Bible reading: John 11:1-45.

Message.

People sometimes come out with the most inappropriate comments when we are suffering, grieving or in pain. For instance, you can be telling them about an incident that has really upset you and they’ll say, “Worse things happen at sea” – I have no idea where that remark originated! You can be describing a struggle which has made you feel utterly dejected and they’ll respond with, “Well, you can always look on the bright side”. Or you can feel trapped in agony and despair and they’ll say, “Pull yourself together, you’re bound to feel better in the morning”. I’m sure we’ve all received comments like these; they feel like a slap on the face and make us feel worse rather than better.

I’m sure that the folk who say these things don’t mean to be hurtful. It could be that they’ve never experienced much suffering in life, and so can’t imagine what you are going through. It could be that they are natural optimists who seem to quickly bounce back after a problem. It might be that they aren’t particularly empathetic, able to identify with other people’s burdens. Or they may simply not be listening properly to what you’re saying. These folk aren’t being deliberately cruel, but they may well be guilty of insensitivity or self-centredness.

We can’t imagine Jesus acting like that, can we? For we’re absolutely convinced that he had time to listen to every hurting soul who asked him for help and advice, we’re sure that he never gave them a brusque or dismissive answer, and we certainly can’t think of him callously playing with their emotions. Yet, in this story about Lazarus, who seems to have been one of Jesus’ closest friends outside the band of disciples, this seems to be exactly what he does. And we don’t like it.

Let’s think of what happens in this story. It begins with Martha and Mary sending news of their brother’s grievous illness to Jesus. When he hears it, he says some immensely encouraging words which, I am sure, were relayed back to the two ladies: “This sickness will not end in death”. Assuming that it reached them fairly quickly, this message must have greatly encouraged Martha and Mary. But their hope was short-lived as Lazarus soon succumbed to his illness. Not only were the sisters left distraught at the death of their beloved brother, their trust in Jesus had been shattered.

That’s bad, but it gets worse. You’d have thought that, having heard of Lazarus’ sickness, Jesus would have dropped everything and run as fast as he could to Bethany in order to heal him before it was too late. But that is precisely what he doesn’t do: instead he stays put where he is – possibly some distance from Bethany – for two more days before belatedly telling his disciples, “We’re off now”. What business was so important to Jesus that he could not leave it to attend to Lazarus? We are not told; perhaps it was something very pressing. But Jesus certainly gives us the impression that he just doesn’t care – while Lazarus gets progressively weaker and the sisters become more and more distraught with anxiety.

Eventually Jesus does decide to begin his journey – to the surprise and horror of his disciples, who tell him, “But, Lord, the last time you were in that area, you got stoned!”. As they start off, Jesus tells the disciples that Lazarus is asleep, but that he will wake him up. They happily take Jesus at his word, indeed they say that the bed rest will help Lazarus get well – until Jesus bluntly says, “No, it’s not that kind of sleep: Lazarus is dead”. We’re not told how Jesus knows this (no mobile phones in those days): did another messenger arrive, panting and sweating, or was this a direct revelation from God? It doesn’t really matter but, yet again, hopes were raised and soon dashed.

Finally Jesus arrives at his destination – a house, filled with wailing mourners, many of whom have come from nearby Jerusalem. And, of course, his arrival is far too late, for Lazarus has now been dead for four days. That time-frame is important, as some rabbinic traditions suggested that the human soul hovered over a dead body for three days, implying that resurrection might be possible. But that time had now passed and, furthermore, Lazarus’ corpse was beginning to carry the stench of decay. So Martha collapses in Jesus’ arms, while Mary doesn’t even leave the house – perhaps she is too caught up in her grief to speak to anyone, or else so angry with Jesus that she simply cannot bear to meet him for fear of what she might do or say.

Martha is both bereft and reproachful. “Master, if only you’d been here, none of this would have happened”, she says – words which would later be repeated by her sister. But she is still clinging to a tiny thread of hope, I think: “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask him for”. I find Martha’s continued trust in Jesus – still just about intact – both pathetic and touching, especially as she declares her hope in Lazarus’ eventual resurrection (which was a fairly new belief in Judaism, on which the Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed). I don’t think our reaction would have been anything like Martha’s: we’d be raging and railing at Jesus, asking why he had allowed such a needless death, telling him that it was “all his fault”.

