“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” These words of Jesus are both deeply comforting and deeply challenging. In a world that resists exclusive truth, they confront us with a bold claim: that everything we are looking for: direction, reality, and life itself, is found in Him alone. And in moments of fear, doubt, or uncertainty, they offer a steady assurance: if we are with Him, we are on the right path. 

We live in an age with little space for silence. Every spare moment is filled, every pause distracted. Yet Mary shows us a different way - not merely wondering, but pondering the works of God in her heart. Here is a call back to stillness, attentiveness, and a faith formed not in noise, but in quiet reflection.

Psalm 23 is more than a comforting poem - it is the story of a pilgrimage. It begins in rest and peace, moves through darkness and uncertainty, and ends in the presence of God. Each of us is walking this path in our own way. And even in the moments when we cannot see where we are going, or feel unsure of God’s voice, we are given this promise: the Good Shepherd has not stopped leading.

​What does it mean to stand firm in a world that pressures us to stay silent? On St George’s Day, Fr. Oliver explores courage, faithfulness, and the call of Christ in Luke 12: to acknowledge Him boldly and trust the Spirit in moments of fear. 

​Fr. Oliver reflects on the road to Emmaus, where disappointed disciples walk away believing their hopes have failed—and invites us to see how the risen Jesus meets us in our confusion, calling us to trust that, from heaven’s perspective, there is far less to fear than we think.

Fr. Oliver explores the longing we all feel for a world where good triumphs, love endures, and death is not the end—and invites us to consider what it means if that story is not just something we wish were true, but something that has actually broken into our world.

Fr. Oliver invites us to walk with the women at the tomb, exploring what it means to follow Christ faithfully through grief, uncertainty, and the quiet struggles of everyday life.

Maundy Thursday
Psalm 22
Fr.  Alan Heatherington
​(no audio recording)

Oh, use me, Lord, use even me, just as You will, and when, and where, until Your blessèd face I see, Your rest, Your joy, Your glory share. Amen. (Psalm 22, pp.18,19)

Why is Psalm 22 so important in Holy Week, so prominent that appears on Palm Sunday in all three years of the lectionary cycle and is read in its entirety on every Maundy Thursday, as it will be later this evening? Why do I preach from it every Holy Week? How did it come to be among the three most quoted psalms in the New Testament?[1] Why is it sometimes known as the “Psalm of the Passion” or the “Psalm of the Cross”?

In the accounts of the crucifixion in Mark and Matthew, those passing by the Cross shook their heads at Jesus, as was prophesied in vs 7. In the time of Jesus, this psalm was already so well-known to the Jewish people as a “Messianic Psalm” that vs. 8 could be quoted even by the ones who were mocking Him as He hung on the Cross: “He trusts in God; let God deliver Him if He delights in Him” (Matthew 27:43). All four Gospels mention the soldiers’ casting lots for the garments of Jesus, as prophesied in verse 18. In both Mark and Matthew, the first verse of Psalm 22 is spoken by Jesus from the Cross when He “cried out with a loud voice, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46) 

Those people who heard Jesus say these words would have understood them as an “announcement” of this Messianic psalm, one that was already being fulfilled in part by the nails that “pierced His hands and feet.” This was mentioned in verse 16, nearly one thousand years before Roman crucifixion existed.

But if we are to understand the significance of Psalm 22 in the context of the crucifixion and the accounts of the Gospel writers, we need to start with a better understanding of the entire psalm. As early as verse 3 we encounter the conjunction “but,” called in Hebrew the “adversative vav.” It often turns the corner from lamentation to praise:

          But You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In You our fathers trusted; they trusted, and You
          delivered them. To You they cried out and were rescued; in You they trusted and were not put to shame
          (vs.3-5).

Now we begin to see where our psalm is going. This is the answer to what was meant by the questions in verse 1. Note that it is not one question, but two: “Why have you forsaken Me,” and “Why are You so far from hearing My groanings?” But we know that in our own darkest hours, God does not forsake us or refuse to hear us; rather, He hears us, rescues us and delivers us! Though there are three times in Psalm 22 that God is asked not to be “far away” (vs.1,11,19), yet, in v.26, we read that “those who seek Him will praise the Lord,” because, as Isaiah wrote, when we seek Him, He may be found, and when we call on Him, He is always near (Isaiah 55:6). 

