On Rising
March 22, 2026
Rev. Traceymay Kalvaitis

John 11 selected verses

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward 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.” Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

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Today’s sermon is titled On Rising.

Friends, I don’t want to give you a mistaken impression that preaching on this passage from John is not a huge challenge. As a reader, I love this story for its detail and drama, but as a teacher, I would just as soon avoid it because I know for many it raises way more questions than it answers. It is difficult for us to fathom a power that could bring a person, four days dead, back into the world of the living. Our rational minds cry out, “It can’t be done!” Friends, this is not a story for our rational minds. This is a story that pushes the margins of possibility. People have been pushing the margins of possibility for ever and ever.

Four hundred and fifty years before the birth of Jesus, a Greek scientist by the name of Democritus theorized that all things were made up of invisible particles called atomos. The name for these particles, atomos, meant “indivisible.”* For two thousand years, it was difficult to fathom a power that could split the atom. It was Ernest Walton, the son of an Irish minister, who, along with his partner John Cockcroft, performed the impossible. They struck the nucleus of a lithium atom with a proton and and two astonishing things happened. First, the nucleus of the lithium atom split. Then the scientists realized that the lithium atom did not split into two lithium atoms. Instead, because the proton that struck the lithium atom was incorporated into the atomic structure, what resulted were two helium atoms.** Everyone said it couldn’t be done, until it was.

It is healthy to question and it is healthy to doubt; it is also healthy to wonder. So today, and as we move closer to the season of Eastertide, I invite us to wonder. What if Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead? What if it happened just as the events are described? What if Jesus really did wait two days before going to the aid of his dearest friends? What if Jesus was, as the scriptures say, “greatly disturbed and deeply moved.” We read that “Jesus wept.” Who or what did he weep for? Did he weep to see the grief in Mary and Elizabeth? Did he weep for Lazarus? Did he weep for his decision to wait so long? Did he weep for the lack of understanding of his detractors? Could it be that Jesus wept for himself? Because what he was about to do would absolutely seal his fate. What he was about to do would mark him as an enemy to empire. What he was about to do would erase all doubt in those who bore witness and it would raise doubts in the minds of humankind for millenia.

Here’s the thing I can’t seem to get past, Friends. Jesus’s teachings would not make him a threat to empire. It was not Jesus’s teachings that began a revolution, it was the unexplainable signs of healing, the two accounts of Jesus raising from the dead (one a young girl, the other his friend Lazarus), and the mysteries surrounding his own death and resurrection. Without these, I don’t see the level of threat that would warrant a public execution. It was his healings on the Sabbath and these unexplainable retrieval of those who had already crossed the threshold of death that made him such a threat to the power structure of his day.

In the verses directly following our story for today, the leaders plot to kill him (John 11:55) and they plot to kill Lazarus, too (John 12: 10-11). This story of Lazarus being called forth from the tomb only appears in the Gospel of John. Some scholars theorize that by the time the Gospel of John was written, Lazarus had died (again) and it was safe to tell his story. Lazarus could have still been alive when the other Gospels were recorded and in the cultural turmoil that marked the first century the story may have endangered him. It is easy for us to forget that community members of the early church were hunted down and put to death for 300 years. A thousand years later, it was the Christians who became the oppressors.

Through it all, Friends, through all the sordid history, there is a thread of truth that can be followed. The thread of truth is formed from the words of Jesus to Martha when he said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Death holds no power over us. Our bodies must return to the earth, as does every living thing, but we are more than just our bodies. Death has no power over us. There are forces stronger than death and throughout history those forces have risen, again and again, to guide humankind out of the darkness of war and oppression. Truth will rise. Justice will rise. Peace will rise. Love is the strongest force in the universe and it will not be overcome. This, Friends, is the message of this story we are given today.

In closing, and as we turn towards Palm Sunday next week and the Passion of Christ following. As we walk with our teacher once again as the powers that be seek to silence him, seek to disappear him, I pray that we walk with eyes, hearts and minds wide open. Remember Jesus’s words from John 14:20,“ I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” May the presence of Christ in us be our assurance in all we will ever have to face in our lives, especially as we inevitably face our own deaths. May the presence of Christ within us lead us in the care and nurture of our souls, the eternal and everlasting parts of our being. May the presence of Christ within us make us fearless in our pursuit of truth, justice, peace for all of humankind. So be it. Amen.

*https://www.britannica.com/science/atom/Development-of-atomic-theory
**https://mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/laureates/walton/research-profile

Pastoral Prayer
God who is Father, Mother, All, I pray your blessings of peace upon us all this morning. This worldly life is fraught with hardship and disappointment and it can eclipse the light of Your presence among us. Help us, Lord, to attune our awareness of the divine that is intermingled with the ordinary, the blessings that come along with the tragedies, the beams of holy light that shine into the heart of darkness. For the parts of us that are fearful, grant us assurance; for the parts of us that feel unworthy, flood them with forgiveness. Strengthen us, we pray, when faced with difficulties within ourselves and within our culture, strengthen us with a love so tender that we become boundless and effectual, on every level of our beings. For the healing that is happening, we thank you; for the awareness that is deepening, we thank you; and for the guidance that is only a prayer away, we thank you. Amen.

Benediction
May “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ” -Philippians 4:7