And finally Mary arrives on the scene, falling prostrate before Jesus outside her brother’s tomb. She’s not like her sister, she doesn’t “maintain a stiff upper lip” or attempt to control her grief; she simply pours it all out in what we might imagine are great incoherent sobs. Anger, grief, frustration and loneliness mingle together; and, apparently for the first time, Jesus “gets it”. For when he sees Mary’s tears, and the tears of the bystanders; even more, when he sees the tomb for himself, the emotion of the moment appears to finally touch him. This is no longer a theological debate about God, healing and resurrection; this is a family in pain. At last, it seems to be penetrating Jesus’ tough exterior. He, too, can only weep.

Well, we know what happens afterwards, how – despite all expectation and human logic – Lazarus comes out of the tomb. It’s a fantastical and horrifying scene as he is still wrapped in his funeral bandages, we can only guess at the onlookers’ initial amazement, even fear. But tears are soon dried and grief gives way to unalloyed rejoicing. This is one of the great stories of the Bible, as Jesus brings life and joy at the exact moment when all hope seems to have been dashed. I’m sure that similar swings of emotion are felt by the relatives of a person pulled alive from the ruins of a house many days after an earthquake, or the family who receives news that their soldier son who has been missing, presumed dead, is in fact safe, well and on their way home. Strangely enough, good news can be almost as difficult to handle as tragedy.

I want to focus for a moment on Jesus’ tears. For there are a number of questions we might ask about them. The first is one which initially appears simple: “Why did Jesus cry outside Lazarus’ tomb?” The obvious answer is that he was greatly moved by the powerful emotions which everyone was expressing – far more demonstrative than the suppressed sobs and discreetly dabbing handkerchiefs which you tend to see at a British funeral (and which, I feel, can cause more harm than good as people allow good manners and embarrassment to bottle up their feelings, rather than letting them be expressed at such a cathartic moment in their lives). I believe that Jesus cried because everyone was crying: he truly identified with their pain and grief.

Or did the onlookers interpret Jesus’ tears in a different way? Did they see them as rage against the sheer senselessness and waste of death, anger because a man in the prime of life had been snatched away (which must have been much more common in those days than it is today), perhaps frustration that even Jesus, had been unable to prevent this death from happening. I must say that death does (and perhaps should) make us angry; it seems so pointless and irrational, it is the final arbiter against which there is no appeal, it is an event which, despite today’s wonderful medicine, we cannot dodge for ever. St. Paul called death “the last enemy”; it is an enemy which always triumphs.

I wonder, though, if something else is also going on? For it seems to me that Jesus is disappointed at the way in which everyone has assumed that Lazarus’ life is over for good, that no-one has latched on to his words of hope and life. In other words, he may be saddened because nobody has dared to think the unimaginable, that Lazarus may yet rise (in “real time” rather than simply on the last day). They have failed to hear his promise of healing, they are still earthbound in their thinking, they have edited God’s power out of their expectations.

We may well think it unreasonable that Jesus should expect people to set aside the experience of everyone who has ever lived, which is that dead people stay dead! Remember what I said earlier about Jesus’s Jewish audience; they believed that, during the first three days after a death, there was still a faint hope thar life might return, but not, as here, after that. Now, we may well feel that Jesus was asking too much of his companions and listeners. But we mustn’t forget that they had one great advantage over us: most of them had seen Jesus performing other signs and miracles, they knew (if you like) that he could “deliver the goods”. Yet their faith could not extend to believing in Lazarus’ resuscitation – which, I agree, was a pretty big “ask”! In other words, they were still failing to recognise Jesus as the all-powerful Son of God. We must honestly ask ourselves – are we?

Perhaps that’s the challenge that we should take from this remarkable event: that, just as Jesus “woke” Lazarus from his “sleep”, so we all need him to awake our own spirits to faith. For the story goes far beyond raising one person to life, however amazing or momentous that must have been. For Jesus was in fact performing the final “sign” – the last of seven specifically mentioned in John’s Gospel – which would prove beyond all doubt that he was the Son of God.  And we of course see something else: the parallel which Jesus knew he was making with his own impending death. He wanted to be sure that, on Easter Day, many people would look back to this story of Lazarus, make the right connections in their minds, and believe.

Many of the people who had come to visit Mary saw what Jesus did, and they believed in him. I think that’s probably the crucial point to take from this story. Yes, Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters. Yes, he had compassion on their plight. Yes, he wanted to turn their grief into joy (although, of course, Lazarus did eventually die again – I wonder how long he lived for?). But those weren’t the main reasons for Jesus performing this, his greatest miracle; and he certainly wasn’t interested in performing religious stunts that would make the crowds gasp. No; this story fits in with John’s aim which runs throughout his gospel: “These things have been written in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life”. Have we believed a little bit more through hearing this story today? I hope so.