Being the Fourth Sunday of March, this past Sunday was our Healing Service. The Scripture passage was the story of the Raising of Lazarus from John 11. The sermon is going to be shared below but there are two prayers that I want to highlight that were integral to writing this sermon.
The first is The Prayer That Never Fails. Yes, there is one. It goes as simply as, “Lord, Your Will Be Done”. To share the prayer is one thing, to live into the results is something else.
The second is the Serenity Prayer,
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference"
The first
line of the Serenity Prayer is a very human response and follow-up to the
Prayer That Never Fails. We are on the
cusp of Easter, where Jesus dies for us in a more horrible fashion, to be
raised again For Us. The power of the
story of the Raising of Lazarus is, in part, how deeply the grace and the grief
of our Lord Jesus extends into the life of all God’s Children.
From the Lord’s Day, Sunday, March 22, 2026:
John 11: 1-45
SERMON “All
For The Glory of God”
In our
faith, we have the prayer that never fails.
Simply put, it goes, “Lord, Thy Will Be Done.” Having prayed this prayer, know that it can
disappoint us, confuse us, back us into a corner, make us afraid, as well as
liberate us, grant us courage, grant us peace, and align our souls with the
Will of our Lord. Because the Lord’s
will is not our own. I have seen most
faithful Christians who have to painfully put their trust in Jesus afresh when
struggling with this. I have also seen
tentative Christians whose lives of faith have deepened in aligning to God’s
Will.
God’s Will
Be Done, that might lead us to conclude that we ought to, anyone know this
tune? “Sit back, relax, and let yourself go with the flow…”, because it’s God’s
flow.
Which is
nice, a comfortable sentiment, let God take the next steps. But might that make us little more than
passive? I think perhaps the Serenity
Prayer is a better guide if we are truly going to dare to entrust ourselves
God’s Will. You know the prayer, "God,
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change
the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference"
I find both
these prayers, the Serenity Prayer and the Prayer That Never Fails find roots
in the story of the raising of Lazarus.
Is the
story a familiar one to us? There are
three siblings, Martha and Mary and Lazarus.
We’ve met the sisters before, but not Lazarus. He is ill.
Word is sent to Jesus, to summon Him.
Already, there is evidence of ‘courage to change the things I can’…send
for the Healer. But Jesus delays,
intentionally. His words, “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.”
And then we have Jesus’ followers. The Clueless. Also known as the Disciples. In the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, I remember they have a recurring theme. They are in the background singing “What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a happening, what’s the buzz, tell me what’s a happening…” And they live into that role today. First, well…if Lazarus is sleeping, like Jesus said, he’ll just wake up, right? And it was Jesus who, maybe through gritted teeth, “No, you beloved morons…metaphor…sleep, death, sleep, death. YES, HE DIED! But that’s what is going to change.”
And second, they are fixated (with good reason) that the authorities are out to get Jesus. To go to Lazarus is to go to Bethany, two miles from Jerusalem, the viper’s nest. Where they are now is across the Jordan, a day’s journey minimum, after the events of the last chapter. That is where the minds of the disciples are. It is Thomas the Twin (the doubter) who says, “Okay, Jesus is going to die, lets go die too.”
When Jesus
arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. Jesus comes to each sister in turn. To Martha, the “practical” one, He knows she
understands she will see her brother again at the Second Coming. But there is a caveat. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would
not have died.”
Then Jesus
speaks some of the most powerful words in the Bible, “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.” This Martha believes.
Then Martha
goes on ahead to alert Mary and Mary meets Jesus at the tomb. Mary is the “contemplative” one. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would
not have died.” But if Martha spoke in
regret, Mary is speaking through her tears.
And Jesus does not try to explain himself, or his Messianic role, or the
Hope of the Future. Those are all true
but useless in the face of the moment.
She’s lost her brother. What she
needed from her Lord were not words but presence. And Jesus wept alongside her.
Some
appreciated His presence, but others were nattering on the edges, “He healed
the blind man, could he not have healed Lazarus?” Or, where were you Jesus?
