A 2025 essay by Arthur C. Brooks sent me back to Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a story, Brooks notes, that few writers have matched in its ability to name the fear of dying. Ivan Ilyich has lived a respectable life—carefully plotting his career, providing well for his family, and achieving social success. But one day, Ivan has an accident that leaves him with lingering pain. Days pass, and eventually illness overtakes Ivan. And when it becomes clear that he will not recover, something far more frightening sets in.

Ivan realizes that everyone around him knows he is dying—and yet no one will name it. Conversations remain polite. Hope is performed. Ivan’s doctor offers more treatments. The truth is avoided. What tormented Ivan most was not simply that he was dying, but that he was forced to face it alone. Tolstoy tells us that this denial was a “poison” to Ivan, even greater than the cause of his illness.

This story remains unsettling because it points to something painfully familiar. We find it hard not only to grasp the idea of death but to face its reality when it comes close. The fact that only one in three Americans has advance directives for their end-of-life care, perhaps highlights our tendency to avoid and feel uncomfortable with dying and death. The most common reasons given for not having done this simple paperwork were first simply not having gotten around to it— kind of putting it off—or feeling it is too uncomfortable to think about.

In his book “Speaking of Dying,” Fred Craddock argues that the church colludes with our culture’s avoidance of death and challenges pastors to speak meaningfully into this ordinary aspect of life that troubles us so. Craddock and his co-authors note that the Christian story allows for suffering and death. When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, it meant the Word would undergo death. Indeed, Jesus endured the full agony of death. It’s part of our narrative, and we should be equipped to engage it.

This is why the story of Lazarus is so significant. It revolves around death—Lazarus's and Jesus's—and how we may relate to both.

As the story opens, we learn that Lazarus is sick. His sisters send word to Jesus: “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.” Yet—Jesus delays. Not because he does not care; we know he loves them. Not because he lacks power; they know he has the power to save Lazarus. But because there is some truth about God’s glory that cannot be revealed without passing through death.
Lazarus dies. Now, Jesus tells the disciples it is time to go to Bethany. Even before Jesus arrives, grief has settled in. The rituals have begun, the tomb is sealed, and decay has taken hold.

Martha meets Jesus on the road. She does not soften her words or hide her disappointment. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus says that Lazarus will rise again, Martha interprets this as something to look forward to in the future, at the end times. But Jesus gently tells her “I am the resurrection and the life. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus invites Martha to trust a deeper reality already at work—a life so fully rooted in God that even death cannot interrupt it.

And then, from her deep grief, Martha speaks one of the clearest confessions in the Gospel of John: “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

If saying the right words were all that mattered, the story would end there. The glory would be revealed. But Jesus does not stop with Martha’s confession. Jesus knows that good theology or words alone cannot fully meet death’s demands.

So Jesus goes on to meet Mary on the road. And when he does, there is no more talk of theology. She collapses into sorrow. She weeps, and the community weeps with her.

The passage tells us that Jesus is deeply moved. He is not detached from what is unfolding; he does not remain strong for them. Jesus was greatly disturbed says the text. Jesus loses his composure and weeps with them.

It is not because Jesus doubts God or has forgotten what is possible. But because Love does not stand apart from suffering or observe grief and death from a distance, but enters fully into them with us.

Finally, Jesus arrives with them at the tomb, and when they get there, they hesitate. Jesus is cautioned against opening it.

“Lord, there is already a stench.” Don’t get any closer.

But Jesus insists. The glory that Jesus is promised is yet to be fully revealed.

The stone is rolled away. Lazarus is called out. And he emerges alive—but still bound. Wrapped in grave clothes.

And again, the story does not end here. Jesus turns to Lazarus’ community and says, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Jesus does not do this work alone. Transformative love now requires human hands. It requires all of them to come near to what death has touched.
And this, too, is part of the glory Christ reveals and that we are invited to share. It is not ours to defeat or deny death, but to participate in a love that abides in and through it—through our presence, loosening what death has bound, where we can, for one another. Because resurrection is not only something God does to us, but something love does among us.

When Tolstoy tells the end of Ivan Ilyich’s story, the terror does not ease because Ivan is cured. He is not. His body continues to weaken. Death continues its work. What changes is not the outcome—but the presence.

As Ivan becomes more helpless, one person stays close: it’s his servant, Gerasim. Gerasim does not avert his eyes. He does not soften the truth. He also doesn’t rush Ivan toward false hope or pretend this is anything other than what it is. Gerasim enters the truth of what is happening when others cannot.

He holds Ivan’s legs to ease his pain and sits with him through the night. Tolstoy tells us that this simple, unguarded presence brings Ivan more relief than any medicine.

Gerasim does not save Ivan from death. He saves him from dying alone. And this changes everything for Ivan. As death approaches, it loses its sting. Tolstoy writes, “Ivan searched for his accustomed fear of death and could not find it.” “O, bliss!” are Ivan’s dying words.

Gerasim is an icon of our vocation, doing exactly what Jesus asks of the community at the tomb. “Unbind him, and let him go.”

The poet laureate of Colorado, Andrea Gibson, died this past July at the age of 49 of ovarian cancer. Weeks before she died wrote this blog post:

I am rarely inspired to write while hurting. I write from the soft (or not so soft) landing of the lesson learned. I write when I’ve had enough time and distance to say, “Thank goodness that happened.”

But today, so as never to clip the wingspan of truth, I am writing to you from the heart of the *wound**, from the bullseye of ache. I am writing in pain, friends, knowing many (if not most of you) are in some kind of pain as well. *

A few weeks ago, my parents visited. I wanted to hide my hurting from their hearts, and tuck it away so they wouldn’t have to carry it, too. Pretend I was fine. But “We are always better with the truth,” my father had told me on the phone before the trip. So I fell into my mother’s arms, sobbing the way I did as a child when I fell off my bike.

Because I didn’t pretend to be okay—something new rooted between my parents and I. An even deeper tenderness. The kind of closeness that grows when no one is trying to spare anyone else from what is hard to hear.

“People think that the worst thing that can happen is the truth. The truth is not the worst thing that can happen.”

Abiding with one another in such vulnerable communion—this is our calling. And when we take it up, in our living and in our dying, Christ is present with us, the gates of heaven open, and the glory of God is revealed.