Our Weeping Lord

The Fifth Sunday of Lent
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

Have you ever had a door-to-door missionary or evangelist visit you? It even happened to a priest of a small parish. A pair of energetic proselytizers tried to convince him that they had the true religion. The priest, being a kindly man, listened for a while and then said: “Gentlemen, look. I have a proposition for you that will settle this. I have a glass of poison here. If you’ll drink the poison and then stay alive, I’ll join your church—and not just me, but I’ll bring along my entire congregation. But if you won’t drink the poison, well, then, I can only conclude that you are false ministers of the gospel because you don’t trust that your Lord won’t let you perish.”

This put the missionaries in a bind, so they went off to a corner to put their heads together. They said, “What on earth are we going to do?” Finally, after a while, they came up with an idea. They came back to the priest and said, “We’ll tell you what, Father. We’ve got a better plan. Why don’t you drink the poison, and we’ll raise you from the dead!”

Our gospel today is the well-known story of Lazarus who died and who then was brought back to life. He didn’t drink poison on a dare, but he evidently just got quite sick and started to decline rather quickly. So in a panic, his sisters sent word to Jesus to get over there fast.

But Jesus does something that may strike us as rather callous: he waits four days before going. And of course, Lazarus died, and his sisters, Mary and Martha, were put through terrible suffering and grief—all of which could have been avoided if Jesus had simply come right away! We’re told it was only two miles away!

Sometimes we may wonder why the Lord delays answering our prayers when we really, really need him and beg for him to come… just the way Lazarus’ two sisters worried when it appeared pretty certain their brother was going to die. But Jesus teaches us how even in the worst of circumstances—even in the case of death itself—our faith can bring us to experience greater glory. In the case of Lazarus’ death, it was the glory of the resurrection.

This gospel story is very rich, very profound. One interesting detail is that Jesus wept so profusely at his friend Lazarus’ death, that the other mourners remarked among themselves, “See how Jesus loved him!” Yet literally only moments later, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Wouldn’t you think that instead of crying, he would have said to Mary, Martha and the others: “OK, folks. Don’t cry. God’s going to raise Lazarus in just a few moments! Hang on a minute and you’ll see!” But this wasn’t Jesus’ message at all. Instead, he himself also wept. We wonder why.

Perhaps our Lord felt such empathy for Mary and Martha that he wept for their sorrow. Maybe, as the onlookers assumed, his friend’s death moved him to tears. But maybe it’s just as likely—and just as consistent with Jesus’ actions recorded in other parts of the Bible—that he was weeping over all the sin, death and corruption that he saw in the world.

A central message in today’s passage, therefore, is this: God weeps with us in the midst of our need. God weeps for the systemic sins of society… for the greed, the pollution, the child abuse, the physical and sexual abuse, the discrimination and injustices, and all the other things that weaken our families and corrupt our planet. And to be sure, God also weeps for the personal pain in each of our lives.

The Scriptures say that Jesus is our high priest—the one who has endured everything we endure on earth, but in his case, without sin. So it makes sense that Jesus can feel for us and weep with us, even though he knows the outcome will renew us and glorify God—just the way it did in Lazarus’ case.

Later, on the day we call Good Friday, Jesus undergoes an untimely and cruel death himself. But we know that he is really victorious. The defeated one, surrendering to the will of God, becomes the victor through the power of God—right into the resurrection!

For many, if not most, Christians, Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection are an unfathomable mystery. We may wonder what all that has to do with us. But our Lord wants us understand that death is the ultimate healing. Only by passing through death can we go on to live forever in the presence of God. To die is also to be reborn. It may seem scary from where we now stand. It may seem like something to be avoided at all costs. Yet at the same time, we know that in the end, it’s something each and every one of us will have to do.

Jesus’ beautiful promise to Mary and Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, and that those who believe in him will live even if they die, underscores the ultimate good news of our faith: death is not all there is. We will go on living! Even if we aren’t sure what kind of life it will be, the example of Lazarus, and then of Jesus, assures us that it will be glorious—and how that should fill us with great hope and confidence! Jesus could not be conquered, and if we stick with him, neither will we.

We pray today to understand that because we live in a world that is not yet fully redeemed, suffering and death are a part of human existence. But we can also rejoice that because we believe in Jesus, because we trust him, we and those we love will live, even though we die.