Jesus knew that. He knew that the Father had not forsaken Him, nor had He refused to hear His groanings. He had not gone “far away.” When we come to the final verses of this psalm, the shift from lamentation to praise is unmistakable. Verse 19 begins with another adversative vav, another Hebrew conjunction that changes directions:

         But You, LORD, do not be far off. You are my strength; hasten to help me.
​
Then, building to a glorious conclusion, the word “praise” is used four times in verses 22-26, along with “glorify Him” and “stand in awe of Him”! What at first appeared to be a “psalm of lamentation” is now seen instead to be a “psalm of deliverance,” one that looks forward to all that God is yet to do in the future, just as He has done in the past. This is important, because reading only the first words of Psalm 22 out of context is misleading as to the essential character and meaning of this Messianic psalm, and as to the very character of God Himself. It is only as we go on that we find what this psalm meant to our Lord Jesus Christ when He cited it in His final moments on the Cross.

The question of Jesus, “Why have You forsaken Me,” is sometimes mistakenly called His “Cry of Dereliction,” a cry of “abandonment,” meaning that God the Father had to look away from His only Son in His moment of deepest need. This is said to have been necessary because God cannot look on sin, and only then had the sinless Jesus become the bearer of our sins. Yet, as John the Baptist proclaimed at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He is the Lamb of God, Who is taking away the sin of the world.” The sinless Jesus came to be the sin-bearer. It is true that we do read in Habakkuk (1:13),

          You (God) are of purer eyes than to see evil and You cannot look on wickedness.

But that is only the first half of the verse! It continues with these words:

          Why is it that You do look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more
          righteous than he?

The word for “look” is the same in both halves of that verse![2] When we say that God cannot look on sin, we mean that He cannot countenance it, He cannot look on sin with approval; but He does look on it with judgment. God Himself led His people through the wilderness for 40 years by a pillar of cloud by day and by a pillar of fire by night. He saw them repeatedly turn away from Him and from His appointed leaders, Moses and Aaron. And, seeing their sin, He punished them for it. But He never looked the other way. We read in Psalm 106 (:43-45),

          Many times did God deliver them, yet they rebelled through their own devices and were brought
​          down through their wickedness. Nevertheless, He looked on their adversity. When He heard their 
          lamentation, He remembered His covenant with them and relented according to the abundance of His
          lovingkindness.

How, then, could God possibly look away from His only Son, the One Who was lifted up on the Cross in order to “draw all men to Himself?” As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The Son of Man must be lifted up so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” God sent His only Son into the world not “to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” [3] Our sin was judged on the Cross of Christ, once for all. God looked with judgment at the sin that Jesus bore. But He looked with love on His Son, the sin-bearer, so that He could also look with love on us, the sinners.

The key to this is found in verse 24 of our psalm:

          (God) has not despised or abhorred the suffering of the afflicted One, nor has He hidden His face from
          Him; but when He cried to Him for help, He heard.
 
The cry of Jesus was not a “Cry of Dereliction,” but a cry of deliverance, not of abandonment but of confidence, not of despair but of triumph, all borrowed from a “psalm of deliverance.” A revered German New Testament scholar wrote that in this moment, Jesus may have experienced “a mere passing feeling” of abandonment, a feeling that “must not be confused with actual objective desertion on the part of God… which, in the case of Jesus, would have been a metaphysical and moral impossibility.”[4] As Athanasius taught, the godhead is eternally undivided, and the Savior on the Cross was still God the Son.
The incomparable British preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, once made this extraordinary if slightly conjectural statement (emphases mine):

          Psalm 22 actually may have been repeated word for word by our Lord when He was hanging on the
          tree; it would be too bold to say that it was so, but even a casual reader may see that it might have
          been. It begins with, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and ends… in the original with “It
          is finished.” We should read it reverently, putting off our shoes from our feet, as Moses did at the
          burning bush; for if there be holy ground anywhere in Scripture, it is in this psalm.

