2026-03-22 Lent 5

Scripture Readings

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!

Way back in 1905, a guy named Frederick Wells conducted a routine inspection of a diamond mining operation that he was managing. The story goes that Wells spotted a flash of light reflecting from the wall of the open pit about 18 feet below the surface during the inspection. He climbed up to the location and pried it out with a pocket knife. Initially he thought it might be a large piece of glass or crystal due to its enormous size, possibly even some kind of prank by the miners. It was over a pound and roughly the size of a fist or a human heart. It was honkin’ huge which made the find being a genuine diamond seem impossible. Diamonds were simply never this big!

Wells took the huge stone back to the surface and brought it to the office. One of the office clerks, upon looking at it, literally threw it out the window, dismissing it as a worthless piece of crystal! “It’s just fool’s gold, Freddy!” Fortunately, somebody thought, nothing ventured, nothing gained! and went and retrieved it. Lo and behold, after proper testing it was confirmed it as the genuine article! 3,106 carats. The largest diamond ever discovered, by far, found near Pretoria in South Africa. It was sent to the renowned diamond cutters Joseph Asscher & Co. in Amsterdam for cutting and polishing, a process that began in 1908 and produced nine major stones plus 96 smaller brilliants and some fragments.

The largest of the major stones is 530.2 carats and was dubbed the Great Star of Africa by King Edward VII and remains the largest colorless cut diamond in the world. This magnificent stone is mounted in the head of the Sovereign’s Sceptre as part of the British Crown Jewels. It is appraised at around $400 million USD - so you might get your chance to own it if King Charles ever decides to take to the pawn shop!

On the Fifth Sunday in Lent we’re also talking about precious things of inestimable worth and value. The Resurrection. This is the gem of Christianity. No other religion offers you such a priceless jewel at no cost to you. Certainly, there was a cost, a great cost, as the Son of God descended into darkness and emerged on Easter Sunday as the firstfruit of the resurrection of God’s people. Here we see the crown jewel of Christianity: Jesus promises that one day, in the flesh, we shall see God. Physical body and soul will be reunited, even though we die. We shall live and laugh and walk and talk in the new heaven and the new earth. This is the promise of sins forgiven in Jesus. This is the promise of abundant life forever more. This diamond, this precious gem, it comes to you as a free gift by faith, bought and paid for by the blood of the lamb.

“I believe in the resurrection of the body.” We confess this in the Apostles’ Creed. “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come” is the last line of the Nicene Creed. In both of these confessions, we profess our faith in the crown jewel of Christianity. This is truly the reason for our Lenten journey to the cross. As we see Jesus suffer and die in our place, He defeats death. And our reward for His work is the priceless gem of the resurrection.

We see this theme in all of our Scripture readings today. The prophet Elisha resurrects Shunammite woman’s deceased son. St. Paul speaks of it in our Roman’s reading: “He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you … For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (8:11,18). And of course, Jesus raises Lazarus to life in our Gospel reading from St. John.

“Take away the stone” Jesus says (11:39). Roll it back away from the tomb! The crowd is a little apprehensive about that one. They’re in the Mediterranean. It’s hot there. You know how bad a dead mouse smells behind your extra fridge out in the garage. Imagine a decomposing human body in the heat of the arid Judean Desert! Martha, Lazarus’ sister, points this out: “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days” (11:39). The little detail about ‘4 days’ is actually a key detail. The Rabbis of the time taught that the spirit or soul of a dead person would kind of hover over the body for three days. It would leave once it saw the body decomposing. Raising Lazarus after four days—when putrefaction had set in and the soul had supposedly departed left no room for doubt: it was an undeniable miracle proving Jesus as “the resurrection and the life” (11:25).

And then came the big moment: “Jesus cried out with a loud voice,”Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go” (JN 11:43-44). And the crowd goes wild! Actually, I’m pretty sure that anyone who actually saw this miracle was terrified beyond words! This event inspired much faith, with many believing that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah. Nobody could raise a four-day dead man but the Messiah!

This miracle was the most dramatic and public “sign” Jesus had performed in His ministry. A man dead for four days, unmistakably resurrected — as you can imagine generated massive buzz and excitement. It fuelled messianic expectations, leading people to hail Jesus as the promised King who could conquer even death itself. And if He could conquer death, He could certainly conquer the pesky Roman oppressors! Witnesses to the resurrection of Lazarus were actively testifying about it, spreading the news and drawing the crowd. This reading is put here, on the 5th Sunday in Lent, precisely as the lead up to Palm Sunday. It is this crowd that comes out to greet Jesus with shouts of Hosanna! - but more about that next Sunday.

Without a doubt, resurrection from the dead remains the ultimate gem and crown jewel of Christianity. No other belief system on planet earth offers this pearl of great price by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. This is what Job had prophesied about when he said “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (19:26). And St. Paul connects this to the promise of our Baptism: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3-4).

Now, back to the diamond mine - just imagine if this unbelievably precious stone had simply remained thrown out the window, discarded, as worthless junk?! Plain and ordinary crystal, no matter how big it is, is just plain and ordinary and has little to no value. This is what happens if we abandon the crown jewel of the Christian faith. If we cast aside our Messiah and His promise of the resurrection. If we simply believe our body is ‘just stuff,’ a material prison for the soul. These ideas were popularized by the Orphics - a mystical religious movement in ancient Greece associated with the legendary poet Orpheus. They inspired Plato and further Greek Philosophers. The body is bad. We need to get rid of it. This was one of the concepts behind cremating bodies. Cremation largely fell out of favour in Christian-dominated Europe from around the 4th–5th centuries AD onward. Christianity always favoured burial precisely because of the crown jewel of our faith - the promise of bodily resurrection.

It needs to be said that the Lord God has made many diamonds. Bigger diamonds than even the Great Star of Africa have been found. And no doubt bigger and better gems will be found in the future! But the Lord only made one of you. You are one of a kind. And our Lord and Saviour Jesus has given you the promise of resurrection. The pearl of great price, the gem of greatest value, the jewel of incomparable worth is yours by faith alone in the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In His name, Amen!