Fifth Sunday of Lent – 22 March 2026

One of the maxims we learn in life is that when we are in a hole, we should stop digging. It sounds simple. Yet it is remarkably difficult to live by. From time to time, we see it play out in public life—a figure caught in a mistake, who keeps speaking, keeps defending, keeps digging deeper. We cringe as we watch it unfold. And yet, if we are honest, we recognise something of ourselves in it. Because all of us, in one way or another, know what it is to dig a hole for ourselves. It happens in our work. It happens in our relationships. We say too much or too little. We act too quickly or not at all. We try to cover our tracks, justify ourselves, hold things together—and somehow, it only tightens around us.

Gradually, what begins as a mistake becomes something more. We feel caught. We feel trapped. At times, we feel almost entombed. The future no longer feels open. What once stretched before us as possibility begins to close in. The present becomes heavy, clouded. And the past—our past begins to hold us fast, like a kind of grave. We are entombed by what has been.

This is not only a personal experience. In these days, something similar can be felt on a much larger scale. War is widening across the Middle East, drawing more and more into its shadow. Decisions are made, responses escalate, and the sense grows that the world itself is digging deeper into a conflict that is increasingly difficult to contain. At the same time, the cost of oil rises sharply, and with it the cost of living. What happens far away begins to shape daily life here at home. Petrol prices climb. Food costs increase. Families feel the pressure tightening, choices becoming more constrained.

There is a sense, for many, of being caught in something larger than ourselves. This is not just economic. There is a quiet emotional toll: a fatigue, an anxiety, a sense that the horizon is no longer as open as it once seemed. The future can begin to feel uncertain, even foreclosed. And so, whether in our personal lives or in the life of the world, we recognise something of that same experience: We feel hemmed in. We feel burdened. We feel, at times, entombed.

It is precisely here that today’s Gospel speaks. The story of Lazarus is not only about death at the end of life. It is about all those places where life has closed in on itself—where something in us, or around us, feels sealed off, beyond reach, beyond hope. And it is there that Jesus goes. He does not avoid the tomb. He does not stand at a distance. He does not offer easy explanations. He approaches it. He stands before it. He weeps. And then, from that place, he calls: “Lazarus, come out.”

This is the heart of the Gospel. Because whatever it is that entombs us—our past, our fears, our mistakes, our anxieties about the future, even the weight of the world’s troubles—this is the place Jesus wants to touch. He comes that we may have life and have it in all its fullness. And so, he is drawn, almost urgently, to whatever diminishes that life in us. We may fear those places. We may avoid them. We may feel powerless before them. But he does not. He looks at them squarely, and he calls life out of them.

And this is the mystery we are moving toward in Easter. That the place we would expect only death—fear, failure, conflict, loss—becomes, in God’s hands, a place of life, of possibility, of new beginnings.

But for that mystery to take root in us, something is asked of us. We are invited not to turn away from what entombs us, but to face it—with trust. To begin to wonder: what life might God be calling forth from this very place? And then comes that striking final moment in the Gospel. When Lazarus emerges, still bound in the cloths of death, Jesus says to those standing nearby: “Unbind him, and let him go.” In other words, the work of life is shared.

And so, in a world marked by conflict, rising costs, and quiet anxieties, we are drawn into that same work: to loosen what binds others in fear; to stand with those who feel trapped or overwhelmed; to make space, even in small ways, for life to breathe again.

The call of Jesus is not only spoken to Lazarus. It is spoken into every place that feels closed— in the world, in our communities, and in our own hearts. “Come out.”

As Lent draws to its close, we are invited to hear that call again. To believe that no situation is finally sealed. That no stone is too heavy to be moved. That even now, life is waiting to be called forth. And to take our place among those who help unbind one another—so that the life God desires for us may step out into the light.