During his life the Lord did many extraordinary things. To follow just the Gospel of John, he turned water into wine, he healed the son of an official from a life-threatening fever, he healed the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda. Then he walks on the water, he feeds the 5000 with five loaves and two fish, he cures the man born blind. But today, the climax to this series of signs- it’s the seventh – he raises his friend Lazarus, four days dead, from death. This is in another league. Of all Jesus’ works of power, of all the signs he worked, this is the greatest and the one that most calls on our faith. Here we are, two weeks before Easter, and we hear this Gospel. It’s the clearest pointer to his own Resurrection, which is of course in a different league again – not a return to this life but a transition to eternal life.

“I am the resurrection and the life”, says the Lord. “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

From our school days, we may recall the poem: “Tiger, tiger burning bright, In the forests of the night.”  It’s by William Blake. Well, in Aberdeen Art Gallery there is a remarkable pencil, ink, watercolour picture of the raising of Lazarus by the same man. It dates from 1805. It is something this painting of today’s Gospel should be in Aberdeen. Really, we should go to the Art Gallery and contemplate it. (It’s so precious actually that it’s not on display and you have to ask to be shown it). But there stands Jesus, very tall, dressed in white, very bright and calm, his right hand raised and his mouth open, saying presumably “Lazarus, come out!” And there is Lazarus in the tomb, on the ground before him, wrapped in a white shroud but beginning to rise in response to the voice of the Lord, his gaze fixed on Jesus. There are the sisters too, dressed in black, kneeling with their arms raised, Martha turned towards her brother as if encouraging him to hear the Lord’s words and come back to life, Mary turned towards Jesus, arms upraised, pleading with him to show his divine power and bring their brother back.

We can take this picture and put ourselves in it. We can imagine Jesus, gentle and majestic standing before us, saying to us, “John / Mary come out!” This is what our Easter liturgies are: the Lord in the Eucharist (Maundy Thursday), on the Cross (Good Friday), passing from death to life (Easter Vigil), risen from the dead and coming towards us (Easter day), and saying to each of us, Come out. Then turning to our brothers and sisters in faith, and saying, “Unbind him, let him go.” So we help raise each other.

“I am the resurrection and the life”, says the Lord. “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

It is Resurrection Jesus brings. It’s what only he can give. And before each of us, he stands saying, “Come out – out of death into life.”

He says it to all those here and elsewhere awaiting baptism. The first resurrection is faith, a rising from the confines of our own ideas into the wide thought and plan and purposes of God.

And as we live out our Christian life, he remains there, calling us out day after day into the second resurrection, the resurrection of the great double commandment of love – so can we rise, again and again, out of the confines of our selfishness into the expanse of his self-giving.

At the hour of our death, he will stand beside us, calling us to a third resurrection, the resurrection of hope. How striking that after last week’s vote against assisted dying Jesus comes today as precisely Death’s defeater. It’s he who enables us to overcome the dread of our end, who takes us beyond the confines of pain and fear into his own entrustment to the Father and offers the grace of life to every human being.

Yes, every resurrection in our life is of faith or hope or love.

And further still, at the end of all things, his voice will run through the universe, and “all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5:28-29).

Brothers and sisters, Easter is coming. Easter is the risen Christ. May he rise in us all. Amen.

St Mary’s Cathedral Aberdeen, 22 March 2026