Fifth Sunday in Lent
Year A, RCL
March 9, 2008
All Saints’, Bentonville
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." 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." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" Jesus 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. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
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." And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 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. 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." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 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." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. 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." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 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."
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
The Dean of the Cathedral in San Francisco, Alan Jones, talks in his book, Soul Making, about the “gift of tears”. He speaks of tears as “agents of resurrection and transformation”, “weeping and the bursting forth of new life”. We intuitively know that something good can emerge from our lamentation. Most of us have experienced the cathartic effect of “having a good cry.” But the gift of tears is something more “radical, threatening, and lifebearing than the occasional necessary release from tension that the effect of ‘having a good cry’ affords.”
Upon finding that his friend Lazarus had died, “Jesus began to weep”. If the study of the King James’ Bible was a part of your childhood, you would probably know that this verse from John’s Gospel, verse 35, is the answer to the Bible trivia question, “What’s the shortest verse in the Bible? The answer ? “Jesus wept.”
The image of Jesus weeping over the death of his friend is a compelling one. Jesus compassion, his humanity, finds evidence in the observation of the witnesses to the scene, “See how he loved him.” And indeed he did, but there is more.
“Jesus wept”. Those of you who have heard me preach and teach regularly know that I am reluctant to take a single verse of scripture out of its context. Because it is the historical and literary context of scripture that gives it it’s meaning, its richness, and determines it’s relevance for its original readers and for us as well. But this phrase, “Jesus wept” – is infinitely transportable. Because Jesus weeps the same tears today that he wept when he discovered that his beloved friend Lazarus had died four days before Jesus arrived.
I’m convinced that Jesus wept when he read the paper last week and learned that for the first time in U.S. history we incarcerate 1 in 100 Americans. And when I drove up to the Benton County Jail a few days ago, I passed the sign, a sign I know you’ve all seen, that proclaims (proudly or with shame, I’m not sure) that the inmate population today is 512. There is just enough room, I think, at the bottom of the sign, for the words, “Jesus wept.” Numbers like that don’t mean so much to us, until they represent someone we love, until someone we know and care about personally, passes endless days behind steel bars. And then we, along with Jesus, shed our tears.
I can also easily imagine the phrase, Jesus wept, positioned above the doorway at the entrance to the Intensive Care Unit at Northwest Community Hospital – where inside a young man lies today unconscious, clinging tenuously to a fragile existence. And how can Jesus not weep when for four long years American parents have sent our own noble and brave young men and women to kill the children of Iraqi parents.
We can certainly find considerable comfort from the image of Jesus weeping, mourning the loss of a friend, when we are in need of a savior who weeps on our behalf – a Jesus whose loves us enough to shed tears. But there is something about the story that doesn’t quite add up, if the magnitude of Jesus’ love for a lost friend is all that we take away from the image of a weeping Jesus.
To start with, Jesus took his own sweet time getting to Bethany. After learning that Lazarus was ill, he lingered for two days with his disciples before finally making his way to the home of his now dead friend. And judging from the conversation with his disciples, Jesus was confident that he could resurrect Lazarus – so I have to ask, why the tears?
Maybe Jesus wasn’t weeping just over the death of Lazarus. Perhaps the tears were in anticipation of his own death – an acknowledgement that he too would soon be laid in a tomb.
Later Jesus would be put to death, and in an odd twist of fate, for the crime of giving life to Lazarus. Jesus life giving actions had caught the attention of the Sanhedrin, who worried about how the Roman authorities would react to a Jew stirring things up. And so he was crucified.
I’m suggesting that Jesus tears weren’t simply tears shed over the loss of a dear friend, but that he is weeping for the loss that each of us face when we die to an old way of being. Jesus offered new life to Lazarus, but in doing so he was signing his own death warrant. In choosing death for himself, Christ provided us with the clearest example I know, of how we can die to sin, to shame, to old prejudices, to bigotry, to a tired way of being in the world, and choose new life in Christ. Like Lazarus we have stayed in the tomb too long and it doesn’t smell so good. God can breathe new life into our dry and brittle bones.
Occurring two Sunday’s before Easter, we might think of the raising of Lazarus from the dead as a foretaste of the resurrection we are now anticipating. The image of Lazarus, stumbling from the tomb, his hands and feet bound by strips of cloth, is a more accessible resurrection story – not one in which the earth shook, rocks were split and the curtain of the temple was torn in half. Instead it is a kind of “everyman’s resurrection” - the kind of resurrection that is available to us all, everyday, anytime we are willing to turn our backs on whatever is not sustaining, life-giving and accept the grace that is naturally ours. It is a here and now sort of resurrection.
We worship a God who weeps with us and for us. Who promises above all to accompany us on the journey through death and into new life. The gift of tears occurs, in the tradition of the desert fathers, when the ultimate source of life is uncovered. When all pretenses are dropped. When we are confronted with the reality of our weakness, our vulnerability, tears have a way of flowing.
Jesus tears occurred, not when he first learned of the death of his friend Lazarus, but after asking Mary, “Where have you laid him?” Jesus began to weep when Mary replied, “Come and see.” Come and see. Arriving at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus was confronted with the reality of death, that of his friend and of his own. And these tears that Jesus wept were the kind of tears that wash away self-deception and reveal who we really are. They were the tears that offer a kind of second baptism, a baptism of tears. And through those tears Jesus could see his own death and the resurrection which was to follow. That same gift of tears is ours.