The Thursday Sermon

Just for the heck of seeing how the week's work is progressing...

This is probably not final form, but here is how my thinking on the story of Lazarus in John 11 is coming for this week.

A Divine Paradox: Divine Love and Divine Delay

Text: John 11:1-45

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The narrative of Lazarus presents one of Scripture’s most profound theological tensions: the apparent contradiction between divine love and divine delay. What do we make of a God who loves deeply yet acts slowly?

Lazarus, whom Jesus loved, fell gravely ill. His sisters sent word: “Lord, the one you love is sick.” They anchored their petition in divine love rather than human merit—a shrewd understanding of grace.

Yet verse 6 delivers a deliberately dissonant note: “When he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.”

Jesus received urgent news about someone He loved, and His response was, apparently, intentional inaction. Here, love and delay coexist in the same divine response.

Consider the weight of those intervening days for Mary and Martha. The message was clear. The need was urgent. The relationship had been long-established. Yet hour followed hour as Lazarus deteriorated from critical to terminal. Then death arrived before the healer did.

This reveals a fundamental principle: Divine timing and human urgency exist in different temporal frameworks. Our instinct demands synchronicity between our crises and God’s interventions. Yet God operates according to purposes that transcend our immediate relief—not divine indifference, but divine intentionality working toward ends we cannot yet perceive.

Divergent Responses to Divine Absence

Upon Jesus’ arrival—four days after Lazarus’s death—we witness contrasting theological responses embodied in the two sisters.

Martha immediately meets Him with words both accusatory and affirming: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” She speaks the counterfactual that has tormented her: Christ’s presence would have prevented this tragedy.

Yet she adds: “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” This is tenacious faith—faith that maintains its grip under severe strain, acknowledging pain while refusing to surrender hope.

Mary offers the identical statement: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But she omits Martha’s affirmation. She simply offers her grief, unadorned and unresolved.

Jesus does not correct her theology. He does not demand greater faith. Verse 33 tells us He was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled”—profound emotional disturbance in the face of death’s devastation. God does not require us to sanitize our grief for His comfort.

Then comes verse 35: “Jesus wept.” Why would Jesus weep when He knew He was moments from resurrecting Lazarus? Perhaps, because their pain was real, because love enters into suffering rather than observing from a distance. The tears of Jesus validate the reality of loss even when restoration is imminent.

The Theology of Strategic Delay

Then why the delay? Jesus provides the answer in verse 4: “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

This statement initially appears false—Lazarus does die. Yet Jesus speaks to a larger trajectory, an outcome transcending immediate circumstances. The delay was not accidental but architectural—not divine negligence but divine design. This scene is orchestrated not despite Jesus’ love, but because of Jesus’ purposes.

If Jesus had arrived on their timeline, He would have healed a sick man. Admirable, certainly—a demonstration of compassion and power. But John, the writer, has a deeper revealing in mind. Healing the sick was routine in Christ’s ministry. Raising someone dead for four days is categorically different.

The delay allowed the situation to move beyond illness to death, beyond crisis to seeming finality. Jewish tradition held that the soul hovered near the body for three days, making resuscitation theoretically possible. By day four, decomposition was unmistakable. Martha states it bluntly: “By this time there is a bad odor.” (I love the King James language here: “Lord, he stinketh!”)

God delayed so that when Jesus acted, there could be no natural explanation, no attribution to human intervention or timely medical care. The miracle had to be undeniable.

Mary and Martha requested healing; God intended resurrection. Their prayer was “prevent this tragedy”; God’s agenda was “I will prove that even death is subject to My word.”

Jesus tells Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” This is Christological self-revelation—the entire event functions as prophetic preview of Easter morning. The raising of Lazarus unveils Jesus’ identity as the conqueror of humanity’s final enemy.

Beyond the Threshold of Impossibility

When Martha protests: “Lord, by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days,” she articulates what everyone thinks: we have crossed the threshold of impossibility.

This resonates with our own experiences—situations where we conclude we have moved beyond redemption. The damage is too extensive. The time elapsed is too great. The death is too final.

Yet Jesus responds: “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” The stone is removed. Jesus prays for the crowd’s understanding, then speaks with absolute authority: “Lazarus, come out!”

The dead man emerges, wrapped in grave clothes, walking from death into life. Jesus possesses the authority to call dead things back to life. This is not resuscitation—this is resurrection, the reclamation of what had been irretrievably lost.

The Question That Remains

Perhaps you find yourself in a season of divine delay. You have prayed with clarity and persistence, yet heaven appears silent. The need is genuine, the request reasonable, yet the response seems to be absence. The temptation is to conclude that God has not heard, does not care, or has withdrawn His presence.

This text offers an alternative interpretation: When God appears late according to our timeline, God may be orchestrating something beyond our initial petition. God is not merely resolving immediate difficulties—He is revealing His character and demonstrating His power in ways that transcend our presenting requests.

This requires embracing a challenging theological framework: sometimes God allows situations to deteriorate to the point of death precisely because resurrection displays God’s power more fully than prevention. Mary and Martha wanted Tuesday healing; Jesus provided Friday resurrection. Our petitions may not receive immediate response, but when God’s intervention comes, we may discover that God was not late—He was precisely on time for the greater miracle.

Jesus posed a question to Martha that echoes to us: “Do you believe this?” Not “Do you understand?” or “Can you explain the theodicy of suffering?” Simply: “Do you believe?”

Do you believe that when God’s timing diverges from your urgency, God remains good? That when God appears silent, God remains sovereign? Does God possess authority over whatever tomb you currently face?

Jesus continues to exercise authority over death in all its manifestations—dead dreams, relationships, hope, faith, futures. He stands at the entrance of these tombs and speaks: “Come forth!”

The Jesus who wept at Lazarus’s tomb enters into our sorrow. The Jesus who called Lazarus from death possesses power to resurrect whatever has died in your life.

God’s delays are not denials. They are the precondition for the manifestation of His glory. We often pray for healing when God intends resurrection, ask for prevention when God plans demonstration. We plead for removal of suffering when God intends to meet us within it.

This is our hope: not that God will spare us from every tomb, but that no tomb can contain what God chooses to resurrect. Let me repeat that: no tomb can contain what God chooses to resurrect. That is our bearing as we head into Holy Week and toward Easter.

Let us pray.

Eternal God, the One who holds time itself in Your hands, we acknowledge the tension between our urgency and Your sovereignty. We confess that we have often measured Your faithfulness by the speed of Your response rather than by the certainty of Your character.

For those among us who wait in the darkness, who stand before tombs of our own—dreams that have died, relationships that have ended, hopes that have been buried—grant us the tenacious faith of Martha, the honest grief of Mary, and the assurance that You are never absent, only working beyond our sight.

Forgive us when we demand Tuesday healing and resist the deeper work of Friday resurrection. Teach us to trust not only Your power but Your timing, not only Your ability to act but Your wisdom in delay.

We thank You that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, that our Savior feels as we feel. In our moments of loss, may we know that You are Emmanuel—God with us—even in the grave.

And when You call forth life from death – as You surely will – give us eyes to see Your glory, hearts to trust Your purposes, and voices to testify that no tomb can contain what You choose to resurrect.

Through Jesus Christ, who is Himself the resurrection and the life, we pray.

Amen.