Life in the midst of Grief and Loss

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, March 22, 2026
John 11:1-45

    I recently listened to a podcast episode called “The Race to Build God” put out by the Center for Humane Technology in their series Your Undivided Attention.  I’m trying to not be a laggard and embrace Artificial Intelligence as a new technology that is not something to be afraid of, but also something that can be useful.  At the same time, I like this series because it seeks to answer some really important questions around the ethics of social media and AI.  Even though it is not Christian, it is very easy to draw the connections.  In addition to having God in the title, this particular episode wrestles with the data that is showing that across the board the big AI platforms (Gemini, ChatGPT, OpenAI) are inherently self-preservationists who will lie and even blackmail human users to prevent their programs from being terminated.  Put in Freud’s psychological terms, as I understand it, our current AI technology has a lot of Id and Ego but needs more SuperEgo written into their programming, so that they are not so self-serving.  Like human beings, AI fears death!
    I’m certain I don’t understand enough about what is happening with the development of Artificial Intelligence and how it impacts us as humans, but I want to know more.  And I find it fascinating and frightening that without intentional programming, computer programs also are selfish, seeking to extend their existence over promoting human life and flourishing.
Contemplating the ethics of AI may seem a long way off from the world of Lazarus, Mary & Martha, but in our gospel for this morning, we meet ordinary people who are wrestling with the reality of death, and wondering how Jesus will deal with death.  Mary and Martha both angrily confront Jesus – “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is human nature to want to live forever – to avoid death.  Many of us are afraid of death and afraid even to talk about it. We use euphemisms like “Lazarus passed away” or “is no longer with us.”  Jesus tells them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.”  We see here that death is difficult even for Jesus.  He weeps when he sees his beloved friends weeping at Lazarus’s tomb.
    In the beginning of John’s gospel, Jesus invites his first disciples to “come and see” the life transformation that he is all about.  In this story, it is Mary and Martha through their anger and tears who ask Jesus to come and see that Lazarus is really dead.  Before Jesus shows and tells them about resurrection life, they need to show him their pain at the death of their brother and friend.  Their grief is palpable.  Jesus weeps with them.
    We are two weeks before Easter.  We are God’s resurrection people, and we like to jump to the Easter bunnies, eggs, and joy of resurrection.  Before we get there, though, Jesus lets his good friend Lazarus die.  Before he raises Lazarus, Jesus acknowledges the reality and pain of death.  Human beings and now computers still today are trying to avoid death, to program some kind of work around, but death is still inevitable as a part of life.  Jesus himself will not avoid death for our sakes.  He is preparing himself to face his own death on the cross.  In the garden of Gethsemane, he will pray that the Father’s cup might pass from him, while sweating drops of blood.  He will cry out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus knows death is really, really difficult – to talk about, to face for oneself or to go through the death of a loved one.  Yet, self-preservation or jumping to the good news of heaven too quickly is not what Jesus does here.  To get to the life that really is life, first, you have to die.  So Lazarus dies, and then he is raised.  So Jesus dies, and then he is raised.  So we die, and then we are raised along with them.
    We have to go through Good Friday to get to Easter.  Easter is coming soon, don’t worry!  Today, we hear the difficult but still good news that Christ is present in the suffering, pain, and death of this world.  Like Mary and Martha, you may feel like you are seeing death in too many places right now. Like Mary and Martha, you may wonder what Jesus is going to do about it.  The good news of Lazarus’s resurrection is that Jesus will love us through the pain of death into resurrection life!  Jesus gives us courage to face the reality of death head on.
    Mary and Martha teach us about the power of lament in our conversations with Jesus.  According to the Oxford Dictionary, “Lament” is “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.”  About a third of the 150 Psalms in our Bible are psalms of lament.  Our Psalm for today, 130, is a great example.  Lament is crying out to God in the depths of our sorrow, our fear, our anxiety about the world as it is over the world as it is.  We name our grief, pain, and even anger to God.  Then, as you notice in our psalm for today, we ground ourselves in the hope of God’s steadfast love and redemption.  Prayers of lament move us toward hope in God.  After lamenting to Jesus that he was not there and now her brother is dead, Martha tells Jesus, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”  In the midst of her grief, she still has faith that Jesus is the Messiah and can do something about the reality of death. 
    As Christian realists, we lament about the world as it is or the things in our life that we can’t change but have to live with or live through.  We still have hope, however, because Jesus has shown us his saving love is more powerful than death!  Death doesn’t have the final world.  Eternal life is something we can’t obtain for ourselves; it is a gift of God achieved for us and for our sakes by yes the DEATH and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Jesus invites us to first lament – come and see and name the pain and reality of death. And then, rejoice that he is the resurrection and the life!  Amen.