Sermon Sunday March 22, 2026
Fifth Sunday of Lent
At the center of our gospel reading, all the readings really for today is the virtue of faith. Do we believe in God? Do we believe in God’s love and God’s power? Beginning with the reading from the prophet Ezekiel. That great vision that Ezekiel had in the midst of great tribulation for the Jewish people where all hope seemingly was lost. And Ezekiel has a vision of the valley of bones.
Now you know once the decomposition has happened and all that is left of our human body is bones is the end. No doctor can cure it. No emergency team can come in and still save the life. And yet through the preaching of Ezekiel and the faith in the power and love of God, even those bones began to walk in that vision. They began to grow flesh and be restored. And in the gospel reading, where all hope seemed lost, Jesus is able to pray and bring back to life his friend Lazarus. Many things can be said about these readings, but primarily what weaves them all together is faith. Do we believe in the impossible? Because that’s what faith is. Believing in things that seem impossible, not because we are gullible people. Not because we are anti-scientific people, but because we believe in God’s power and God’s love.
It’s easy to believe in reasonable things, but what about those things that are seemingly impossible? How strong is my faith? Martha and Mary and Lazarus, close friends of Jesus, they believed two things about Jesus. They believed in his love for them and they believed in his power. And that’s why Martha and Mary both say to Jesus, “If you were here, my brother would not have died.” Why? Because you love him. We believe you love him. And we believe you have the power to keep him even from death. We believe in your love. We believe in your power. And yet when Jesus hears that his dear friend is dying, he is not rushing. Notice he stays where he was for two extra days. He’s almost delaying on purpose. Well, not almost. He says so in the gospel. He says we must wait so that the power of God and the love of God can be displayed even more beautifully. Without a doubt, Jesus wants people to know that it was God’s love and God’s power, not coincidence. Many things can be said about the delays of love.
You know, we are not patient people. I am not a patient person by nature. And yet there is something about the virtue of patience that is essentially connected to faith. Because we cannot grow into the kind of faith that moves mountains as Jesus said unless we allow the impossible to become believable. There’s a great scene in that trilogy by Tolkien called The Lord of the Rings. The movie begins with this scene. Frodo, a little hobbit who becomes the great hero of the story, is sitting in the fields and the great wizard who is a Christ-like like figure arrives riding on this on this little cart. And Frodo says to him, “You are late.” as if to insinuate that he was supposed to have been there earlier. And Gandalf, the great wizard, replies in the most beautiful way. He says, “A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he intends to.” This this is the key to our misunderstandings about God’s timing. Because it’s so easy for us to say, “Well, God, why didn’t you arrive earlier? Why didn’t you do this when I wanted you to do this? Why won’t you lift me out of whatever depression, difficulty, challenge now here?” But see the key here is that God does not work around our timetables. It’s not that God is late or that God is early in answering our prayers, in providing great miracles in our lives.
It’s that our timetable is not synced with God’s. God arrives precisely at the right time. It’s just that we don’t always know what the right timing is. There are difficulties that often are essential for our growth in faith. And it’s so easy for us to desire to bypass those difficulties in our life. Oh, if only I didn’t have to go through this valley of death, valley of difficulty. If only I could get the job right away.
If only I could overcome this struggle without any pain and suffering. If only God wasn’t late.
But have we considered that before Christ rose from the dead, he had to go through Calvary?
There was a period of struggle and difficulty and darkness that went beyond even the understanding of the apostles. maybe even beyond the understanding of Jesus in his humanity because he himself
says, “Lord, God, let this cup pass away from me.” There’s a kind of darkness we go through, all of us, that sometimes challenges our faith. We do not understand.
But here’s the second point. God not only works according to his timetable and not ours, but God also has his ways of doing things that are beyond our ways. God’s pathway for us may not always be exactly the way we imagine. Notice the ongoing confusion in the gospel today.
When Jesus wants to go to Bethany, the disciples misunderstand. They say they wanted to stone you. Why even go there? When Jesus tells them to roll the stone away, everyone protests again. There’s a stench. Why do that? See, the pathway of Jesus, the pathway of God is often not understood by us. But again, here is where we must lean on our faith.
Do I believe God enough to trust that his timetable and his
pathway is what is best for me, what is best for us?
Do I trust God enough that even if I’m walking in the midst of darkness, I can’t see when I’m going, where I’m going, but God is leading me. Do I feel that I am safe, that I will be okay? Do I have the kind of faith that may even seem scary to me? But because I believe in God’s love and God’s power, I know I will be okay. I know we will be okay. I want to wrap up with the second reading we had today.
In the second reading, it said, “Even those who have died in the body, as long as they have faith, they will live.” Faith is the answer. If they have the spirit, they will be all right. It is the life of the spirit, faith in God, faith in Jesus, trust in his time, in his pathway. That is ultimately what leads us home. And so here is a question for us, a takeaway. Do we make plans for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, for our church? But sometimes, do we also allow for the possibility that God may have a different plan? That even as we continue to have a vision of the future for us, do we allow for the possibility that God may take us in a different direction? That God may appear in a different way that God’s pathway is going to be not the same as what I imagined. And if I allow for that possibility,
do I actually believe and want to take God’s hand rather than to lead God by the hand? You see, that’s the difference. Who is leading? Am I leading God or is God leading me? Do I allow God to lead me even in the most uncertain circumstances of my life? I pray for that gift of faith for us for all we encounter. Amen.
Father Wojtek Kuzma