This week those of us who use the Revised Common Lectionary heard once the story of the raising of Lazarus, the action in the Gospel of John that led the religious authorities to have Jesus arrested. The passage was 45 verses long (!), so I'm not copying the whole thing here. If you'd like to read it in full, go to The Lectionary Page.
Included in this story, of course, is the shortest sentence in the whole Bible, "Jesus wept" (John 11: 35). Of course, the Episcopal Church reads the New Revised Standard Version, which translates it as "Jesus began to weep." The poetry of Scripture is often lost in the NRSV. I personally prefer “Jesus wept.”
This is on the short list of most important sentences in all of Holy Scripture. Because it invites us to consider: what does it mean to follow a Savior who weeps? In the Hebrew Bible God walks in the garden, God laughs, God rants and raves, God even changes God’s mind. But God never cries, not even after the Great Flood or when people are held in bondage. The very idea of a mighty, omnipotent, God crying was simply unthinkable. And while the Jesus presented in the Gospel of John is often presented as being totally in control, which is in-keeping with the Gospel’s overall theme that Jesus is not only the Messiah, but God, here in chapter 11, verse 35 we see the rawest, most human version of Jesus in all of the Fourth Gospel. Here at the grave of his friend, Jesus, the Christ, the living embodiment of God, cries. And not just a single tear down the side of his cheek like a sentimental moment in a Hallmark movie, no, the Greek word embrimasthai literally translates to “he snorted like a donkey,” and already knowing that Jesus was distressed and upset we can confirm that, yes Jesus ugly cried. And if you know, you know.
This short sentence, one single word in Greek, buried in the longest Gospel reading we do all year – outside of Holy Week – has some major ramifications for us, even now. Especially now. In a culture that tells us – tells men, in particular – that we have to be strong, that we have to keep it together, that we can’t show emotions, can’t show any weakness, can’t shed a tear, this moment of Jesus weeping – ugly crying - over the loss of Lazarus is so powerful. It flies in the face of every convention that we have been taught. Every ounce of pride that we have is made irrelevant in this moment. Jesus has undone what we thought to be true about grief, about death, about life, and about how it’s all connected.
Most of us, I suspect, are familiar with the so-called Five Stages of Grief – to be honest, there are plenty more, but these exist less as an absolute and more as a model, a guide: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Sadness, and Acceptance. And all five are on display in this story: Denial – Jesus himself says Lazarus sickness doesn’t lead to death; Anger – Jesus is greatly disturbed, and again, the Greek text suggests it’s full-on angry, maybe over Lazarus dying, or maybe the people’s unbelief; Bargaining – Mary and Martha both say that if Jesus had been there their brother wouldn’t have died; Sadness – obviously, Jesus began to weep; and Acceptance – Mary and Martha bear witness to their brother’s resurrection and are therefore able to recognize Jesus in his own resurrection when all hope seems lost. The Five Stages are not meant to be linear, mind you, they are often experienced in a not-so-organized fashion, but because we see them play out right here, because Jesus himself experiences them, we can lean into our own grief in the moments when it takes hold. We can, instead of fighting against it, burying it, or pretending it isn’t real, acknowledge our grief and remember this story, remember that God too has wept, has experienced heartbreaking grief, and in that lies the good news of God in the one called Emmanuel – that God is, in fact, with us, in all of our emotions, all of the actions that make us human.
The text invites us to befriend our own grief – whatever it may be – but it also reminds us that grief is not all there is. Sometimes our pain can become so great, and all around us are trying to tell us to buck up and get over it and not be so sad, putting us on the defensive and leaning even more into our pain – often accompanied by cries of “You don’t understand what I’ve been through!” While may be true, and our pain deserves to be acknowledged - and no one has the right to tell us when we should “move on” or “be better" - remaining in the stuckness of our denial, anger, bargaining, and sadness will keep us from getting to the place of acceptance and seeing that there’s life on the other side of the pain.
Fortunately, the good news of Jesus is that those stuck places are often exactly where he shows up. Wilda Gafney, writes in A Women’s Lectionary, that life in Jesus happens here, among the brokenness, failings, and limitations of the physical world. Plato had taught that the physical world was evil, a mere shadow of a greater, more ideal and eternal realm. Christianity picked up on the idea, first among the Gnostics and later among the Puritans, and we still see it today whenever churches preach that everything that is of the physical world is an enemy. Even death. And so we are taught to rage against the world, rage against the dying of the light – thank you, Dylan Thomas – rage against that which is broken, failed, or limited. What can fit that description better than death itself, right?
Yet it is in this place, amongst the broken, failed, limited enemy of death that Jesus cries, “Come out!” Lazarus has been dead for four whole days, which is significant because it not only hammers home that this isn’t one of those stories, like Jairus’ daughter, where the person may or may not actually be dead, but if it is meant to invoke the old theory that the soul lingers around a body up to two days after physical death, then saying he’s been dead four days means he ain’t coming back. All hope is lost. For Mary, Martha, and the people standing there grieving. Maybe, even, on some level, Jesus feels that hopelessness, but through it he cries to his friend, “Come out!” Death itself hears the cry, and Lazarus returns. Death is now the enemy that we can learn to love, thanks to Jesus.
Thanks to the model Jesus gives us, of befriending our grief and even embracing the enemy of death, we can hear his voice when he calls to us to “Come out!” Just like Lazarus Jesus cries out to us to come out from the darkness, to come out from the shame, from the place of judgment, from the sin that holds us captive. Would, as Robb McCoy once wrote, the whole Church heed these words. Come out! Come out from our stuckness! Come out from our pain, from our desire to scapegoat and blame, come out from our need for approval, come out from our comfort zones and desperation to hang onto nostalgia, rooted in the fear that death will consume us if we dare change. Come out of the graves we have dug for ourselves and come into the light, the light of life, the light of hope, the light of love, the light of Christ. This is the very light we all received in the form of that candle lit from the Paschal flame when we were baptized. It is the light that is already in ourselves and each other, if we have eyes to see, if we have ears to hear – and listen to – the voice of Jesus. Then, even when all hope seems lost, we can recognize him.
Once and for all, the story of Lazarus helps us remember that Resurrection doesn’t just happen to Jesus, or on the “last day,” but it is a daily reality, one that lays claim on us right here, right now. Jesus wept. We weep. Jesus cries for us to come out. And our grief is redeemed.
