The Weeping Lord: John 11:1-45 - Fifth Sunday in Lent

¹Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ²Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. ³So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” ⁴But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ⁵Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, ⁶after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
  ⁷Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” ⁸The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” ⁹Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. ¹⁰But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” ¹¹After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” ¹²The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” ¹³Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. ¹⁴Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. ¹⁵For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

  ¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, ¹⁹and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

  ²⁸When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” ²⁹And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. ³²When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep. ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

  ³⁸Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴²I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

  ⁴⁵Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. (NRSV)

Forsythia by Anne on Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

As if being a medical professional wasn’t already difficult and dangerous enough in these times, one job I imagine to be absolutely grueling is that of triage.

There is a shortage of hospital beds, face masks, ventilators, and medical professionals to tend to all the sick. Because of this, someone must decide who will get immediate treatment, who will wait, and God forbid, who will not receive treatment at all.

The problem is that there is no perfect way to determine who should be given priority. Regardless of whatever decision is made, or how good the criteria is that we create, someone will cry out, “that’s not fair!”

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus doing a kind triage. Jesus receives word from his friends Martha and Mary that their brother Lazarus was ill. But Jesus stays two days longer in the place where he was.

We don’t why he chooses to stay. Knowing what we know about the situation, Jesus comes across as rather dismissive of his friends. Eventually, Jesus arrives in Bethany—and by the time he arrives, he knows what’s happened: Lazarus has been dead for four days. In those four days, Martha and Mary buried their dead brother in a tomb. When Jesus finally shows up, these women do not hold back their feelings from Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

You can feel the sorrow, the disappointment, the anger in these words. Yes, Martha makes a beautiful confession of faith in Jesus as he speaks to her words of promise and life. But Lazarus is still in the tomb. The pain is still powerful. Death has struck—and Jesus wasn’t there to stop it.

Just before Jesus goes with the sisters and the mourners to the tomb, he is overcome…and begins to weep. When they arrive, the stone is in place. The stench of death is overpowering. What will Jesus do?

What we see here in Martha, Mary, and the mourners is the tension that exists between faith and disappointment; hope and despair. Because death has struck—and Jesus was not there to keep it from happening.

Today, we find ourselves in a very similar situation—because death is running amok, with Covid-19 being its sword. As it both sickens and kills God’s children, it’s destroying a whole lot else with it: all sense of normalcy and routine; our safety and security; our economy and our businesses, jobs, livelihoods, and life savings. You can’t even come to church because of the danger. Going out in public could potentially kill you and the people you encounter. And we don’t know how long this will last. We don’t know when the stock market will hit bottom. When the number of infections and deaths will subside. When we will no longer be sequestered in our homes.

What I find particularly troubling is that some will sail through this crisis and come out unscathed—while others are living in fear for their lives; scared that a simple trip to the supermarket will result in deadly germs coming home with the groceries. There are people who were already ill, who were already struggling to get by, whose lives were already in turmoil—and now, all hell has broken loose. How do you keep faith when death and destruction are a clear and present danger??

This is a time to really pay attention to Martha and Mary’s courage—they don’t hold back their sorrow, disappointment, and anger from Jesus. It doesn’t make you a strong Christian to conceal what’s in your heart. It makes you a dishonest Christian. To cry out to Jesus is an act of faith. Sometimes, it’s the only act of faith—particularly now, when you don’t know when this ordeal will end, or how bad it will get. The temptation is strong to give up faith, give up hope, give up on living. Death can kill the body, but it can kill the spirit just the same. Jesus is not expecting you to be okay with all this—because he certainly is not.

I’m not okay with the ways that the pandemic is unfairly impacting the poor and vulnerable.

I’m not okay with the fear-mongering, shaming, and blaming; the misinformation and disinformation, the hoarding and the stealing. I’m not okay with a worker’s job being labeled “non-life-sustaining” when it’s the worker’s life it sustains. I’m not okay with how all this chaos is impacting our children. I’m not okay with us being a scattered church.

But Jesus is the resurrection and the life. In Christ, the way to go is forward. We go into the future, knowing that death and pain, disappointment and loss are likely waiting for us there. But so is Jesus! When you present our doubts and disappointments to him, he speaks words of promise and hope. You respond by doing the works of resurrection in the world. You unbind your neighbors from fear and pain, loneliness and shame.

Thanks be to God that new life is already happening—in our strengthened relationships, in the outpouring of love to one another, in the creative adaptations are making to be church in these scary times. We may still be at the beginning of the Pandemic, but we are only at the beginning of resurrection—and the resurrection will continue on when Covid-19 is a distant memory.

So, in the meantime, keep crying out until you see the Lord’s salvation. Jesus weeps with a weeping world. Jesus suffers with the suffering; he dies with the dying. But it is resurrection that keeps us going and moves us forward. You are alive in Christ, and death is running scared. Believe, and you will see the glory of God.