John 15:13As we arrive at John 11:38–55, the atmosphere is heavy with expectation because Jesus stands before the tomb of Lazarus, surrounded by grief, confusion, and fear; the stone is sealed, the mourning has begun, and the future seems already decided. Yet Jesus does something radical: He calls life out of death, so this moment is not only about Lazarus; it is an announcement, a prophetic sign pointing forward to Jesus’ own resurrection and to the renewing power of the Holy Spirit that will transform history itself. The Gospel tells us that Jesus is deeply moved, then He approaches the tomb not as a distant miracle-worker but as a friend who has already wept, and when He commands, “Lazarus, come out!”, it is more than a miracle, but it is a declaration that death does not have the final word. In John 15:13, Jesus later says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…” So the resurrection of Lazarus foreshadows that greater love because Jesus is already moving toward His own death so that humanity might experience renewal through the Spirit.
Lazarus walks out of the tomb still wrapped in grave clothes, and then Jesus tells the community, “Unbind him and let him go.” This detail matters because resurrection is not only an individual act; it is communal since others must participate in removing what belongs to death. This moment anticipates Easter morning, when Jesus Himself will rise, not merely to return to life as before, but to inaugurate a new creation through the Holy Spirit. In the Wesleyan understanding of holy love, resurrection is not only an event but a process of sanctification in which God calls us out of what suffocates us, fear, sin, injustice, and invites the community to help remove what still binds us. The raising of Lazarus is therefore both personal and prophetic: it shows us the heart of Christ and prepares us for the cross and the empty tomb. One of the hardest truths of the Gospel is that sometimes things must die for renewal to begin, and Lazarus had to pass through death before new life could be revealed. Jesus Himself would face the cross before resurrection glory; then this pattern is not limited to individuals; it also unfolds within history. Human societies have carried practices that needed to die so that justice could emerge since slavery, once defended by distorted theology and cultural power, had to be confronted, resisted, and ultimately dismantled through the courageous witness of believers and communities shaped by holy love, and today, racism still lingers as a grave cloth that binds humanity. The Gospel calls us to allow old systems of domination and prejudice to die so that reconciliation and true belonging can be born. This is not a message of despair, but of hope because death, in the Kingdom of God, becomes a doorway to renewal, the stone that seems final becomes the place where God speaks life. As we approach the beginning of Lent, the church enters a season that mirrors this movement from death to renewal. Lent is not simply about giving something up; it is about allowing God to remove what prevents us from living fully in love and, just as Jesus asked that the stone be rolled away, Lent invites us to open the places of our lives we would rather keep closed. During this season, we walk with Christ toward the cross. We confront our own patterns that need to die, habits, fears, resentments, trusting that resurrection will follow. Lent teaches us that transformation often begins with surrender. As we close Black History Month, we remember that the journey toward justice has always carried echoes of resurrection, and communities who endured oppression, segregation, and systemic injustice have witnessed God’s renewing power again. The fight against slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and ongoing efforts for racial equity reveal how holy love works within history, calling societies out of tombs of injustice. The resurrection of Lazarus reminds us that God does not abandon communities trapped in systems of death. Instead, Christ calls people and nations toward liberation. When the church stands for dignity, justice, and reconciliation, it participates in the resurrection work of God. There is a powerful illustration of this kind of transformation in the film The World We Make and it is the story follows a young interracial couple navigating prejudice and misunderstanding in a small community. What begins with tension and resistance gradually becomes a journey toward empathy, healing, and renewed relationships. The film shows how love has the power to confront inherited patterns of fear and to reshape the future. Like Lazarus stepping out of the tomb, the characters must face what binds them: assumptions, history, and pain, before they can move into freedom. The story reflects the Gospel truth that transformation is relational, and renewal does not happen in isolation; it happens when people choose courage, compassion, and the willingness to see one another through the lens of God’s love. After Lazarus is raised, the religious leaders begin to plot against Jesus, and, ironically, the miracle that brings life to Lazarus accelerates the journey toward Jesus’ own death. This is where John 15:13 becomes clear: the raising of Lazarus is a sign that Jesus will lay down His life for His friends. Holy love is costly because it confronts injustice, challenges systems of power, and sometimes provokes resistance. Yet this is precisely how transformation happens since the resurrection of Lazarus announces that the greatest love in the universe is already at work, a love willing to enter death so that others may live. Throughout this series, we have seen how relationships are transformed when God’s love becomes the center, and we have explored friendship, delay, grief, compassion, and now resurrection. Each movement has shown us that transformation is not superficial; it is rooted in the holy love of Christ. As we close Transformed Relations by God, we recognize that resurrection is the culmination of all relational healing. Jesus restores not only Lazarus’ life but also the community around him. Relationships broken by grief are renewed through divine love, and today, as we stand at the edge of Lent, we begin to look forward to a new journey, a new series called “The Biggest Love in the Universe.” If Lazarus’ resurrection points us toward Jesus’ own rising, then the next chapter invites us to explore the magnitude of God’s love revealed through the cross, the resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. The biggest love in the universe is not abstract; it is personal, sacrificial, and transformative. It is the love that rolls away stones, calls the dead to life, and sends us into the world as agents of renewal. As Jesus calls Lazarus from the tomb, He also speaks to us. He calls us out of what binds us, individually and collectively. He calls systems of injustice to fall away, He calls communities to become places of healing, and He invites us into a rhythm of dying and rising that reflects the heart of God. So today, hear the voice of Christ: Come out of fear, come out of division, come out of the old patterns that keep love buried, because the greatest love has already been revealed, a love willing to lay down its life for friends, a love stronger than death, a love that is about to lead us into a new journey together.