Whether or not the entire psalm was on the lips of Jesus, it surely was in His mind and on His heart. And the fact that “It is finished” was the final word[5] of Psalm 22 is riveting. It ends with this promise in verses 30 and 31:

          Posterity will serve Him; they will come and proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn, that
          it is finished! (asah in Hebrew, tetelestai in Greek)

Even those who were said to have been “standing far off” from the Cross (Luke 23:49) might have heard Jesus “cry out with a loud voice, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46). But it is likely that only those closest to the Cross would have heard Him complete the psalm by saying faintly, with His dying breath, “It is finished,” as recorded only by St. John, who was the only disciple standing with Mary at the very foot of the Cross. John heard it, remembered it, treasured it, and recorded it for us.

What God is acknowledged in Psalm 22 to have “finished,” Jesus did once for all on the Cross,[6] in order to establish righteousness for all generations of His people and for “all the families of the nations” (verse 27). That includes all of us! When Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He meant that it was complete, it was fulfilled, because it was “the full, final sacrifice,"[7] the consummation[8] of all that was required for our redemption. Atonement was complete, and God’s wrath was satisfied. Just two verses earlier, St. John explicitly wrote of Jesus’ having known “that all things were now finished.”[9]  

All that was left was the ultimate validation of the victorious Christ, the Christus victor, Whose victory was demonstrated not only by a Cross, on which He was lifted up to draw all men to Himself (John 12:32), but also by an empty tomb, from which He would emerge as the One Who, near another tomb, the tomb of Lazarus, had said to Martha, 

          I AM the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me, though he were dead, yet will he live
          (Jn. 11:25).

In His redeeming work on the Cross and in His role as the Pascal Lamb Who takes away the sin of the world, yours and mine, Jesus completed what He was sent to do. As he had said in His Bread of Life discourse (John 6:38-40),

          I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him Who sent me. For this is
          the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal
          life; and I will raise Him up on the last day.

In His great High Priestly Prayer in the Upper Room, Jesus said to the Father,

          I have finished the work that You gave Me to do (John 17:4).

Another part of that finished work had been completed on the first Maundy Thursday, when Jesus gave to His disciples, to us, and to all who follow Him in faith, the gift of the Holy Eucharist, through which His very Presence is forever promised. “This is My Body, this is My Blood.” That same promise was among the final words of the risen Christ to His disciples, the last of His words recorded in St. Matthew’s Gospel: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). He is here! He promised!

Yes, it was “for us and for our salvation” that God did not “hide His face” from His Son on the Cross; and He does not hide His face from us whenever we cry to Him for help, sinful though we may be. God heard every cry of His Son from that Cross: He heard Him when He cried out with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  But then, above and beyond that, the Father heard His Son’s final whisper:   
​  
          ‘ā-śāh: It is finished.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
​

[1] Along with Psalm 2 and Psalm 110
[2] Hebrew, nabat (נָבַט): to look, regard, behold, consider
[3] John 12:32; 3:14-17
[4] Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer (1800-1873)
[5] “It is finished” is only one word in Hebrew, ‘ā-śāh (עָשָֽׂה), just as the final word of Jesus from the Cross in John’s Gospel is only one word in Greek, tetelestai (τετέλεσται). Jesus might well have said “asah” just before “He bowed His head and gave up His spirit” (John 19:30)!
[6] ephapax, Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, 9:26, 10:10
[7] From Thomas Aquinas to Richard Crashaw to Gerald Finzi
[8] In Latin, consummatum est; “it is finished,” consummated, completed, fulfilled, accomplished.
[9] John 19:28, also tetelestai

​The Fifth Sunday in Lent
John 11 - The Raising of Lazarus
Fr. Oliver Robinson

John 11 – God brings what is Dead back to Life
Q: What in your life have you quietly given up on?
An area where you were once full of hope - but over time, you’ve let go of it…
or quietly resigned yourself to the fact that it won’t change.
A hope.
A desire.
Your marriage. Your family.
Something that once felt full of life…and now part of it just feels empty?
The things you’ve stopped praying about…because you just don’t think it’s going to change?

