John 11:1-7, 17-27, 32-45
What Does it Mean to Be Alive?
When we step into John 11, we step into one of the most emotional and hope filled stories in Scripture.
Lazarus—friend of Jesus, beloved brother, pillar of his community—becomes ill, and before help arrives, he dies.
His sisters grieve, his friends gather, the house fills with tears and casseroles and whispered prayers, and then, four days later, Jesus finally shows up.
And right away, this story presses a question on us—not just about what happened to Lazarus, but what it means to be alive.
And maybe even more urgently: what it means to be unbound because Lazarus doesn’t just get resurrected, he gets released--he gets set free.
And those are two different things.
You can be breathing and not be living.
You can be standing and still be bound.
You can walk out of a tomb and still carry the grave clothes of your past, and Jesus cares about all of it.
I once spoke with a man who told me that for years he woke up every morning, went to work, came home, ate dinner, watched TV, went to bed—and repeated that cycle day after day.
He said, “I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t in crisis, I wasn’t even unhappy, but I wasn’t alive. I was just existing.”
Then one day, a friend invited him to volunteer at a community kitchen.
He didn’t want to go, but he went anyway.
And he said that night, as he was serving food, hearing stories, and laughing with strangers—he felt something he hadn’t felt in years.
“It was like someone opened a window in a room I didn’t know was suffocating me,” he said.
He had been breathing before, but that night, he started living again.
And I think that’s the kind of distinction Jesus is trying to show us in this story.
When Mary and Martha send word to Jesus—“Lord, the one you love is sick”—Jesus… lingers, he delays, he doesn’t rush.
And if you’ve ever prayed and felt like heaven put you on hold, you know exactly how Mary and Martha must have felt.
There’s a meme that says, “God never gives you more than you can handle. But sometimes I wish God didn’t trust me so much.”
Mary and Martha would have loved a little less trust in that moment, but John gives us a clue as to why Jesus waits to go to Lazarus in verse 4: “This illness is for God’s glory.”
And it’s not glory as in spectacle, but glory as in revelation—God revealing God’s heart.
And sometimes that revelation happens in the waiting.
Jesus’s delay is not neglect—it is the soil where faith takes root.
It’s where we learn that God may not move when we expect, but God always moves nonetheless.
And when Jesus finally does arrive, he doesn’t start with a miracle.
He starts with tears.
We are told: “Jesus wept.”
This is shortest verse in Scripture, and one of the most powerful.
Jesus doesn’t say, “Don’t cry, everything happens for a reason,” or “Just be strong.”
He doesn’t say, “Let me explain the theology of suffering.”
He cries.
The Son of God stands at the tomb of His friend and lets His heart break.
And in that moment, we learn something essential about being alive: to be alive is to feel.
To be alive is to let compassion move us and to keep our hearts open in a world that keeps trying to close them.
Some of us were taught that faith means being strong all the time, but Jesus shows us that faith means being real, being open, being human, being alive.
And then Jesus walks to the tomb, and suddenly the story becomes our story.
Because Lazarus is not the only one in a tomb: We all have tombs—places where life feels sealed off, where hope has been wrapped up and buried.
Some of us live in the tomb of shame, carrying old mistakes like chains.
Some live in the tomb of fear—fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of being seen.
Others live in the tomb of grief, where the loss of someone or something dear settles like a stone on the chest.
And some live in the tomb of exhaustion, where life has been so hard for so long that even good things feel suspicious.
A month or so ago, a young man came to the church asking for help with his utility bills.
He had just moved here from Maine because, he said, “things are cheaper in Tennessee.”
His rent here is half of what it was there, but he’s working a minimum wage job in a burger joint and still can’t keep up.
I asked him if his parents were still in Maine.
He told me his mother died when he was young, and he never knew his father.
He grew up in the foster care system—he lived in forty different homes before he aged out at eighteen.
And then he said something that broke my heart.
He said, “It’s hard for me to accept when things are going well. It makes me nervous. I’m not used to it.”
That’s a tomb.
That’s what it looks like when life has taught someone that hope is dangerous, that goodness is temporary, that love is unstable.
This young man is alive—but he’s still wrapped, still bound by the grave clothes of a childhood that taught him not to trust joy.