When Jesus, broken hearted, ordered the tomb to be opened, it was Martha, the practical one, who introduces that bit of humor, as inappropriate as it may feel, but how often do we suddenly find a moment of laughter in our own grief?
Martha says, “Jesus, really? Its been four days.” To quote her words from the King James Version, “By this time he stinketh.” But Jesus replied, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?
Then the
tomb is open and Jesus calls for Lazarus to come out. And the way Jesus says, “Unbind him, and let
him go…” This is another moment of humor
for me. I always pictured Lazarus
wrapped up like the Mummy from a Univeral’s 1950’s monster movies.
Up to now,
the heart of this passage has always been the exposed heart of Jesus weeping
alongside Mary and the others. Despite
His God-powers, our pain is His pain.
But here’s the piece that niggled at me this time around. This was all for the glory of God. Jesus says so at the beginning and says so
again to Martha at the graveside. And
that bothered me.
Because we
are going to torture this family, put the sisters through the grieving process,
kill Lazarus outright, so that Jesus can make an example of resurrecting
him? For the glory of God? That Jesus could have been there, could have
done exactly as both Mary and Martha pointed out, healed him before he ever got
to the point of death?
The prayer
goes, ‘Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” Neither sister was serene in the moment. We don’t see it explicitly, but each sister
in turn greets Jesus the same way.
“Lord, if you had been here…”
It’s normally read with a certain basic respect for Jesus as the Son of
God. But what if Martha was speaking
through clenched teeth, no ‘hello’, but “If you had been here, my brother would
NOT have died!!” And Mary, it says she
was weeping, but what if she were beating her fists on Jesus’ chest as she
greeted him with, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother Would Not Have Died.”
Lord, Thy
Will be done…sure, but if you had been here…that’s not just a voice of two
sisters, that’s a voice among of the community of the grieving. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change… That comes at the end of
the process we call grief. In the
moment, the idea of this being done for the glory of God? For God’s will to be done? God’s will was to take my beloved? In the moment of death, that can feel a
mockery.
The
Serenity prayer goes on, an ask of God for the courage to change the
things that I can. We see Martha already
moving in that direction. She’s ready
for the acknowledgement that she will see her brother at the Resurrection, the
Second Coming. She is ready to hear that
Jesus is the resurrection and the life, she says it, “I believe that you are
the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” Jesus does not press Mary on that, she’s not
there yet.
It takes
courage to grieve, to move into this painful process of healing. And it is really only in the abstract that I
can say grieving is a healing gift.
Because in the moment, it sounds like pandering.
The third
piece is wisdom, to know the difference of what I can do and cannot do. And knowing that which I cannot do, I have
serenity in releasing for God to do. Thy
Will be done. But this wisdom is not,
like the song, to ‘sit back, relax, and let yourself go with the flow’. Courage to do what I can is a call to action,
to do what and everything I can. We,
people of faith, know that grief is not a pit but a process, not to be avoided,
not to be denied, but to be journeyed through.
It may feel
like we are endlessly reliving the pain of the moment, but there is more to it
than that. Every time we care to tell
the story, in our pain, every time we begin to draw out the emotional poison of
good and amazing memories of someone who is now in Jesus’ hands.
I say this
in funeral sermons, the Peace of Christ in times of death is of two sorts. The first is the sure and certain knowledge
of eternal life of Jesus’ own. The
second is that Jesus is with us every step of the way as we walk through the
valley of the shadow of death. That is
the glory of God that Jesus is trying to get across to the Clueless, I mean the
Disciples, at the beginning of this passage.
God’s will
WILL be done, whether we pray for it or not.
And, at the beginning, it can disappoint us, confuse us, back us into a
corner, make us afraid, but if we can surrender to God what God can do, if we
can embrace the courage to do everything that we can do, if we find the wisdom
to understand where those are distinct from one another, God will liberate us,
grant us courage, grant us peace, and align our souls with the Will of our
Lord.
Amen.
Pastor pete
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