Ezekiel
Ezekiel writes in a dark time. 
The Babylonian Empire has successfully attacked Jerusalem, ransacked the city, and taken off a wave of captives to live in exile. Ezekiel, a Priest in Jerusalem, was among them and taken prisoner. 
Ezekiel is living with the Exiles in Babylon and goes down to sit by a canal. There something amazing happens:
​
He sees a stormy cloud in the distance approaching, as it gets nearer he sees ‘fire flashing forth continuously’ (Ez 1:4) and from the midst of the cloud comes forth these four living creatures, and then the throne of God Himself appears in the sky. 

Ezekiel falls on his face in worship, and God speaks to Him. 

And the whole book is this wondrous whirlwind of visions, prophecies, prophetic acts, and God speaking to Ezekiel in these wondrous ways about Israel’s idolatry, How God’s presence has left the temple. God pronounces judgment on Israel and how he will use the nations to enact His justice. 
He tells him about the exile, that Babylon will destroy the city of Jerusalem, and its temple. The most horrifying news. 

But the story turns, and God gives visions of hope. 

God tells Ezekiel he will bring Israel a new King, a King in the line of David, a Messiah, who will lead God’s people. He will be the King God’s people have always needed but never had. And when the New Israel comes under this King’s reign, it will be transformed. God will deal with their rebellious hearts by giving them new hearts. He will send His Holy Spirit to give them new, soft hearts that will love and obey their God:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:26-28)

And then God gives Ezekiel this vision! The vision that we read today. The Valley of Dry Bones. 

This huge valley, filled with the bones of dead bodies, so long dead that only the bones remain. And God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. And as he does so:

There is a sound.
And then a rattling as the bones begin to move
Then, piece by piece, the bones connect to move and reconnect with other bones,
Sinews form and start to tie them together, and flesh starts to appear on them. 
The wind comes and breathes life into these bodies
Soon, there is a vast army, living and breathing, standing before Ezekiel. 

And God tells Ezekiel to prophecy to them again:

Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel.  And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people.  (37:12-13)

The Raising of Lazarus 
Then, nearly 600 years later, Christ stands before the tomb of one of his beloved friends:

Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”  Jesus wept. 

The Son of God, the author of all creation, the man who flung stars into space when He created the universe, weeps. Eyes that watched the beginning of the world, the ages of history pass by, the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms,  and all the great wonders of the universe begin to fill with tears over this one fallen human creature, whom He loves. 

Those of you who have seen the death of a loved one know the terrible grief that Christ felt in this moment. The ache and pain of the loss. That now the world is different from how it used to be. 
He weeps over the death of His beloved friend who has died. 
v35 is the shortest verse in the entire Bible. And perhaps the most beautiful. 

And you know what comes next. 600 years after Ezekiel had prophesied life to dry bones, Christ stands in front of the tomb and orders the stone to be rolled away.

The people hesitate. They are worried about the smell. But He insists. 

Christ lifts up His eyes and prays to the Father. 
And with a loud voice He cries: Lazarus! Come Out!

And a man bound with grave-clothes, hands and feet bound, stumbles forward out of the doorway of the tomb. 

Our hope in the resurrection to come
So here we have the story of Christ's most dramatic miracle. He does what is absolutely unthinkable, even today modern science has not achieved this. He reverses the power of death and raises a man from the tomb. 

Think of what it must have been like to be in that crowd. The wonder and amazement of what has happened.

And we know that the resurrection of Lazarus points forward to:

It points to Christ’s own death and resurrection, which will take place. 

And it points to our death and resurrection, that to those who follow Christ, our death here on earth will be just like a sleep, that one day we will awake from, just like Lazarus did,  when He comes again in glory. 

We say every week in our creed: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

I know that many of you are considering your own earthly deaths, and preparing for the time when your earthly bodies fail you. We will all have to face such a day, but because of what Christ has done we can face it in confidence. And spend our time here on earth well before He calls us home. 

But within this story is something very, very, powerful.  Yes, it does point to the resurrection at the end of days, but it also shows us something else. 

Martha’s response 
There is a moment in this story which I would like to read to you: 

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Christ tells Martha that her brother will rise again, and she responds, almost despondently:
Yes, I know he will, we all know that everyone will be raised by God on the last day
And she is right. Everyone at this time knows these – even the Pharisees.

