

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 15, 2026

by Jeffrey Spencer | Mar 15, 2026 | Sermons

CLICK HERE for a worship video for March 15

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 15, 2026

John 9:1-41

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

As every driver knows, there are areas behind your vehicle that you can’t see with your mirrors. Your rear-view mirror shows you a large swath of what is behind you. Your side mirrors show you another swath on either side. But there are areas that none of those mirrors cover. We call it those areas blind spots. Those blind spots are one of the most dangerous aspects of driving. People not checking their blind spots when they’re merging or changing lanes is one of the most common causes of serious accidents. Many newer cars now have sensors which light up when there’s someone in your blind spot, which is great – but they aren’t perfect. If someone is coming up fast behind you, it might not light up in time. And so, those blind spots can still be dangerous.

The phrase “blind spot” has also become an idiom referring to situations that have nothing to do with driving. We use it to describe someone’s inability or unwillingness to perceive something, perhaps because of a bias, or a deeply ingrained assumption, or a simply a lack of knowledge.

We have another long gospel reading this morning, and this one is particularly rich with themes. There are a number of different directions we could go with it. What I would like to focus on this time around is the problem of spiritual blind spots. There are people with some serious spiritual blind spots in this story, and these spiritual blind spots are dangerous – for them, and for us.

On the surface, this gospel reading is about a man who was born blind. He encounters Jesus, who has compassion on him, and restores his sight. But the great length of the rest of the reading tells us that there is much more to the story. This is much more than a healing story. This is about the spiritual blind spots which prevent the Pharisees from seeing who Jesus is.

When the Pharisees learned that this man’s sight had been restored, they launched an investigation. How can this be? Who could have done this? It certainly couldn’t be a godly man, for he mixed together spit and dirt and used it as a salve, and he did it on the sabbath. Technically, that’s work. That involved kneading. That involved practicing the healing arts. Both of these are no-no’s on the sabbath. So, there’s that. On the other hand, some argued, who could possibly restore eyesight to a blind man without the power of God? For many of these Pharisees, their self-righteousness as meticulous keepers of the sabbath gave them a huge blind spot, preventing them from seeing God at work in Jesus Christ.

Well, the Pharisees thought, maybe this guy wasn’t really blind in the first place. Maybe this was all a big hoax. So off they went like the keystone cops to interview the parents. The parents insisted that he was indeed blind from birth, and so the Pharisees were at another dead end. Now their cynicism, their skepticism, their doubts, gave them a huge blind spot, preventing them from seeing who Jesus truly was and what he was capable of.

These blind spots really come into focus when they went to the formerly blind man for a follow up interview. “What did he do?” they asked him. “How did he do it?” Where does this Jesus come from, anyway? And the formerly blind man replied, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.” What he’s saying is: Isn’t this ironic – you guys are supposed to be the religious experts, and you can’t see what is going on here. And yet, here I am, a guy who spent most of his life literally blind, and, to me, it is pretty plain to see!

This all came to a head when the investigation led them to Jesus himself. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” The Pharisees sensed that Jesus was talking about them, and so they shot back, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

This almost sounds like a riddle, doesn’t it? Jesus said he came so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind. Those who insist that they can see are really blind, while those who can see that they can’t see, can really see!

This riddle-like language is all about spiritual blind spots. The Pharisees have some big ones. Their self-righteousness created a blind spot. Their cynicism, skepticism, and doubt created a blind spot. Their stubbornness in insisting that they are the ones who have everything figured out created a blind spot. All these factors in their lives make it so that they cannot see Jesus for who he is. They cannot see what he is up to. They cannot see their need for him. They have these huge blind spots, and the most dangerous thing about them is that they don’t even know that they’re there.

There’s a scene from a movie which keeps coming to mind for me. I know we’re much closer to Easter than Christmas, but it is from a Christmas movie. There’s a scene in the movie “Elf” where Buddy the Elf hears his coworker singing in the locker room shower. Her voice is lovely and he is entranced, so he goes into the locker room, sitting on the counter just outside her shower. It sounds a little creepy, but his intentions are completely innocent. The charm of his character is his utter naiveté. He listens to her sing for a bit before he starts singing along with her. At this point she realizes there is a man in the locker room. She screams at him to get out, and Buddy covers his eyes and starts running blindly, away from the shower, and WHAM, at full speed he slams into a locker and falls to the floor.

I watch this movie pretty much every year, and this scene cracks me up every time. Yes, it might be true that I have the sense of humor of an eight-year-old boy, but here’s the thing: It is said that even the most absurd humor is funny to people because it has an element of truth to it. In fact, comedians and comedy writers will tell you it must have an element of truth in order to be funny. Oscar Wilde famously said that if you want to tell people the truth, you have to make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you. And I think this scene, as silly and juvenile as it is, points to a deeper, if uncomfortable truth about us, which is that we all have a tendency to run blindly, with the full force of someone who insists that they know what they’re doing, until we hit a hard, blunt surface. We have a tendency to run with blind confidence in ourselves until we inevitably hit a wall.

You see, we have some of the same blind spots as the Pharisees. There are times when we have the same sense of self-righteousness. There are times when we have the same cynicism, skepticism, and doubt. There are times when we have the same stubbornness, insisting that we have everything figured out. And these create for us these spiritual blind spots which prevent us from seeing the truth. They prevent us from seeing who Jesus truly is for us. They prevent us from seeing what he came to do for us. They prevent us from seeing our need for him. And these blind spots are dangerous! We run confidently, but blindly, through life until we hit a wall, until we crash out.

This story is told in order to open our eyes. This story is given to us so that we can get past these blind spots and see the truth more clearly.

To see clearly is to begin by acknowledging our own blindness. This isn’t a riddle, this is repentance. It is to admit the ways in which our self-righteousness and our skepticism and our stubbornness have gotten in the way of seeing and trusting and worshipping Jesus. To see clearly is, first of all, to confess our sin.

To see clearly is also to see Jesus as the formerly blind man saw him. It is to see not only our sin, but also our savior. It is to trust that Jesus has come from God to bring us forgiveness, life, and salvation. It is to have our eyes opened by Jesus to the truth – the truth about us, and the truth about him. It is to receive the gift of restoration from him, the gift of new eyes and a new life. It is to look upon Jesus with faith, and worship him as our Lord and God.

C. S. Lewis once wrote: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

This is a beautiful description of the Christian life. It is a beautiful description of what it means to live with the restored sight that faith in Jesus brings. Jesus opens our eyes in such a way that our blind spots are overcome and we can perceive him rightly, and with him, everything else.

Jesus opens our eyes to see that we really do need him. We really do need his forgiveness, and so we move from self-righteousness to humility.

Jesus opens our eyes to see that he really can help us. He overcomes our cynicism, moving us to hope. He overcomes our skepticism, moving us to trust. He overcomes our doubts, moving us to faithfully worship him.

Jesus opens our eyes to see that we don’t have it all figured out after all, but that it is okay. He has come to help us see him as the way, the truth, and the life. He has come to lead us into a new life of joyful discipleship, moving us from stubbornly following our own way to following him into what, as the Apostle Paul says, is good and right and true.

By his loving grace, Jesus touches your eyes today, so that every blind spot might be removed, and you would see clearly that he is the Lord of your life and the savior of your soul.

He comes to you once again to restore and sharpen your vision, so that with eyes of faith, you would see him rightly, and with him everything else.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church