So You May Believe

[A reflection on the Gospel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 22, 2026, which may be found by clicking this link: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/lent-5a/]

In last week's Gospel, the Disciples of Jesus asked Him who had sinned, the blind man before them or his parents, to provoke God to blind the man from birth. In today's Gospel, we read that Jesus delayed going to Bethany after being informed that His dear friend Lazarus was quite ill. In the first, Jesus was adamant that the first was no result of anyone's sin per se, and in the second, Jesus delayed, ensuring that Lazarus died of natural causes. In fact, both passages are about people who suffered misfortune not because of their specific sins, who did not avoid misfortune due to (in Lazarus' case) proximity to God's favour, but because that is just how the world works. People are born with genetic or congenital defects, people get sick and die, because that is just how this sorry world works.

In both cases, these grave misfortunes would not have excited much comment except for Our Lord's presence. Now, because of the limits of His human body, which He willingly took on, Jesus could not get to everyone to heal or raise them from the dead (that particular feat is saved for later and not discussed in these passages), but where He could, He demonstrated God's power to its fullest. He restored sight to a man who was born blind, which could happen for a multitude of reasons and was especially then totally irreversable, and raised a man from the dead, dead no less than four days in the hot climate of the Middle East (even Lazarus' sister said, "Um, you want to open the tomb after four days? The smell is pretty bad as it is..."). Both of these seemingly hopeless, impossible cases Jesus took on to show God's power and to prefigure what can be expected of the age to come when the power of Death and Corruption are no more.

Why this demonstration of power? Jesus spelled it out clearly to Martha at Lazarus' graveside, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” The purpose is two-fold: to foster belief and to show God's glory in small part before the time when all belief is fulfilled, and God's glory is fully manifested for all to see. The actions are in part mercy and in part promise, mercy for the pain and suffering now, promise that the pain and suffering someday shall be no more. In fact, Jesus would later show that even He could...and would...suffer, and not alleviate it right away, until a more wondrous recovery would happen, not only to foster our belief and show the glory of God, but this time to sanctify our suffering and deliver us from its final grip. In this, He does not trivialize our suffering, but hallows it, and even partakes in it Himself, for an even more spectacular and meaningful deliverance.