Rev. Dr. James Goodlet … A Love That Will Not Let Us Go

Sunday Worship - FPC LaGrange - March 8th, 2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Well, I said earlier that there was an event that really changed the whole nature of the gospel. You can't have someone going around and raising dead people from their graves. So, according to the Jewish leadership of the day, this Jesus character needed to go. Which, when you think about it, is an interesting strategy. They thought that they should try and kill a man for whom death seemed no match. I wonder if the Pharisees gave that much thought in their deliberations. I wonder if anyone thought to ask, you know, he raised Lazarus from his tomb. How do we know he'll stay in his? But they were desperate. Too many people were starting to believe in him. And when the powerful get desperate, they will go to rather extreme ends to preserve the so-called peace. And even so, as the Jewish leadership was plotting their murderous schemes, Jesus kept doing what they were doing, miracle, or what he was doing, rather, miracles and signs and the like. But I must confess that when it comes to this particular sign, sometimes when I read it, I get a little bit, I get a little bit confused. I mean, if he knew what he was going to do with Lazarus, why did he cry? If he knew he was going to raise this guy from the dead, why the tears? Before he even arrived on the scene, he confirmed that he was going to do something to Lazarus. A few verses earlier, before what we read, it says Jesus said, Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. I'm going to go wake him up. And yet it says that Jesus says that Jesus was so moved by the grief of Lazarus' sisters Mary and Martha that he himself was provoked to tears. I knew what was coming the next day. I had it all planned out. Had the ring. I was going to go pick up the ring. I was going to talk to her parents that day because I knew that the ring would burn a hole in my pocket, so I needed to try and just do it all that day. And then I was going to ask her in a mere 24 hours, I was going to change. Well, we were going to make a decision together that was going to change the course of our lives, and I did not want to ruin the surprise. And yet, as if our director of children's ministries, it was as if she had some sort of sixth sense. Because on August 3rd, 2011, the day before I was to propose, she asked me a question. She said, What are you going to propose? Is this going to happen? And it put me in an awkward position. Again, I knew it was going to be the next day, but I didn't want her to know that it was coming. And so I responded. In the only way I knew how to respond at the time, I said to her, I don't know. I'm still thinking about it. Which wasn't a lie. But it did generate a certain kind of response. I can still remember it with great clarity. Fifteen years later, we were beside a pond in Alabama that late summer day. And after I said what I did, my would-be fiance walked to the car that was about a hundred yards away, and she slammed the car door so hard, I could feel the ground shake underneath my feet. And it was an interesting sort of feeling. On the one hand, I ached for her. I mean, I knew that she was questioning everything about us, about our life together, about herself, about me. It felt incredibly cruel. Full disclosure, after about an hour of the silent treatment, I did say to her, look, it's coming, it's coming sooner than later. But I will say that I did. I felt absolutely awful. Yet on the other hand, I knew what was coming and I had her right where I wanted her. Kind of. If she didn't break up with me. In spite of that joy, I knew that was going to be coming in twenty-four hours, though. I felt the pain. And it felt awful. And you're probably wondering, why in the world did she say yes twenty-four hours later? Good question. Now, I want to be clear. That is in no way comparable to what Mary and Martha were feeling that day they'd lost their brother. But for me, at least it helps illustrate how and why in that moment, even though Jesus knew what was coming, even though he knew the joy that was on the horizon, he felt the way he did. He felt pain. He felt empathy. He felt hurt for those sisters. He felt, it says, disturbed in his very bones. He was disturbed by their pain. He was disturbed by their hurt. He was disturbed by death itself. Because you see, death really, really bothered Jesus. He welled up at the sight of it. When he arrived at the tomb, the text says that again, he was greatly disturbed. It didn't matter what he was about to do. It didn't matter if he knew that he was about to bring Lazarus back. This was someone who absolutely abored death, hated death. He couldn't stand in the sight of it. He couldn't be in the presence of its stench. Even if he knew that death was the means by which God could be glorified, even if he knew that death can sometimes be a merciful end, Jesus is disturbed, was disturbed, has always been disturbed by death's very existence. And so what does he do in the story? He takes death head on. He meets the moment, he opens the tomb with that terrible stench and that awful darkness, and he said to the powers of death, unbind Lazarus and let him go. Because when it came to Jesus, there was no place, tomb, or otherwise where his love would ever let us go. There was no pain, no agony, no anguish or torture where Jesus would not meet us where we are. He would even face the thing he disliked most in the world: death, to meet us where we are, to meet us in our heartache, our distress, our misery, to empathize with us and for us, to weep for us when we weep, to be disturbed just as we are disturbed. He couldn't stand death, but it was no match for him. Nothing would that ever keep this man, the son of God, wrapped up in the burial clothes and linens of isolation from his people. Nothing. Not a single thing, not even a tomb. And I think that's an important thing for us to remember these days. I I fully confess. Quite a bit. As a pastor, y'all trust me with what you're wrestling with, your fears, your concerns, your worries, the things that keep you up at night, the things that you do, we do, that we know in our gut is wrong. Or that things that happen in the world that are wrong. Or maybe we just again we don't exactly know how to navigate them. And they could be intensely personal things. They could be intensely private. Or they can be something we see on TV or online. I've even had conversations with some of you about the footage that we're watching of missiles and drones and bombs off in the Middle East. And I will tell you as I watched that, I wondered myself what God must be thinking and feeling. If death bothered and disturbed Jesus, then how would he have processed all of this? More than likely, if I asked ten different Presbyterians that question, I'd get ten different answers. Some would say that what's happening in the Middle East is a means to a liberating end. Others would say certain people had it coming. Still others would yearn for more diplomatic efforts. And then there are those who probably wonder, why even go there? Why talk about such things in church? Why rattle a hornet's nest? Which I certainly understand. I do not like getting stung. And yet I have heard you go there in your own lives. And I believe, as pastor, that we don't do theology or discipleship in a vacuum or within our own little echo chambers. Theology will and always will, discipleship will and always will intersect and interact with the things that are happening in the real world. Be they individual, personal, public, or politic. And while I by no means feel qualified to offer anything approaching an informed opinion about such topics as war or political theater, I will say this as it regards this particular text. That it is abundantly clear, both within John 11 and throughout the whole of Jesus' life, that he did have a fundamental issue with death. But also that he was willing to enter into that death if it meant being with his people. Jesus said to death, unbind him and let him go. And he says to us, I will never let you go. And it is why he did what he did with Lazarus that day. It's why he did what he did that fateful Easter morning. It's why we say or we sing that his is the love that will never let us go. It's why we say that nothing in life or in death can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, even as bombs fall and drones fly, even as innocent children, loyal soldiers, and corrupt world leaders die, even as gunfire rages and civilians sigh. God's is a love that will never let us go. And so I can quote the great hymn of the church with confidence that even as the nations rage from age to age, we remember who holds us fast. God's mercy must deliver us from the conqueror's crushing grasp. This saving word that our forebears heard is the promise which holds us bound till the spear and rod can be crushed by God, who is turning the world around. A world in which death does not, does not have the final word. A world in which tear-stained cheeks give way to full-throated shouts of joy. A world in which all of God's children can freely utilize their God-given voices, a world in which we face, stand face in the face of death and all of its friends and say, unbind us and let us go. A world in which we shed the ragged grave clothes of pain and poverty for the Sunday finery of empathy and compassion. And a world in which our job and our calling is to meet the moment head-on, to stand and face that which is keeping our sisters and brothers and our siblings confined in their existential tombs, and say to them and to death, unbind them and let them go. Because ours is a world to be one in which we live with a love that will never ever let each other together.