John 11:1-45

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.

This morning, I want to tell you a story of something that I experienced while working as a student chaplain at Westmead Hospital, in the six months after I finished here as a student in 2014. Part of that role was being an on-call chaplain after office hours and on weekends, for anyone who requested a chaplain, regardless of denomination. It was my times on call that were the most harrowing and formative for me; I saw victims of car crashes and domestic violence, I was there when a doctor had to inform a mother her unborn child had died in the womb, and I was also there for miraculous births and great medical news. But one such night kept coming to mind as I read the passage for today. A disclaimer: I may cry at some point; just letting you know.

It was about 3am on a Sunday morning when I was called in, and the lights were dimmed softly when I walked into the room. There were around twenty people in the room, gathered in a circle around someone I could not see. As the circle parted to allow me to join them, I saw a young mother, younger than me, sitting in a rocking chair holding a bundle, with a young father standing beside her. In the circle were grandmothers and grandfathers, cousins and friends, sisters and brothers who’d come to see the baby, to say hello – and to tell him goodbye. You see, this room was one in the PICU or Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Children’s Hospital, and the little baby was dying. And I was the chaplain on duty that night. Everything that could be done for this four-month old boy had been done, and yet his decline continued. His young parents, still teenagers, had made the heartbreaking decision that some must make – to release him from ongoing medical treatments which were painfully preventing the inevitable.

So here I was, at 3 in the morning, an intern, a rookie, a chaplain there to love them and walk with them through this valley of the shadow of death.  Mum was rocking gently, her tears spilling onto his tiny race-car blanket while dad stood by, shifting from foot to foot, a face full of pain, occasionally placing his hand tenderly on her shoulder.  When I introduced myself to them, she asked everyone to leave, except myself.  When the family left, I knelt at the mum’s side and said the only thing I could think to say: “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”  And she just wept, and heaved, and stammered: “I’ve prayed and prayed for Jesus to heal him and I know Jesus can if He wants to… but I guess Jesus just needs my boy in heaven with Him instead.”

Oh how my heart broke. This sentiment just breaks my heart: the idea that God wanted that special flower for God’s heavenly garden, or needed another angel. I wanted to tell her Jesus does not need your baby to die, or tell her something that would not leave her thinking that God is a cruel God who makes tiny babies suffer in order to gain something for Gods self. But of course this was in no way the time to talk to her about a theology of suffering and death, heaven and hell, or to discuss the nature of God, or to debunk our usual, transactional way of praying – that is, God, do this for me and I’ll do this for You.

Earlier on in my placement at Westmead Hospital, my supervisor gave me this Lazarus story as a tool to work with grieving parents, which I kinda hated. The pleading of mothers and grandmothers, fathers and uncles for God to heal their child, even to bring their child back – they made the Lazarus story feel cruel, like a withered promise never to be fulfilled again. Lazarus was raised to life, but sucks to be you. And yet I was never able to shake the text, no matter how I tried; it stayed at the back of my head, inviting me to pay closer attention.

When we look at the Gospels, we do find a few stories of healing and resurrection.  Unlike in the Hebrew Bible where people who die had the decency to stay dead, in the Gospels people are popping out of graves and wandering around around as Jesus and his followers travel and perform signs and wonders.  Jesus heals many many people, resurrects Jairus’ daughter and resurrects Lazarus.  Much later, after Jesus had left His earthly ministry, Peter calls forth Dorcus from death. But of course, they did not heal all the sick nor raise all the dead, did they?

So what does the Gospel of Jesus teach us about grief and suffering, about the presence of death?  One thing we know for certain is that a life of piety, a life lived as near to perfection as possible will not stave off suffering or death.  So far as we know, Jesus is the only perfect human life, lived wholly oriented toward the will of God; and his life, suffering and death are hard evidence that goodness is no protection from pain. Jesus knew every level of pain, emotional, spiritual, and physical, and still died.

So what then do we do with this Lazarus text?  If we take it at first glance as we often do, we can be satisfied with a miracle story, the exhibition of God’s power in the incarnation of Jesus.  Yes, this is one meaning of this encounter.  But other things, deeper things are happening beyond the raising of the dead. Speaking to me out of this scripture this morning is the striking depiction of Jesus’ grief.

