Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026

John 11:1-45

Few of us get very far in life without having to make the mournful visit to a funeral home…

Or some other place where friends and family of a loved one or friend have gathered.
This gathering goes by various names: visitation…calling hours…wake.
These gatherings can sometimes be awkward experiences.
Many of us live lives largely unanchored from certain social conventions our ancestors knew all too well.
Great-grandfather and great-grandmother knew what to do and say and wear to such solemn occasions…far better than we.
The most social and extraverted among us fall into unusual silence crossing the thick funeral-home carpet…
Into the mortuary chapel where people are standing or sitting on chairs…silent or quietly visiting.

Fortunately…for the ill-at-ease…the bereaved family has thoughtfully provided a conversation-starter.

It is good to remember…as we recall again the names of people we have known and loved.

Other reflections come back to us…a voice…a laugh…a twinkle in the eye…the gentle touch of a hand.
It is good to remember…but remembering can also be painful.
If the loss is recent…it can be hard to even hear the name without a tear coming to the eye.
And this is how it should be…this is how we grieve.
And grieving takes time and it is different for everyone.

It’s said that time heals all wounds…but that’s not always true.

Many of us know firsthand that some memories are not so easily healed.
Some memories deliver fresh pain as soon as they come to mind…even if they are years old.
Wouldn’t it be great if painful memories could be stripped of their ability to cause pain…
As a florist strips a long-stemmed rose of its thorns?
The Lord be with you.

It was not a memory that was very old…in today’s Gospel reading…

But…for Mary and her sister Martha…it was like an open wound.
Their brother…Lazarus…had been on his deathbed.
Mary and Martha had sent an urgent message to their friend…Jesus…
To come with all haste and make Lazarus well…but Jesus had not come
Lazarus…their beloved brother…breathed his last.
They bathed his body and wrapped it tightly in strips of linen cloth…
Soaking each layer with fragrant ointments and oils…as was the custom.
They laid the body on a stone shelf in the family tomb and rolled the heavy stone to seal off the opening.

Not long after that…Jesus finally showed up.

Martha saw him first…and each sister in turn said the same thing to him:
Lord…if you had been here…my brother would not have died.
Ouch!
Martha then says something more hopeful:
But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.
Martha and Jesus then engage in that famous exchange about life and death…in which Jesus says:
I am the resurrection and the life.
Do you believe this? he asks her.
Then…Jesus asks for directions to Lazarus’ tomb.

We all know how the story unfolds from there.

They walk to the tomb…a crowd of curiosity-seekers trailing behind.
He gives the order to unseal the tomb.
He does it over Martha’s objection that this is crazy…the body’s going to stink.
Jesus orders: Lazarus…come out!
And he does…Lazarus stumbles out of the darkness.
And it is then…that Jesus utters the words: Unbind him…and let him go.

Lazarus is living and breathing once again…

But he needs his community of family and friends to take hold of those tight-wrapped linen strips…
And gently peel them away from his now-living flesh.

Unbind him…and let him go.

This is what we do for each other…
When one of our fellow travelers on life’s journey is incapacitated by grief or shame or loss.
It is a vitally important mission of the Christian community.
We reach out to a person whose life is bound up tight by bitter memories and begin the process of healing.

One by one…each cloth strip must be unwound.

With each successive layer…a little mobility returns.
The suffocating sensation of tightness goes away.
The feeling of panic that comes from having one’s arms strapped tight against the body disperses.
Finally…the last winding-strip falls to the ground.
There’s the sensation of a soft breeze caressing the skin.
What had once seemed to be nothing but rot and decay…
Has been transformed into unbinded and unbounded life.

That’s the gift Jesus gives to us.

The raising of Lazarus is but a hint…a foreshadowing…
Of a far greater raising yet to come.
That is…if you hold a light beneath a piece of paper with this story written on it…
You will see the resurrection of Jesus shining through.

The novelist William Faulkner wrote:

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
That’s the perspective of a Southern novelist of the early 20^th
Faulkner lived in a land of decaying antebellum mansions…
Of sharecroppers supposedly emancipated who for all practical purposes remained enslaved…
Of once-great landowning families who had fallen from their former glory…never to regain it.
To Faulkner…the past was a linen winding-sheet…confining…constricting.

Jesus’ word to us is different.

We who trust him and call upon his name can graciously discover that the past is indeed dead…
And has become truly past.
Before us lies a pathway to the future…
With our Lord walking beside us on the journey.

How can we accompany him…how can we keep up…