When Life Returns
For Lent, we are shaping our reflections around a single question: Can we skip to the good part?
Each week, across blog posts and Podcast episodes, we’ve explored scripture looking for Jesus’ wisdom for our world today. Each theme of this series offers us:
If we skip to the Good Part, instead of staying with mystery, we miss out on learning how to listen.
If we skip to the Good Part, we can grasp outcomes that look good but warp who we are.
If we skip to the Good Part, we settle for believing what we can see, and miss the kind of faith that changes who we become.
If we skip to the Good Part by avoiding the topic, we miss the chance to watch our community change.
Sometimes we do skip to the good part, but the truth is not always welcome.
Scroll below for this week’s narrative.
John 11:1-44
A certain man, Lazarus, was ill. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (2 This was the Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair. Her brother Lazarus was ill.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, saying, “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.”
4 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.” 5 Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus. 6 When he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was. After two days, 7 he said to his disciples, “Let’s return to Judea again.”
8 The disciples replied, “Rabbi, the Jewish opposition wants to stone you, but you want to go back?”
9 Jesus answered, “Aren’t there twelve hours in the day? Whoever walks in the day doesn’t stumble because they see the light of the world. 10 But whoever walks in the night does stumble because the light isn’t in them.”
11 He continued, “Our friend Lazarus is sleeping, but I am going in order to wake him up.”
12 The disciples said, “Lord, if he’s sleeping, he will get well.” 13 They thought Jesus meant that Lazarus was in a deep sleep, but Jesus had spoken about Lazarus’ death.
14 Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died. 15 For your sakes, I’m glad I wasn’t there so that you can believe. Let’s go to him.”
16 Then Thomas (the one called Didymus) said to the other disciples, “Let us go too so that we may die with Jesus.”
17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Bethany was a little less than two miles from Jerusalem. 19 Many Jews had come to comfort Martha and Mary after their brother’s death. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, while Mary remained in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. 22 Even now I know that whatever you ask God, God will give you.”
23 Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha replied, “I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die. 26 Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27 She replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, God’s Son, the one who is coming into the world.”
28 After she said this, she went and spoke privately to her sister Mary, “The teacher is here and he’s calling for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to Jesus. 30 He hadn’t entered the village but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who were comforting Mary in the house saw her get up quickly and leave, they followed her. They assumed she was going to mourn at the tomb.
32 When Mary arrived where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her crying and the Jews who had come with her crying also, he was deeply disturbed and troubled. 34 He asked, “Where have you laid him?”
They replied, “Lord, come and see.”
35 Jesus began to cry. 36 The Jews said, “See how much he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “He healed the eyes of the man born blind. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”
38 Jesus was deeply disturbed again when he came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone covered the entrance. 39 Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said, “Lord, the smell will be awful! He’s been dead four days.”
40 Jesus replied, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you will see God’s glory?” 41 So they removed the stone. Jesus looked up and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me. 42 I know you always hear me. I say this for the benefit of the crowd standing here so that they will believe that you sent me.” 43 Having said this, Jesus shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his feet bound and his hands tied, and his face covered with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”
45 Therefore, many of the Jews who came with Mary and saw what Jesus did believed in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
“The one you love is sick.”
It is the kind of message that assumes it will be enough, that love will lead to presence without needing to say anything more.
But Jesus does not come right away.
He is across the Jordan, in a place where people are gathering, listening, remembering what has been said about him, beginning to believe. He stays there, continuing the work he has been given to do. And while he remains, time does not hold still.
Long enough for people to begin arriving, one by one at first, then in small groups, until the house fills with voices that soften as they cross the threshold. There is movement in the kitchen, quiet conversations in corners, the slow settling of a room that knows why it has gathered.
And somewhere in that span of waiting, Lazarus dies.
By the time Jesus arrives, Martha meets him on the road before he reaches the house, stepping out to meet him where he is.
“If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Mary rises from where she had been sitting with the others and comes to him, the group following behind her without needing to be asked. She says the same words, but from a different place, her grief less guarded, more visible.
“If you had been here…”
No one interrupts her.
Jesus does not answer right away. He looks at her, at the others, at the way grief has settled across all of them, shared and held together by people who have stayed.
There is a pause. “Jesus wept.”
Not apart from them, but with them.
They move toward the tomb together, the same people who had filled the house now walking the short distance, carrying the weight of what they have already lived through. The entrance is covered by a stone, set in place when they had laid Lazarus’ body inside, marking what everyone already knows—he is dead.
Jesus says, “Take away the stone.”
Martha answers him directly, not softening the moment. “Lord, already there is a stench, because he has been dead four days.” Still, they move the stone. We can imagine Jesus nodding at the stone. It shifts. The space opens.
Jesus shouts into the darkness. “Lazarus, come out.”
And Lazarus comes. After four days dead, he comes.
Alive.
But still wrapped, the cloth binding his hands and feet, his face covered, the marks of death still clinging as he steps forward. There is a stunned quiet. And then Jesus speaks again, his voice steady, certain, almost quiet against the weight of what has just happened.
“Unbind him.”
The people who had been sitting in the house, who had walked the road, who had stood there through everything that led to this moment, are already close enough. So they move. They reach out. They begin to loosen what still holds him, to unwrap what had been meant to stay.
The same presence that held the weight of death makes space for life.
This miracle of help does not stay on that hillside. It carries forward in ways that feel less dramatic but no less real. Someone begins to come back after months shaped by depression, stepping forward, but not yet steady, still carrying what has not yet been set down. Someone returns home after illness, alive, but unsure how to move back into ordinary rhythms. Someone stands on the other side of loss, moving forward, but still wrapped in what cannot be removed all at once.
Life returns.
But not all at once.
And the people who stayed when nothing was changing are the ones who find themselves close enough to help, the same kinds of spaces that once held grief: kitchens, living rooms, tables where people gathered without needing to fix anything. Now holding something else, not finished or resolved, but moving. In the story, Lazarus comes back in a moment, but living again takes longer, unfolding in what happens next, in the hands that reach out, in the time it takes to remove what still binds.
Sometimes we do skip to the good part.
Life returns. Something shifts. What felt impossible stands in front of us. But revival does not end there.
Sometimes we do skip to the good part,
but revival sends ripples we cannot control.
And those ripples move through people, through presence, through the quiet, steady work of those who stay close enough to take part. So the question remains.
Not only whether we want the good part.
But whether we are willing to stay… long enough…
to help someone live.
Want to Go Deeper?
Faith doesn’t form in the moments we wish would hurry up. It takes shape in the waiting, the wrestling, and the choices we make when pressure tempts us to move on too quickly. This reflection stays with those in-between places, asking what it means to resist shortcuts and practice justice, kindness, and humility in the lives we are actually living.
Some of these reflections are now shared through the Sacred Narratives podcast, while others continue in writing here and on Substack, each one tracing the same question from a different angle.
If you want to stay connected, the best way is to subscribe through my website. That’s where I share more personal reflections and where you’ll receive updates about upcoming classes, gatherings, and ways to take part in this work together.
If you want to keep walking this road without skipping the hard parts, I’d love to have you along.
