Roll Away the Stone (Church Newsletter article)

“So they took away the stone.  And Jesus looked upwards and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’" (John 11:41-44)

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were especially close friends of Jesus, and gospel accounts tell us that Jesus was more than once a guest in their home.   In the passage from John, Jesus’ had received word that Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, was ill.  We’re told that, though Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, he remained where he was for two days before setting out to Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, where Martha, Mary and Lazarus lived.  When Jesus finally arrived at Bethany, Martha and Mary in succession both told Jesus, “If you had been here, our brother would not have died.”  And yet Martha held on to a sliver of faith, saying “But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”  Even as she mourned her brother’s death, she called Jesus “Lord” and said, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” We’re told that, amid the weeping mourners, Jesus likewise wept.   Yet that same Jesus told the weeping mourners, “Roll away the stone” and shouted to Lazarus, “Lazarus, come forth!”

 

Are you now, or have you ever been, sealed in a tomb?  While we likely haven’t had the experience of being physically buried and then brought back to life, any number of things – disability, ill health, depression, unemployment, addiction, marital and family discord, grief at the passing of a loved one – have the potential to seal us up in tombs of despair and hopelessness, entrapping us in darkness, blocking out the sunlight.  As Jesus was at Bethany in the midst of mourning, Jesus is with us even when – indeed, Jesus is with us especially when – we feel abandoned by family and friends and even by God.   

 

Jesus meets us where we are – but does not leave us there.   To those of us sealed in tombs of despair, Jesus rolls away the stone and says “Come forth!”   The God who, in Ezekiel’s presence, brought forth new life in a place of death is the same God who gave new life to Lazarus – and who can give new life to us, and to our congregation.

 

Make no mistake:  God is still in the resurrection business!   To quote a saying familiar in the United Church of Christ, “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.”  Psalm 30:5 reminds us that “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”  When we are in places of despair, struggling to hang on to life and hope, may we remember the words of an old sermon, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin’”