Scooped Up

March 22, 2026

Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A

First Reading: Ezekiel 37:12-14

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8

Second Reading: Romans 8:8-11

Gospel: John 11:1-45

One of the most tender moments I can remember as a dad is the first time one of my kids fell and scraped their knee. If you're a parent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That little one is toddling around, full of confidence, and then boom, down they go! Then, a beat of silence, and....a cry, the one that comes from somewhere deep, the one that tells you this isn't drama. This is real pain, real fear, and a very small person who has just discovered that the world can hurt you.

So what do you do? You scoop them up. You hold them tight. You clean the wound — gently, even though they're squirming. You put the bandage on. Then you just hold them, and you say the words every kid needs to hear: "It's okay. I've got you. You're going to be all right."

I must have been a pretty clumsy little kid because I remember my own dad doing this for me more times than I can count. Here's what stays with me about those moments: it wasn't just that the pain went away. It was the overwhelming sense that there was someone bigger than me and stronger than me, and because of him, everything really was going to be okay.

I thought about those moments a lot this week as I sat with today's readings because that's exactly what's happening in the Gospel of John; though admittedly the stakes are infinitely higher than a scraped knee.

Lazarus is dead. Not sick, not declining, dead. And in the tomb for four days. Martha and Mary, his sisters and dear friends of Jesus, are crushed. When Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, having deliberately waited, which is its own fascinating detail, Martha comes out to meet him with words that are heartbreaking in their honesty: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

Can you hear it? It's not accusation. It's a grieving woman who believes so deeply in Jesus that her pain is sharpened by his absence. She trusted him, and he wasn't there. Yet, (and this is what makes Martha one of the great figures of faith in all of Scripture)  she follows it immediately with, "But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you."

Even standing next to her brother's tomb, she hasn't let go of the idea that Jesus can still intervene. Jesus responds with words that should stop us in our tracks: "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."

This isn't a comforting metaphor. This isn't a greeting card. This is Jesus Christ making the single most audacious claim any human being has ever made: that he himself is the power over death, and he's about to prove it.

But before he does, something remarkable happens: Jesus sees Martha’s sister Mary weeping. He sees the others weeping. Then, the Gospel tells us he became "perturbed and deeply troubled." The scene builds even more, with two of the most powerful words in all of Scripture: "Jesus wept."

The God of the universe, who is about to call a dead man out of a tomb, stops and cries first. He doesn't bypass the grief. He doesn't say, "Relax people, I've got this." He enters into the pain. He feels it. He weeps with the people he loves. That's not weakness; that is the fullness of love, a love that refuses to stand at a distance from our suffering. If you're a parent, you know this in your bones. When your child falls and screams, you don't stand across the yard and shout instructions. You run to them. You pick them up. You hold them. You enter into their pain before you fix it. That's what Jesus does at the tomb of Lazarus.

Then, he fixes it. "Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man walks out of the tomb, still wrapped in burial cloths. Four days dead, but alive again. Now, this miracle is staggering on its own, but the readings today are doing something more than just telling us a great story: they're building a case, and it's worth stepping back to see the whole picture.

The prophet Ezekiel, writing centuries before Jesus, gives us God's promise: "O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them. I will put my spirit in you that you may live. I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord."

That's the promise: God himself will defeat death. Then in John's Gospel, we watch that promise fulfilled in real time. Jesus doesn't just talk about resurrection. He does it, right there in Bethany, in front of witnesses, with a man who has been dead long enough that Martha warns them about the smell. Notice carefully what Jesus does before he calls Lazarus out: Jesus prays to the Father; he leans on that relationship. This isn't a magic trick. This is the Father and the Son, together, demonstrating the very power Ezekiel foretold.

Then Paul, writing to the Romans, connects it to us, to you and me, sitting here today: "If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you."

Do you see what's happening across these three readings? Ezekiel says God will bring life out of death; Jesus proves it at the tomb of Lazarus; and Paul tells us that the very same Spirit — the one that opened that grave — now lives inside every believer. The God who promises resurrection, has demonstrated resurrection, and now shares the power of resurrection with you, through his Spirit. It's not just future tense — it's right now. The new life Jesus offers isn't only something you experience after you die; it's something available to you on a Tuesday afternoon when the world feels like it's caving in.

That brings me back to where we started: to a parent's arms, to the words, "I've got you. You're going to be all right." Because here's what I think today's readings are really saying to us, especially as we enter this final stretch of Lent before Holy Week: whatever “tomb” you're standing in front of right now — grief, addiction, a marriage gone cold, a diagnosis that terrifies you, a sin you can't seem to shake — Jesus is not standing at a distance shouting instructions. He's walking toward you; he's weeping with you; and he has the power, right now, to call new life out of whatever feels dead in your life and circumstances. He scoops us up. He holds us. He says, "I am the resurrection and the life."

It's not a greeting card. It's a promise from the same God who opened Lazarus's grave. And He keeps his promises, though in His way, and in His time.