It is because of passages in the Old Testament, like the Ezekiel passage we read today, that the Judeans in Jesus’ time have started to conclude that God will raise the dead out of Sheol before the end of the world.
There is only one group that disputes this: the Sadducees, and they are known as being odd for not believing it. 

But we, sometimes, can be guilty of the same thing as Martha:
We believe in the “resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”
But we forget that life is also here, now, with us. 
Martha is only thinking about the future resurrection. 
Jesus’ response to Martha is this:
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. 

Jesus does not say ‘I can provide the resurrection and the life’
He says “I AM the resurrection and the life”
And He proceeds to bring part of that future resurrection into the present.
He raises Lazarus from the dead!

Those who believe in Jesus can enjoy a confidence in the face of our earthly deaths, but He has also come NOW, and to give us this new life NOW, today, here in the Chicago suburbs.

The American Bible scholar, Gary Burge, who taught at Wheaton and is now at Calvin Theological Seminary, writes this: 
      Jesus is telling us that the reality of the resurrection is not something that simply awaits us in the end of time. As we saw, Judaism held this belief popularly. But Jesus is expressing a truth that is sometimes missed. Resurrection describes an aspect of life that we can experience now. Martha says that Lazarus will be raised in the future. But Jesus says that Lazarus is going to be raised now. This means that there is a real power available in the present experience of Christ that is unknown to the Jewish framework of Martha and Mary. The power of God resident in our lives today is the same power that will enable us to live for eternity. 
– Gary M. Burge, NIV Application Commentary: John

Martha believed in all the right doctrine, but she missed the present reality of Jesus in her life.
Christ is not just our future hope; He is our present resurrection and life.

Application:
So what are the areas of your life where you need God to raise you from the dead?
What tombs are you stuck in, that you need Him to call you out of?
What areas of your heart, what relationships, what dreams, visions, and passions, have become for you ‘dry bones’ caked in dust and longing for new life?
Where do you need God to soften your heart, and replace your heart of stone. 

Spiritual dryness
A question I often ask people in my counseling office is ‘How close do you feel to God in this season?’
I receive varying responses. It usually quite rare for someone to say ‘ very close’ but it does happen. Most people are experiencing a sense of distance form God. 
The follow-up question I often don’t ask them, but I can ask you here is this: 
          Who was it that moved?
When you feel far away from God, did He move away from you? Or did you move away from Him? 
Martha knew all the right things, but she has the Son of God standing in front of her, telling her that He is about to raise her brother from the dead, and she misses it!

She can't see it – she thinks He is offering her a theological comfort, but really He is about to do the most spectacular miracle in front of her – and reverse death itself!

How often are we Martha in that moment!
How often do we resign ourselves to our current circumstances and don’t believe that Christ has come to heal us!
He doesn’t say ‘I will be the resurrection and the life’ He says “I AM the resurrection and the Life.”

Following Christ now in this dark world means that the process of our resurrection has already begun – He has filled us with His Holy Spirit and given us new hearts. 
Christ is at work in our lives NOW in ways that bring life out of what feels dead.

How?
Well, there is one example of this I felt called to in my prayers for you to bring today:

Marriages and Child/Parent relationships
Some of you have fallen into patterns in your marriages and family relationships that are unhealthy. 
Of course you have, we are broken human beings and, sadly, this is inevitable. 
And some of you have been married, or in your family, for a very long time and probably don’t hold out hope that these patterns will ever change.
How often are our prayer: ‘Lord please change this persons heart!’ Instead of ‘Lord please change my heart!’
Well, I have some news for you:
There is absolutely nothing you can do to change the people you are in a relationship with. 
Your spouse, your friends, your parents, your children. 
You cannot change their feelings, their behavior, or their personality.  
That is 100% outside of your control.
The ONLY thing you can change is YOURSELF. This is the only person you really have control over.

And with the power of Christ in your heart NOW, TODAY, you can partner with Him in making changes so big in yourself that the scales of your marriage tip, that the relationships with your family begin to change. That the things you thought were dead start to gasp back into life.

