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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
This Fifth Sunday in Lent, the providentially‑provided Gospel Reading dramatically shows to our coronavirus-seized world the God-man Jesus Christ’s conquering death. Whatever fears that we may or may not have about temporal death on account of our sins can give way to the sure and certain hope of eternal life that we have by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. As we heard Jesus say to Martha, those who believe in Him, though they die, yet will they live, and those who live and believe in Him will never die. In short, “Whoever believes in Jesus lives”!
Today’s Gospel Reading, like the Gospel Readings for at least the past two Sundays (John 4:5-30, 39-42; 9:1-41), consisted of a lengthier-than-usual account largely unique to the Holy Gospel according to St. John. Although between last week’s and this week’s Gospel Readings one whole chapter intervenes, with both its passage of time and its own events, including attempts by the Jews to stone and arrest Jesus (John 10:31, 39), nevertheless both the theme of light and the miracle of Jesus’s opening the eyes of a blind man carry over from last week’s Gospel Reading to this week’s Gospel Reading in which Jesus again referred to the light of the world and some of the Jews asked if He Who opened the eyes of the blind man could not have also kept Lazarus from dying. And, in this week’s Gospel Reading, there again are multiple scenes, in this case basically those scenes involving Jesus’s talking with His disciples, Jesus’s talking with Martha, Jesus’s talking with Mary, Jesus’s raising Lazarus, and finally the Sanhedrin’s plotting to kill Jesus. This Lazarus, of course, is not the poor man of St. Luke’s account who died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom (Luke 16:19-31), but he is the brother of the two sisters of St. Luke’s account, Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to His teaching, and Martha, who was distracted with much serving (Luke 10:38-42).
There are a number of interesting aspects to today’s Gospel Reading, and we talked about many of them last summer in a session of our Midweek Bible Study (Week 174 here). As I prepared to preach this morning, one of the more‑intriguing aspects to me continued to be Jesus’s essentially twice being deeply moved in His spirit or Himself, His at least once being greatly troubled, and His weeping. Bible translators differ in how they render the original Greek words, and Bible commentators differ in what they say the words mean. For his part, the Divinely‑inspired St. John links Jesus’s first being deeply moved in His spirit and His being greatly troubled with His seeing Mary weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping. The evangelist does not give a cause for Jesus’s own weeping—in the Greek a different kind of weeping than the weeping of the others—nor does the evangelist give a cause for Jesus’s being deeply moved again. At least possible is that in all of these three cases Jesus is reacting to people’s grieving as those without hope of the resurrection (confer 1 Thessalonians 4:13; TLSB, ad loc John 11:33, 1804), to their wrong attitude about death, and to their lack of trust in the One Who conquers death (Morris, ad loc John 11:33, 493‑495).
Is Jesus deeply moved in His spirit, greatly troubled, and weeping over us? Is He moved, troubled, and weeping at our grieving as those without hope of the resurrection, at our wrong attitude about death, and at our lack of trust in Him Who conquers Death? What are the real reasons for our fear of the coronavirus? Do we care more about temporal things than eternal things? Do we think that God cannot enable other people to get by without us here? Are we concerned but not doing anything about unbelieving loved ones whom we would not see for eternity? Do we forget that for us everything is better in the life to come? Such sins and all other sins bring temporal death (Romans 5:12; 6:23; confer TLSB, ad loc John 11:17-27, 1804), but only those who do not repent of their sin and trust God to forgive their sin will be resurrected to eternal suffering. Those who, enabled by God, repent of their sin and trust God to forgive their sin will be resurrected to eternal life. In short, “Whoever believes in Jesus lives”!
Today’s Gospel Reading’s account of Jesus’s “resurrecting” (or, “revivifying”) Lazarus leads to, anticipates, and informs the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s own resurrection. As we heard from St. John, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, the Sanhedrin, and made plans to put Jesus to death. Caiaphas the high priest had unwittingly prophesied that Jesus would die as a substitute for both the Jewish nation and the children of God scattered abroad, presumably the Gentiles. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 130; antiphon: v.7), with the Lord there is steadfast love and plentiful redemption. As today’s Epistle Reading reminded us (Romans 8:1-11), there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. As God in human flesh, Whose human voice had Divine power to call Lazarus from the grave, Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and my sins, providing atonement or redemption for all, though only some actually receive it in repentance and faith. Like Peter before her (Matthew 6:16; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20; compare John 6:69), Martha confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God, Who was coming into the world, and that was before the miracle involving her brother! Others believed after the miracle, as God wanted them to believe, and as God wants us to believe.
When we repent and believe, then God forgives our sin, through His means of grace. For example, God’s Word spoken by His prophet was the means of the “resurrection” of the very many very dry bones of the exceedingly great army of Israel in today’s Old Testament Reading (Ezekiel 37:1-14). Holy Baptism works a greater miracle than Jesus did by restoring Lazarus’s temporal life, because at the Font we receive eternal life (Romans 6:5; Titus 3:5-7; confer Marquart, CLD IX:20). As Jesus ordered Lazarus to be unbound and let go, Jesus orders pastors to pronounce Holy Absolution to loose and forgive our sins (Matthew 16:19; 18:18; John 20:22‑23). And, as Jesus gave thanks to the Father before calling Lazarus out of the tomb, in the Sacrament of the Altar, we give thanks to God and eat bread that is the Body of Christ and drink wine that is the Blood of Christ so that we will not die eternally (John 6:50).
Being so forgiven by God and thereby gifted with eternal life gives us great comfort and peace at all times, especially in this time of the coronavirus. Temporal death is not the end, and it has no “sting” for believers (1 Corinthians 15:55-56, citing Hosea 13:14). Those who believe in Jesus, though they die, yet will they live. Their souls are with the Lord, while their bodies “sleep” in the grave, until the one resurrection of all the dead. Those believers who are living when Jesus’s voice calls all the dead from their tombs (John 5:28)—those whom the old creedal language referred to as the “quick”—will never experience that temporal death. As Jesus in the Gospel Reading gently “catechized” Martha and Mary (Nocent, 2:118), working with them where they were in their faith and understanding, so He does with us, comforting us who face death with the sure and certain hope of our own resurrection to life everlasting. As was the case in the Gospel Reading, so also with us: in His time Jesus acts out of love for us and for a good purpose, even when what we might consider a delay and something that seems bad results (Roehrs‑Franzmann, ad loc John 11:1-54, p.95). And, also worth noting is that the Sanhedrin tried to stop Jesus, but, by doing so, they helped fulfill His plan of salvation; and, when the Sanhedrin later tried to stop Peter and John from proclaiming Jesus, Peter and John listened not to them but to God, for the apostles could not but speak of what they had seen and heard (Acts 4:1-22, especially vv.19-20; confer 5:17-42, especially v.29).
Today’s Gospel Reading has providentially proclaimed to us in this time of coronavirus that “Whoever believes in Jesus lives”. Such times of pestilence are nothing new. Hymnwriter Paul Gerhardt lived through times of the plague, and, against the background of his further suffering during the Thirty Years War, he wrote the hymn we know translated as “Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me”. We close now, as we will later close this service, with a translation of the stanza that Gerhardt himself spoke on his deathbead (Resch, #756, LSB:CttH, 1097):
Now in Christ, death cannot slay me,
Though it might, / Day and night, / Trouble and dismay me.
Christ has made my death a portal / From the strife / Of this life
To His joy immortal! (Lutheran Service Book 756:5.)
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +