Ezekiel
37:1 - 14
Psalm
130
Romans
8:6 – 11
John
11:1 – 45
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, March 26, 2023 by Fr. Gene Tucker.
“GOD’S POWER: THE POWER TO CREATE AND TO RECREATE”
(Homily text: John 11:1 – 45)
At the beginning of John’s Gospel
account, we read the following: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made
through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome
it.”
The themes that are outlined in these opening
verses of John’s account come to fruition in the raising of Lazarus. Specifically,
these themes are the power to create (“All things were made through him”) and
the power to create life, to cast out darkness and to establish light (“In him
was life, and the life was the light of men”).
Down through time, as human beings have
interacted with God, and have pondered God’s nature and God’s power, one
consistent understanding has been that at the heart of God’s nature and God’s
power is God’s ability to create things out of nothing, and to recreate and to make
things new.
Lazarus, Jesus’ friend and the brother of His
friends Mary and Martha, lay dead in the tomb. He’d been dead for four days by
the time that Jesus and the disciples made their way to Bethany, where Mary,
Martha and Lazarus lived. (John seems to indicate that Jesus deliberately
delayed His coming to Bethany.) The four-day period is significant in the
understandings of God’s people at the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry, for
the belief was, back then, that a person’s soul lingered around the body for a
period of three days in the hopes of being reunited with it. So the bottom line
in reading that Lazarus had been dead for four days is to confirm that Lazarus
was completely and totally dead. Furthermore, confirming this understanding is Martha’s
comment that Lazarus’ body would have begun to stink by the time that Jesus
stood before the tomb.
Into this hopeless situation, we hear
Jesus’ voice, calling to Lazarus, “Come out”.
As in the account of creation in the
early chapters of the book of Genesis, Jesus’ voice creates, just as God spoke
the words and said, “Let there be light”. Jesus’ voice says, “Lazarus, come
out”.
Out of nothing, out of a complete lack
of hope, a complete lack of life and liveliness, the dead man returns to life
again.
If God can create and can recreate,
even in circumstances like the raising of Lazarus, isn’t it just possible that
God can create within our hearts and our minds a completely new and recreated
self, a self come to life again, a self transformed into God’s image and
likeness?
Yes, indeed, God can do that. Our Lord
Jesus Christ can do that, simply by saying the words to create anew when our
prayer rises to seek such a rebirth. After all, Jesus’ power to create affirms
His relationship to the Father, for He possesses all of God’s power to create
and to recreate.
Thanks be to God!
AMEN.
