5 Lent, Year A

"DEATH LEADS TO LIFE"
Ezekiel 37: 1 – 14; Psalm 130; Romans 6: 13 – 23; John 11: 1 – 44
A sermon by: The Rev. Gene Tucker, Given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL on Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Death leads to life….

“Don’t you have that backwards, Father?” you may be asking….Shouldn’t it be “life leads to death?” You know: we live, we get old, we die. That’s the way life is, it ends in death, right?

No, I didn’t get it backwards….Death leads to life.

“How so?” you may ask…..Lazarus’ death leads to life, and Jesus’ death on the cross leads to life. Both are resurrection accounts. Moreover, Lazarus’ death leads directly to Jesus’ own death. For the raising of Lazarus is – for the writer of the Fourth Gospel – the immediate cause of Jesus’ own death. John tells us that some of those who witnessed Lazarus’ raising go to the Pharisees and begin planning to put Jesus to death.[1]

Let’s look a little closer at the issue of death leading to life:

Lazarus’ death was not the end of the story. For Lazarus’ death provided the occasion for new life to begin, life after death….Lazarus heard the Lord’s voice say, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who was bound with linens cloths and with a face covering, came out of the tomb when the stone was rolled away. So the man who had been dead for four days (to the ancient Jews, a person’s soul lingered around the body for three days, in hopes of reuniting with it), a man who was really dead, came back to life.

And Jesus’ death is not the end of the story, for on the third day, Jesus rose from the tomb, casting off the linen cloths and the face covering, rolling the stone away.[2] Jesus’ death leads to life, the new life we have in Him by coming to belief in Him.

Jesus’ death leads to life, for all of us who have been baptized. For in the waters of baptism, we are buried with Christ in His death. And if we are buried with Christ in his death, we shall also rise to new life by the glory of the Father. That’s St. Paul’s image as we read it in Romans 6: 3 – 4.

Jesus goes forth to His death and resurrection with victory in His hand. Having conquered the powers of death by raising Lazarus, He is now ready to enter into His “hour”,[3] that time that John describes as the time when Jesus is most in command, most in control. Jesus willingly lays down His life for those who will come to believe in Him. No one takes Jesus’ life from Him. John makes that clear.

But let’s go back to the business of death….Death means the end of hope, the end of any possibility that human beings can help the situation.

Maybe that’s why Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, express faith that Jesus could have helped their brother. “If only you were here”,[4] they each say to Him. Perhaps that’s why the onlookers said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”[5]

That’s what baptism, our spiritual death and rebirth, signifies: a complete loss of hope. For as we are lowered into the waters of baptism, we give up any hope of being able to help ourselves out of the sin that we find ourselves in. We are unable to help ourselves, there’s no way humanly possible that we can fix the mess we find ourselves in.

And it is at that point of hopelessness that we hear the Lord Jesus’ voice calling us each by name, saying to us, “Come out”. Come out of the waters that threaten to swallow us up. Come out of the bondage of sin that binds us like linen cloths. “Be raised to new life”, Jesus says to us in the Sacrament of Baptism.

As we make our way through this earthly life, there will be times when the power of sin threatens to bury us again, to try to reclaim us and seal us in that hopeless state. But the power given to us in our baptisms calls us to cry out in hope to the Lord who conquered death that day in Bethany, and who conquered death that day on a cross outside the city walls.

And so we come, out of the watery tomb of baptism that symbolizes our sinful condition, delivered by the power of the one who conquered death, not once, but twice.

For, you see, death leads to life.

“Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”
(I Corinthians 15: 57)

AMEN.


[1] See John 11: 45 – 53.
[2] Notice the similarities between Lazarus’ raising and Jesus’ resurrection: both accounts mention the linen cloths, the face covering, and the stone which is rolled away. John want us – apparently – to make a deliberate connection between the two accounts.
[3] John recalls Jesus’ use of this word, “hour”, found many places in the Fourth Gospel. The word describes the time of Jesus’ glorification: His suffering, death, burial, resurrection and ascension into heaven.
[4] See verses 21 and 32.
[5] Verse 38