Fifth Sunday of Lent, cycle A

John 11:1 - 45

This last week I have found myself getting pretty upset with God. If this virus ends up injuring someone I love, or disrupting society so much that people will be roaming around in gangs stealing toilet paper from senior citizens, or our life savings will be wiped out and we will have to move in with our kids, whose life savings will probably also be wiped out -- well, you get the idea. And I’m kind of mad at God for a situation in which we can’t go to church, can’t celebrate weddings or funerals or even the Easter services that bring our worshiping communities together. And between you and I, I’m upset with God that I can’t receive Holy Communion. So I say, along with lots of other people, “Why, God? Why are you doing this to us?”

Today we just heard the story of the Raising of Lazarus. I think the story might help us if you, like me, are wondering why God doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers.

Jesus is informed of a tragedy waiting to happen. He does not seem alarmed, even when he tells his disciples that Lazarus has died. I’m pretty sure the apostles wondered why Jesus hadn’t dropped everything and rushed to the home of his dear friends, Lazarus and his sisters. After all, that’s what people do, especially if they can help. And they will especially do it for the ones they love.

That’s what Martha says, as she meets him at the edge of the village. “If you had been here, our brother would not have died!” If God was really in charge, he would have kept Lazarus from dying. After all, dying is about the worst thing that could happen to someone. And Jesus tells her in a calm voice, “your brother will rise”. Martha, being of the Pharisee persuasion, agrees. I know he will rise on the last day, but that doesn’t help now, does it?

Mary then spots Jesus, runs out and falls at his feet, and says the exact same thing, “If you had been here, our brother would not have died!” Now maybe I’m taking liberties here, because I see Martha being very human, shaking her fist in Jesus’ face. I don’t blame her for being angry. Mary, on the other hand, is on her knees. And Jesus reacts very differently, He becomes perturbed, deeply troubled, and he wept. That’s the part that’s so hard to understand about this story. Why did he become troubled and disturbed and weep? Is it all a sham, is it something to make the forthcoming miracle even more dramatic? Does it tell us something about God and human tragedy?

When Jesus weeps, he shows us that our sorrow is also God’s sorrow. We do not have a God who sits in heaven watching everything happen without a care; his grief is as great as, or greater than our own. As the Good Thief found out, God is right up on that cross next to our own. In our current crisis, God is with us. Emmanuel.

When Jesus weeps, he reminds us that there are times when words cannot help, It’s a lesson we need to learn over and over again, because we all keep forgetting it. Sometimes the only response to someone else’s tragedy is to simply weep with them. When you turn on the news or go to your favorite news sources, someone is always talking,speculating, blaming, criticizing, or second-guessing; and someone else answers back. And neither really knows what they are talking about.

When Jesus weeps, he grieves for what is lost. Lazarus will be restored, of course, but not to the way things were. He will suddenly be a cause for disruption in his peaceful village. There will be those who will rush back to church, so impressed by this obvious miracle. There will be those who will want to kill him, as we learn later in John’s gospel, because his very existence is a threat to their way of life, their power, their legitimacy. And there will be those who will decide it was all a trick to make Jesus into some kind of God, and they will blame Lazarus for going along with this ruse. Lazarus has definitely lost something, even though he is raised from the dead. Jesus loses something as well when he is resurrected; he bears the marks of the nails on his hands and of the sword on his side, for all eternity. And when we get through this terrible trial, we all will have lost something.

The climax of the story is that it shows us how God works. God does not make decisions about who he will heal and who he will not. We are invited to pray for healing and for other good things. God may choose to answer our prayers. But in the story of Lazarus, we see God working in his usual way, where he always redeems our suffering afterward. In the miracles described in John’s gospel, you can see that thread running through them. The healings that take place are healings of people who have been suffering, sometimes for a very long time, like the crippled man waiting by the pool of Bethesda, or the healing of the man born blind. Lazarus tells us that God even redeems the suffering after death. And the mystery of the Cross simply universalizes this theme. Does that console me? Do I cease being angry with God? It may be that I am still angry, because I’m human, and his ways are not my ways. But in the end, it comes down to faith. He has shown us how he works. The cross could not be clearer. It is now up to you and I to believe that God is with us, suffering with us, precisely so that our suffering can be redeemed.