Recalled to Life - Dr. Britt Terry

John 11:1–44

Dr. Britt Terry

Women in the Pulpit Sunday • March 22, 2026

Today we're going to use the liturgical reading from John 11. Before we get to the text, I want to say that this is one of my favorite Bible stories, period. John's Gospel is my favorite gospel, and part of the reason is because it's weird. And if you know me, you know that I like weird stuff.

So here's some background about why this gospel is different. First, it differs from the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—in content, theme, and style. In John's Gospel, we get Bible stories that don't appear anywhere else. We get the Samaritan woman. We get the woman caught in adultery. We get the Maundy Thursday mandate, where Jesus washes the disciples' feet and says, "You love like I love." We get the post-resurrection encounter with St. Thomas. And we get the Lord's first miracle—the wedding at Cana, where they run out of wine and Jesus says, "Keep the party going." That miracle appears only here.

We also get these "I am" statements about Jesus—which should make us think back to the Old Testament, when God appears to Moses in the burning bush and says, "I am who I am." Here Jesus expands that definition. The gospel is also stylistically different. You don't get any parables. No little stories where Jesus tells the tale and you've got to figure out the meaning. Instead, you have what I call mic-drop moments—where Jesus just says it, and you have to feel the impact.

One of the first is early in the Gospel, when Jesus calls Nathaniel. Nathaniel says, "How do you know me?" And Jesus says, "I saw you sitting under that fig tree before I even got here." And then the mic drop: "You think that was something? You're going to see heaven opened up. You're going to see angels descending and ascending. Me seeing you ahead of time is nothing compared to what you're going to see."

And of course we get that beautiful Prologue—"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"—a simultaneous statement of who Jesus is, fully human and fully divine, and how we get to be children of God. That's how John's Gospel is different throughout. Now let's look at the story directly.

At the beginning of John 11, we get the people telling Jesus that Lazarus is sick. There's some back and forth, and then Jesus says: "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm going there to wake him up." The disciples reply, "Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better." Jesus had been speaking of his death, but they thought he meant natural sleep. So he told them plainly: "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake, I'm glad I was not there, so that you may believe."

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them. When Martha heard Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed home. "Lord," Martha said, "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." And 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. Do you believe this?" "Yes, Lord," she replied. "I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who has come into the world."

Then at the tomb, Jesus said, "Take away the stone." But Martha said, "Lord, by this time there's a bad odor, for he's been there four days." Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me." And then he called out in a loud voice: "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

Now, the other reason I really love this story is because it's directly referenced in one of my very favorite novels: A Tale of Two Cities. One of the principal characters, Sydney Carton, repeats Jesus's words—"I am the resurrection and the life"—over and over at a really pivotal part of the novel. Carton is a thuggish, rubbish fellow. He's a scoundrel, a drunkard, a jerk. He's also in love with another man's wife, and that's pretty much what drives all his actions. Near the end, Carton has to decide whether he's going to die in place of the husband of the woman he loves. His motivations aren't great—it's because he's in love with Lucy. But he doesn't have to do it, and he walks the streets of Paris early in the morning repeating to himself, "I am the resurrection and the life," to screw up his courage, to convince himself to literally take Charles's place at the guillotine.

Spoiler alert: he does it. Carton changes places with Charles. Charles is free. Sidney gets his head chopped off. Charles reunites with his wife, they have a baby, and the last words of the novel—"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done"—are Carton's words. He anticipates that life will go on because of the sacrifice he makes.

That scene comes together with another refrain that runs through the novel. It's used as a secret code among the characters: "Recalled to life." I don't have a tattoo, but if I did, it might say that. Time and again, alongside the chaos and brutality of the French Revolution, the characters in this book are recalled to life. They answer to a higher code, and it happens through individual actions—not institutions like the government or the church, but individual actions.

And I feel like that's one of the things today's Gospel story asks us. How are we recalled to life? How can we ourselves be resurrected anew?

So our passage starts with the death of Lazarus. We know he's Jesus's friend. He's the brother of Mary and Martha. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and you can tell from the way the disciples and others around him talk that he's sort of lollygagging. He's not in a hurry. They keep fussing: "Come on, you gotta go." And he keeps pushing them off. But he decides to make a detour to Bethany. He's not going to heal Lazarus—he's already dead. Jesus knows that. He says first that he's "just asleep," then that he's going to wake him up. And probably because that's confusing, because people are deep in their grief, the disciples say, "No, he's not asleep!" And Jesus says, "No, I know he's dead." He already knows. But he's going anyway. And he says, "For your sake, be glad I wasn't there before." Which is totally wild.

Lazarus has already died. Jesus finally gets going, arrives in Bethany, and Martha comes scooting out to meet him on the road. She's going to tell him what he already knows: my brother has died. And of course she says it: "Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died." How many times do we say that? "If you had been here, I wouldn't have lost my job. If you had been here, I wouldn't be sick. If you had been here, my spouse wouldn't have left me."

Instead of fussing back at her, Jesus says, "Do you believe your brother will rise?" That question pulls Martha into what she's already learned through being a student of Jesus. We don't get a picture of Martha sitting there listening to him teach, but she must have heard, right? She's hung out with him quite a bit. And she says, "Yep, I believe the dead will rise on the last day."

And here's the mic-drop moment: "I am the resurrection. I am the life." Not something on the last day. Right now.

But Jesus is not done with Martha. He gives her the chance to say who she believes he is. And she says: "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who has come into the world." Now if that ain't a confession of faith, I don't know what is. It is distinct. It is succinct. It is precise. It is concise. She articulates what his role is, what the Incarnation means. It's later echoed by St. Thomas when he says, "My Lord and my God," but she gets to say it first.

Now, you remember who Mary and Martha are from other stories in this gospel. Martha is typically depicted as the busy one—fussing, cleaning, making the chart, doing the research, writing the grocery list. Mary is the contemplative one, sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening, absorbing. And for most of the time, whenever I've heard anybody talk about these two women, Martha gets dismissed and Mary gets praised. Partly because Jesus himself said Mary picked the better thing.

But if you're like me—you're the oldest, you're the responsible one, you're the person in charge, you're the adult in the room—you gotta make the chart, do the research, write the grocery list, go to the store, cook, clean. Because if you don't do it, the wheels are going to fly off. And whether or not it's actually your fault, it's your fault.

So Martha seems like a person you don't necessarily want to be around. And it's not fun to be her, either. However, in today's passage, we see Mary and Martha almost invert roles. Martha's the one running out to meet Jesus. And what we can do is think about these two women not as opposites but as two sides of the same coin. We can be the person in charge who's fussing and worried about stuff, but we can also be the person who is listening, contemplating, in the presence of Jesus.

Martha runs out fussy: "If you had been here—" But instead of staying there, she moves into faith. Jesus asks, "Do you believe?" And she doesn't just say yes. She makes the most precise, most powerful confession of faith in the whole gospel. The one who's always cleaning, always being told to stop worrying—she's been passed over. But now she gets to say: "You're the Messiah. I know it."

And from this point, Jesus goes to do this miraculous work. All throughout John's Gospel, we see miracles, but save for the actual resurrection of Christ, this is the big one. It's not just seeing somebody under a fig tree. It's not restoring sight to the blind. It is a dead man who comes back to life. This miracle, like all the ones in the Gospel, is profound. This is seeing the glory of God. This is what Jesus meant when he said, "Be glad for your sake that I wasn't there"—because now they're going to see something extraordinary.

Lazarus is resurrected. He comes out of the grave, which had to be really weird—another weird moment in a weird gospel. And who's to say what happened after that? I've always wondered. Since Lazarus is literally granted another life, what is it like? Of course, his friend is going to be crucified soon after this, so it couldn't have been a picnic.

But I like to think about it this way. Jesus said, "Take those grave clothes off. Unbind him. Let him go." I like to think his next fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years—whatever he gets back on this earth after being pulled out of the grave all stinky and gross—he lives this more abundant life. It's exuberant. It's abundant. It is unbound.

And his sisters too—their lives had to be dramatically changed. Martha, after unequivocally getting to state, underline, and declare who Jesus is and what he can do—just like her brother was recalled to life literally, she probably was too.

We can think about the miracles in our lives, big and small. I don't care if they're assisted by technology or medical intervention or whatever. There's still a miracle when something that seems like a dead end is revitalized.

So I want us to think about this: Where do you see the resurrection? Where have you seen renewed life? How can you, like Martha, speak your faith into belief and see life around you restored? What ordinary or extraordinary miracle is recalling you to life—to be part of what Jesus calls us all to do: to be the resurrection and the life in this world? Amen.