You can ask Him to fulfill his promise of the resurrection and the life TODAY, by softening your heart.
Replacing what was stone into living, beating, flesh. 

The best way to fix any human relationship is not to ask Christ to fix the other person, but to ask Him to fix you.

Practical Applications:
Examples:
Gentlemen – we struggle to apologize for things.
It is very hard for us to separate our sense of character from our actions.
When our wives or children bring us something we did wrong, we often feel that what they are sayingis that we are a failure as a husband or a father.
This is not the case. When people bring you criticism of your actions, keep it framed as an action. Apologize quickly for the action, not for failing as a father or husband. We all make mistakes, and it is human and normal for us to mess up.
Apologize regularly, because everyone gets things wrong, and you are not so special that you do not need to apologize to make things right. 
Tell your wife how much you love her regularly. Make her feel like the most beloved woman that ever walked the face of the earth.
Use your words and actions to make her feel like the most treasured and beloved wife on the planet. 
Understand that when she tells you you did something wrong, she is not making a comment on your character—she is making a comment on your actions, and those are two different things.
Know that when she tells you things, she probably just wants to be heard and listened to, and does not always need you to fix the problem. 
She does not see things the way you do, and she does not process her thoughts in the same way.

And if you think these things are too hard to do - Ask Christ to give you a new heart for them. Ask Him to speak words of resurrection in your heart so that you can. He will answer your prayer. This is His promise, which is available to you NOW.

Ladies – it can often be really frightening to let your husband lead you. You see his faults, you see his failings, and you have been let down plenty of times before. But the more you are able to put your trust in him, as the man Christ has led you to in marriage, the better things will go.
Do not become an obstacle to his leading your family. Become the main source of encouragement in his life.  Remind yourself regularly that what seems exceedingly obvious to you is often not obvious to him at all, and that he is holding on to things that no one else gets to see.
Do not be annoyed or anxious when he does not share his feelings with you—he does not see things the way you do, and he does not process feelings in the same way.
And if you think these things are too hard to do - Ask Christ to give you a new heart for them. Ask Him to speak words of resurrection in your heart so that you can. He will answer your prayer. This is His promise, which is available to you NOW.

Children of difficult parents – some of you are carrying heavy, heavy wounds. There are things you are grateful for, and things that you should not have had to carry.
Do not let your parents’ failings define you. 
And if they are still continuing to hurt you through their failings, learn to set good boundaries with them. 
Learn to say NO when you need to. 
Learn to recongise the needs you have that they are just nbever going to meet, and let them go.
Lean into Christ and the church community He has provided for you. There are many spiritual mothers and fathers available to you right here in our congregation!
And if you think these things are too hard to do - Ask Christ to give you a new heart for them. Ask Him to speak words of resurrection in your heart so that you can. He will answer your prayer. This is His promise, which is available to you NOW.

Parents of difficult children – particularly those of you who mourn over your children’s lack of faith. Let your children see the difference it makes having Jesus in your life. 
Let them look at you in wonder and think, “How did my mom or dad become such a peaceful, joyful, loving, and fulfilled person?”
No matter what they tell you, they are watching you closely, and they will see the changes you make in your life as you become more like Christ. This will be a far better testimony to them than any pressure to come to church or expressions of disappointment in them.
Lift them up to God daily in the quietness of your private prayer.

When they say things about your faith that are hurtful, do not defend Christ (He doesn’t need you to); instead, tell them how much it hurts you when they speak of something so precious to you that way. 
Do everything you can to maintain a good and healthy relationship with them, so that if the time comes when they turn to Christ, you have not placed a stumbling block in their way—the fear that you will say, “I told you so.” (For who wants to tell their parents they were right about something?)

And if you think these things are too hard to do - Ask Christ to give you a new heart for them. Ask Him to speak words of resurrection in your heart so that you can. He will answer your prayer. This is His promise, which is available to you NOW.

End
So do not resign yourself to what feels dead.
Do not settle for dry bones.
Do not assume that because something has been this way for a long time, it will always be this way.

