![Faith Makes Space for Grief [OR Raising Lazarus and a Valley of Dry Bones]](https://caitlintrussell.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/cross-people-black-and-white.sermon-Caitlin-Trussell-567x372.gif)
Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on March 22, 2026
[sermon begins after two long Bible readings–hang in there, they’re worth it]
Ezekiel 37:1-13
John 11:1-45
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 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.” 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” 11 After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” 12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” 13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
28 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.” 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 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.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 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.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 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.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 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.”
45 Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him.
[sermon begins]
I recently rewatched the Harry Potter movies, having also read the book series a few times over the years.[1] The magical world-building seen through Harry’s eyes is a wonder to behold, including the Hogwarts school’s carriages that seemingly propel themselves without horse or engine.[2] In the fifth movie we learn that the carriages are pulled by Thestrals, a horse-like winged reptilian creature that can only be seen by someone who has seen death. If you hadn’t seen someone die, then you couldn’t see the Thestrals pulling the carriage. The carriages seem to be pulling themselves. Harry had seen his friend Cedric die at the end of the last movie so Harry could now see these creatures. Seeing his friend die opened his eyes to see something new amid his grief and anger.
Some of us here today know what it’s like to see death, to watch someone’s life leave their body. Mary and Martha certainly did. There was enough time after Lazarus became ill to send word to Jesus. There was more time after the sisters sent word and even more before Jesus finally arrived after Lazarus died. Martha was angry. Mary was miserable. Both were heartbroken and grieving. Both proclaimed their faith in their Lord—if he had been there then Lazarus would not have died. Martha’s confession of faith is one of the big three in John’s gospel along with Peter and Thomas. Martha said to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Mary’s faith acts—she kneels at Jesus’ feet and cries. Simultaneous faith and grief. Many verses in the story are given over to grief. Only a couple verses describe the raising of Lazarus.[3] Faith makes space for grief. Some of us know how long those days, hours, and minutes can be while we watch a loved one die. We know the powerlessness, anger, and broken hearts as we wait and watch and pray…as we lose, as grief enshrouds our hearts.
This Bible story about siblings and friends grieving together describes an important truth about people of faith. We make space for grief and we grieve with each other. Just ask our friends who have been through Augustana’s Grief Support Group. Faith in Jesus doesn’t take grief away. Indeed, Jesus’ is greatly disturbed and deeply moved by grief, soul wrenching grief for his friends. And grief maybe even for himself as he knows what’s coming for him and the grief that will bind his friends again when he dies on a cross. The story of Lazarus is as much about Jesus’ humanity as it is about his divinity.
The prophet Ezekiel and his people knew grief, too. 500 years before Jesus, the Babylonians took Ezekiel’s people from southern Israel into far away Babylon. The temple in Jerusalem was God’s dwelling place, but Ezekiel and his people ended up far, far away in a land where their God was not known. They lamented, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones goes against Jewish burial custom.[4] It was a mass casualty decimation and there was no one to bury them. Another story of grief but this time it’s one of collective grief. A grief that exemplifies our own when faceless groups people are annihilated by war, bombs, and hunger inflicted by politically powerful people who feel neither the suffering of the dying nor the sting of death themselves.
For Mary, Martha, and Ezekiel, faith and grief walked together. Faith made space for their grief for their brother and their community. Faith didn’t erase grief or explain it away as just the way life works. Sometimes we’re inclined to minimize or feel shame about our own grief. It’s too big. It’s too messy. Or we think that if only we had more faith then we would feel less pain. Or if only someone else had more faith, then their grieving wouldn’t hurt our hearts. These Bible stories are an antidote to such thinking. The faithful people in these stories are the ones who are sad, angry, and ugly-crying. Even Jesus. Even Jesus! The English translation of “Jesus began to weep” doesn’t do justice to the Greek word which means soul-wrenching sobs.[5]
Minimizing grief, whether our own or someone else’s is antithetical to the crescendo of the cross and the silence of the tomb that we are edging toward as Palm Sunday and Holy Week loom on the calendar a week from today. We are treated to whispers of Holy Week in our John reading. Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet is remembered to us even though we don’t get to that part of the story until the beginning of the next chapter. Anointing is done for divine kings and for the dead. Jesus’ anointing conflates the two. In verse 25, using yet one more divine “I am” saying, Jesus said, “I AM the resurrection and the life.” In verses 4 and 40 Jesus talks about God’s glory in conjunction with the Son of God being glorified. When the word “glory” is used in the Gospel of John, it is code for Jesus hanging on the cross. We tend to think all kinds of things when we hear the word “glory” but hanging on a cross is not typically one of them.
It’s common to avoid Lent and Holy Week, to go from the Transfiguration straight to Easter buffered by the mini-Easters of Sundays in Lent. Lent is quiet and grey, culminating in Holy Week that is dark and ends in a tomb. Holy Week runs smack up against our addiction to optimism, smack up against our discomfort with grief, and smack up against our desperation not to look at the ever-so-obvious tomb. But sinking into the depths of Holy Week, focusing on cross and tomb feels like freedom. It feels like freedom because it feels true. There IS pain in the world. Sometimes we cause that pain. Sometimes the pain is inflicted on us. Sometimes we watch helplessly as the pain is inflicted on other people. The relief and truth of Holy Week is enormous. Facing this truth head-on, neither looking away from grief nor blocking out God in the midst of it, reveals what God does when confronted with a tomb. Our journey into the abyss of death and grief places in stark relief an ever more vibrant Easter dawn when the trumpets declare victory over death.
In Ezekiel, God breathes into the decimation, restoring the forgotten dead into community. In John, Jesus raises Lazarus reconnecting him with his community. In the tomb of Lazarus, lays a man who’s about to walk again. Jesus tells him to come out. Lazarus comes out. His disorientation must be staggering. Jesus looks at the people and says, “Unbind him.” These people had a role in his unbinding. Jesus gave them work to do to welcome him.[6] Among the people who unbind Lazarus are surely many who loved him or at least knew him. The moment reveals that “resurrected life needs a community.”[7]
Raising Lazarus is Jesus’ final sign before the execution plot unfolds. A sign of life that declares his divinity and incites his execution. The people are ready to crucify because they fear that the one who brings life might get noticed by the powers that be in Rome and bring death to them all. As Holy Week whispers to us from the faraway place of next week, we pause with the crowd of people who unbind Lazarus. We, like them, wonder about the power that can resurrect. The power that can draw unwanted attention. Lazarus isn’t the only one standing there dazed and disoriented.
As we the people acknowledge the mercy of God, we see the fullness of life that God pours through us as we grieve and celebrate life. We see the Christ, the Word made flesh. We see each other receiving the Spirit who breathes life into our bodies – here, now, today, with these people whom Jesus calls to help unbind us as we are called into resurrected life. Thanks be to God and amen!
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[1] Link to IMDB: Harry Potter Movies
[2] Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) – IMDb
[3] Karoline Lewis, Professor of Homiletics, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Lectionary Discussion for 3/22/26. #1074: Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary
[4] Cody J. Sanders, Associate Professor, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Lectionary Discussion for 3/22/26. #1074: Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary
[5] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Lectionary Discussion for 3/22/26. #1074: Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary
[6] Laura Holmes, Professor of New Testament, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington D.C. Commentary on John 11:1-45 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary
[7] Ibid.