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John 11: 6–16There are moments in life when love itself becomes a problem, not because love is wrong, but because love places us at risk. Love exposes us, binds us, commits us, and makes us vulnerable to pain. Depending on the circumstances, the people involved, and the nature of the relationship, love can complicate everything. Yet paradoxically, love is also the strongest bond we can form. It is the highest risk in any relationship, but also the deepest and most meaningful connection we can experience. Scripture reminds us again to remember our Creator, the source of love itself, especially when life becomes difficult and confusing.
Jesus warned that there would be times when love itself would suffer erosion. In Matthew 24:12, He says that because lawlessness increases, the love of many will grow cold. We are living in days like these, I mean, our news cycles reflect it daily: broken relationships, hardened hearts, indifference toward suffering, and a growing inability to feel deeply for one another. In such a world, love does not disappear suddenly; it cools gradually. That is why remembering our Creator is not sentimental advice; it is a survival practice for the soul. Love, by its very nature, carries urgency; love responds when it is needed most; love moves toward pain, love reassures us that we belong. One of the most painful experiences in human relationships is not rejection, but delay, when love seems to hesitate at the very moment it is most required. Delay feels like absence, silence feels like abandonment, and yet, this is exactly where the story of Lazarus confronts us. Lazarus and his sisters shared a genuine love for Jesus, as Scripture makes explicit: Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, and, astonishingly, still delayed His arrival. Not only that, He chose what seemed like the worst possible moment to act. His explanations sounded illogical to the disciples, almost irresponsible. Yet Jesus openly names the purpose of His delay; what appears as neglect will become revelation, what feels like absence will become miracle. Delay, in the hands of divine love, will not end in loss but in deeper faith. At times, love can feel irrational because it does not always move in straight lines or according to our expectations. Love is rarely unidirectional; it radiates outward and affects everyone within its reach, and just as love has a halo effect that shapes entire communities, hatred does the same, even when we fail to notice it. Still, when actions rooted in love are finally revealed, witnesses rejoice. Love always reveals itself eventually; it never remains hidden forever. This tension reaches a human climax in Thomas, who represents the struggle we all carry when love and logic collide. His skepticism does not come from arrogance, but from a wounded heart, and he voices what others feel but do not dare to say. His response reveals a soul that has been strained by disappointment and fear. Yet Jesus does not reject Thomas, yet He understands better than we do how love must sometimes be shown, not explained, not rushed, but revealed in time. When we look honestly at the current state of human relationships, we see a crisis where love is often handled with excessive pragmatism, Xenophobia, hatred, domination, and exclusion are symptoms of relational breakdown. Love becomes problematic when it is managed like merchandise, measured, priced, negotiated, and withdrawn when inconvenient. Ours is a civilization marked by broken relationships because we have lost the patience and courage required for real love. Healthy love, however, is a sign of emotional and spiritual health cause love reflects our ability to feel, to empathize, to recognize the humanity of others. Relationships are healthier when they are rooted in love rather than control or utility. In contrast, chronic absence of love, especially when it becomes habitual, is not neutrality; it is damage to the soul, and Scripture consistently associates lovelessness with spiritual decay. Our culture often treats love as a transaction, and love becomes an object to exchange, a service to consume, a contract to renegotiate, but in the Kingdom of God, love works differently. I mean, love is covenantal, not transactional; it is given before it is earned, it waits without abandoning, it risks without controlling. This is the power of love: love restores broken souls, love speaks life into darkness, love outlasts death itself. Love has the capacity to transform not only individuals, but entire civilizations, and the story of Lazarus teaches us this hard but holy lesson: sometimes we must learn to wait for love’s full revelation, trusting that God’s delay is not denial. While we wait, we are called to love others as we have been loved, first, freely, and faithfully. John 11: 1 - 5Most of us don’t encounter God at the high points of life. We encounter Him in hospital corridors that smell like disinfectant, in text messages that begin with “Can you pray…,” in waiting rooms where time feels heavier than usual. Sickness, in Scripture and in life, is never just physical. John tells us that Lazarus was sick, and that simple sentence carries more weight than we might notice at first. It brings fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability. It reminds us how little control we really have. Faith, real faith, almost always begins there, not with strength, but with weakness, not with answers, but with need.