Because of what Christ has done on the cross, he paved the way for us all to have access to new hearts, to dry bones come to life, for what was dead in us to be made alive, and to have new life breathed into us. 
That same voice and power that called Lazarus out of the tomb is the voice that speaks into our lives today.

So stand up, wrapped in your grave clothes, and hobble out of your tomb!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Amen.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever.
Lord, make me know Your ways; teach me Your paths; lead me in Your truth; and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation. Amen. (Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 25:4,5)

We are living in a dark world, one that was created out of darkness, that descended again into darkness in the Fall, that had the possibility of a fresh start after the Flood but again fell into darkness after the Tower of Babel; a world that was in darkness when it rejected God’s Messiah, and that is in darkness today because it has rejected God’s self-revelation and God’s leadership. We feel victimized by all this, yet helpless to know what we could do to effect significant and lasting change.  In our Gospel reading Jesus said, “We must work the works of Him Who sent Me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” We have today to be doing God’s work.

All four of today’s lectionary readings are trying to teach us this: that God is still on His throne, and that He is in charge even when His working is hard to discern. God tried to explain that to Samuel when He said, “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Samuel was looking for someone tall and rugged to be king, but God was looking for a young shepherd boy whom He could make into a giant-killer. What it means is that only God always gets it right, even when we are fully confident of our own flawed and fallen judgment. When we set ourselves up as the enlightened ones, we expose ourselves with our perpetual shortcomings. As you have heard me say many times, “God is God, and we are not.” In Psalm 100, we read:

         Know that the Lord, He is God!
         It is He Who has made us, and not we ourselves.
         We are His people, the sheep of His pasture (100:3).

Our psalm for today, the 23rd psalm, is attributed to that shepherd boy. It is by far the best-known and most-loved of all the 150 psalms. And it is all about God’s sovereign leadership, whether or not we read it that way. It is God Who is our Shepherd, Who supplies all our needs. It is He Who feeds us, leads us, refreshes us, and brings us to paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. It is He Who comforts us in the valley of the shadow of death, so that we need not fear any evil. He keeps us safe from our enemies. He anoints our heads with oil and fills our cups to overflowing. He pursues us with His goodness and lovingkindness, and He guarantees our eternal place in His house.

That is our God: One Who knows all our needs, and Who cares for them in His abundant lovingkindness. One way or another, God will execute His will and bring us to His eternal house. His ways are so far beyond our understanding that He often reveals them to us in mysterious imagery: in visions and words that puzzle us, overawe us, occasionally frighten us, but ultimately that comfort us. They speak of our proactive God Who will triumph over sin, death and darkness in a Kingdom where He Himself is the Light.

Think for a moment about darkness. We know that in some disturbingly obvious ways we are living in a time of darkness. I suspect that under the surface even the most naïvely optimistic persons recognize at least some areas where darkness prevails.

Darkness has a long history. The second verse of the Bible tells us that “darkness was over the face of the deep.” And so the very first recorded words spoken by God were, “Let there be light.” And because God is sovereign over His creation, the next words are, “and there was light” (Genesis 1:2,3). He spoke, and there was light.

Another time that we confront the scenario of darkness versus light is when our sovereign God was bringing plagues on the Egyptians, one of which involved bringing a darkness over the people of Egypt so complete that for three days they could not see anyone or anything, or go anywhere. But Exodus 10:23 tells us that “all the people of Israel had light where they lived.”  

God always gives light to His people. He accommodates us because He knows that light is necessary for our life and health. And while we all acknowledge the necessity of physical light, we may mistakenly regard our need for spiritual light as optional.

King David recognized this when he wrote these beautiful words in another of his great psalms:

          If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,” then will my night be turned to day. Even the darkness is            not dark to You, and the night is as clear as the day; darkness and light to You are both alike
          (139:11,12).

To us, darkness and light are not at all alike. But, as I said before: “God is God and we are not.”

In another psalm David wrote, “With You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light” (36:9).
And again, he wrote,

          You have delivered my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God
          in the light of life (56:13).

In the Collect for the First Sunday in Advent we pray, “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, assures us that this prayer already has been heard and answered, writing,

          The Father has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from            the domain of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:12b,13).

