Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons: 22 March 2026

Fifth Sunday of Lent

The dramatic story of Lazarus that John shares with us, is the seventh and final sign Jesus performed before his passion and death. Quite simply it reveals Jesus as 'the resurrection and the life' as the promised messiah and son of God who is victorious over death, but also demonstrates for us his humanity and love rooted in the setting of his own friendship with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. It is also the catalyst that determines his own passion and death, but the sign that reveals his resurrection from the dead.

It is a dramatic story, and there are a number of elements in the narrative that can help us engage with it from our own limited perspective. There is the theological aspect focussed on Jesus statement that he is 'the resurrection and the life', which is a revelation of his promise to us all of eternal life.

This is in contrast to the miracle of his bringing back to life of Lazarus, for Lazarus though risen from the dead is brought back to ordinary human life and has yet to die again, for his body is simply mortal, not the risen and glorified body we are promised in order to enter life in the kingdom of heaven.Lazarus' death is both the hint of Jesus' power over death but also a signpost to what is to come for us all through Christ's death and resurrection, that is salvation and the hope and promise of a new and everlasting life, as the letter to the Romans puts it so succinctly :'If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you'. (Rm 8: 11)

Then there is the human element encapsulated in the emotional response of Jesus to his friend's death. The profound distress of Jesus, the intimacy and friendship shown in the dialogue between Martha and Jesus is a sign of his openness to women (and men) as equals with him, it is also an exchange in which Martha opens for us the revelation of Jesus as he really is, not in the brilliance of the Transfiguration, but through the human rainbow of emotional colours which tells us the incarnate Christ is totally at one with us. Jesus here is the compassionate heart of God with all of us in human life, discovered for us now in all its joys and sorrows.

Here too we discover that grief is something close to the loving kindness of our God, Jesus does not escape this aspect of our own lives, for him loss is sorrow, that emotional pain of separation becomes not only that fog we go through but in him changes into the cloud of unknowing which he will finally lift from us on that great and wonderful day, when we too shall see him as he is. It is as Ezekiel understood:' Thus says the Lord GOD: Look! I am going to open your graves; I will make you come up out of your graves, my people, and bring you back to the land of Israel'.(Ezekiel 37:12) Only for us it is the new Israel in the Kingdom!

Woven in the story of Lazarus is an understanding of God-in-Jesus to be found fully in human life, not a deity remote and removed from our world. And here we can take a call to action, Jesus shares with us his ministry to proclaim the good news by word and deed. That command to 'unbind him'(v1h1), tat is to undo the wrappings of death from the resurrected body of Lazarus is a community effort, Christ's 'sign' is to be revealed through others, we are the ones who 'unbind' Christ's presence , reveal him in the setting of our own situations, even the 'bad smells' of life. We now go out to unbind the Lazarus figures in our untidy and messy world!

Lectio

Texts from the Orthodox celebration of Lazarus Saturday

Hymns of the Feast

Apolytikion: First Tone

By raising Lazarus from the dead before Your Passion, You confirmed the universal resurrection, O Christ God! Like the children with palms of victory, We cry out to You, O Vanquisher of Death; Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!

Kontakion: Second Tone

Christ - the Joy, the Truth, and the Light of All, the Life of the World and the Resurrection - has appeared in his goodness to those on earth. He has become the Image of our resurrection, granting divine forgiveness to all.

Troparion of Saturday of St Lazarus, Orthros. Tone 1

O Christ God, when Thou didst raise Lazarus from the dead, before Thy Passion, thou didst confirm the universal resurrection. Wherefore, we, like babes, carry the insignia of triumph and victory, and cry to Thee, O vanquisher of death, Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord.

Exaposteilaria, Saturday of St Lazarus. Tone 3

By Your word, O Word of God, Lazarus now leaps out of death, having returned to this life. Therefore the peoples honor You with their branches, O Mighty One; for You shall destroy Hades utterly by Your own death.

By means of Lazarus has Christ already plundered you, O death. Where is your victory, O Hades? For the lament of Bethany is handed over now to you. Let us all wave against it our branches of victory

The Raising of Lazarus

Poem by Dennis Spilchik

The Saviour arrived in Bethany east of Jerusalem,
Four days late to save Lazarus from dying;
To be met by bereavers gathered and following.
And Jesus saith unto Martha (the sister of Mary
And brother of Lazarus), "I am the resurrection, and the life:
He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
Believeth thou this?"
Martha answered, "I believe that you are the Messiah,
The Son of God, who is come into the world."

"If only You had come earlier;" Mary wailed
At Jesus's feet, "Lazarus would have been healed!"
Jesus wept, and so did they who drew near.
"Take away the stone!" Jesus said and they feared.
Bewildered, questioning His character and sanity;
For the body reeked of flesh rotting;
And yet, they obeyed and Jesus prayed.

Then resurrection words pierced the air,
Into the tomb unto Lazarus's ears.
And they there deduced, "The dead cannot hear?"
"Lazarus, come forth!" Jesus ordered.
And so came the corpse forward:
Forgiven and whole, unbroken by Satan.
And they present witnessed, the dead now living,
And saw the glory of God in Him Whom was given.