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Wake Up Dead Man is not ultimately a story about mystery, exposure, or even justice. It is a story about what happens when mercy speaks to death—and death listens.
Lately, it feels like everyone is talking about Wake Up Dead Man.
Not just because it is clever or entertaining—though it is both—but because of that scene. The absolution. The moment when vengeance stalls, truth stops performing, and mercy quietly takes center stage. It is rare to watch a film and feel the room fall silent because of grace.
This creates a familiar problem for preachers.
When a story lands this richly, it begs to be used immediately. Advent thrives on longing. Christmas on mercy breaking in. This film presses all the right theological buttons. More than once in the past week, I found myself wanting to slip the movie into a sermon.
But some words are too good to rush.
If we can hold our nerve, Lent offers a better home for it. And not just any Sunday in Lent, but the Fifth: the raising of Lazarus. Because Wake Up Dead Man is not ultimately a story about mystery, exposure, or even justice. It is a story about what happens when mercy speaks to death—and death listens.
By the Fifth Sunday in Lent, most congregations are tired.
The disciplines have worn thin. The resolve has softened. Whatever we intended to fix about ourselves back on Ash Wednesday has proven more stubborn than we imagined. By Lent 5, people are no longer especially interested in spiritual strategies. They are interested in life.
Which is why the Church gives us Lazarus. Not a parable. Not a proverb. A corpse.
John 11 does not ease us toward Easter; it drags us to a tomb and makes us stand there long enough to smell the truth. Lazarus is dead. Jesus delays. Martha theologizes. Mary weeps. And the crowd does what crowds always do: they begin explaining why things are the way they are.
Into that scene comes one of the most unsettling commands in Scripture: “Take away the stone.”
Truth That Knows How to Kill
Detective Benoit Blanc, the moral center of the Knives Out universe, is very good at his job. He sees what others miss. He follows the clues. He exposes what is hidden. In that sense, Blanc would fit right in among the voices surrounding Lazarus’ tomb. He knows how death works. He knows what must have happened. He can explain why the stone should stay right where it is.
And he would be right.
Lazarus is dead. The stench is real. Truth, after all, is not the problem in John 11. Everyone agrees on the facts. The problem is that truth, by itself, cannot raise the dead.
That is the film’s quiet indictment of the kind of righteousness that believes ascent is the same thing as salvation. Once the truth is revealed, once the guilty are named, once the system is clarified, life will follow. But it doesn’t.
The problem is that truth, by itself, cannot raise the dead.
Truth alone only confirms what the tomb already knows. As David Zahl has observed, “Only Christianity dares to locate the solution to the human problem outside the self.” Lazarus cannot solve Lazarus. No amount of insight, effort, or explanation will get him breathing again. If life is going to happen, it must come from elsewhere.
“Lord, If You Had Been Here…”
In Lazarus’ story, Martha’s confession is impeccable: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). She says all the right things at exactly the right moment. And Jesus does not correct her. He deepens her faith. “I am the resurrection and the life.”
The main character in Wake Up Dead Man, a priest named Jud, articulates a vision of Christian ministry that sounds scandalous only because we have forgotten how Biblical it is. Jud’s calling, he says, is not to fight the wicked and bring them to justice, but to serve sinners and bring them to Christ. God did not hide him from guilt. God did not fix him. God loved him in the middle of it.
That is Lazarus’ theology. Because Lazarus does not climb out of the grave once he hears the truth about his condition. He is called out. He is summoned. He is given life he did not cooperate with.
When Mercy Risks the Stench
Jesus’ command, “Take away the stone,” is not a request for moral improvement. It is an act of mercy that risks embarrassment, offense, and failure. Martha protests, not because she lacks faith, but because she knows how death works (John 11:39).
So do we. We know how shame works. We know how guilt lingers. We know which stones should stay put. Lent trains us to name these things honestly. But Lent 5 refuses to let us stop there.
Jesus does not speak life from a safe distance. He steps into grief. He weeps. He stands before the sealed place of death and orders it opened—not so the crowd can see how bad things really are, but so that the dead can hear his voice. “Lazarus, come out.”
In Johnson’s film, mercy interrupts the whodunit logic at precisely this point. The truth does come out, but it does not get the final word. Absolution does. Not after everyone behaves. Not after the damage is undone. But while sin is still unfolding. That is not narrative convenience. It is gospel.
Unbinding the Living
The final command in John 11 is often overlooked: “Unbind him, and let him go” (vs. 44b). Resurrection creates a new problem. The living still look like the dead. Grave clothes cling. The community must participate now—not by diagnosing death, but by loosening what no longer belongs.
That is why Wake Up Dead Man presses so hard on the preacher’s conscience. The temptation is to use it immediately. To put it to work this Sunday. To capitalize on the fact that people are already talking about it, already moved by it, already leaning forward.
And sometimes, of course, you should. Preaching is not archival work. If a word needs to be spoken now, speak it.
But if you can hold on—if you can tuck this story away—it will preach even better later. Lent 5 gives this illustration room to breathe. Lazarus gives it a body. The tomb gives it a smell. And Jesus gives it a voice that does not explain death but commands it.
Of course, patience is hard, especially when you are holding something this good.
So use it if you must. Or, if you can wait, set it aside. Let it rest. Come back to it when your people are tired, honest, and standing in front of sealed places they cannot open themselves. And let the word fly.
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