Similarly, in today’s epistle reading to the Ephesians, St. Paul wrote:

          You were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light, for the fruit 
          of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth, discerning what is pleasing to the             Lord (5:8-10).

He then continued with these words of admonition:

          Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them; for it is shameful even to
          speak of the things that they do in secret. Everything that is exposed by the light is made visible, for 
          everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore… awake, sleeper, and arise from your deadly 
          stupor, and Christ will shine (His) light on you (Ephesians 5:11-13).

Did you see the shift there? Light, that good thing that sustains us in life, the light that God created in the very beginning, the light that Jesus came to shine on everyone coming into the world, the light that He commanded us to be to others, the light that can dispel the darkness, is also the light that reveals wickedness, the “unfruitful deeds of darkness.” Darkness tries in vain to hide from the light or even tries to extinguish the light. But its efforts are doomed to failure. That’s a promise!

This is what we pray in the most common Proper Preface to our Eucharistic Feast:

          It is right, and a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give thanks to You, Father Almighty, 
         Creator of Heaven and earth; for You are the Source of light and life, You made us in Your image, and 
         called us to new life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Because we are created in His image, God’s light is our light. Knowing that He would not be in this world for very long, Jesus wisely transferred the responsibility for spiritual light to us when, in the Sermon on the Mount, He said, “You are the light of the world… Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father Who is in the heavens” (Matthew 5:16).

Just before the healing in today’s Gospel, Jesus said,

          Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life  (John 8:12).

That same thought is found near the very opening of St. John’s Gospel, in a prologue that mimics Genesis 1. There, John writes:

          In the beginning was the Word. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in            the darkness, but the darkness has not apprehended it (John 1:1,4,5).           

After recording the greatest statement in all Scripture, John 3:16, St. John continues with these words:
​
          This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather                 than the Light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does               not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But the one who practices the truth                 comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be clearly shown to have been done in God (3:19-21).

Now, at the beginning of our Gospel narrative, Jesus says,

           We must carry out the works of Him Who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming, when no one               can work. While I am in the world, I AM the Light of the World (John 9:4,5).

He spoke those words as He stood in front of a man who had been blind from birth, one who had spent his entire life in darkness. The question His disciples asked was reflecting a commonly held belief that his blindness was the direct result of sin, either his own sin or that of his parents. Jesus replies that neither is the case, but that this was “so that the works of God might be displayed through him.”

In the verses from John 9 that are omitted from our lectionary reading, the Pharisees try to convince the man that Jesus was a sinner. His famous reply was,

           This one thing I know: that once I was blind, but now I can see (9:25).

We used to sing a gospel hymn that began, “The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin. Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in. Once I was blind but now I can see. The Light of the World is Jesus” (words and music by Philip P. Bliss, 1875).

The entire ninth chapter of St. John’s Gospel is devoted to this one healing; and in its conclusion, Jesus says to this man in the hearing of the Pharisees,

          I came into this world for judgment, so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind.”            (9:39).

By this He was referring to the blindness of the Pharisees who steadfastly refused to believe in Him, to see Him as the One Who had begun by stating that He was, indeed, “the Light of the World,” and had proved it to be true by the corroborative evidence of His miraculous sign (9:5).

The Book of Revelation closes the canon of Scripture with these words about John’s vision of the heavenly city (21:22-25; 22:3,5):

          I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no            need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its 
          lamp is the Lamb. The nations will  walk by its light… and night will be no more. They will need no
          light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

The same God Who said, “Let there be light” will be our eternal light. He is the One to Whom “the darkness and the light are both alike,” the One in Whose “light we see light” (Psalm 36:9). We can conclude with King David:

          The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear? Of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1).

St. John assures us in his first epistle,

          If we walk in the Light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of
          Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1:7).

And so we must do what we sang in our Sequence hymn: 
 
          I want to walk as a child of the Light; I want to follow Jesus.

Think about what that might mean for you personally, “to walk as a child of the Light” and “to follow Jesus;” to be “the light of the world” just as He was “the Light of the World.” It may completely change the way you walk through Holy Week on the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross. Only then will you understand more fully what it means to take up your cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23). Always remember:

                 You are the light of the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.