And some of us know exactly what that feels like.
All of these are real tombs, heavy tombs, tombs that shape how we see ourselves and how we see God.
Jesus stands in front of these tombs and says, “Take away the stone.”
And like Martha, we say, “Lord, it’s going to stink in there.”
In other words: “This is going to get messy,” and it will.
Healing is messy, truth is messy, hope is messy, but Jesus doesn’t flinch.
God never flinches at the messes in our lives.
Then comes the moment.
Jesus calls, “Lazarus, come out!”
And Lazarus does.
He walks out of the tomb—alive, but still wrapped, still bound, still wearing the evidence of the grave.
And Jesus turns to the community and says, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Jesus brings him back to life, but the people around him help him live that life.
Jesus gives resurrection, but the community gives release.
And this is where the church steps into the story—not as spectators, not as critics, not as bystanders, but as the ones Jesus trusts with the holy work of unwrapping one another.
Because nobody gets free alone.
Nobody steps into new life without someone else’s hands helping peel back the layers.
The church is meant to be the place where we gently, patiently, lovingly help each other take off the grave clothes we’ve been wearing for far too long.
Sometimes unwrapping someone looks like listening—really listening—when they finally tell the truth about their pain.
Sometimes it looks like reminding someone of who they are when shame has convinced them they’re unworthy.
Sometimes it looks like sitting with someone in their grief long enough for them to believe they’re not alone.
I think of a woman who once told me she had spent years feeling like she was “living small.”
She said she felt wrapped in invisible bandages—old wounds, old words, old fears and then she joined a small group at church.
Week after week, people listened to her, encouraged her, and reflected back to her the goodness they saw in her.
One night she said, “I think I’m starting to feel like myself again,” and someone in the group said, “No—you’re starting to feel alive.”
Years later she said, “Those people unwrapped me.
They didn’t even know they were doing it, but they unwrapped me.”
That’s what the church is supposed to be: a place where people get unwrapped from life’s grave clothes.
There’s a story about a little boy in Sunday school who heard this story for the first time.
When the teacher said, “Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb,” the boy’s eyes got wide and he whispered, “Did Lazarus come out fast or slow?”
The teacher said, “Probably slow because he was wrapped in cloth.”
The boy nodded and said, “Yeah. Sometimes it takes a while to come back to life.”
Sometimes it takes a while and sometimes resurrection is instant, but unbinding takes time.
Sometimes God calls us out of the tomb in a moment, but it takes a community to help us walk again.
Every week, there are men, women and young people in our pews who are saved by Christ but still wrapped in the grave clothes of fear, shame, loneliness, or old wounds.
They’ve heard Jesus call their name—but they need a church around them to help them take the next step.
They need hands that steady them, voices that encourage them, and a community that refuses to let them walk alone.
And that only happens when we show up.
To be the church, we have to gather as the church.
To unbind one another, we have to be present with one another.
To help people live again, we have to be involved—in worship, in ministry, in relationships, in the messy and beautiful work of real community.
Resurrection is God’s gift.
Unbinding is our calling.
And we can’t do it from a distance.
So let’s commit ourselves again to being here—every Sunday, every season, every step—so that together we can help one another live the new life Christ has already begun.
Will you pray with me?
God of life, we come to You now with open hands and honest hearts, grateful that You are the One who calls us out of every tomb and into the light of new beginnings.
Speak again the words You spoke at Lazarus’s grave—come out—and let them echo in every place within us that has grown quiet, tired, or afraid. Call us into a life that is more than breathing, a life that is awake, responsive, and free.
And Lord, as You unbind us, make us a people who unbind one another. Give us the courage to show up, the compassion to listen, the tenderness to walk with those who are still wrapped in grief or fear or shame. Knit us into a community where no one has to struggle alone, where resurrection is celebrated and release is shared work.
Today we commit ourselves—our presence, our gifts, our time, our hearts—to the holy calling of helping one another live the life You have already begun in us. Make us faithful to that calling, steady in that love, and bold in that hope.
Do in us what only You can do, and do through us what You trust us to do.
In the name of Jesus, who brings life and sets us free. Amen
