based on a sermon shared with the Presbyterian United Church of Christ. Video of sermon below.
One of the hallmarks of the Gospel of John is pointing to miracles as signs of God’s power in the world. Signs are John’s narrative and theological method to encourage the readers of his gospel to consider not only what God is able to do, but to enter into a conversation, into a relationship with Jesus. A sign, a wondrous act in the Gospel of John is always followed by a conversation with Jesus.
Jesus not only does things. Jesus pursues relationships, especially in the Gospel of John.
In his account, John shares stories about 7 signs before the passion of Jesus. The first 6 are astonishing manifestations of divine dynamism in ordinary, daily contexts– in a party, in healing, while traveling, and in the sharing of food. More than demonstrations of divine dynamism, of God’s power in the world, these signs open space. They create opportunities to talk about presence, about the contradictions of social rejection, about the transformative power of solidarity, about the pain of despair and the restoration of peace and wellbeing, and about the personal and social capacity for transformation that can happen in sharing a simple meal with one another.
And then there is the 7th sign. I find this one overwhelming. In it, the dynamism of God is manifested in what is most basic and at the same time, most impactful.
The first 6 signs point to essential aspects of human life:
community, health, freedom, and sustainability.
The 7th sign, however, goes deeper into what is most fundamental to being human:
the inevitability of death, and the gift of life.
The lesson for this morning covers the first 45 verses of John 11. Allow me to consider a part of the lesson:
So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”
When he heard this, Jesus said, “This illness isn’t fatal. It’s for the glory of God so that God’s Son can be glorified through it.”
Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus. When he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was.
After two days, he said to his disciples, “Let’s return to Judea again.”
“Our friend Lazarus is sleeping, but I am going in order to wake him up.”
The disciples said, “Lord, if he’s sleeping, he will get well.”
They thought Jesus meant that Lazarus was in a deep sleep,
but Jesus had spoken about Lazarus’ death.
Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died. For your sakes, I’m glad I wasn’t there so that you can believe. Let’s go to him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.
Even now I know that whatever you ask God, God will give you.”
Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha replied, “I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die.
Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, God’s Son, the one who is coming into the world.”
Many of the Jews who came with Mary and saw what Jesus did believed in him.
During one of our recent Wednesday Bible studies, a discomfort was voiced around a phrase found several times in the Gospel of John: “(some thing happened) for the glory of God so that God’s Son can be glorified through it.”
And then, a question:
Does that mean that the man had to be born blind for God’s glory? (John 9)
What about his life, his livelihood, his dignity?
Does that mean that Lazarus had to die for God’s glory? Why not let him live?
These are good questions. They are the kind of questions that arise when faith takes human dignity seriously. And for many of us—especially those who approach faith from a more progressive perspective—they should matter deeply. Because we believe that the relationship Jesus seeks to build with each one of us, and with the community of his followers, is rooted in freedom, dignity, and solidarity—not in self-righteousness, not in checklists of piety, and not in performative acts of religion.
So what do we do with these stories?
I want to suggest that when Jesus says some things happen so that God’s glory may be revealed, he is not placing the burden on the disenfranchised or marginalized. Not on the man born blind. Not on Lazarus. Jesus is not saying that their suffering was necessary or divinely orchestrated for show.
Rather, Jesus is moving the social burden and the theological weight.
Jesus is moving the social and theological burden away from the disenfranchised and marginalized, and placing it squarely on the systems, assumptions, and biases that encourage those who do the disenfranchising. The glory of God, then, is not about explaining suffering. It is about changing how we have been conditioned to see the other, and confronting everyone with their self-righteousness and demeaning ways.
A response to these questions is, perhaps, that the glory of God was not manifested for the man, as if he were a means to an end. Jesus loved him exactly as he was. The glory of God was manifested in him, that the community be set free—from the rejection, the exclusion, and the judgment they had imposed on him his entire life.
What the divine glory does, then, is to liberate not the ones who God already loves just as God created them to be, but those who have forgotten how to love, even themselves.
