Lent 5 Year A 2026: John 11:1-45

On Saturday, October 26, 2013 Nebraska lost their afternoon game to Minnesota. In 2013, that was way worse than it is now. In the early evening, my phone rang. Now for those of you who might not have had cell phones in 2013, there are two things you need to know. First, the ringers on our phones were on. We answered phone calls in general. And second, our ringers were so on that we paid money for special ring tones. Different people had their own ringtones so you could tell who was calling without having to look. So while my phone, in general, rang to the tune of “Danger Zone” from the movie Top Gun, my brother had chosen his own ring tone on my phone. It was called “eagle’s call” and it came pre-downloaded on the phone. There were bells in the background followed by a ridiculous, loud caw. So back to that evening, my phone began to caw from its place on the sofa and I assumed my brother was calling to discuss that terrible, terrible football game. But when I answered the phone, it wasn’t my brother, it was his girlfriend. I was still recovering from the panic which was rapidly replacing my frivolity as I processed hearing her say that there were paramedics at their house. That he was unresponsive. My brother lived in Omaha so my plan had been to come up after church Sunday, maybe take a couple of days off work to keep him company as he recovered from his allergic reaction or whatever it was that had him in such bad shape. But by 11:00 that night my husband and I had been summoned to Omaha. When we got there, we were told that my brother had had an aneurysm burst in his brain. He was not going to recover. And he died.

It was after that experience that I began to feel a sisterhood with Martha. That though I know the second part of her statement to be true, and even though Mary says the same thing to Jesus without the theological couching given to Martha, Martha has my heart. I don’t totally buy the historicity of the second half of Martha’s statement, where she says, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him”. It feels like John putting some theology and some foreshadowing into her mouth. But historicity aside, while Mary is waiting, Martha is charging out of her house, demanding answers. I hear in Martha’s words a tone of reproach, of scolding, of “where the hell were you when I needed you?”

We’re not sure if this Mary and Martha are the same Mary and Martha as those who Jesus visited in the Gospel of Luke. But Martha’s behavior in both stories are consistent with the little we know about her. She gives real oldest sister vibes. She’s the one who is in charge. Luke refers to the household as her household, which would suggest the absence of any man (brother included) to take precedence over her - but it could simply suggest that she was such a force of nature that it was essentially her household anyway. Or maybe Lazarus was a child - we are given no information other than that he was their brother.

In verse 20, Martha left the house to go meet Jesus. On its face, it could look like Martha is simply being hospitable. But people in mourning normally did not leave the house during the first seven days following a death except to go to the grave of the deceased. Martha would not have left the house to be a good host; plus, in a situation such as Martha’s there is no energy to be concerned about social niceties. It would have been seen as inappropriate to leave for such a reason anyway. But Martha is so mad, so tired, so distraught, that she can’t wait for Jesus to arrive to light into him. She has been publicly grieving - when you went to the tomb to weep, it was a production of wailing and lamentation for the dead person - for at least four days. Before that she was caring for an ill sibling, no matter his age. And then the man in whom she had put her last hope failed her.

When have you felt like Martha? Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Lord, if you had been here…

I think Jesus in Gethsemane feels like Martha did when she sent that message, and was left feeling the same way as Martha felt when she cried out for help and received none. And in the same way as Easter isn’t an “all’s well that ends well” after Holy Week, the raising of Lazarus isn’t an “all’s well that ends well” to this story. No matter how much meaning-making we can do surrounding how something may have worked out, redeemed suffering is not erased suffering.

Was Martha right? If Jesus had been there, would Lazarus not have died? There’s a technical answer and a theological answer to her question. By technical I mean timeline. In verse six, Jesus seems to deliberately let Lazarus die. Lazarus, however, might already have been dead by the time the message arrived, and Jesus’ delay would have meant his arrival in Bethany would have been after the finality of Lazarus’ death had been confirmed. As he does elsewhere, Jesus acts in his own time, not when we would prefer he act. One of the most annoying things that is often said to people when they are struggling with a challenge is, “God’s time”, which always just means “this is going to take way longer than you would like it to, and oh by the way, you are actually powerless over making things turn out how you want them to, when you want them to.” So by the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Jewish custom at that time required that burial take place the day of death, if possible. Jewish belief also held that the soul lingered near the body for three days, so that death was truly final on the fourth day. When death is a range, a time frame, instead of a specific time of death proclaimed by a physician, the question of when Lazarus died becomes even murkier. Jesus’ two-day delay, plus one day’s travel each way between Bethany, where the messenger originated from, and Jesus’ location across the Jordan, which is where John places him at the end of chapter 10, would add up to four days if Lazarus died and was buried on the same day the messenger left Bethany to report his illness. 

To answer Martha’s accusation theologically, the best I can do is “maybe”. Illness continued while Jesus walked this earth. We are only promised that death and crying and pain will be no more in the new heaven and new earth, after the first heaven and first earth have passed away and the sea is no more, on the day of Judgment. So, we struggle with the difference between deep sadness over catastrophic happenings and evil.

In the words of the Rev. Dr. Kate Sonderegger, “We ordinarily think of almighty God and his word, revealed in holy Scripture, as the source of light and not darkness, of peace, redemption, and weal, and not of woe. And yet one of the lessons of our adulthood as Christians is the reality, perhaps even the inevitability, of darkness and woe in our own lives and in the lives of the nations of the world. Yet often the darkness and woe cannot be expressed. What words can capture the loss of our work or our home, of our good name, of our joy and satisfaction in life? What does it mean for us to suffer pain; to lose someone we love; to suffer disappointment in ourselves; to examine our lives before God and taste the bitterness of failing to love God and neighbor above self; to understand our faith in God sorely tried, sometimes shattered, by these shadows that have fallen across our lives?...This is what theologian Karl Barth calls the “shadow side” of life: not evil, yet standing near to it, reminding us that for every morning there is evening; for every light, darkness; for every seedtime, harvest and the end…What should we make of the shadow side of our lives, of the enigmatic dark lines in the lives of the people of the earth?” (90-91)

My brother’s death wasn’t an act of evil. Lazarus’ death wasn’t an act of evil. Tragedies, yes. But as Dr. Sonderegger wrote, and as the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, for everything there is a season and each of these times is in God’s hands. To suffer is to live fully and we all get a turn at the plate, but we are not alone - we are in God’s hands.

As Paul promises in Romans, “God works all things together for good.” Many redemptive things came out of both events. Many people received organs from my brother’s body. Some of his friends were spooked into actually going to the doctor when something felt wrong - a real accomplishment for boys in their 20s. God was glorified through Lazarus. And redeemed suffering, transformed suffering, is not erased suffering.

I’d like to close with a prayer from Dr. Sonderegger’s Stations of the Cross meditation on Station XIII: Jesus Is Placed in the Arms of His Mother. Let us Pray.

Lord Christ, as we meditate on your passion, may we remember also those for whom you died.
Hear our prayers this day:
for all those who mourn the death of one they loved;
        for those who hold in their arms the body of a loved one;
        for those who feel their lives broken and shattered;
        for those who cannot see their life beyond this death;
        for those who cannot grieve or weep.
We pray also for all those we name either aloud or in the silence of our hearts.
We gather up these prayers in the name of the One born of Mary and borne by her at the end, Jesus Christ. Amen.