Light in the Depths

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC March 22 2026. “Ignite the Light” series. Text: John 11:1-45 It is Women’s History Month. And right now, there are real reminders that the struggle for women’s full dignity—in society and in the church—is not behind us. Legislation like the SAVE Act (being debated this very weekend in the Senate) threatens to create new barriers to voting, not just for women, but most certainly barriers that will disproportionately affect women, especially those whose legal names no longer match their birth certificates. At the same time, there is a growing movement in some corners of Christianity to restrict women from preaching and leadership. And I know this part isn’t abstract. In the clips of my sermons regularly getting posted these days on social media, it’s common to receive comments discrediting anything I say only because I’m a woman saying it. Arguments against women in church leadership are often justified by appeals to scripture—some reflecting the norms of the time, others drawn from how women show up (or don’t) in the Gospel stories. You know the ones: “All the disciples were men!” // Today, our Gospel story has a lot going on in it. Yes, the big reveal is Lazarus coming out of that tomb. But there is so much more: There is a political crisis. A theological crisis. And—if we look closely—a buried story. A buried female story. Because at the heart of this story is a question about who gets to speak the truth about who Jesus is—and what happens when that truth comes from a voice some would rather not hear. John’s Gospel is organized around seven astonishing “signs.” The raising of Lazarus is the seventh. And it is the one that gets Jesus killed. Right after Lazarus is raised, the religious authorities decide: “He must die.” Which makes me wonder—Jesus has healed before. Fed thousands. Turned water into wine. Why is this sign the turning point? To understand that, we look back to the prophet Ezekiel. In chapter 37, he sees a valley of dry bones—an image of a defeated people. God speaks, breath enters them, and they rise. God says, “I will open your graves… and bring you back to your land.” This is not just about individual resurrection. It is about national restoration. Liberation. The defeat of oppression. Now imagine living under brutal Roman occupation. And then hearing about a man who has just… opened a grave. Do you see the connection? This would not just look like a miracle. It would look like Ezekiel’s vision coming true. A sign that God is about to overturn the order of things. And hope—especially hope among the oppressed—is always dangerous. So when the authorities say, “If we let him go on like this… the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation,” they are not being irrational. They’re being realistic. They’re thinking of how to keep the crowds from “poking the bear” of the empire. Because if the crowds start mobilizing around Jesus as the one who will raise Israel from the dead—Rome will respond with violence. Better, they think, for one man to die than for the whole nation to be destroyed. (John 11:50) This is the political crisis. But there is another layer to this story. Another kind of burial. New Testament scholar Elizabeth Schrader Polczer has spent years studying the earliest manuscripts of John’s Gospel—especially this chapter. And what she noticed is that in many of the texts, there are signs of disturbance. In more than one of our oldest copies, there are edits—visible ones. Names changed. Words scratched out. Singular turned into plural. In particular, the name Mary appears to have been altered to Martha. And in some places, what was once a single woman becomes “the sisters.” Schrader Polczer’s careful reconstruction of the text from the most ancient copies suggests that Lazarus had one sister—Mary. One sister, not two. Now, that might sound like a technical detail. A scholarly footnote. But stay with me—because this matters. Schrader Polczer’s claim is this: that the Mary in John 11 may actually be Mary Magdalene—and that her role was later divided by introducing Martha into the story. Not invented out of thin air, but imported—brought in, she suggests, from the Gospel of Luke, where a different Mary and her sister Martha (no mention of Lazarus) appear in a completely different story in a completely different place—Galilee in the north, not Bethany near Jerusalem in the south. In Luke 10, this Mary sits at Jesus’ feet as a disciple while Martha is busy serving. It’s a well-known scene. Early scribes would have known it well. And so, over time, it seems possible that this familiar pair—Mary and Martha—was inserted into John 11. And here’s what that does: It takes one central woman, Mary Magdalene, sister of Lazarus, and turns her into two. It diffuses her presence. It redistributes...