Have You Pondered Your Death Lately?

This weekend, we witness Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It is the fifth and final big Gospel lesson from John for this Lenten season. The raising of Lazarus is the seventh miracle, or sign, in John’s Gospel. In our shared Lenten journey, grounded in the common elements of home, we enter this miracle as followers who have been welcomed, given living water, and restored to spiritual sight.

The raising of Lazarus invites many questions. One of them is an important question for us to tend in our blessed vulnerability as human beings: have you pondered your death lately? Most days, the thought of our death does not cross our minds. We live with today’s powers and certainties. Then, there are days when our mortality cannot be denied. You have your stories, great and small, when mortality and limitation show up in your life.

The raising of Lazarus is certainly a moment that connects us to Jesus’ resurrection and the promise that we, too, will be raised from our final death. Just as much, and perhaps not as often held close, is that the raising of Lazarus is about God’s power to raise us from all we might name as death. There is new life and unbinding at work in the Gospel lesson. How does Lazarus live differently, now that he has been raised from the dead? So too, how do we live differently, now that we have been raised from our daily death by the love and grace of God? Now that is a question worth pondering as we reflect on our own mortality, daily and ultimate.

Yours in Christ Jesus,
Pastor Peter