And I think this must also be true in the world today.
I think about Cuba and the United States. The manifestation of God’s glory is not for Cuba—at least not primarily. God already loves the Cuban people exactly as they are, and the Cuban people know the power of presence, belief, and faith even under the internal pressure and external chokehold they have experienced for 7 decades. When God’s glory is revealed in Cuba, perhaps it is for the liberation of the United States—for the freeing of a people, and their systems and patterns of abuse, of rejection, and of dehumanization. Perhaps the ones most in need of liberation are not those who suffer under oppression—they know the power of presence, of believing, of faith. Liberation is needed by those who participate in oppression, justify it, or remain silent before it.
Liberation allows for the awakening of conscience. And with such awakening, what must follow is the rejection of evil—not out of fear, but out of conviction.
To skim over today’s lesson might suggest that Jesus is teaching something new to the person called Martha. Yet, if we read more attentively, what you will see is a woman initiating the conversation, asking the hard questions, even answering her own questions out of a conviction she already carries.
You can’t make that kind of conviction up. That conviction does not come from knowledge of the mind, but out of certainty that grows in the spirit. Only experience, time, trust, awareness of the presence of God in life and in the world, is able to grow the conviction that God is able to save, and more than save, that God is able to restore life.
Harm spreads easily and swiftly. When injustice is allowed to persist—when it is normalized, excused, or ignored—it gives license for others to act in the same way. We see it in the United States, and we see it echoed in the actions of leaders and governments around the world.
The opposite is also true: a radical turn toward righteousness, toward dignity, toward the humanity of the other, can awaken those who have been silent, those who have been indifferent, those who have been afraid to speak.
Because what is happening in our world is not abstract. It is not theoretical. It is deeply, painfully human.
What the government of the United States is doing to the people in Cuba is inhumane.
What governments in Tel Aviv and in Washington are doing to Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians is inhumane.
What the Russian government is doing to Ukrainians, what the Chinese government is doing to Uyghurs, what civil war has done to the people of Sudan—this too is inhumane.
And even within nations like Israel and the United States, the dignity of every human takes a toll that comes from participating in or being associated with violence—violence that only sows discord and deepens enmity. It is irrational, with very real consequences for people whose governments do not represent (and, it seems, actively reject) their high aspirations for solidarity and peace.
We see hypocrisy in the language of religious freedom used, for instance, by President Trump. While he touts incoherent policies on religious freedom, at the same time, we witness the rising Islamophobia, antisemitism, and xenophobia across the country, even in our own communities. These contradictions are not only political—they are theological. They reveal a deep need for a change of mind, a change of heart.
How do we cultivate, in our lives and in our shared life as a community of belief, a faith that can withstand social contradiction, difficulty, adversity, and pain?
image by Kevin Malik
How do we follow the example in the lesson of John 11 in a way that even in the most difficult moments, we can speak of the certainty of God’s presence?
Presence. Belief. Faith.
The invitation is not simply to marvel at how Jesus can inexplicably and wondrously transform the circumstances of an individual.
I think the invitation, especially in the times we are living in, is to recognize that the ones in need of transformation are those who hold power, influence, and legacy.
Those in need of a change of heart are those who could choose solidarity instead of selfishness, those who could reject systems built on false, fragile, and destructive notions of supremacy and exceptionalism, those needing to choose joining in the creation and deployment of systems of dignity, wellbeing, health, hospitality, and peace.
So the question is not: Why did this person suffer?
The question is: What must be transformed in us, in our systems, in our world, so that we may finally see one another as God sees us—fully human, fully worthy, fully beloved?
There is where the glory of God is revealed.
Jonathan Sacks, known among other things for serving as Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, is known to have said that,
faith is the courage to live with uncertainty. Hope is the belief that together we can make things better.
The signs of Jesus are not just displays of power. They are invitations.
Invitations to conversation. Invitations to relationship. Invitations to belief.
In that belief, we can find both life and the courage to face whatever comes next.
Presence. Believe. Faith
Lord, I believe. Amen.