22 March 2026 | Liz Caughey
I have learnt over the years that a really helpful way to explore gospel readings is to consider the story from the point of view of the different people involved.
By doing this with today’s reading I have identified three messages that I would like to focus on: 1) how God’s timeframe and timing are so different to ours; 2) how God responds to people according to their need; and 3) that we are called to be part of God’s miracles.
So firstly, God’s timing: when Jesus hears from Mary and Martha that their brother Lazarus is critically unwell, he doesn’t rush to his side. Although we know that he too loves Lazarus, he actually delays going to see him. It must have been agonising for the two sisters to reach out to Jesus and not get a response – knowing that, if he would just come, he could likely heal Lazarus. But Jesus had good reason. He knew that by getting there after Lazarus had died – well after, as it turned out – and knowing he could raise him from the dead, everyone would then see the glory of God. Jesus’ delay would carry a message of God’s love and power, and therefore a message of hope.
God’s timing is so often different to ours – more likely to disrupt our hopes and dearest wishes. Now, no one can pretend to know God’s mind but of course, being human, we can’t help speculating. So, some would say that in those delays in God’s response – perhaps we are being given time to adjust, and reconsider, or reprioritise. To prepare for whatever is to follow. So perhaps it is – like – God’s gift to us – although that might feel unlikely at the time.
And then we have to consider that maybe God’s silence IS his response. God can be silent seemingly forever in the face of need and prayer, in the face of desperation.
And that silence, as we all know, can feel like – the absence of God, or even abandonment by God. It’s not uncommon for us to think at those unbearable times that there IS no God – and we are certainly not alone in this.
The 16th century mystic, St John of the Cross, wrote about ‘the dark night of the soul’, and Mother Teresa spent decades feeling no response from God at all. The theologian CS Lewis referred to ‘the door slammed in your face when your need is desperate’.
In the Bible there are many instances of people lamenting God’s absence: the prophet Habbakuk, who said, ‘How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?’; Job, who spends 37 chapters asking why God is silent; and even Jesus, who cries out on the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’
And yet these people all held fast to their faith. And we are urged to do the same in the face of silence and doubt, to have faith in the unseen and the unknowable. To lean into that faith for comfort and hope.
And sometimes God will respond in unexpected ways and through unexpected people. As Rev Lopini said in a sermon last month, ‘No place is so desolate, so distant or so challenging that Jesus has not already been there.’ Jesus understands our dilemmas and our mamae, our pain. God is faithful to his people, but faithfulness doesn’t necessarily mean that God will respond urgently or in the way that we want.
Secondly, from this text, we can see that Jesus responds to each person differently according to their need. He reassures his disciples about their concerns for his safety, he shows courage in the face of threat by saying he will go to Judea despite the risk. He reassures Martha – a woman of unshakeable faith – that her brother will live. He reveals to her and to her only that he is the resurrection and the life, and she says immediately that she believes this. Then when she falters at the tomb – thinking Lazarus has been dead for too long to be brought back to life – Jesus gently chastises her to remind her to hold on to her faith.
When Mary came to him weeping, he wept with her in her moment of deep loss – showing that he too loved her brother, understood her grief – and felt his own. He gave life back to Lazarus and, in doing so, revealed the glory of God to the crowd of onlookers so that many became believers.
Each person’s individual needs were met by Jesus’ perfect response. Just as God meets each of our unique needs. Some people need truth, some need to be reminded to hold on to faith, others need reassurance; some need just the presence of another alongside them; some need action, some need release, some need to be shown the glory of God. And those responses from God, whenever they come, are so often, somehow, all right, even if it takes us years to understand why.
We must remember, too, the words in our service that say, ‘May we be the answer to our prayers for one another’. Because as God’s people, we are called to respond to others, to be the light of Christ in their time of need. To walk alongside them so they know they are not alone.
The third message from today’s reading is that, while it was Jesus who performed the miracle, Lazarus’ family and friends also played a part in that miracle. Firstly, someone led Jesus to the tomb, another rolled away the stone, removing the obstacle to Lazarus’ resurrection. Once he had left the tomb, others took off his bindings to give him freedom of movement. And then they were told by Jesus to let Lazarus go, and they did. And he went.
This is a powerful message to us as church. It suggests that we too have a part to play in God’s miracles. In bringing about change, in bringing about new life, whether it be of institutions, communities or families – or indeed churches facing decline.
The stones we roll away might be – barriers to justice, such as policies that discriminate against sections of society; or fear – of the ‘other’ or of change or of the unknown. But we must collectively do that work where we see injustice. Change begins the moment one person refuses to ignore an unjust situation, and speaks up when others remain silent. And it can be one of the most difficult things we will ever do, to swim against that tide of popular opinion.
The reading suggests that it’s never too late to make change for the better. What we might think is “too late,” as in the Lazarus story, God might call “just the beginning.”
And the reading suggests, too, that the need for change is often in the places we’d rather avoid – amongst the broken people, the exhausted congregations, the relationships that feel beyond repair. The text today tells us that God is not put off by ‘too difficult or too late’.
Our task is to speak up about it, and to gather and encourage like-minded others to do the same.
We don’t have to be famous, or rich, or top of the class. We just need to stand up and be counted. In this way, bringing new life in our world and in its systems begins with people who say ‘enough’. History can turn when one person decides silence is no longer an option. That is what Mahatma Gandhi knew, and Martin Luther King, and Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parkes and Dame Whina Cooper, to name a few. And that is why Christ came into the world.
So, to finish, looking back at this reading,
Let us be patient and hold on to our faith as we wait for God’s timing to bear fruit.
Let us be the people who refuse to ignore injustice, and who stand and speak while others stay silent.
Let us be the people who set the scene for God to perform his miracles.
And let us be the answer to our prayers for one another.
Whakapaingia te Atua.
Amine.