"Deeply Moved" (John 11:1-44)

Disturbed by a Distant-Seeming Jesus

1   Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But 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.” 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. …

I’ll confess, this picture of Jesus disturbs me. Having heard that his beloved friend Lazarus is on death’s doorstep, Jesus seems to coolly, distantly weigh his options: go to be with Lazarus and his sisters, or to let his friend die in order to demonstrate God’s power.

This picture of Jesus does not match up with the Jesus I know. This is not the Jesus who is moved to compassion by the sick and the hungry.  Nor is it the Jesus who refuses Satan’s temptation to prove his power.  This is a calculating Jesus who sanctions a suffering friend’s death, and the grief of many other friends besides, all so that he might demonstrate God’s power and strong-arm folks into belief (cf. 11:4, 42, 45).

Now, I’m nearly certain that my own discomfort, my own cognitive dissonance, is missing the point. From the beginning, readers have called John the “spiritual” gospel, recognizing that John seems to take occasional storytelling liberties in order to get to the spirit of who Jesus is. Most commentators also agree that the gospel of John is the last gospel to be written, that much of its material is drawn less from word-for-word memories of Jesus’ short, punchy sayings—“The kingdom of God is near” and “love your enemies” and “do not judge”—and more from the very real but very personal impression that Christ made on John. You could say the gospel of John is more impressionist painting than photograph.

All of this to say, I’m going to let go of my discomfort with this distant, calculating picture of Jesus. I’m going to allow that, like any good storyteller worth his salt, John may be dramatizing events—raising suspense, inviting expectation—in order to highlight what really matters: the glory of God revealed when Jesus encounters Lazarus (John 11:4).

From a Wedding to a Funeral

17   When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.

Jesus arrives in Bethany in the middle of what we might call a funeral. It is the fourth day of a seven-day mourning period, known as shiva in the Jewish tradition, where the family remain at home to grieve and are supported by people in the community who come to visit.

What will soon follow will be Jesus’ final sign (or wonder) amid the seven signs that John sprinkles throughout his gospel. I cannot help but wonder if it is more than coincidence that Jesus’ first sign—turning water to wine—happens at a wedding while his last sign happens at a funeral. There is a certain full-circle symmetry in these first and final signs, the first sign taking place at the beginning of a new life, the final sign taking place at the end of a life.

As John is a poetic storyteller, making regular use of symbols and images, I would like to think he’s signaling here that Jesus’ signs span all of life, from the beginning to the end. There is no moment in our life that Jesus’ grace cannot redeem, no moment beyond the transforming power of God’s love. Because as we will see, that is the common denominator of these signs. As with the first sign at the wedding, so with the last that we see here at a funeral: love leads to new life.

The Resurrection: Now or Later?

20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

In other words, Martha—like many other faithful Judeans—believes in the resurrection. It’s just a matter of timing: the resurrection is not now but at the end of time. When the Judeans talked about resurrection, they were not talking about isolated instances of resuscitation but about a universal event that would take place at the end of history.

What Martha wants is an exception. She wants her brother back now, in the middle of time.

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Which is sort of like saying, “I am the end of the world.” Or, “history has been completed or fulfilled, in me. Resurrection is here, now, in me.” To be sure, it’s not the literal resurrection that we might envision, where graves are opened and the dead walk out.

Jesus proceeds to explain: “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Just what Jesus means here is a mystery for those who read without faith. For us who trust in Jesus, however, the baseline meaning is this: In Christ, life—including the life of those who have died—life goes on. Death is real, but life is more real. Or as Paul puts it vividly in 2 Corinthians 5:4, death is “swallowed up” by life. In Christ, death does not have the final word.

“Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

In the other gospels, it is Peter, an eventual church leader, who confesses Jesus as messiah, God’s anointed savior. In the gospel of John, however, we hear this profound confession from the lips of one of his women disciples.

A Spectacle of Grief and Love

28   When 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.” 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The 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. 32 When 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.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” …

This Jesus—this Jesus with tears in his eyes, visibly moved by the grief of Mary and others—this Jesus is different from the disturbing picture of Jesus that I perceived at the beginning of today’s scripture, the picture of Jesus coolly calculating what configuration of events would most convincingly demonstrate his power, no matter the suffering of his beloved friend or the grief of many others. This Jesus is wracked by grief. This Jesus cares for the grieving.

When Jesus first hears the news about Lazarus’ illness, he comments, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory” (John 11:4). I heard that comment as cool and calculating, the words of a man who is in control of everything. Now, however, I’m led to wonder if the gospel of John was not directing our attention (through the words he gave Jesus) toward this culminating moment in the story. In other words, the gospel of John was pointing toward this moment, highlighting that what happens here at the burial site of Lazarus is about God’s glory.

If the glory of God had been simply about God’s power, then Jesus could have walked up to the grieving crowd and said calmly and coolly, maybe even a little smugly, “Go to the grave and see what I’ve just done.” He could have made a spectacle of God’s power.

Instead he weeps. If anything, he makes a spectacle of his grief. He makes a spectacle of God’s love. “See how he loved him!” the crowd says with wonder (John 11:36).

The glory of God is not the brute force or control of the unmoved Mover who sits high above the fray and can do anything he like. The glory of God is a heart broken with love—a love that is stronger than death, as we will see.

The Power of Broken Hearts

38   Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus 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.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I 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.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The 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.”

My experience with funerals has largely been that they are paradoxical. On the one hand, there is a certain anxiety and trepidation with which we sometimes approach them. A person might say about them, “This time tomorrow, it’ll all be over,” as though it’s something to get through. On the other hand, there nearly always seems to be a tender catharsis or release at the funeral itself. If one door has closed—and indeed, in a very real sense, it has—then another door has opened. I’ll often hear later from the family about how a meaningful exchange with someone or even just how a serendipitous encounter with the natural world (a bird, a butterfly, a cloud) imparted to them that their loved one was safe and perhaps even in some way still alive. Ralph Echols, who passed away a few weeks ago, told me that after the passing of his wife Molly, he would say a word or two to her every night along with his prayers to God.

I don’t want to detract from the most immediate meaning of today’s scripture, namely that a dead man emerged from his tomb alive. But Lazarus’ spectacular revival should not be mistaken with the resurrection itself, by which I mean, the resurrection should not be contracted or reduced to one isolated miraculous moment. Lazarus, remember, is human like the rest of us. He would die again; and the second time, his body would be committed to the elements for much longer, just like the rest of us.

No, I do not think Jesus’ sign is meant as a one-time demonstration of some strong-armed God. Rather, I think Jesus is signaling to us—that’s what a “sign” does, right; it “signals”—I think Jesus is signaling to us the power of broken hearts. In Psalm 51, the psalm of David that is regularly recited on Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent, we hear, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps 51:17). Broken hearts bring us closer to God. In his sermon on the mount, Jesus proclaims, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt 5:4), indicating that broken-heartedness is what opens us to the care and comfort of God and others. Lazarus’ revival and the joy and wonder that accompanies it, all signal the power of hearts that are broken open—hearts that are moved to tears, like Jesus’, like Martha’s, like Mary’s.

The heart that breaks is open to receive. Conversely, the heart that builds a wall, a defense, may be building its own tomb. It is another gospel paradox. When we avoid our loss—and that may be anything from the death of a loved one or departure of a friend to the end of a career or conclusion of a stage of life—when we avoid our loss, we lose out on the care and comfort that is part of Christ’s resurrection love. When we distract ourselves to avoid the pain, we prolong the pain, pushing it deep under the surface where it may metastasize. But when we accept our apparent losses, whatever they may be, when we allow our heart to break open, we receive the care and comfort of Christ’s resurrection love and discover the loss not to be an absence but a transformed presence. 

Prayer

Dear Christ,
Who is the resurrection and the life,
Inspire us by the spectacle of your grief
…
That we too
May allow our hearts to break open
To receive care and comfort
And to connect genuinely
With others
And with God.
Amen.