When Martha and Mary send word to Jesus, they don’t send a medical report or a theological argument, nor do they explain how serious the situation is or remind Jesus of all they’ve done for Him; the message to Jesus is brief. They simply say, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” That’s it. There is no argument, no theology, no manipulation. This is prayer at its most honest; it’s not polished, not dramatic, but relational; they trust Jesus not only because He can heal, but because He loves. Mature faith often sounds like that: fewer words, deeper trust. We find a prayer grounded in relationship, not performance, and I’m sure that anyone who has ever sent a short, urgent message to someone, they trust understands this and Scripture does not rush past pain; at contrary when your child is in trouble, you don’t write paragraphs, you just call, moreover, when trust is deep, words can be few. There is urgency in their action since they send word immediately. Faith does not sit back passively and call it spirituality. Faith moves, reaches out, asks for help, and yet, there is no panic in their message; they do not try to control the outcome. It seems to me like urgency without hysteria. It’s like when you take your car to a trusted mechanic. Let's see the scene: You know something is wrong, you know it needs attention, but you trust the person you leave it with. You don’t stand over their shoulder, but you wait, and that kind of waiting is not resignation, it’s hope; then, trusting God does not mean doing nothing, it seems like faith moves quickly, but it does not rush God. Then Jesus responds in a way that feels unsettling. He says the illness will not end in death, but in the glory of God. That sounds right, but it doesn’t feel comforting, at least not yet, because anyone who has ever prayed desperately and received a “spiritual” answer instead of immediate relief knows this tension: you’re hurting, and someone says, “God is at work,” and part of you believes it, but another part of you still aches. God’s purposes are larger than our pain, but they do not erase our pain. I mean, sometimes divine purpose meets human pain. Both realities exist at the same time. The answer feels right but incomplete; it seems like Scripture doesn’t hide that tension, Scripture allows room for tension, not denial; however, God’s purposes are greater than our pain, but never dismissive of it. And then we reach one of the most emotionally charged verses in the entire story: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” John makes sure we hear this before Jesus delays, not after the miracle, before the waiting, love is affirmed before waiting begins. This verse is here to protect us from a dangerous misunderstanding,g which means Jesus does not delay because He is indifferent; delay is not indifference. He delays because love sometimes allows the story to unfold in ways we do not choose. Love does not always protect us from suffering, but sometimes love doesn’t hurry; it holds. Anyone who has ever watched a child struggle to learn something hard, riding a bike, tying their shoes, or standing up for themselves, knows this kind of love. You could intervene immediately, but you don’t, because growth requires space, and space often feels like absence. This is where many of us live most of our lives: between prayer and answer, between illness and healing, between promise and fulfillment, we are loved, but we are waiting, we trust God, but we don’t understand His timing, we believe He could act now, and we wrestle with the fact that He hasn’t, yet, so, this is where most believers live. However, John 11:1–5 teaches us that waiting is not a sign of God’s absence. Delay is not denial because silence is not abandonment, God’s love is not measured by how quickly He fixes things, but by how faithfully He stays present within them. Waiting is not wasted time in the Kingdom of God. Some of you are in that space right now, this week we’ve prayed, we´ve reached out, we’ve trusted God with what our love most, and we’re still waiting. This passage doesn’t rush you past that reality; however is a reminder that God’s silence is not absence, God’s delay is not rejection, God’s love is not cancelled by uncertainty. It meets us there and says: you are loved, not after the miracle, not once everything makes sense, but right now, in the uncertainty, in the waiting, in the ache. Resurrection is coming in this story, but before resurrection, there is love that waits, faith that trusts, and hope that holds on even when the outcome is not yet visible, the story is still unfolding, and that, sometimes, is where faith does its deepest work. We are loved, even before the miracle. |
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