Lent 5 Jesus Wept

Lent 5 (John 11:1-45) Jesus wept.

Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead is the catalyst for the crucifixion.
As we have observed in the gospel readings during Lent, the miracles Jesus performed attracted large crowds, convinced his disciples he was the promised Messiah, and brought fear, confusion and anger to the religious authorities.

In the midst of this turmoil, Jesus reveals himself most fully and completely as the One who is both human and divine. The particular incident involves Jesus’ relationship with a single family.

According to the internal evidence of scripture, the family of Martha, Mary and Lazarus are wealthy Pharisees who live just outside Jerusalem. We understand they are wealthy because of Mary’s extravagance in pouring a precious ointment on Jesus’ feet. We understand they are Pharisees because of Martha’s statement of faith in the resurrection. Most Jews at that time did not hold that belief.

Tradition suggests Martha was the eldest and the head of the household. This is based on Martha’s concern about providing all the details of hospitality when Jesus visited. Tradition also suggests that Mary was younger than Martha and that Lazarus was the youngest. He was probably an older teen. He had not yet assumed his responsibility as the head of the household. And, he had not yet married and fathered children to carry the family name into the future.

If the tradition is accurate, Lazarus’ death was a terrible tragedy on many levels. Despite the family wealth, the death of the only male heir left his older sisters vulnerable in a patriarchal society. It also meant the end of the family line since the common belief was that the only assurance of life after death was in a man’s children. The children would remember his name. Without heirs to hold the memory of the ancestors, they were truly dead.

The amazing aspect about the story is how the entire universal Plan of Salvation is woven into the particularity of one family’s terrible tragedy. The universal experience of humanity is present: sickness and health, faith and fear, hope and despair, life and death.

Lazarus becomes sick. Martha, as head of the household, sends for Jesus. She includes in the message: your friend is ill. It is clear the family enjoys a close personal relationship with Jesus. And, Martha reminds Jesus that her younger brother is Jesus’ friend. Surely, Martha reasons, Jesus will come and heal his friend. After all, he has healed thousands of total strangers in his three years of public ministry.

There is a very subtle but very powerful use of language in the passage. When Martha and her friends speak of Jesus’ love for Lazarus they use the word that means friendship. When John refers to Jesus’ love for Lazarus and his family he uses the word that means steadfast holy unconditional eternal love.

For the sake of friendship, Martha and Mary and their neighbors expect Jesus to heal Lazarus before he dies. For the sake of steadfast holy unconditional eternal love Jesus invites his friend, Lazarus, to participate more fully and completely in the universal Plan of Salvation for the entire human race.

This choice is not without cost. It cost Lazarus his life. It certainly cost the family terrible sorrow and grief. It cost Jesus a temporary loss of respect from his disciples and the people who wondered if he had failed. It cost Jesus the emotional turmoil of entering into the grief and sorrow of the moment. And, it set into motion the sequence of events that would culminate in the crucifixion.

The disciples warned Jesus that he had only barely escaped death the last time he visited Jerusalem. The religious authorities would be waiting for an opportunity to kill him. Jesus decides to go to Bethany, a town just outside Jerusalem, yet he deliberately waits two days. He waits in accord with the Father’s will. He waits so that the Glory of God might be manifested in the resurrection of Lazarus and in the final culmination of the Plan of Salvation.

The story is familiar. Martha and Mary lament that Jesus is too late. The crowds express doubt in Jesus’ power. Jesus dialogs with the sisters and hears the mixture of faith and fear, belief and doubt, in their grief.

Jesus asks to visit the tomb. The family and the crowd expect Jesus to join them in the ritual lamentation for the dead. It is a loud weeping and wailing, for most religious people believed dead was dead. Even those who believed in resurrection believed it was only for the righteous. And, who could say whether any one particular individual would be accounted righteous. Lazarus was young. Perhaps he had not performed sufficient good works to qualify as righteous. Perhaps his untimely death was a sign of divine punishment for sin.

In the midst of this grief and sadness, doubt and uncertainty, Jesus himself weeps. He is fully human and can do no less. The suffering he encounters is deep and broad. It is the suffering of people lost in the pain of separation from God. It is the foretaste of the suffering Jesus will experience on the cross.

Jesus weeps for the death of his friend and he weeps for the human condition that results in such terrible sadness and death. People some times say: where was God when this terrible tragedy happened? Where was God in the earthquake, the tsunami? He is right there. In Jesus Christ God unites our humanity with His divinity. In that union God experiences our grief and our sorrow. The proof of this is in the statement: Jesus wept.

Jesus wept for Lazarus and for the human condition. This was not His Father’s original Plan for the human race. This is the consequence of the Original Choice our species made to separate from God. That separation has brought terrible distortions to the way we think, feel, choose and experience life. That separation produces fear, frustration, anger, sin and death. And, Jesus is God with us in the midst of all of that suffering.

Jesus is the assurance that although we abandon God, God never abandons us. He is with us in all of our joys and in all of our sorrows. He weeps with those who weep because he is fully human and knows life as we know life and feels suffering as we feel suffering.

This particular story has a happy ending for the family. Jesus raises Lazarus, the younger brother, from the dead. It is an amazing gift for the family that is also the catalyst for the religious leaders to move against Jesus with false accusations of blasphemy. Human separation from God produces fear, frustration, anger, the assertion of the will to power and the fatal pride that leads to the arrest, trial, torture and execution of the Son of God.

Jesus knew this was his path forward. Jesus knew his gift of life to Lazarus was his own death warrant. Jesus also knew this way forward was the only way to accomplish the Plan of Salvation.

Salvation is not a human right. Neither is it something we can earn or demand. Salvation is Life overcoming and transforming death.

No prophet can accomplish this. No religious teacher, philosopher or scientist can accomplish this. Only the co-eternal Son of God, The Beloved, can do this and has done it. Jesus just doesn’t give us a religious insight about God. Jesus is God.
As God, Jesus just doesn’t have life, he is life itself. He is eternal life. He raises Lazarus with a word. He embraces human separation, sin and death, and with a single word in a moment of terrible pain, he unifies a lost broken and tormented human nature with divine nature. By the infinite power of eternal love Jesus reunifies humanity with divinity. By the infinite power of eternal love Jesus transforms death into life.

Jesus wept. He knew the terrible suffering separation produces in human lives. He knew the terrible price he would have to pay to overcome that separation. He knew that even after his own resurrection people would reject the gift of salvation he offers. He continued on the path of the Plan of Salvation anyway. He chose to unite his will with the will of God the Father. That will is steadfast holy unconditional eternal love.

Jesus wept that day at the tomb in Bethany because Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved of the Father. Jesus wept because Jesus just doesn’t have love, Jesus is love.