The culture of mourning, explored throughout the bible – the highly ritualized wailing and mourning is the state in which Jesus finds the community when he (finally) arrives in Bethany. He is greeted by a bold Martha: where were you? You could have stopped this! Jesus responds with a clear and resolute reassurance that her brother will live again, not just in the end times, but today. And yet, when Jesus goes on to encounter Mary and the crowd of mourners, he is greatly disturbed in spirit, and deeply moved. The original Greek has Jesus moved within his gut. Jesus, our God revealed, Emmanuel, weeps. He does not hide his emotion, or try to show that everything is A-OK for him. He is deeply mournful at the grief of his friend.

When I asked the family in the PICU if they wanted to pray, the mum whispered, “yes please”.  “For what should we pray?” I asked.  “For Mark to be able to go on home; I’ve told him and he just won’t let go.”  So we prayed – a prayer of lament and thanksgiving, a prayer for release.  I think I sang a verse or two of Jesus Loves Me This I Know and Amazing Grace with a very wobbly voice. And then, there were no more words, just silence and floods of tears – the truest prayer of all. Silence and tears in the face of this incomprehensible, illogical death – so tiny and so huge.

Friends, I think I now get why this Lazarus story was given to me as a pastoral tool. See, without the Lazarus story I would still be ashamed of my tears.  I was initially sorry I had cried; I mean, I am the chaplain; I should be steady and tear free, right?  This is their story, not my story… But actually, it is our story.  Jesus wept. Jesus, the ultimate chaplain who could do what no chaplain or doctor could do, still wept.

As Thomas Merton beautifully puts it, “Jesus is the theology of the Father, revealed to us.” What does Merton mean? He means that Jesus, fully God and fully human, is our best chance to understand God. It is of course possible to dismiss the weeping of Jesus as superfluous, and theologians have, but I would rather not take anything in the Gospel as superfluous.  So what does it mean when Jesus weeps?  The author of John has clearly indicated that Jesus knows full well he will raise Lazarus.  The Gospel of John gives us a picture of Jesus in control of every aspect of His ministry, including his own crucifixion.  So why on earth would Jesus weep if he knew for certain that his beloved friend would live again this day?  Was it that Jesus was moved to tears by the overwhelming scene of mourning, and Mary clinging to his feet in despair? Perhaps. Or could the grief that took hold of Jesus, took hold of God, be in response to knowing in a new way the suffering of all humanity, from the very beginning of creation to this very moment – the struggle to be human, to suffer, and to die?

And could Jesus be weeping for His story, which will unfold at a more rapid pace after Lazarus rises?  Did Jesus know that very soon, he would die at the hands of the very people he loves so – the very people with which he mourns?  Perhaps that is the true miracle of this story – that God took into God’s self the depth of our suffering in a new way – and wept.

Back to the story. After a while, the broken hearted mum in that dark room, holding her dying son, asked for the baby fingernail clippers. Without the hint of a question in his eyes, dad moved into action, rummaging around in the overstuffed closet and found them in a pale blue gift bag, covered with storks and little angels.  Out of the bag spilled a handful of baby shower gifts, – blankets, ointment, onesies – the gifts of life, of a future that will never be. Dad unwrapped the clippers and brought the little steel object over to mum, and she said to him, “No, I need you to.” And there they were, dad tenderly clipping the nails of his dying son, mum’s hand cupping his tiny head.  I felt the need to look away, stepping back from this intimate moment, a moment that felt so futile and yet so holy.   Those things that are important in the days, hours and minutes before the death of our beloved – those are the things to which we are called to orient our whole lives in the face of the certainty of a death that will claim us all. We are called, as co-workers in creation with God – to walk along side and be a tangible reminder that those who suffer and those who are grieving are loved and valued by God. This, perhaps, is why it is natural to offer food to those going through difficult times – it’s tangible love.

My friends, rather than notions of a transactional, vending machine God, who steps in and intervenes to save the innocent, cure cancer or stop the murderous rampage – may we cling instead to the notion that God walks alongside us in our suffering, our holy companion on every journey even to death – for Good Friday shows us that God has walked all the way to death too.  All the way and beyond.  And that is where we are, in Gods loving embrace, wrapped in the blanket of God’s love – in life, in death, in life beyond death.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen